FIRST OF ITS KIND

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 October 1943, Page 4

FIRST OF ITS KIND

AUSTRALIAN CAMPAIGN IN NEW GUINEA LARGE FORCE SUPPLIED WHOLLY BY AIR. SOME UNITS BY PARACHUTE. (Special Australian Correspondent.) (Received This Day, 12.5 p.m.) SYDNEY. This Day. The Markham and Ramu valleys campaign in Northern New Guinea is unique in that, for the first time a great Australian force has been entirely transported and its service maintained by air. It is believed that this feat has not been paralleled by the Allies in any other war theatre. Under ordinary conditions, a divisional force on move requires at least 2.000 vehicles of its own to supplement a great network of sea and rail communications. This intricate supply system has been replaced, in the Markham and Ramu valleys, by aeroplanes and a ground organisation of jeeps and native carriers. The Douglas transport plane, with the carrying capacity of a two and a half ton truck, is the cornerstone of this organisation. Even the jeeps make the first part of their jbuiney to the battle front in a transport plane. Hundreds of plane loads were required to move the entire Australian force. In the first twenty days after a strip had been hacked out of the kuna grass at Nadzab (where Australia’s first airborne troops landed) 2,000 plane loads were put down. For hours, transports landed at the rate of one per minute. Nor does the lack of an airstrip prevent supply. At present troops at three places in the Ramu Valley are being fed regularly by a “kai bomber.” Since their supplies cannot be landed within easy distance, the Douglas transport fleet selects an open area and drops them by parachute, and the troops receive their rations far ahead of normal schedule.