RAID ON RABAUL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 October 1943, Page 4

RAID ON RABAUL

IMPETUS GIVEN TO ALLIED THRUSTS WHOLE JAPANESE FRONT THREATENED. FURTHER MOVES EXPECTED. (Special P.A. Correspondent.) (Received This Day, 1.15 p.m.) SYDNEY, This Day.

General MacArthur worked for sixteen hours a day for weeks making preparations for Tuesday's record Allied air attack on Rabaul. Three days before the raid General MacArthur took war correspondents into his confidence.

He explained how the largest force of bombers and fighters ever assembled in the South-West Pacific had been secretly mustered for an attempt to knock out Rabaul from the air and how even planes of the near-pensioned class have been patched up to augment the available strength for the job.

. It is revealed that hundreds of our aircraft took off from airfields on the New Guinea mainland, Kiriwana and Woodlark islands, both of which were occupied by Allied forces last June. The construction of air bases two hundred miles nearer New Britain permitted the employment of a fighter cover for our bombers. This was provided by Beaufighters and Lightnings, which were used in the greatest numbers ever seen in the Pacific skies. The devastating raid lasted two hours. Our planes brought back many graphic photographs, indicating . the extent of the damage. The attack on Rabaul had been delayed until reconnaissance indicated that Japanese air and shipping concentrations were at their peak. However, the damage to installations is even more than the actual plane and ship losses and will disrupt Rabaul's effectiveness as an important base. The success of the raid must give impetus to Allied aggressive thrusts in the South-West Pacific. The whole of Japan’s 75 mile southern Pacific front, extending from the Buin and Faisi area in the Solomons to Wewak, New Guinea has been endangered. Anticipating further Allied moves in the Pacific, the Sydney ‘-Herald" says, in an editorial, that General MacArthur's blow at Rabaul vividly illustrates what he has called the "application of the offensive power in swift massive strokes.’’ Throughout the Pacific the Japanese have had to yield the initiative to the Allies, whose main task henceforth is to gain bases from which their superior sea and air power can be brought to bear against Japan's inner defences.

Rabaul now has been raided 122 times since’General MacArthur established his South-West Pacific Command. Up to the end of July, the Allies dropped approximately .1000 tons of bombs on Rabaul this year. The previous heaviest tonnages were 60 tons on January 10 last year and 54 tons on March 24 this year, when 250 enemy aircraft were hit on the ground. The heaviest shipping losses to the Japanese at Rabaul were 80,000 tons destroyed and 20,000 tons seriously damaged in raids extending over three consecutive days in October last year. The latest attack, when the bomb load dropped was 350 tons, exceeded by 30 tons the previous Pacific record established in the Wake Island raid earlier this month.