JAPANESE AIMS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 August 1942, Page 3

JAPANESE AIMS

IN LATEST NEW GUINEA LANDING ATTEMPT TO GAIN AIRFIELDS. SMASHING ALLIED AIR ATTACKS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 10.5 a.m.) SYDNEY, This Day. Important fighting is developing in the heavy jungle country around Milne Bay, 220 miles from Port Moresby, where the Japanese forces landed on Wednesday morning. “Contact is being maintained and fighting is in progress,” a Genera! Headquarters spokesman told war correspondents. The Japanese attack is directed against Allied land installations, the spokesman added. While loday’s communique from General MacArthur’s Headquarters makes only brief reference to fighting between the opposing land forces, it tells an inspiring story of further smashing Allied victories in fierce air battles. War correspondents say the air above Milne Bay was thick with planes almost throughout Thursday. At dawn, Allied fighters began ma-chine-gunning enemy barges and supply dumps ashore. In battles that developed in this sector and in the Buna area, twelve Japanese planes were shot down, including dive-bombers and two more were probably destroyed and seven damaged. The latest air victories brought the total of enemy planes destroyed in the New Guinea area since Monday to 35, with two probables and seven others either damaged or destroyed. Despite the Japanese Zero fighters’ admitted superiority in some features, Allied fighter pilots appear to have perfected a technique offsetting these advantages. Figures of progressive total destruction at the new enemy airfield at Buna reached 23 on Thursday, when our medium bombers, with fighter escort, again attacked the field. Ten Zeros endeavoured to fight off the attackers. Of these nine were either destroyed or damaged, while our forces emerged unscathed. Allied losses in a week’s spectacular air fighting so far have been only two planes. . War correspondents say the Allied Kittyhawk fighters mowed down the Japanese as they waded ashore from barges in Milne Bay. The beach is strewn with invasion barges burned to a cinder and for a hundred yards inland our fighters have blazed a strip of jungle in destroying the enemy’s supply dumps. Although the enemy landing on Wednesday was made without air protection, Japanese planes were in the air over Milne Bay on Thursday, when six enemy fighters and two dive-bombers were shot down in this sector. This is the first mention of Japanese dive-bombers in New Guinea for some months. The immediate goal of the enemy appears to be plantation country which could be converted into aerodromes for planes attacking Port Moresby and the mainland of Australia. The present scene of the land fighting is dense jungle, traversed only by narrow tracks. Extremely bad weather during the past few clays has turned these tracks into morasses. The mud in places is three feet deep and communication from the lighting zone is said to be difficult. News therefore is restricted. Enemy planes made two raids on the Australian mainland on Thursday. In a night attack on Darwin two enemy bombers caused slight damage, while at Broome minor damage was sustained in a night raid by two enemy seaplanes. ATTACK ANTICIPATED STATEMENT BY SIR T. BLAMEY. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.55 a.m.) RUGBY, August 28. General Sir T. Blarney (Commander of the Allied land forces in the SouthWest Pacific), on his return from forward headquarters, said, according to a message from Australia: “The Solomon Islands action is not a single battle, but part of the campaign into which we have gone and which must be fought to a finish. The landing at Milne Bay was part of the Japanese general plan to force the frontiers to (he south, but we had forces established in the vicinity before the arrival of the Japanese.”