RIVER OF FIRE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 February 1942, Page 4

RIVER OF FIRE

SCENES IN JAPANESE ATTACK ON PALEMBANG Oil From Huge Storage Tanks EMPTIED INTO RIVER AND SET ABLAZE ALLIED FIGHTERS AND BOMBERS DESTROY MANY BOATS (By Telegraph.—Press Association—Copyright.) (Received This Day, 12.20 p.m.) BATAVIA, February 17. Japanese plans to capture Palembang before the Dutch had time to carry out a scorched earth policy were frustrated when huge oil storage tanks were emptied into the river and set on fire. After parachutists had failed to gain control of the refineries, Japanese transports arrived in the estuary of the Moesi River and troops began to pour into all kinds of small craft for the assault on Palembang. The Dutch by this time had decided that the risk of oil installations falling into Japanese hands was too great and began to carry out a systematic scorched earth policy. Storage tanks were set on fire and thousands of gallons of burning oil were poured into the Moesi River, turning it into a river of fire, just as the first Japanese boats appeared downstream. Then Allied fighters and bombers struck, diving down to within a few feet of the river. All the leading Japanese boats turned over or caught fire, and the river became dotted, amid the flames, with swimming enemy soldiers. But more boats came up the Moesi and its meandering side-channels. The odds were too great and the city fell, but fighting is going on in the tangled jungle outside.