NEW TEST OF NAVAL STRENGTH

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 45, 5 February 1943, Page 4

NEW TEST OF NAVAL STRENGTH

CRYPTIC official announcements from Washington furnish meagre details of a new major naval engagement which is now proceeding off the colourful Solomons. For the fifth time American and Nipponese haval might is being put to the bitter test. Once more the thoughts of the inhabitants of Australasia are bent in anxious interest upon the struggle for sea supremacy in the South Pacific. In four previous clashes Japan has suffered immense loss of face as her Imperial Navy has called the battle off and retired to its bases, seriously crippled and minus 60 per cent of its air-craft-carrying strength. To-day's battl,e s which is still proceeding is a§ yet clouded in the uncertainty which is born of a close and careful censorship. That is why we can only conjecture as to the nature of its progress or as to its outcome. We have possibly grown so used to American sea victories over the Japanese that the great majority have no doubt whatsoever as to thte final outcome of the conflict. This class of thought is the healthy type which make* for confidence and morale. It is as desirable as the sunbut it should not be permitted to overcome reason and grow into a complex. Japanese strategy is by nature as cunning as it is bold and ruthless in putting its objectives into practice. The classicial sea defeats of the past so amazingly unexpected from the stiff-necked Japanese point of view, and so damaging from an international standpoint, will not, if it can possibly be avoided, be allowed to occur again. New strategy, new formations, new desperate expedients can be expected in order to side-step any fresh draught to the cup of bitterness which already attends the Nipponese naval command. It can therefore be fully anti-f cipated the new major clash is the direct outcome of the 'sixty warships mobilised at Rabaul, with more on the way which was broadcast over the Australian National network two weeks ago, and that in manoeuvring for the r?3W battle for the key island of Guadalcanar, every possible advantage will be sought by the Japanese admiral who can also be expected to change his tactics and embark upon new and completely unorthodox methods for the accomplishment of his objective. Japan has been thirsting for news of a naval victory and it will, the test of the newly assembled navy in the South Seas to see that she gets it. The outcome, which must affect both New Zealand and Australia to a very serious degree* hangs yet in the balance. It would be folly, until Japanese; naval power in these waters has been completely broken to .say that the threat of invasion to these islands has in any way lifted.