ENEMY WAR POWER

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 20, 24 July 1945, Page 5

ENEMY WAR POWER

IMPAIRED BY FLEET

WASHINGTON, July 22. Extensive damage was inflicted on enemy combatant vessels, merchant shipping, airfield, transport, and other military installations by the British and American carrier-aircraft which struck at targets near Tokio on Wednesday afternoon, says Admiral Nunitz in a communique.

The attacking aircraft bombed, rocketed, and strafed installations in the area extending from the Yokosuka navy yard to Mito Kiryu, on the northern edge of the Kanto plain. They encountered no enemy airborne opposi-

tion. Flak was very heavy over the Yokosuka navy yard, but it diminished as the pilots bombed gun positions. Detailed reports show the following results: — Sunk: A destroyer, a cable-layer, three small cargo ships, and seven motor torpedo-boats. Damaged: The battleship Nagato (32,000 tons), the superstructure of which was heavily damaged; an antiaircraft (converted). destroyer, an old destroyer, four luggers, and two small craft. Six locomotives, four hangars, an ammunition dump, an oil tank, a power plant, and a transfoz'mer /ere also destroyed. Thirty aircraft were destroyed on the ground and 42 damaged. The Allied losses were 12 aircraft. HEAVY DAMAGE DONE. ■ Preliminary reconnaissance reports show that the bombardment of the industrial establishments at Hitachi by American battleships, cruisers, and destroyers and units of the British Pacific Fleet last Tuesday evening damaged a copper refinery and inflicted severe damage on the Hitachi engineering works and Hitachi arms factory. tight forces of the 3rd Fleet, operating five miles west of Nokima Cape, today encountered a four-ship convoy and sank a medium cargo ship and a small cargo ship and damaged an escort vessel. Other light units attacked the town of Omura, on Chichi Jima, with gunfire. • Search aircraft destroyed a small coastal cargo ship and six small craft .and left two small cargo ships burning. . Privateers yesterday sank a small coastal cargo ship on the east coast of Tsushima and damaged a large cargo ship. FIVE MILES FROM TOKIO BAY. .The Guam correspondent of the Associated Press says that the communique partly answers the mystery of the whereabouts of the American fleet since the Tokio strike. The light units which . smashed the four-ship convoy were only five miles from the very mouth of Tokio's outer bay, while a similar task squadron shelled Omura, 550 miles south of Tokio. ■ ■ The fact that the fleet is able to separate into • small units for various missions in the heart of the enemy's seas,is itself significant of the lack of opposition.The whereabouts of the American and British heavy units is still wrapped in a security black-out. The Nagato is 26 years old, but had been modernised. She is one of two battleships which the Japanese are known to have commissioned at the same time. A London report states that the Nagato is said to be one of the last four