AIRFIELD BLASTED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 April 1943, Page 3

AIRFIELD BLASTED

Heavy raids on Kavieng airfield prevented interference by Japanese fighters. The ships were first sighted in Kavieng Harbour by an Allied reconnaissance plane early on Thursday. They numbered 13 warships (known to include cruisers) and also medium to large merchantmen, aggregating about 40,000 tons. At dusk on - Thursday, when our big bombers made their first attacks, they found that six of the ships had left the harbour and were anchored along the south coast, and these vessels were the targets chosen by the bombers. Two heavy explosions occurred on a 10,000-ton merchantman, indicating direct hits, while a 6000-ton merchantman was seen to be settling down by the bow after being straddled with 5001 b. bombs and is believed to have sunk. Damaging near misses were scored against other vessels, but gathering darkness prevented full observations of the results. Details of an attack on Friday evening against the enemy ships which remained at Kavieng were given in General MacArthur’s communique today. It was these attacks, again exploiting the combined low-level “skip-bomb-ing” and high-level bombing tactics, which were so successful in the Bismarck Sea battle, which inflicted the crippling losses on the enemy’s war shipping. The loss of the two cruisers is a particularly serious blow. The Allied aircraft made a round trip of more than 1000 miles to attack the ships. > MANY OTHER RAIDS Today's communique also reports a number of other operations. At Timika, Dutch New Guinea, medium units executed an effective low-level bombing and strafing attack on enemy barges, motor transport and supply dumps. In the Kai Islands long-range fighters executed a sweep over the Langgoer airfield, and sank a barge by strafing at Watdek. In the Tenimber Islands medium bombers and later a heavy unit, bombed the town of Saumlak, starting large fires in the building area and along the waterfront. Off Dyaul Island a heavy unit bombed and hit a 6000-ton enemy cargo ship which was heading toward Rabaul. A heavy unit bombed enemy shore installations at Gasmata with the aid of flares, and a medium unit bombed and strafed the waterfront at night from a low altitude, completely demolishing storehouses along the wharf. Another medium unit at night bombed and strafed aerodrome dispersal areas on Cape Gloucester. In New Guinea a medium bomber bombed and strafed the town of Madang at night, starting fires. At Finsch hafen a heavy unit bombed the beach area. Attack planes three times made low-level sweeps over the Mubo area, bombing and strafing enemy positions at Kitchen Creek, Salus, Duali and Lababia.