SHARP & POWERFUL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 July 1943, Page 4

SHARP & POWERFUL

ALLIED ATTACK ON BASE IN SOLOMONS HEAVY JAPANESE LOSSES OF SHIPS AND PLANES. IN ONSLAUGHT LASTING 20 MINUTES. (Special Australian Correspondent.) (Received This Day, 12.25 p.m.) SYDNEY, This Day. About 300 planes cf all types— Allied and Japanese—fought out Saturday morning’s big battle over the Buin-Faisi anchorage. This greatest raid of the Pacific war lasted only 20 minutes. Under cover of cur weaving fighters, a powerful force of Avengers, Dauntlesses and Liberators attacked 15 ships scattered' in the harbour. The seven sunk included most of the really worth-while targets in the concentration. Some of them were blown cut of the water and sank in a few minutes. The last of the seven vessels destroyed had gone to the bottom before the final wave of Allied torpedo and divebombers pulled away from their targets. Buin-Faisi is one of the.main enemy bases in the present Solomons campaign. Recent Japanese naval forays against Allied positions in New Georgia have come from the direction of this heavily fortified anchorage. The exact number of enemy fighters which endeavoured to protect the shining has not been announced, but it is known that at least 70 Japanese aircraft were located on the airfields in the BuinFaisi area on the day before the raid, and an even greater number earlier in the week. Of the 49 enemy fighters which were sent crashing into the sea, at the rate of more than two per minute, 44 were Zeros and 5 were floatplanes. GALLANT RESCUE. At the South Pacific Headquarters, Admiral Halsey disclosed that A.merican destroyers on Thursday night penetrated deep into enemy waters, to rescue 160 survivors of the cruiser Helene, which, was sunk in the first battle of Kula Gulf. These men had drifted on to the enemy-occupied part of New Georgia Island. For a full week they were harried by Japanese patrols. War correspondents say that the rescue was made near a powerful enemy base by an American destroyer force, sneaking through narrow, uncharted straits and risking air, surface and submarine attacks. Many of those rescued were in the water for two days before being washed ashore.