MAY BE DECISIVE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 October 1942, Page 3

MAY BE DECISIVE

IN PACIFIC WAR AT SEA THE SOLOMONS BATTLE. EXTENSION OF AMERICAN BASES. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, October 15. “The continuing air and naval battle in the Solomon Islands has already, in the aggregate, begun to assume the dimensions of an action which may prove decisive in the Pacific war at sea,” says the “Sydney Morning Herald,” commenting on the latest cheering news from the South-West Pacific fronts. Australian analysts of the war news see the battle for the Solomons as one of attrition, with the Japanese losses in ships and aircraft now mounted to a total which must prove gravely embarrassing to the enemy. It is also pointed out that the recent reports of actions in the South-West Pacific have revealed the existence of American bases in the New Hebrides and Fiji, which considerably strengthens the Allied position in this theatre. While no information of the size or tyoe of these bases has been given, both American and Australian observers regard their now officially-acknow-ledged existence as proof of the determination of the Allies to pursue a vigorous offensive policy against the Japanese. A Washington report states that Esniritu, Santo Island, in the New Hebrides, is an air base which some of the air force units which assisted the marines to capture Guadalcanal’ used as a jumping-off place. Emphasising again the great importance of land-based air power, in which the 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 crippled 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 in war.”

JAPAN’S ALTERNATIVES. The enemy’s unwillingness to risk a major fleet action in which carriers and battleships would participate is generally commented upon, and it is pointed out that the attritional fighting into which the Japanese have been led by the Americans has already cost them losses equivalent to those of a ,- lnajor fleet action fought in vain. But ' observers are agreed that the Japanese still have substantial sea power available, and they must either risk a battle or admit defeat in a 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 “Herald,” “at least they have so far outwitted, out-manoeuvred, and out-fought him in the shrewdest skingame this war has yet produced. The stake for Allied victory in the Solomons is more than relative security for Australia and New Zealand, and their supply lines from America says the Sydney “Daily Telegraph 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 Port Moresby to Ims would outflank the Japanese base at Rabaul, and probably force the enemy’s main concentrations back to Truk, 1000 miles to the north.