L^T .-SUNOCO, ^_WEDNESD A Y , „APR I L_. GOOD EVENING EVERYBODY: y Dgr Unde Samcw-l' ^ jii my struck back at the Japanese today^ with the most spectacular of all air raids to be recorded so far. At the command of General MacArthur, thirteen American bombers flew al the way from Port Darwin and struck at four enemy Among them were three positions in the Philippines, flying fortresses, find the flight was personally led by Brigadier-General Ralph Royce. The, official { communique reports that enemy shipping, enemy airfields,i i enemy docks and aircraft were destroyed and damaged. And all but one of our planes returned safely. Only | one bomber^ the enemy shot down^ and the crew of i that one was rescued. 4 1 "1 ’ LEAD - 2 Olficials describe it as perhaps the most ^ daring attacJc of the war, certainly the most long \ 1 i distance attack. The longest ever made by the British ^ Royal Air Force were those against northern Italy, a round trip of some fifteen hundred miles.j The length of this air raid is not given. But it may have miles. jThe official report adds that the raid spread not only destruction but dismay. General Royce*s air squadron hit at three of the Philippine Islands. It bombed Nichols Field near Manila, also Bantangos on southern Luzon, an important port for the Japanese. It then dropped bombs on Cebu, the capital of Cebu Island where the Japanese landed tv»elve thousand soldiers only last Rid ay, and another most important Japanese base, Davao, on the island of Mindanao. f' B LEAD - 3 1 Who is this General Royce, a newcomer fay / A headlines? His official title is Chief of Staff to Lieutenant-General Brett, who is Deputy Supreme Commander of the Air Forces of the Far East. Before he Tt-a4~~thg4. post, ip? was considered at home .one of the A' ^ outstanding bomber pilots in Uncle Sam’s Air Corps. He was twice in command of Selfridge Field in Michigan. As long ago as Nineteen Seventeen, when only three years out of West Point, commanded the first^ aerial squadron sent to France in the last war and won the French Croix de Guerre for bravery. He has been commanding officer of the Seventh Bombardment Group, also Air Officer of the Department of the Philippines at Manila. He is fifty-two years old, or young, as you prefer. This raid created an even greater sensation in London than fill lii-r /\ The news became U ' ' LEAD - 4 thG topic of* conversation everywhere where men had gathered together. In every hotel, bar and pub throughout London, glasses were lifted to.'F^oyce and hfs pilots. A key official in the British Air Ministry A used these words about the raid;- ”A diKiimuil"' fgyft show that makes us mighty proud of the Americans;, 5nd he added, "The American Eagle is beginning to strike.” The results, declaredrthe Britishers, were extt’aordinary, especially considering the long distance the bombers had to fly from their base in Australia.<>^^ General Brett, in reporting the news, declared that Royce had volunteered for the command of this A —-------- important mission. Incidentally, it’s interesting to learn that the British call these shows "raid^"^ ^he Americans call them ’’missions.” It will be interesting to learn the details when they are made public. In a later dispatch, we learn that some of 1 "t LEAL - 5 those bombers actually landed in the Philippines and brought back to Australia a number of people evacuated from the islands. A latter report from General MacArthur tells | us that Royce^ men sank or damaged at least eight enemy ships. Besices that, our flyers destroyed hangars, damaged runways, wrecked and damaged aircraft, ^ dispersed troops concentrations, set fire to docks and warehouses. H MacABTHUB The British in London A O/^ completely mystified by the hubbub tfaair~tRrp~--tT'»tTi raised A oacs^ the authority of General MacArthur, the questio^ tltA- U, how complete T authority^wttt*^ A|spokesman in London put it this way:- "There is no shadow of doubt in our minds j that General MacArthur is the supreme commander not only of the American forces but *of all the Allied forces in the southwest Pacific." And he added that the understanding on the banks of the Thames is that MacArthur took over that supreme command immediately aiter.Sir Archibald Wavell ^as shifted back to India. We do not know, say the British, whether MacArthur has been officially appointed, but so far as the British Government is concerned, he is the supreme commander in fact. Premier Curtin of Australia also announced that so far as his Government wi^s concerned, MacArthur MacARTHUR - 2 Id j And used these words:- ^Cables between A 0 the Australian Government and the Australian envov in Washington have made it quite clear that Australia VMXvvtcfenL fully approved MacArthur’s appointment.” tods Curtin /V added that he wa'" quite surprised at the statem.ent made yesterday by a spokesman for the American Army, to^doubt concerning MacArthur*s position. ”1”, said ”have treated him as the supreme commander. ” / ___ middle EAST The news from the Middle East tonight sandstorms in the Libyan desert. Of course they work A ^ both ways. They prevent any advance on either side. But^they enable both sides to do a lot of preparing. The reoorts from Cairo are that the British believe Nazi Marshal Rommel may be concentrating his forces and building up a new line p^reparatory to an attack. There*s the greatest e tension all over the Middle East, everybody wondering which_waj _t,he Nazi cay ' i“" is going to jump that situation in a piece I wrote for LIBEETY Magazine, which IIr-rri—today. That same Middle East A ^ has been a theatre of crucial wars for at least six thousand years. And it's a subject of never-ending fascination. FRANCE To the appointment of Pierre Laval as of France, our Government's firstis to postpone the sailing of tv-’o ships with food for the French iu : k people, together with another, a Red Cross vessel^with 1 milk and clothing for French children. Two of the ships were to go to North Africa. An agreement was ii made only last week for sending them, and they were all refndy in New York harbor, fully loaded with supplies. The Red Cross .veixnasb with milk and layettes A A ; t -i I ! 4 for babies was to go direct to a port in unoccupied France. Assistant Secretary of State Sumner V/elles declared today that th^^3p=c^^^^ not be permitted to leave the country until the situation has cleared up. In his press conference this morning^^elles told newspapermen that he had received some preliminary XRfiiar: reports from Admiral Leahy, but they were not complete FRANCE - 2 enough to allow the State Department to make a definite announcement regarding ^the attitude of our Government. Naturally, the most feverish kind of rumors were circulating today as a result of the spectacular and disastrous jumping of Laval to supreme power. All the reliable reports that we can get indicate that the people of France are almost at starvation’s point. Henry Raylor, author of TIME RUNS OUT was remarking to me today that although no ^azi officials are supposed to be in unoccupied France, there is a German commission at Marseilles which seizes eighty percent of all the food imported into France from North Africa. And one-half of the rest of it is grabbed by Hitler’s officials in occupied France. So in order that Frenchmen may have one ton of dates or one ton of wheat from their African possessions they have to import nine tons to be seized by their conquerors. Correspondent henry Taylor says the Germans will now ease up on this, just to curry favor with the French, and get the French Fleet. I: FRANCE - 3 I^They, the Germans, even forced the French railroad men to scrape ^half of the axle grease out of the grease boxes on French rolling stock, and turn it over to the Germans. There has been a good deal of doubt around various desks in New York about Laval’s title. Lome of us have been calling him Vice-Premier and others Premier. A late dispatch from Vichy seems to settle the question. At present the swarthy little man from the Auvergue is neither. He is Premier Designate, and will by the end of the week, be Premier. Tomorrow he will return to Vichy from Paris and tell Petain and Admiral Darlan whom he has chosen for his Cabinet, presumably after conferring wi;^Hitler's man Abetz and receiving Iws-OVay on the appointments. A RUSSIA Tonight’s reports from Russia claim that the Soviet Armies have smashed through two German defense lines and are fighting for the approaches of a large and strategic city. The Stalin Government rigidly forbade Russian correspondents to mention the name of the city, but outsidei^s believe it is either Bryansk, two hundred and twenty-five miles southwest of Moscow, or Kharkov, t^^e Pittsbur^of the Ukraine. It was only yesterday that the Red Army announced it had smashed a line twenty-five miles wide in the defenses around Kharkov. The Germans are complaining that the torrential^- rains of the Russian Spring have made the front into a i chain of iMjaHXxikiRxfeK^xx impassible bogs.\The Germans admit that many tractors are being lost in the mud and even horse-drawn vehicles are of little use. \ gUSSIA -■ 2 Tractors, they add, can be used only for the most important supplies. There are reports from Stockholm that, in snite of the thaw and the rains, the Russians have been making use of Cossacks to harffass the Germans along the A whole front. i SUBMAFINE A hundred and fifty more submarines for Uncle Sam*s NavyJ That*s the decision of the Naval Affairs Committee of the House. The Committee was considering the bill to add a hundred and seventy thousand tons to our underwater fleet; but^ the Committee increased that tonnage from a hundred and seventy thousand to two hundred thousand, after hearing the evidence of some of the Navy*s experts. UNION 1 The War Labor Board has ordered the International Harvester Company to sign a contract witU-rri nas, which will virtually compel everybody who works for the j Comp?ny to join a union. There has to be a referendum election in each factory of the Company to decide whether a majority of those who are already Union |/\J members want such a provision enforced, can be no doubt v/hich way such an election will go. The yb iu JT1 implicatior^^is that the War Labor Board is determined to enforce compulsory union membership in every ifactory over which it has jurisdiction, meanSAOimif .every factory in the land. This is the s<=cond such action by the V/ar Labor Board. The workers at a shipyard in New Jersey have also been unionized^^ order means that union membership has to be enforced oy the employing company. No union card, no job. BYFD Senator Harry B^d of Virginia , A. t .................. --x- a startling statement about war production. It was contained in a report of the Navy Department, and it declared that slow-downs at the command of labor leaders and inefficient management had cut down the turn-out of war materials anywhere from twenty-five to ninety per cent in eight highly important factories. In publishing this report, Senator Byrd used these words:- ”If anything is more reprehensible than a complete halt of work on war production, it is a deliberate slow-down.” Among the cases he cited was that of an aircraft corporation at Long Island City. According to the Navy Department’s report, this. during the week ending A^ril Eleventh, was operating at only forty per cent ^ capacity, due to the demand because of of laborjleaders for a slow-down, and also^^ finef f icient management. ” The report went on to say that in several I i w^. 1 BYPD - 2 sections of that plant all of the workers, including the foremen, are enemy aliens. I! 7 nopmandie Here’s the first official report on the burning of the NORMANDIE. \The Naval Affairs Committee | of the House says, "The Conclusion is inescapable I that it was bad judgmenA to issue orders for the / sailing of the ship as/ early as February Fourteenth," and it adds, "The evi/ience is also conclusive that competent naval officers recommended against the sailing of the shijb >nd that ytfe recommendations were ^ A A____ n overruled. I l/\j ^ Yhere was no evidence of sabotage/in the burning of the NORMAN _____ ugh the opportunit ieSy<^u/2 I 'dc '^were abundant. #s#-the only reason why there was A A lA/TlX^ none te that the time wasn't ripe. The Committee A uses the words:'- "carelessness, lack of proper supervision, divided authority, lack of unified • • • • • ^ command." The consecuence was divided responsibility, j conf usion lack of coordination. The Committee was r NOBMMI:!! - 2 even unable to find out who had issued the order that the NOEMANDIE should sail February Fourteen In conclusion, the Committee recommends that the control of the merchant marine shBu-'M be immediatel} r turned over to the Ma vy r yw4--t li/ilrnuiu] Lli-frb— A President Poosevelt already has an executive order to that effect all drawn up and ready to sign. r GUNNER Y/hat are the feelings of the crew of a bomber that is attacking the enemy? Here’s one answer from a young turret gunner, a Minneapolis lad. After his first battle with the Japs, he used this expression:- ”My stomach was all knotted up inside.” And he added ’^that he felt ^scar^d A reporter asked whether it was tougher on the I way to the target or on the way back. One flyer replied: ”When you'sP^ foing there you't?=^ all keyed up and K ^ A anxiou^ a1 l-htihhi-y The Minneapolis gunner said that on the way back from the mission his bomber suddenly was attacked by two Japanese navy Zero fighters. While he was pouring bullets at them, a third Zero appeared on his tail. ^/v He let one of them come up close before he opened fire, then his tracers ripped into the Japanese, and there was a spurt of flame and a cloud of smoke. He just i GUNNEP - ? * > n dropped out of the sky, smoke streaming from his A engine, and v^hen I looked around for the other two Zeros they had disappeared.” Then he added these words:- ”When I saw that Japanese plane going down in flames I had sort of a funny feeling. I took out a photo of my wife and looked at it.” •I M