BOMBS GET HOME

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 December 1942, Page 3

BOMBS GET HOME

ON BIG JAPANESE CRUISER AT RABAUL VESSEL LEFT IN FLAMES. BELIEVED TO HAVE BEEN DESTROYED. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, December 29. Liberators scored three direct hits witli 5001 b bombs on a large Japanese cruiser in Rabaul harbour. The cruiser was left in flames, and it is believed to have been destroyed. This latest raid on Japan’s key south Pacific base was made on Monday morning in bad weather which again prevented full observation of results.

After the attack on shipping in the harbour, our planes bombed the township with high explosives and incendiaries. Later reconnaissance showed the cruiser burning fiercely and beginning to buckle. Reconnaissance following Sunday s raid on Rabaul by Fortresses and Liberators showed the 15,000-ton transport still lying on its side in the harbour, while the two smaller vessels were burning off Sulphur Point. This devastating weekend attack, made by three waves of heavy bombers, was the greatest raid on Rabaul since the sustained offensive in the last week of November, when .major battles were being fought in the Solomons. Rabaul has now been raided six times during December. MANY ISLAND TARGETS, In other widespread Allied air attacks, runways and enemy aerodromes at Finschhafen, in New Guinea, and Gasmata were bombed by Liberators. Beaufigliters and Hudsons kept up reI lentless attacks against enemy targets in Timor. Fighters attacked _ store i dumps and traffic on the Laivai-Laga i road and bombers scored hits on undisclosed targets at Laivai and Fiiiloro, An intercepting Zero was shot down. The Laivai-Fuilaro area in which the Japanese are building an aerodrome and accumulating supplies, has now been attacked on four successive days. Large parties of Japanese were apparently at work on the drome. Discussing the heavy Allied air blows against the Japanese in this theatre during the past few days, the Sydney “Sun” today says editorially: “It is pleasing to observe that Allied airmen have a definite and notable superiority. But Japan will not crumple because of slow attrition in the south Pacific. Only by blows at her heart will the war be won. At the present we are twisting her little finger. No doubt it is painful to her, but while we appear to have stemmed the course of invasion, we have not yet begun to drive her back to any considerable extent.” Dr. Peter Russo, a former resident in Japan, also writing in the “Sun” today declares: “There is reason to believe that Japan is holding in reserve tremendous resources and forces comparable in their surprising effectivity to the materials she used during the early days of the Pacific war.”