DECISIVE VICTORY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 169, 19 July 1943, Page 3

DECISIVE VICTORY

OVER IN 20 MINUTES Allies Score In Greatest Air Battle Of Pacific N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent Rec. 12.30 p.m. SYDNEY, this day. About 300 planes of all types— Allied and Japanese—fought out Saturdav morning's big aerial battle over the Buin-Faisi anchorage. This was the greatest raid of the Pacific war, though it lasted only 20 minutes. Under cover of our fighters a powerful force of Avenger, Dauntless and Liberator planes attacked 15 ships scattered in the harbour. Seven were sunk, four being warships, including most of the really worthwhile targets, in the concentration. Some of them were blown out of the water and sank in a few minutes. The last of the seven vessels destroyed had gone to the bottom before the final wave of Allied torpedo and dive-bombers pulled away from their targets. Buin-Faisi is one of the main enemy bases in the present Solomons campaign. Recent Japanese naval forays against Allied positions in Georgia have come from the direction of this heavily-fortified anchorage. The exact number of enemy fighters which endeavoured to protect the shipping has not been announced, but it is known that at least 70 Japanese aircraft were located on the airfield in the Buin-Faisi area on the day before the raid and even a greater number earlier in the week. Of 49 enemy fighters which were sent crashing into the sea at the rate of more than two per minute, 44 were Zeros and five float-planes. Helena Survivors Rescued At South Pacific Headquarters, Admiral Halsey disclosed t: lat American destroyers on Thursday night penetrated deep into enemy waters to rescue 160 survivors of the cruiser Helena, which was sunk in the first battle of the Kula Gulf, and who had drifted on to the enemy-occupied part of New Georgia Island. For a full week they have been harried by Japanese patrols. War correspondents say the rescue was made near a powerful enemy naval base by an American destroyer force sneaking through narrow, uncharted straits and risking air, surface and submarine attacks. Many of those rescued were in the water for two days before being washed ashore.