PROMPT & DEADLY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 August 1943, Page 4

PROMPT & DEADLY

ALLIED ATTACK ON WEWAK AERODROMES LANDMARK IN THE PACIFIC WAR. JAPANESE MUCH WEAKENED. (Special Australian Correspondent.) (Received This Day, 12.40 p.m.) SYDNEY. This Day. “Japan’s aerial Pearl Harbour” is the "apt description given by the “Sydney Morning Herald’s” military correspondent to the astounding destruction of a great enemy air fleet on four aerodromes at Wewak, in Northern New Guinea. From every point of view the Wewak raid is recorded as a striking landmark in the Pacific war.

“Most gratifying was the rapidity with which, on receipt of a reconnaissance report, the Allied High Command launched so great a force to attack,” says the “Herald” correspondent. “For such targets are not usually long-last-ing. Wewak has been increasingly taking the place of Rabaul as the enemy’s major base in the north-east-ern sector, and reinforcements of planes are known to have been steadily arriving. This accounts for the packing of so large an aerial armada into one circumscribed area. Japanese fears for their bases at Lae and Salamaua (threatened by the Allied land drive) must have been very real to permit such a dangerously exposed aggregation. A catastrophe of the kind that has taken place must exercise a gravely limiting effort on their entire aerial strategy in this war zone. The aerial weapon on which they must have counted to hamper the next stage of Allied aggression has been badly blunted and the heavy toll in trained personnel is quite as serious, considering the recently noted deterioration in the calibre of Japanese air crews.”

“Neither the Boram nor the Wewak aerodrome is a target any more after our attacks,” Major-General Whitehead, who directed the raid, told war correspondents. He added that he believed the striking Allied success proved that the decisive way to fight the air war was at tree-top height, and that the attack bomber was the most dangerous weapon available to the South Pacific air forces.

Official calculations are that more than 50 per cent of the enemy aircraft caught on the ground were destroyed and that 75 per cent of the remainder were badly damaged. More than 225 aircraft were attacked on the four aerodromes at Wewak; Degau (20 miles to the north), But, 30 miles to the north) and Boram, four miles to the south. The Allied crews expressed surprise at the lack of anti-aircraft opposition. An indication of the thoroughly surprise nature of the attack was that at Wewak Aerodrome the Japanese provided a perfect target by switching on the airfield landing lights for our bombers, which they evidently mistook for some of their own aircraft. Bombing and strafing sweeps were made from a low level.