BATTLE FOR SOLOMONS

Marlborough Express, Volume LXXVI, Issue 250, 23 October 1942, Page 5

BATTLE FOR SOLOMONS

LOCAL ATTACKS REPULSED NIPS'. AIR WEAKNESS DISCUSSED.

P.A. Gable.

NEW YORK, Oct. 22.

Local Japanese thrusts against the western flank of the American positions on Guadalcanar have been repulsed, states the latest communique from Washington. The situation generally shows no big change. "Yesterday's Navy communique indicating that the Solomons Battle has not yet been joined is based on recent reports and presumably serves as a reply to continued Axis radio reports that a great battle is raging in the Solomons," says the New York Times Washington correspondent. "United States Navy Department cfficials, however, decline to discuss this propaganda. It appears likely that the Japanese may have indicated to their Axis allies that a inajor attack was under way at Guadalcanar, after which their troop concentrations and supply dumps were bombed by U.S. forces. "Observers note the quick announcement of the loss of the destroyers Meredith and O'Brien as Indicating the inauguration of a new Navy Department policy in such matters. Previously the news of sinkings had been withheld as long as three months." The Washington correspondent of P.M. says that American air experts regard the disproportionate Japanese losses of bombers and flghters in the Solomons as an infallible indication of a vital weakness in Japan's war strength. They argue that casualties have, so thinned the ranks of first-line Japanese pilots that in-

& JSSrnr M JF Jt&ar J? J&isy Jr jwz at j* jbc* experienced fliers are now being sent into battle. In the air battle last Saturday the enemy lost almost 50 per cent. of his raiding force, which is unprecedented in aerial warfare and far beyond the allowance of expenditure. The Japanese have lost over 350 planes so far in the battle for Guadalcanar — a number far out of proportion to the scale of the engagement. "Despite American air superiority in the Guadalcanar area," says P.M., "the Japanese are risking a battle fleet, bearing out deductions that the Japanese cannot rely on their aviation to help wrest the island from the Allies. Airmen declare that there is evidence that the Japanese air force has cut down the period of training for aviators from ten months to six or less in order to increase the flow of fighting pilots. If Japanese aircraft production is maintained at the comparatively high rate of 500 a month it will be impossible for the Japanese to man the planes at the rate they have been losing first-line pilots in the past few months. They are confessing this weakness in their war machine by placing inexperienced fliers in the important battle raging around Guadalcanar."