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Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 February 1943, Page 3

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BY JAPANESE AIR FORCES TO WIDESPREAD ALLIED KAIDIS FOLLOWING ON HEAVY DEFEAT IN NEW GUINEA. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, February 8. After being swept out of the skies over Wau, New Guinea, on Saturday, the Japanese air force in the Southwest Pacific area stayed on the ground yesterday. General MacArthur’s latest communique does not mention activity by a single enemy machine, though Allied air offensives ranged from Celebes to New Britain. There is, however, a further indication of the thickening of the enemy’s defensive arc to the north of Australia. Timika, in Dutch New Guinea, was today mentioned in the communique for the first time. It was bombed and strafed by a Liberator. Another enemy base in the same area. Kaukenau, which first appeared in a communique last week, was also attacked. Timika and Kaukenau are eight miles apart about 550 air miles from Darwin. During the past month the evidence has mounted of steady Japanese infiltration along the south coast of Dutch New Guinea toward the Allied base of Merauke. Boeton and Wangiwangi Islands, at the south-eastern tip of Celebes, were reconnoitred by an Allied Hudson bomber, which damaged two Japanese luggers. A Liberator killed numbers of Japanese when two troop-laden 50ft. motor barges were attacked in Riebeck Bay, New Britain. Low-level strafing forced the barges, each of which carried about 75 men, to run ashore, and one barge was left in flames. The enemy aerodrome at Lae, New Guinea, which was the base for Saturday's singularly unsuccess-til air assault against Wau, has been raided by Allied Beaufighters and Liberators. Fires were burning and buildings had been shattered when our planes turned for home.

Only intermittent patrol skirmishing is reported from Wau. Forty more Japanese have been killed in the area. At Bakumbari, near the Kumusi River mouth, a further 20 Japanese stragglers were killed by Allied patrols. In the earlier action in this neighbourhood 75 enemy troops were killed.