AMERICAN FIGURES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 December 1943, Page 4

AMERICAN FIGURES

OF JAPANESE NAVAL LOSSES CRITICISED BY BRITISH M.P. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 10.30 a.m.) LONDON, December 2. If the Government wished the country to be less optimistic and to avert any possibility of slackening it must give the public more war information, said Sir J. Wardlaw Milne, during the resumed’ debate on the Address-in-Reply in the House of Commons. “The Japanese at the beginning of the war had 18 battleships, of which the Americans have sunk three and damaged ten,” he added. “The Japanese had 18 aircraft-carriers, of which the Americans have sunk six and damaged nine. The Japanese had 56 cruisers, of which the Americans have sunk 34, damaged 68 and probably sunk four. The Japanese had 156 destroyers, of which 76 have been sunk, 82 damaged and 18 probably sunk. I don’t give these figures in order to call attention to their inaccuracy, because I believe they were accurate from the observers’ point of view at the time, but unless the public gets more information about what is happening and what Japan and Germany are doing, obviously people will think that things are surely over.”