BATTLE LOSSES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 August 1943, Page 3

BATTLE LOSSES

AMERICAN AND BRITISH NOT HEAVY

CONSIDERING NATURE OF FIGHTING.

MR STIMSON'S SURVEY OF LATE EVENTS.

(British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.15 a.m.) RUGBY, August 5. American casualties in Sicily to July 22 totalled 501 killed, 3,870 wounded and 2,370 missing, the Secretary for War (Mr Stimson) announced, according to a Washington message. Mr Stimson said

the American losses were moderate considering the nature of the fight-

ing and terrain and added that the

British casualties were not a great

deal larger than the American. Enemy prisoners now numbered about IOOJIOO and the number of enemy killed and wounded was also believed to be substantial. Allied unity in the Mediterranean theatre, which he hud just visited, was unprecedented in history, Mr Stimson declared. He hailed the Russian capture of Orel as a major victory. The lossds of Liberator bombers in the Ploestin raid amounted to 20 per cent, but a devastating blow had been struck at vital Axis oil resources. Mr Stimson disclosed that 177 Liberators participated in the raid, out of which between 15 and 20 were shot down over the target, and as many more failed to return. Eight had been forced to land in Turkey.

A Cairo message says that less than 24 hours after their return from the Plcesti raid, twenty officers and men of the Ninth American Air Force were decorated with the Purple Heart by the commanding general at an American base hospital in the Desert.