JAPANESE LOSSES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 November 1943, Page 3

JAPANESE LOSSES

RABAUL MAY BE TOO HOT TO HOLD VIEWS OF AMERICAN NAVY SPOKESMAN SOME MAGNIFICENT LYING IN TOKIO (By Telegraph—(Press Association— Copyright) WASHINGTON, November 17. The Japanese have suffered such destruction at Rabaul, according to a United States Navy Department spokesman, that they may have to abandon the base as “too hot to handle.” Their losses include important units of their fleet. The spokesman asserted that 102 Japanese planes had been shot down in the Rabaul zone in the past six days, compared with 15 American planes lost. These figures, he said, were so fantastic that even high Government officials doubted them till supplied with proof. Nevertheless, the Japanese continued to pour ships and planes into Rabaul. The spokesman gave a list of the Japanese claims of Allied ships sunk or damaged since Pearl Harbour as follows: 26 battleships sunk and 12 damaged; 14 aircraft-carriers sunk and six damaged; 80 cruisers sunk and 37 damaged; 82 destroyers sunk and 31 damaged; 147 submarines sunk and 51 damaged. The United States Navy Department’s official figures of its own losses in all war theatres are: One battleship, four carriers, nine cruisers, 33 destroyers and 14 submarines. , CONTINUED TOLL OF ENEMY SHIPS & PLANES COMMUNIQUE GIVES DETAILS (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, November 17. Twenty-three Japanese planes have been destroyed, 10 probably destroyed, a transport sunk, a cargo vessel damaged and beached, and a second cargo vessel damaged in Allied air operations reported in General MacArthur’s communique today. The raids reported included the heaviest R.A.A.F. Beaufort bomber strikes yet made against Rabaul where an 8000-ton transport was sunk by a mast-high attack and another large merchantman was damaged. The Beauforts were over Rabaul for two hours on Sunday night, and they reported a considerable concentration of enemy shipping still in the harbour. They dropped 17 tons of bombs and probably caused more extensive damage than that claimed officially. Searchlight glare and intense anti-aircraft fire hindered observation. The strike offers evidence of the rising strength of the R.A.A.F. in the New Guinea area. The third Japanese shipping loss reported today occurred off the New Ireland coast where Catalinas scored direct bomb hits and forced a vessel to beach. The main Japanese air losses were inflicted when a Kittyhawk fighter patrol intercepted enemy planes raiding Allied forward aerodromes at Nadaab and Gusap, north-east New Guinea. They shot down 20 Japanese planes, with six others probably destroyed. Our losses were light. Some damage, however, was done on the aerodromes which provide air support for our ground operations in the Ramu Valley.

A counterstroke by Allied bombers which dropped 76 tons of explosives on the enemy’s forward aerodromes round Alexishafen, .which similarly provide air cover for the Japanese forces in the Ramu Valley, met with no fighter interception. This was the fifth big Allied air attack on the area in the past 10 days.