No farther south than the Equator, no farther
west than Midway Island," are the official
orders under which the Navy's sea- planes
based on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, are searching
this fortnight for a mythical foe bent on
invading the United States.
Steam and electricity, with transpacific
liners, cables and radio, made the Hawaiian
Islands the travel-bureau press agent's "Crossroads
of the Pacific." Now, aviation, with
giant flying-boats equipped with sleeping-berths,
carries globe-trotters across the worlds
greatest ocean from San Francisco to Hongkong,
Canton or Manila.
Military and naval brass-hats, poring over
ever-present but seldom-talked-about battle-plans,
forecast that aviation has made the erstwhile
Sandwich Islands some-thing more than a "crossroads,"
that they now are the key to mastery of the
Pacific.
Now, Pan-American Airways Clipper planes
click regularly above the clouds, drop out
of the skies to pause at Honolulu, then speed
on their way again to Midway, Wake Island,
Guam, Manila and China.
These remote island air-halts are some-thing
more than mere refueling bases for the airmail.
On Midway, halfway be-tween America and Asia,
technicians have established a fully equipped
air-station. Until the Pacific Cable Company,
stretch-ing out 1,304 miles from the Hawaiian
"crossroads," -placed one of its
posts on Midway, this coral island, with
ideal cli-mate, was uninhabited except by
sea-birds
Spear-Point -- To-day it is the farthest
west shear-point of the aeria1 thunderbolt
guard-ing America. There, this week, forty
long-distance naval patrol-planes, with forty-one
officers and 120 enlisted men, es-tablished
a night-flying and advance head-quarters
base. At French Frigate Shoal, 500 miles
northwest of Honolulu, three similar squadrons
of the Aircraft Base Force (1,000 officers
and 1,000 men, tho not all fliers) could
be concentrated with the aircraft-tender
Wright.
So much for the "no farther west than
Midway" in Rear Admiral Ernest J. King's
orders to his base-force.
There are other American possessions south
of the "Hawaiian Crossroads" Palmyra,
Baker, Jarvis and Howland Islands and Kingman's
Reef southward along the proposed airline
to antipodean New Zealand and Australia,
a 5,000-mile sky-trail yet to be blazed.
Baker, Jarvis and Howland already have landing
areas which could be used in emergencies
by land-planes, for the waters surrounding
these islets are too rough for seaplanes
to make a safe landing. There are no lagoons,
the seas beating directly upon the shore
and at some seasons landing even by boat
is dangerous.
Colonizing-The Coast Guard cutter Itasca
has colonized these islets with Hawaiian
youths, who are busy grading landing fields
with tractors, planting seeds for purple
and yellow passion fruit, sea-grapes, breadfruit,
Hawaiian oranges, cashew nuts and ironwoods,
collecting weather data with scientific instruments
and building air bases.
These islands are the spokes in the wheel
of national defense in the Pacific, while
Hawaii is the hub. There, Army and Navy cooperate
to build a Gibraltar. They are also trebling
the air defense of the Hawaiian crossroads,"
an insular group stretching 400 miles in
a general northwest to south-east direction.
Planes now are concentrated on Oahu, where
Honolulu is sit-uated. Kauai, "garden
island" with its plantations and cattle
ranches, 150 miles northwest of the Capital,
and Hawaii it-self, 200 miles in the Opposite
direction, soon will have their own air bases
while $18,000,000 is being spent on Horace
Hickam Field, gigantic Hawaiian airport.
Key to Pacific defense, Mark Twain's "loveliest
islands" are only 1200 miles from Alaska,
2410 miles from San Francisco and 4,000 miles
from the Panama Canal. The Army's mighty
new four-motored bombers can fly to any of
these points, except Panama without refueling.
While the Navy patrolled the Pacific wastes
west of Hawaii last week, Japan notified
the League of nations that she intends to
establish regular airlines linking the South
sea islands under her Geneva mandate with
the mother country. Such an airline would
cut directly across Pan American Airways
sky-trail to the Orient from the Hawaiian
"crossroads."