AIR POWER IN ACTION

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 54, 5 March 1943, Page 2

AIR POWER IN ACTION

TT is not often that the secrecy with which impending air operations are necessarily surrounded is relaxed so that the public knows approximately where the enemy force is, what he is trying to do, and the kind of action that is being prepared to frustrate him. On Tuesday General Mac Arthur announced that one of the largest convoys the Japanese had yet sent to New Guinea was on its way across from New Britain, and Allied aircraft were preparing to attack it when the weather conditions permitted. On Wednesday the convoy was increased to 22 ships, which it is calculated were transporting 15,000 troops. To-day that whole expedition lies under the sea. Not only that, but the cost of destroying it is reported to have been limited to four Allied planes lost, and others damaged, but able to return to their base. Such a happening is very rare in real war; it has the character rather of a film, complete with "happy ending," although many people would be inclined to scoff at a film- plot in which the enemy was defeated so completely and at a cost so slight. Yet this happened in reality. The American and Australian airmen under General Mac Arthur's command have in two days won a victory to which it would be difficult to find a parallel for decisive completeness, a victory which emphasises with startling clarity the deadly power of the air weapon. The destination of the Japanese convoy was at first in doubt, but it is now reported to have been bound for Lae, and it is assumed that it was intended to strengthen the enemy's hold on the north coast of New Guinea. If we recall the land operations in the Owen Stanley area, and the excruciating difficulties (solved largely by air transport) which faced the Allied troops when they advanced to Buna, Gona and Salamanda, and the suicidal tenacity with which the Japanese there defended their last positions, we shall appreciate more fully the importance of the victory won by the Allied airmen. These 15,000 Japanese in the convoy, even if they had been cast for a defensive role, could not have been wiped out, in land operations, except at a heavy cost. The victory indeed suggests that, if given air forces sufficient for the task, General Mac Arthur can make the Japanese positions in northern New' Guinea untenable, by depriving them of supplies and reinforcements. The Japanese are in a position from which they cannot embark on large offensive operations without the certainty of supplies and reinforcements, and they cannot, for reasons of prestige alone, withdraw. Although it is unlikely that they will again expose so large a convoy to a fate so fearful, they must, it seems, continue to take risks. Repeated and costly setbacks in the Solomons did not deter them from "coming again " It may be that they will be similarly persistent north of Australia. If so, it is to be hoped that General Mac Arthur's forces will be strengthened sufficiently to enable him to continue to take a heavy toll of them. If an Allied offensive is impracticable until Germany is defeated, a successful "war of attrition" will be the next best thing.