PLANES FOR PACIFIC

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 March 1943, Page 3

PLANES FOR PACIFIC

• MACARTHUR’S REPORTED REQUEST ONE WEEK’S PRODUCTION. FOR MORE VIGOROUS ATTACK ON JAPANESE. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.35 a.m.) NEW YORK, March 26. General MacArthur is asking the United States for one week’s plane production to be sent to the South-West. Pacific, says the New York Daily News. The latest unofficial estimate of American combat plane production is 1500 a week. “Given one week’s plane production, General MacArthur would have double the size of his present air force,” says the Daily News.” Urging a speed-up of American action in the Pacific, the Associated Press Washington correspondent says every day that passes without significant action gives the Japanese more time to repair damaged ships, strengthen their bases and develop their conquests generally. A main objective of the new Allied offensive action would be to force Japan into further attritional losses of ships and aircraft. “Although shipping is one of Japan’s most vulnerable points, they spent both ships and planes recklessly in trying to hold Guadalcanal,” writes the correspondent. “Consequently another island conquest, which would cause similarly serious losses, would be a highly profitable enterprise for the United States, even though the territory won was of little strategic importance. To launch such an enterprise it is believed the Navy might strike more deeply into the Solomons, invading either Munda or Bougainville.”