drive the attack home to the Japanese Islands, and to Japan's industrial installations in Manchuria,
North China and Korea.
 
                     4. Nor should closer ground targets be neglected. Use of the great Japanese staging
areas on Formosa and Hainan Island may be virtually denied by a strong, well-balanced air force
in China. In China proper, when the weather opens next summer, the attacks on shipping will cut
the Yangtsze River supply lines, on which the Japanese positions from Hankow up to Ichang are
entirely dependent. If these positions are also pulverized by heavy bombardment, and if the
Chinese Armies are given strong air support in attacking them, the Japanese hold should be
broken by relatively slight Chinese pressure. Both the Generalissimo and the able General Chen
Cheng, who actually led two sieges of Ichang, have always maintained that the upper Yangtsze
positions could be retaken with 500 allied aircraft in China. I am confident they are right.
 
                       The four kinds of operations are listed in what I regard as their true order of
military priority. It may seem surprising that I put the most spectacular - long range bombing of
Japan - in third place. Yet the reason is simple.
 
                       Long range bombing of industrial installations, as European experience has shown,
takes a long time to produce decisive results. I believe that immediately decisive results can be
produced by the attack on Japanese shipping and air power. Since in China we can count on
knocking down approximately nine Japanese aircraft for each one of our own lost, the fight for air
supremacy here should subject Japanese air power to an extremely heavy strain. More important
still, I will risk my reputation that when the air units and supplies are available for the job, we can
sink a minimum of 150,000 tons of Japanese shipping each month. I consider that the strain on
Japan's air power, added to existing strains in other areas, ought to prove crippling. Japan's
shipping resources are plainly unable to withstand additional losses at the rate ef 150,000 tons a
month. To one with your war experience and special mastery of naval strategy, I need hardly
point out that the Japanese positions in South-east Asia and the South-west Pacific must soon fall,
if Japan has not the shipping and air power to support them. Finally, destruction of the Formosan
and Hainanese staging areas will further increase the effect of the attacks on shipping and air
power, throwing out of kilter the whole Japanese system of military movement. For these reasons,
while both types of operation are exceedingly important, I think the attack on shipping and air
power should have present priority, while long range bombing of Japan must be looked to for the
eventual knock-out blow.
          The attack on the Japanese flank which I have outlined is quite feasible. If
energetic preparations are made during the next months, all necessary units should be in place,
and all supply and other facilities should be ready, by the end of June. The weather in China
opens, and the best fighting season starts during July. By scheduling the most intensive operations
to begin in July, they should coincide.
 
                              -2-