HAZARDS FACED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 August 1942, Page 3

HAZARDS FACED

NO EXPECTATION OF QUICK SUCCESS. OPERATIONS PROCEEDING WELL. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. The Press Association correspondent at a south Pacific port says that a quick and thoroughly decisive result should not immediately be expected in the Allied attack on the Japanese forces in the Solomon Islands. Seizure from the sea of a defended shore is one of the most difficult and hazardous of military operations. It cannot be achieved without the payment of a heavy price in ships and personnel. After the Coral Sea battle, Rear-Ad-miral F. C. Sherman, U.S.N., captain of the lost carrier Lexington, said no defensive force can stop determined offence by air. In the Solomon Islands operation the Allied naval units are defensive against land-based air attack. Ships must be lost till the Japanese air force operating agains them can be denied the air. For this the Allied force has to depend immediately upon its own air forces, and finally upon the seizure from the land of the enemy’s airfields. For all reasons the operation in the Solomons is child’s play for none of those taking part. Many things can go wrong, no matter how careful the planning or courageous the efforts made.

The correspondent also says that it is clear that the forces in the attack are predominantly American. British and Dominion counsel has no doubt been taken in the preparations for the operation. British experience of combined operations in commando raids on Axis positions as possibly also assisted in laying the plans, but the naval units engaged are probably the only ones which include forces other than American.

At least for the present, all communiques about the operation will probably come from Pearl Harbour or Washington. Vice-Admiral R. L. Ghorhiley makes all his reports in the first instance to his immediate superior, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, at Pearl Harbour.

However, it is possible to judge that, while ship and personnel losses may be more severe than is the public’s expectation, the - operation is proceeding well. Notwithstanding the undoubted difficulties and probable mishaps, Admiral Ghormley and his force so far seem to have been “ringing the bell.” The stakes may be high, but the reward for Allied Communications in the Pacific and, more remotely but nevertheless equally clearly for the eventual security of New Zealand and Australia, will be even higher.