N.Z. AIRMEN PRAISED

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 219, 15 September 1943, Page 3

N.Z. AIRMEN PRAISED

SOLOMONS AND NEW HEBRIDES NEW YORK, Sept. 14. "The air force, which started on a shoestring, is now a formidable outfit keeping the Japanese off balance in the Solomons theatre and, indeed, has made the Allied positions in the Solomons and New Hebrides completely safe from enemy interference," said Brigadier-General Glen Jamison, Chief of Staff of the South Pacific Air Force, at a Press conference.

Brigadier-General Jamison highly praised the New Zealanders,. who are splendidly co-operating with American flyers in the South Pacific.

"These people are real fighters. They never complain, no matter how tough the job. They do it and then come home and laugh about it," Brigadier-General Jamison said.

The most damaging thing the South Pacific situation had done to the Japanese was to force them to send more aircraft to this area than they planned, and so upsetting their plans for other war theatres. "It is American strategy deliberately to harass the enemy day and night, keeping him so busy every night that he is a bit groggy in the daytime," said Brigadier General Jamison.

Colonel Brooke Allen, Commander of the Thirteenth Air Force Bombardment Group, who participated in the interview, stated that Munda. in New Georgia, adaptable for fourengined bomber operations, will be an important base, because it brings the Japanese naval base at Truk, in the Caroline Islands, within feasible range of American bombers.