SEVERELY HIT

Evening Star, Issue 24324, 13 October 1942, Page 3

SEVERELY HIT

JAPANESE SEAPLANE TENDER AUSTRALIAN BOMBER SCORES DIRECT HITS (N.Z.P.A. Special Aust. Correspondent) SYDNEY, October 12. Australian Hudson medium bombers have heavily damaged a 10,000-ton Japanese seaplane tender, leaving it motionless. Two direct bits were scored on the ship as it steamed with destroyer escort south of St. George’s Channel, between New Britain and Now Ireland. Twelve Zero fighters were packed wing-tip to wing-tip on the upper deck of the tender when the vessel was first sighted by a lone Hudson bomber on reconnaissance, but other planes of the unit wore quickly called to the scene. After the bombing the destroyer was observed slowly circling the tender, which appeared to have been severely hit and unable to move under its own power. NEW GUINEA CAMPAIGN. No new developments have been reported in the New Guinea land battle, but some correspondents say the Australian troops have now covered the entire area of the gap through the Owen Stanley Ranges. A headquarters spokesman stated to-day that any delay in the Australian advance was due to the necessary reorganisation of supplies and troops. There was no indication that wo had been slowed down by the enemy, and there was still no information available of the size of the Japanese forces in the area. The latest contacts with enemy patrols are reported to have been made last Friday. Havocs and Airacobras pn Sunday morning machine-gunned barges on the beach at- Buna. It is not known whether these barges wore loading or unloading. Strafing planes also raided two unnamed native villages near Buna, both being likely places for the enemy to dump stores. AIR SUPERIORITY. The markedly evident and so far unchallenged Allied air superiority in the South-west Pacific is causing general satisfaction. The value of the sustained raids on llabaul cannot be too highly stressed. Its horseshoe harbour shelters most of the enemy shipping moving south from the main Japanese bases in the Caroline and Marshall Islands, and its temporary immobilisation must be of irrimonee help to the American forces in the Solomons, as well as to the Allied force in New Guinea. Rabaul’s airfields and harbour must inevitably figure in any Japanese plans for a new offensive in this theatre. But three heavy raids within a w-eek, when 112 tons of homlbs have been dropped, must have considerably depreciated its value. ENEMY’S DIFFICULTIES. The latest successful air attack on an enemy seaplane tender, which was almost certainly based at llabaul. illustrates the force of to-day’s editorial comment in the ‘ Sydney Morning Herald ’ that “ Japanese shipping is being harried at points so far from any adequate bases that the enemy must have growing difficulty in serving the fronts as distant as Kiska arid Guadalcanal, while maintaining essential transport throughout the vast area they have overrun. The air resources of the Allies are beginning to tip the scales against the enemy, whose production capacity and technical equipment are considerably inferior .to ours.”