TELLING WEIGHT

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 241, 12 October 1942, Page 3

TELLING WEIGHT

RISING AIR POWER

Allied Blows In Pacific

War Zones

United Press Association —Copyright WASHINGTON, Oct. 11. A .Japanese destroyer has been sunk and a heavy cruiser and another destroyer damaged by United States bombers off Guadaleanar. This is disclosed in a United States Navy Department communique. This states that on Monday night last navy and marine corps divebombers and torpedo planes from Guadaleanar attacked six enemy destroyers, which were located by our search planes. These ships were attempting to assist enemy landing operations on the north-western end of Guadaleanar island. One destroyer was sunk and another damaged. On Wednesday night the enemy continued to reinforce his troops on Guadaleanar. and navy and marine corps dive-bombers and torpedoplanes, assisted by fighters, attacked an enemy surface force to the northwest of Guadaleanar. This force contained one cruiser and five destroyers, which were covering an enemy landing on the island's north-western tip.

Flying Fortresses are claimed to have turned Rabaul. the chief Japanese supply base in the New Guinea area, into a "Pacific Coventry." reports the Australian correspondent of the Press Association. In two mass raids the largest concentrations of these Allied heavy bombers ever lo operate in the South west Pacific have dropped a hundred tons of explosives and incendiaries on the base.

lin port an re of Raids

Considerable importance is attached to these air attacks, which are eloquent of rising Allied air power in this theatre. The attacks were undoubtedly designed to cripple Japanese attempts to build up an offensive from their Rabaul base against the American-held islands in the Solomons, where a new enemy drive has been expected. Not a single Allied bomber was lost in either raid in spite of intense barrages of antiaircraft fire put up by the enemv. Continued raids on their airfields are seriously hampering the Japanese air effort in the South Pacific. Washington reports state that Japanese plane losses in the Solomons now exceed 250, the ratio of plane losses having sometimes been as high as ten to one.

North of Australia. Hudson bombers completed the destruction of a Japanese merchant vessel bombed earlier at Saumlakki. in Tenimber Islands. Large fires were started when bombs were dropped on the enemy-occupied quarter of Dilli. on Timor Island, where Australian ground troops continue their magnificent guerilla resistance to the invader.