AMERICANS REJOICE

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 223, 17 June 1944, Page 7

AMERICANS REJOICE

Trend Of Pacific War huge super-fortresses

LONDON, June 16Reporting from Washington, Wigan says that the American people aie now rejoicing that the global war is rea - lv taking shape. With things going tv ell in Normandy, with the Allied advance in Italy making swift progress, with the Russians striking through the K “ Isthmus, with the Japanese in Burma driven back from their objectives, two new and significant blows are struck at the Japanese in the Pacific. The importance of the news from the Pacific is not only that new blows can be staged when the main Allied might is admittedly massed for the blows m Europe, but that it also marks a new stage in the war against Japan. The war in the Pacific is not being allowed to develop into a series of holding actions, but is being carried forward. “In the past six months, says the correspondent, “the Americans have seen the Allies moving forward with something better than seven league boots, and now they see their forces brought to the very verge of the place where the enemy military might is born and nurtured. . “'The arrival of the bombers over Japan itself ~bas great significance, but they might have had heavier bomb-loads had recent Japanese advances in China not overrun some of the forward aerodromes which half a million Chinese had laboriously prepared. They might have arrived earlier, too, had not the demands of the Burma battles made it necessary to use air transport which would otherwise have been carrying the necessary supplies for the super-Fortresses into China. , , “The Japanese must now know, from the Mariannes attack and from earlier •events, that Admiral Nimitz is trailing his coat and is confident of the outcome of any battle which may eventuate, lhey must also know that attack may come from the north by the greatest battle fleet the world has ever known.” Super-Fortresses. The super-Fortresses, mentioned in action for the first time in the raids on Japan from China, are being produced in the United States by five factories, Mr. Wigan says, and the workers were delighted to hear of the feat. “They are tremendous things, which make the ordinary Flying Fortresses and Liberators look like medium bombers. They stand as high as a three-story house, and are capable of flying from the United States to Europe and back without alighting. They are armed with 20millimetre cannon and many machineguns.” ■ , General 11. H. Arnold called the new 8e29 “a highly complicated and most deadly aeroplane, capable of delivering the heaviest blows yet known through air-power.” This is the first time the colossal new super-Fortresses have been reported in action. These aircraft are half as large again as Fortresses and Liberators and can cruise toward an objective at over 300 miles an hour. They can drop bombs from over 30,000 feet. “Tlie power of the new bombers is so great,” said General G. C. Marshall, “that the Twentieth Air Force will not be confined to a single theatre, but will be treated as a major task force in the same manner as naval task forces are directed against specific objectives.. CAROLINES BASES MacArthur’s Bombers Out SYDNEY, June 16. The heaviest series of raids made by South-west Pacific Command bombers on the Japanese bases in the Carolines are reported. More than 100 tons of explosives were dropped on Truk, while other atolls raided included Woleai and Yap. Several grounded aircraft were destroyed and nine Japanese fighters were shot down. , , Yap Island, 600 miles south-west of the Mariannes, has been highly developed as a war base by the Japanese. It lies 260 miles north-east of Palatn 9a miles from the Admiraltys, and 1250 miles from Port Moresby. It is a central distributing depot for supplies, with large coal, fuel and other military stores, as well as a seaplane base and airfield.