HUGE HARVEST AT RABAUL

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 17, 15 October 1943, Page 5

HUGE HARVEST AT RABAUL

Allied Ait Blitz (By Telegraph.—Press Assn.-Copyright.) (Special Australian Correspondent.) (Received October 14, 9.5 p.m.) SYDNEY, October 14. A great striking force, of Allied aircraft has inflicted a disastrous defeat on Japanese air and naval forces at Rabaul, the enemy s main base in the South-west Pacific. In a devastating raid at noon the Japanese, who were taken by surprise, lost 1 77 aircraft destroyed and 49 ships, and 70 harbour From the battle operations room of the air force in New Guinea where he has been with his senior air commanders, General MacArthur described the attack as a "crushing and decisive defeat for the enemy at a most vital point. ' Rabaul has been the focus and the very hub of the enemy’s main advanced air effort. I think we have broken its back. Almighty God has again blessed our aims.”

General MacArthur’s communique says that the planes destroyed were approximately 60 per cent, of the enemy's accumulated air strength at Rabaul. Hundreds of planes and more than 1000 United States and Australian airmen took part in the great attack which caught the Japanese completely unawares. Details of the shipping destruction are : SUNK OR DESTROYED. Three destroyers. Two 5800-ton merchantmen. One 7000-ton merchantman. Forty-three seagoing vessels ranging from 100 to 000 tons. Seventy harbour craft. SEVERELY DAMAGED. ’ One submarine. One 5000-ton submarine tender. One 6800-ton destroyer tender. One 7000-ton merchantman. Two wharves and a .warehouse were destroyed and other waterfront installations were wrecked and many large fires started. Caught Like Sitting Ducks. “Japanese aircraft caught on the ground on three airfields were bowled over like ninepins by low-flying Mitchells,” writes an Australian war correspondent who aeompanied the attackers. Liberators went over the harbour at a high altitude, concentrating their 10001 b. bombs on Japanese naval and merchant shipping caught like ducks sitting on a pond. Immediately after the first shock of surprise, destroyers and small craft scurried frantically seaward. It was like a stampede of ants after a steam-roller had crushed their nest. Enemy ships were literally lifted out of the haroour bv bomb blasts.” This midday attack on Rabaul, which was made on Tuesday and continued yesterday, was the first daylight raid on the big base since last January. It brought the estimated total of Japanese aircraft destroyed, or probably destroyed, in the South-west Pacific since the beginning of August to 1302. A Japanese cargo vessel of 8000 tons was left stranded on a reef near Cape Gloucester, western New Britain, after it had received a direct hit on the stern' in an attack by Allied night reconnaissance units. General MacArthur’s latest communique, which is mainly an account of Tuesday’s record Pacific air strike against Rabaul, also reports other widespread Allied operations when Admiral Halsey’s escorted bombers attacked Kahili aerodrome, on Bougainville Island. Fifteen of 23 intercepting Japanese fighters were shot down. I