AIR AND NAVAL STRUGGLE

Southland Times, 16 October 1942, Page 5

AIR AND NAVAL STRUGGLE

Solomons Struggle May Be Decisive (Special Australian Correspondent, N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 7 p.m.) SYDNEY, October 15. “The continuing air and naval battle in the Solomons has already in the aggregate begun to assume the dimensions of an action which may prove decisive in the Pacific war,” says The Sydney Morning Herald, commenting on the latest cheering news from the South-west Pacific fronts. Australian war news analysts see the Battle for the Solomons as one of attrition with the Japanese losses in ships and aircraft now amounting to a total which must prove gravely embarrassing to the enemy. It is pointed out that recent reports of South-west Pacific actions have revealed the existence of American bases in the New Hebrides and Fiji considerably strengthening the Allied position in this theatre. While no information of the size or type of these bases has been given both American and Australian observers regard their now officially

acknowledged existence as proof of the Allied determination to pursue a vigorous offensive policy against the Japanese. A Washington report states that Espiritu, on Santo Island, in the New Hebrides, is an air base which some air force units assisting the Marines to capture Guadalcanar used as a jumping-off place. LAND-BASED AIR POWER Emphasizing again the great importance of land-based air power, in which supremacy has lain so decisively with the Allies, The Sydney Morning Herald says: “The initiative which the Japanese have striven to assert on sea and land has been constantly baffled and cripled by the Allies’ initiative in the air, a revelation which should assure the Solomons battle of a leading place in the future study of amphibious tactics of war.” The enemy unwillingness to risk a major fleet action in which carriers and battleships would participate is generally commented upon. It is pointed out that the attrition fighting into which the Japanese have been led by the Americans has already cost the Japanese losses equivalent to those of a major fleet action fought in vain. But observers agree that the Japanese still have substantial sea power available and must either risk a battle or admit defeat in the contest in which the stakes are much more than the Solomons. “If our allies have not yet fully succeeded in getting the enemy, navally speaking, where they want him,” says The Sydney Morning Herald, “at least they have so far outwitted, outmanoeuvred and out-fought him in the shrewdest game this war has yet produced.” DANGER FOR JAPANESE “The stake for an Allied victory in the Solomons is more than relative security for Australia and New Zealand and their supply lines from America,” says The Daily Telegraph, Sydney. “If the Japanese lose the bitter fight for these strategic islands the Allied defence line in the South-west Pacific will be advanced to a new line running from Port Moresby to Guadalcanar. This would outflank the Japanese base at Rabaul and probably force the enemy’s main concentrations back to Truk, 1000 miles to the north.”