BOTH SIDES DESTROYED

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 123, 9 March 1950, Page 4

BOTH SIDES DESTROYED

AUSTRALIAN AND N.Z. SQUADRONS INTERESTING EXERCISES • 1 (P.A.) WELLINGTON, This Day. What with gun actions, torpedo attacks and air strikes, the Australian and New Zealand squad* rons have mutually destroyed each other, says a radio dispatch from the Wellington “Post's” special reporter on H.M.A.S. Australia. . ,

Pointing like a couple of spaniels, a fi’igate and destroyer stalked and killed the subarmine Telemachus in Tuesdays exercises. They thereby paid back the debt of blood incurred when early on Tuesday morning the Telemachus, indifferent to the antics of the destroyer and frigate screen that protected the Sydney, Bellona and Australia, won her third successive kill of the exercises by sinking with her torpedoes two New Zealand frigates. In the afternoon Australia’s direc-tion-officer, Lieutenant E. T. E. Fisher, conti’olled the strike of Sea Furies from the Sydney through the radar plot, vectoring fast fighters into the enemy strike of Fireflies, whose task was to attack the Australia with explosive rockets. In darkness, except for radar indicators and a large circular screen on which was plotted the movements of both air strikes, the direction-officer, without moving from his chair, contrived the destruction of the ill-inten-tioned Fireflies while they were still out of sight of the ship. He put protective Sea Furies right onto the approaching fighters and within minutes a dog-fight raged off the- Canterbury coast.

Refusing to acknowledge their undoubted defeat, however, in order to obey the letter of their orders, the vanquished Fireflies screamed oujt of the sky at the Australia and fired explosive rocket projectiles at a buoy towed astern of the cruiser. The rockets carried heads of concrete instead of the usual high explosive warheads, and these left the aircraft at something over 600 miles an hour to crash in the sea a few hundred yards astern of the Australia.

Fourteen rockets were fired, and It their tai’get had been the cruiser, they would have caused notable damage.