The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 1 (archived PDF)

T H E A R M Y A I R F O R C E S I N W O R L D W A R I 1
planned deployment of American pursuit units could be completed
before late March, and every indication was that by then the fate of
Java already would have been sealed.
Japanese Encirclement of Java
On 1 5 February Singapore fell. Already the enemy held virtually
all areas of strategic importance in Borneo and Celebes. H e was slowly
but surely eliminating a courageous Australian garrison on Amboina,
where the Japanese had landed on 3 1 January. After an Allied naval
force of four cruisers and seven destroyers had been driven back in
Makassar Strait on 4 February, the enemy’s strength in the air had
restricted efforts by naval units of the ABDA Command almost en-
tirely to night operations. The invasion of Sumatra began on 14 Feb-
ruary with a paratroop drop at Palembang, where on the following
day a reinforced enemy controlled both the town and its airfield. The
enemy was closing in on Java, and there was little if any prospect of
wresting from him that air superiority which on all sides prepared the
way for his advance.
Indeed, General Brett already had suggested to the W a r Depart-
ment the necessity for prompt attention to the probability that only
through Burma and China and along a line extending northward from
Australia would the Allies be given an opportunity to strike back.
Fitting his actions to his words, he had sent Brady to Burma for a sur-
vey of facilities, supplies, and munitions, and had called on General
Barnes in Australia for pertinent study and report.66
Reinforcements for the bomber command continued to come in;
five B-I~E’sreached Java by way of the Atlantic route during the first
week of February and two LB-3o’s by the Pacific. In two LB-~o’s,
twenty more officers and men were evacuated from Mindanao, and
by submarine four officers reached Java from C~rregidor.’~But foul
weather and enemy interception thwarted all attempts to bomb targets
of importance for ten days after 2 February. T h e major effort was
made on the morning of 8 February, when Capt. J.L. Dufrane led out
nine B-17’~in an attempt to strike back at Kendari. The weather pro-
vided a cloud cover that appeared inviting but actually contained so
much turbulence as to make flying in formation almost impossible, and
about halfway across the Java Sea the Americans were set upon by
nine to twelve enemy fighters. In what the survivors agreed was the
best-executed attack yet encountered, the Japanese concentrated first
388