ARAWE AIR BATTLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 December 1943, Page 3

ARAWE AIR BATTLE

BELA FED JAPANESE ATTACK SMASHED BY ALLIED FIGHTERS. ENEMY AIR & SHIPPING LOSSES. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, December 23. Allied fighters smashed an attempt by .100 Japanese aircraft to 'attack, the American invasion troops at Arawe, New Britain. Brilliant Allied interception turned the enemy’s first large-scale aerial assault into disaster, .16 Japanese planes being destroyed and four others probably destroyed.

About halt‘the attacking force failed to reach their targets, which included shipping as well as land objectives. The enemy dive-bombers and escorting fighters which managed to penetrate the aerial defensive screen took a severe mauling and caused little damage. It is revealed that Australian-man-ned Spitfires are now being used, oyer New Britain. Massive Allied bombing attacks against the Japanese at Cape Gloucester are being maintained with relentless vigour. Liberators and Mitchells in the latest raid pounded the area with 205 tons of explosives, bringing the total for the past 10 days to more than 2000 tons. Since the beginning of the month Cape Gloucester has received 2500 tons of bombs and has been strafed with hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition. Japanese shipping throughout the South-West Pacific area is being heavily punished. General MacArthur’s communique today reports, attacks by C>talinas on two vessels in the northern New Ireland area. Direct bomb hits were scored and one ship of 6000 tons capsized and sank instantly. A Liberator from the Solomons sank an encnemy troop transport in the same locality. A Japanese destroyer was hit north of Messau Island. .Our longrange fighters destroyed a coastal vessel near Gasmata, New Britain. Australian troops continue to rout the Japanese in the coastal belt of Huon Peninsula. The enemy is in disorderly retreat and imperilled by a weakened suppy line. Enemy dead are strewn along both coastal and inland trails on the peninsula. Australian tanks entered the village of Hubika, an important point on the Japanese barge supply route, on Tuesday afternoon. They had made rapid progress from Lakona, two miles by airline to the south. A count revealed 354 enemy killed. Some of the Japanese in the area died from starvation. Captured enemy equipment incudes anti-tank guns, mines and flame-throwers.

LONG WAY TO GO IN WAR AGAINST JAPAN. SIR. T. BLAMEY ON POSITION IN NEW GUINEA. SYDNEY, December 22. The Japanese have in New Guinea reserves of troops which have not yet been used against the Australians, and more are coming in, stated, General Blarney, commander of the Allied land forces in the South-West Pacific, in an interview with war correspondents. These enemy reserves were at Wewak, Madang and other bases. General Blarney, who has been visiting the battle area of the Ramu Valley and Huon Peninsua, said that the Japanese were now fighting a rearguard action while they prepared defensive positions furher north. “Unless we completely defeat and destroy the Japanese in this war, we shall have to fight them again in 20 years.” he declared. “With too many people, a war that is out of sight is out of mind. We have come only 300 miles, and we still have 3000 miles to go. I cannot see when it will end, but we are over the hill. There is now no danger that the Japanese will or can destroy us. But we still have to destroy them.” General Blarney said in the recent land fighting in New Guinea the Japanese were outflanked, and crushingly defeated. But it had to be remembered that Japan had tremendous resources of manpower. The Japanese losses all round had been at least four times as great as the Australian. “An extraordinary feature is the enemy's attitude to his troops in regard to supplies,’ said General Blarney. “He puts his men into action and lets them stay there, and fails to keep supples up to them. Care for his men is neglected. and his staff work is ineffective. He lets his men live off the country, and we pick them up broken in healtn, living on sweet potatoes and native roots. This leads to an enormous wastage of troops.” General Blarney will spend Christmas in New Guinea with his troops.

FURTHER AMERICAN FORCES LIKELY TO BE MOVED INTO PACIFIC. GENERAL MARSHALL'S VISIT SIGNIFICANT. • NEW YORK, December 22. General Marshall's conferences wjth the Pacific commanders emphasise the dramatically increasing tempo of the campaigns against the Japanese, says the Associated Press. Informed quarters believe that General Marshall gave General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz some indication of the prospects of shifting greatly-increased forces to the Pacific. The “New York Times” Pearl Harbour correspondent says that the importance of the conferences cannot be over-estimated. General Marshall’s meetings emphasised the growing importance of the United States army in the Pacific war. Army headquarters at Hawaii anI nounced that General Marshall conferred on December 19 for two days with Admiral Nimitz, the naval com-mander-in-Chief in the Pacific, and General Richardson, the commander in Hawaii.