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 between strategic and tactical air forces." One day his heavy bombers would attack enemy troop formations hundreds of feet from American lines; the next, they pursued enemy shipping hundreds of miles behind enemy lines.

General MacArthur adopted an island-hopping strategy, skipping over large enemy forces in the American drive northward, and, because of the Fifth Air Force's command of the air, leaving isolated Japanese garrisons to starve, cut off from resupply and rescue. The range of General Kenney's aircraft determined the distance to the next objective. By October 1944 MacArthur's army was ready to leap from New Guinea to Leyte in the Philippines, a target beyond the range of land-based air power. Admiral William Halsey's carriers provided air cover until Kenney's Far East Air Force (FEAF), which combined the Fifth and Thirteenth Air Forces, could move to the Philippines. There, FEAF became engaged in the Army's longest Pacific land campaign, which continued until the end of the war.

The USAAF also became involved in the frustrating and costly effort to keep Chiang Kai-shek's China in the war, tying down dozens of Japanese divisions. Initially this involved Claire Chennault's small mercenary force of private American pilots in China's pay, the Flying Tigers, who captured headlines in the United States when victories of any kind were few in number. With their occupation of Siam and Burma by mid-1942 the Japanese had isolated China, blockading it by sea and cutting supply roads. The USAAF had little choice but to launch a resupply effort into China over the "Hump"―the Himalaya Mountains―from India. The route took American crews above some of the most dangerous terrain in the world in overloaded C-46 and C-47 transports not designed for the weather and high altitudes the missions required. By war's end Hump pilots had ferried 1.18 million tons of supplies from India into China for the fight against Japan.

Although America's original Pacific strategy sought to choke the enemy through a naval blockade, after three years of war Japan remained unwilling to surrender. For Hap Arnold, a strategic bombing campaign employing B-29s would force it to capitulate, obviate the need for an Allied land invasion, and present an opportunity to prove the war-winning potential of an independent air force. The JCS had approved Arnold, as their executive agent, to command the Superfortresses of the Twentieth Air Force. They could strike from fifteen hundred miles, but even their great range left few options for bases from which to launch the air assault. Nimitz's drive through the Marianas in the summer of 1944 freed Tinian, Guam, and Saipan to base the B-29s of Brigadier General Haywood 35