AIR WAR IN SOLOMONS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 September 1943, Page 3

AIR WAR IN SOLOMONS

KEEPING JAPANESE OFF ■ THEIR BALANCE AMERICAN OEFIUER'S SUKVEY. NEW ZEALAND AIRMEN PRAISED. (By Telegraph—(Press Association —Copyright) SYDNEY, September 14. “The air force,- which started on a shoe-string, is now a formidable outfit, and is keeping the Japanese off their balance in the Solomons theatre; indeed, it has made the Allied position in the Solomons and New Hebrides completely safe from enemy interference,” said Brigadier-General Gian Jamison, Chief of Staff of the South Pacific Air Force, at a Press conference. General Jamison highly praised the New Zealanders, who, he said, were giving splendid support to the American flyers in the South Pacific. “These people are real fighters,” he said. “They never complain. No matter how tough the job they do it and then come home and laugh about it.” General Jamison said that the most damaging thing the South Pacific situation had done to the Japanese was to force them to send more aircraft there than they had planned, thereby upsetting their plans for other theatres. He added that it was the American strategy deliberately to harass the enemy day and night, keeping him so busy every night that he was “a bit groggy” in the day-time. Colonel Brooke Allen, commander of the 13th Air Force Group, who participated in the interview, said he believed that Munda could be adapted for operations by four-engined bombers. It would be an important base, because it brought Truk within feasible range of American bombers.