ALLIED PACIFIC AIR POWER

Marlborough Express, Volume LXXVI, Issue 241, 13 October 1942, Page 5

ALLIED PACIFIC AIR POWER

JAPS. HARRIED BASES AND SHIPS CUMULATIVE EFFECT 10,000-TON PLANE TENDER HIT

P.A. Special.

SYDNEY, Oct. 12.

Australian Hudson medium bombers have heavily damaged a 10,000-ton Japanese seaplane tender, leaving it motionless. Two direct hits were scored on the ship as it stea.med with a destroyer eseort south of St. George's Channel between New Britain and New Ireland. Twelve Zero fighters were packed wing-tip to wing-tip on the upper deck of the tender. The vessel was first sighted by a lone Hudson on reconnaissance, but other planes of the unit were 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. No new developments have been reported in the New Guinea land battle, but some correspondents say thiqt Australian troops have now covered the entire area of the gap through the Owen Stanley Range. A Headquarters spokesman stated to-day that any delay in the Australian advance was due to necessary reorganisation of supplies and troops. There are no indications that we have been slowed down by the enemy, and still no information is 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 on Sunday morning machine-gunned barges on the beach at Bunda. It is not known whether these barges were loading or unloading. Strafing planes also raided two unnamed native villages near Buna, both being likely places for the enemy to dump stores. VALUE OF RAIDS ON RABAUL. 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 Rabaul 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 immense help to the American forces in the Solomons, as well as to the Allied forces in New Guinea. Rabaul 's airfields and harbour must inevitably figure in any Japanese plans for a new offensive in this theatre. But the three heavy raids within a week when 112 tons of bcmbs have been dropped must have considerably depreciated its value. The latest successful air attack on the enemy seaplane tender, which was almost certainly based at Rabaul, illustrates the force of today's Sydney Herald editorial comrnent that "Japanese shipping is being harried at points so far from any adequate repair bases that the enemy must have growing difficulty in serving fronts at distant as Kiska and Guadalcanar while maintaining essential transport throughout the vcst area he has over-run. 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."