JAPS. QUIETER

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 33, 9 February 1943, Page 3

JAPS. QUIETER

ALLIED AIR BLOWS Air And Land Offensives In South-west Pacific N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent SYDNEY, Feb. 8. After being swept out of the skies over Wau, New Guinea, on Saturday, the Japanese Air Force in the Southwest Pacific area stayed on the ground on Sunday. The Allied air offensive on Sunday ranged from the Celebes to New Britain. There is further indication of the thickening of the enemy's defensive arc to the north of Australia. Timika, in Dutch New Guinea, to-day mentioned in a communique for the first time, was bombed and strafed by a Liberator. Another enemy base in the same area, Kaukenau, which first appeared in a communique last week, was also attacked. Timika and Kaukenau are eight miles apart, and about 550 air miles from Darwin. During the past month evidence has mounted of the steady Japanese infiltration along the south coast of Dutch New Guinea toward the Allied base of Merauke. The islands of Boeton and Wangiwangi, at the south-eastern tip of the Celebes, were reconnoitred by an Allied Hudson bomber which damaged two Japanese luggers. A Liberator killed numbers of Japanese when two troop-laden 50ft motor barges were attacked in Riebeck Bay, New Britain. Low-level strafing forced the barges, each of which carried about 75 men, to run ashore. One barge was left in flames. The Washington correspondent of tl/eNew York Times says the occupation of Titi, half a mile west of Marovovo, on the north-west coast of Guadalcanar and 25 miles from the Henderson field, is probably designed to establish a pincer movement to smash the remaining Japanese forces on Guadalcanar. According to the Washington correspondent of the Herald Tribune, military experts are of the opinion that the pincers movement at Titi will result in a South Pacific "Dunkirk," or in complete annihilation of the Japanese on Guadalcanar.