LANDING AT MILNE BAY

Southland Times, Issue 24835, 29 August 1942, Page 5

LANDING AT MILNE BAY

ENEMYSTRENGTH DEMONSTRATED

(Special Correspondent, N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 12.30 a.m.) SYDNEY, Aug. 28. “The Japanese landing at Milne Bay is a surprising demonstration of Japanese strength. It shows, even if the Solomons battle succeeds, that the battle for the South-west Pacific is not won. Australia and New Zealand are not freed from the risk of invasion. The Japanese will have outflanked our Solomons positions before we have finished mopping up if Milne Bay is consolidated by them in defiance of increasing Allied air power in this theatre.”

This comment by The New York Evening Post military writer indicates a growing realization that the battles in the Solomons and eastern New Guinea areas are not distinct engagements, but both part of the major battle for the South Pacific. Although the second phase of the battle for the South Pacific has ended in victory for the Allies, it is considered that the third phase is to come.

American observers believe that the Allied fleet is now massing to ■ the north of the Solomons in hopeful anticipation of a show-down with the main Japanese battle fleet. The outcome of such a battle is confidently awaited. All the indications suggest that the Allies are anxious to expand the present guerrilla fighting into a full-scale naval action. However, with the Japanese in desperate need of success to level the score, some American observers, including Major Hanson Baldwin, feel that the enemy may be tempted to launch another thrust against Pearl Harbour or Midway. Such an attack would be a major counter-blow on the Milne Bay principle, designed to distract arid divert Allied offensive forces from the task of rolling back the Japanese. CONFIDENCE IN ALLIES But while the news of the Milne Bay land fighting does not offer a complete picture, war commentators t feel that unless it can be strongly supported by the enemy, the Allied forces in New Guinea are powerful enough to deal with this new threat. It is pointed out that every effort of the Japanese to press inland from their northern New Guinea bases, Lae and Salamaua, has been blocked by Allied patrols. In these sectors, as well as Kokoda, the Japanese seldom venture abroad in parties of fewer than 50, but they have been continually repulsed. The Japanese hold on New Guinea is still decidedly not a stranglehold. If they are finally and completely repulsed in the Solomons and their supply lines to New Guinea menaced, it will be a very precarious hold indeed. The new enemy landing at Milne Bay is symptomatic as much of the rising tempo of the Pacific war as of Japan’s steady purpose to reduce Port Moresby before continuing to drive south. Major Allied successes recently encourage observers here to the hopeful view that the Japanese may have stuck out his neck just a little too far. However, long, arduous fighting by land, air and sea is recognized to be in prospect. MINISTER’S” WARNING 10 Years’ War Possible (Rec. 12.40 a.m.) SYDNEY, Aug. 28. “We must get fighting mad. It is a matter of kill or be killed,” declared Sir Earle Page, the newest member of the Australian War Cabinet today. The view that this might prove a 10 years’ war, for which he had been criticized, was realistic, he said. .“We must fight as a nation on the land and sea, in the air, on the farms and in the workshops, morning, noon and night,” he said. “We must match the Japanese cult of bushido with a crusading determination to blot the Japanese off the map in the southern Pacific.” While the United Nations’ production was outstripping that of the Axis, Sir Earle Page issued a warning that it was a mistake to dismiss Japan’s shipping position too lightly. Though her losses had been heavy, she had seized 500,000 tons of Allied shipping since entering the war.