MUCH EXAGGERATED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 June 1943, Page 4

MUCH EXAGGERATED

RECENT JAPANESE CLAIMS REGARDING SINKING OF SHIPS IN SOUTH PACIFIC. FORMER LUXURY YACHT LOST. (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) SYDNEY. May 31. Following upon the recent acceleration in their submarine campaign along the east coast of Australia, the Japanese are now reported to have dispatched their biggest under-sea fleet to the South Pacific in an endeavour to check the growing Allied strength in that area. Admiral Halsey’s headquarters, however, are stated to be “not deeply perturbed.” A claim by the Japanese to have sunk 13 Allied vessels, including five transports, in the South Pacific area between May 5 and 23 was described by an American spokesman as “another fishing expedition.” “We lost ships, but the Japanese claim is tremendously exaggerated,” he told war correspondents. One of the ships sunk, though not by submarines but by aerial bombardment, was the 1300-ton former pleasure yacht of the nine-times married American asbestos millionaire and “playboy,’ Mr Tommy Manville. This yacht, which was the last, word in luxury, was serving in the south-eastern Solomons as mother-ship to a torpedo-boat squadron. It is reported that soon after the vessel was taken over a senior officer when lying in bed idly pressed a button beside his reading lamp. Immediately the steel bulkhead dropped down and the experimeter found himself side by side with a bed in the adjoining cabin in which reclined a startled junior officer. The yacht’s name was changed from Hiesmaro to Niagara. She was still the luxury ship of the United States Navy when she caught fire after receiving direct bomb hits. She was abandoned without loss of life and subsequently sank.