Word: hengyang
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Since capturing Hengyang (TIME, Aug. 28), the Japanese drive, spearheaded by five divisions with as many more in support, has advanced southwest at the rate of ten miles a day. It cut right through the Chinese army that opposed them-the Chinese, with no ammunition left, had to get away as best they could. The Japs overran Lingling, a Fourteenth Air Force field. At that rate of advance, ten days more would put them in Kweilin, site of a major U.S. air base and capital of Kwangsi Province...
...greatest campaign of the year in Asia opened last week amid the yellow stubble of South China's rice paddies, just harvested of their bumper crop. At Hengyang the Japanese had won the battle of Hunan. There they had paused for regrouping, to consolidate their supply lines and to rest their troops. Twice in a month they had feinted, first due south toward Canton, next southwest toward Kweilin, site of a major Fourteenth Air Force base. Both times they had halted, not yet certain they had the preponderant strength needed to finish...
...hesitation was over. The enemy had completed the road south from Changsha to Hengyang; he had made progress in restoring the railway to service, and he had cleared the Siang River of mines. Major General Chennault's airmen had flown their hearts out, bombing and strafing, but to little avail. The Japanese had at least seven well armed, well clad, well supplied divisions in the field. The Chinese had lost most of their artillery at Changsha. They still had foot soldiers galore...
Encirclement and . . . Nowhere else in the Asiatic or Pacific theaters had the Japs such a large force active in the field against any of the United Nations. The Japs' strategy was sound and tried: encirclement and annihilation. Due west from Hengyang, one column struck swiftly toward Shaoyang; southeast of Hengyang, another struck from captured Leiyang to engulf Changning...
About a thousand miles to the east, in China, the Japs stalled again in their drive down the Hankow-Canton railway from Hengyang and the twin drive toward Kweilin, where the U.S. Fourteenth Air Force base was threatened. The Japs' backing & filling, while increasing their already preponderant power, was puzzling. Of one thing observers were sure: it was now or never for the Japs. Within 60 days the Ledo-Burma supply route should be open. Thereafter, the Japs' last chance to cut China in half and wipe out U.S. A.A.F. bases near the China coast would be lost...