SEEING THE NEW YEAR IN

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 41, 22 January 1943, Page 3

SEEING THE NEW YEAR IN

Official War Correspondent N.Z.E.F,

Aboard a U.S. Bomber, Jan. 1. The new year is exactly one minute old, and our party is getting noisy. People arc beginning to throw things about. Our guests, the Japanese, wish that everyone would go home. But up here in the starry Solomons sky wc arc just starting to enjoy ourselves. Craning our necks over the side of this big Catalina patrol bomber, we clap one another on the back, yell "Happy New Year!" above the din of the motors, and even manage to make ourselves heard with a few lines of "Auld Lang Sync." This is more fun than we thought possible, a better place to see in the New Year than Queen Street or Cathedral Square can never be until the Avar is won. Wc arc raiding the Japanese 011 their new airfield at Munda Point, New Georgia Island, 180 miles, from Guadalcanal. Our first bomb, screaming down on them at one minute after midnight, is the first of the. year for the enemy in the Solomons zone—and, we hope, on the entire Pacific battlefront. Wc feel proud of it, and it serves as our New Year resolution—the first of an avalanche of high explosives destined for the Japanese in 194,3.

The party has been going all night, and it will not be over for many hours yet. The Catalinas are keeping it alive in relays. They are the night shift in a shuttle bombing service designed to "neutralise" the Munda base and prevent it from being used against Guadalcanal. Few are the hours of daylight or darkness when the Japanese there know respite from the drone of American planes and, the whistle of their bombs. The enemy is losing equipment, losing time and losing sleep. The last minute, of 1942 were slipping quickly by when we arrived over Munda. In the pale starlight the airfield is a dirty white ribobn through the blackness of a coconut plantation. Our first bomb, timed almost to a split second and sped 011 its way by our shouts of goodwill, plummets into the night and reappears moments later in a red flash on the ground. "Happy Noo Year, Tojo!'' yells a gunner at my side. We circle leisurely over the field to let the effects of our gift sink in. Then, in our own good time, we cruise back and drop another one. Small anti-personnel bombs arc tossed by hand through an open hatch, and someone throws out an empty bottle for good measure. To the little yellow men on the ground, its whistle will be as frightening as that of a bomb.. For nearly two hours wc keep making a nuisance of ourselves. The Japanese fire blindly back, and once or twice we feel the ship rock in the blast of an anti-aircraftburst. When our bomb racks are empty and, it is time for another to take over, Ave head for home. Back on the ground, we find, to our delight that we had unsuccessful competition for the honour of dropping the. first bomb of the year. The crew of the Cataline which went over Munda two hours ahead of us had had the same idea. They prolonged, their stay over the target to steal a march on us—but now they ruefully admit that all unknowing we. had slipped in and beaten them to it by a matter of minutes.