OFFICIAL REPLY TO QUERIES

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 265, 7 August 1942, Page 5

OFFICIAL REPLY TO QUERIES

Strategy In Papua (By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, August 6. The Owen Stanley Range, rising to almost 14,000 feet, is the Allied defence line against the Japanese land thrust in Papua, which began with the enemy landing in the Buna-Gona sector. Any Allied garrison stationed in the Buna-Gona sector would have been doomed in the face of a serious attack, an official Allied headquarters spokesman told war correspondents this today. The spokesman was replying to questions by correspondents on the Allied defence policy in New Guinea, and why the Buna-Gona sector was not defended by our troops. He said the mountain range was “almost impassable,” and with the enemy in partial control of the northern New Guinea coast, and in control of the sea lanes from Rabaul, it would have been impossible to defend an advanced position like Buna-Gona without sacrificing the troops involved. . “They could be supplied in the mam only from the sea, with little hope of success,” said the spokesman, “and any garrison there would undoubtedly have been overwhelmed in the case of a serious attack. No special threat exists in its occupation by the enemy, and the establishment of an air base there would be difficult in the fact of our air opposition.