SHATTERING BLOW

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 August 1942, Page 3

SHATTERING BLOW

STRUCK AT ENEMY SHIPS IN RABAUL FOUR LEFT ABLAZE OR SINKING FINE FEAT BY ALLIED HEAVY BOMBERS. IN LATEST DAY ATTACK. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) SYDNEY, August 13. Allied heavy bombers left a 15,000-ton Japanese ship in flames, another large vessel sinking, and two medium ships listing and ablaze in their latest day attack on Rabaul harbour. This crippling blow was delivered on the seventh successive day of the concentrated air attacks on’’ potential enemy reinforcement points for the Solomons. All our planes returned. They were intercepted by a flight of enemy fighters, one of which was shot down, and three to six others were hit and damaged. Shipping and installations at enemy island bases in the Banda Sea (north of Timor) were attacked by our medium bombers, but the results are not known. Other enemy shipping off the south coast of Timor was also attacked, but again the results are not known. GUILE AT KOKODA AUSTRALIANS REGAIN VILLAGE. HARD FIGHTING CONTINUES. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, August 13. “A number of the enemy were liquidated and many were perforated,” was the laconic message received by headquarters from the commander of the Australian land forces which made a successful- raid on Kokoda, in Papua, last Sunday. By guileful strategy the Japanese were dispossessed of Kokoda village. The commander organised three separate thrusts to draw out the Japanese and then, when the enemy had been enticed out of Kokoda, an Australian force which had remained in hiding in the jungle, re-entered the village without a shot being fired. However. confused fighting was known to be continuing on Monday night, the Japanese, after their initial mistake, hitting back vigorously. A big force of Airocobra fighters each carrying a medium bomb, closely supported the Kokoda operations, divebombing and strafing the enemy positions and silencing machine-gun posts. A former Kokoda patrol officer who is in the army, assisted to pick out objectives for the planes and marked his own house target No. 1. This was the first time in the South-West Pacific that fighters have been used as bombers, arid the results are stated to have been highly satisfactory. Each of the Australian patrol forces killed and wounded many of the enemy. Our own casualties were light. JAPANESE LIES BATTLE SAID TO HAVE ENDED IN ONE NIGHT. NEW YORK, August 12.

The Demei news agency, in a broadcast from Tokio radio, purported to be based on information obtained from

Captain Kamada, the Japanese naval spokesman in Shanghai, pictured the battle of the Solomons as a struggle fought at such close quarters that rival warships actually collided.The Domei agency persisted in the fiction that the battle ended after one night. Captain Kamada claimed that the victory for the Japanese could be attributed partly to the Americans’ poor training for night fighting, and partly the Americans’ surprise when they met Japanese naval as well as air forces.