National Comics #4 (1940)

The military leaders of an Asian nation decide that they are ready to conquer the world, and to start with the United States. They embark massive ground and air forces aboard a group of mobile fake islands and deploy them to the American West Coast. Meanwhile Uncle Sam and Buddy Smith are returning stateside from another adventure, transiting the tropics in a small sailboat. The wind dies out, but Unc just rares back and blows those sails forward, and they make good time. But that evening a typhoon crosses their path, capsizes their craft, and departs. They float the wreck to a small group of small islands, then prepare to sleep out under the stars. Buddy thinks it feels like the ground is moving but Sam scoffs. But then a modern warplane arrives and lands on the island. Two pilots climb out, and Unc stealthily trails them as they enter the fake island's superstructure, and make their scouting report. According to them, the U.S. Pacific Fleet is carrying on a distant training exercise, far from the mainland, so now is the time to strike. Uncle Sam steps into the room and punches out all the sailors and airmen in it, then works his way through more compartments, including a barracks full of troops, and punches out all of them also. He gets into the control room and figures out how to detach some of the occupied compartments, and sends those to the bottom. Then he runs back to where he left Buddy, puts him on a remote-control enemy plane, and sends it flying to America. Aboard the High Command island, the leaders detect this, and deploy enough remote-control transmitters to override Buddy's plane's controls and recapture it, and Buddy. Then they transmit a warning to Uncle Sam, who currently is working his way thru the crew of a second island: desist or else! Sam makes no reply, dives, swims back to the first moving island, ascertains that it has "enough fuel to sail it around the world," and sends it southward, toward the U.S. Pacific Fleet's ongoing wargames. Days later, it arrives there, bumps a few things, and gets captured and inspected. The fleet soon is retracing the course by which the phony island arrived. Meanwhile the mobile fake islands have taken positions off the U.S. West Coast, and soon all coastal cities and military bases are under attack from squadron after squadron of bombers. Ground-based gunnery and airborne interceptors are inadequate for the enormous aerial invasion, and the islands themselves are anchored outside of coastal artillery range. Uncle Sam dives again, and swims around grabbing and towing the anchor chains of the fake islands, assembling them all in one area. Dive bombers are sent after him, in vain, with one being destroyed by a spinning anchor chain. About then the Pacific Fleet sails into the area and brings some heavy naval gunnery to bear. Sam meanwhile smashes his way into the High Command's flagship control room, and frees Buddy, whom he conveys to shore aboard a borrowed torpedo. He then returns the torpedo to its rightful owners, at full speed. Once the invaders are driven within range of the shore artillery, it's only a matter of time before all the "islands" are destroyed.