SUPERFORTS ACTIVE OVER JAP MAINLAND

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 188, 10 August 1945, Page 5

SUPERFORTS ACTIVE OVER JAP MAINLAND

CITIES DEVASTATED

Major Oil Refinery Near

Osaka Blasted

Rec. noon. WASHINGTON, Aug. 9.

Eighty Super Fortresses concentrated their attack on a most important oil refinery and tank storage farm at Amagasaki, near Osaka, dropping 500 tons of demolition bombs.

In the first hour to-day 92 Marianas-based Super Fortresses dropped upward of 500 tons of incendiaries on the industrial areas of Fukuyama, says General Spaatz's communique. Returning crews reported excellent results. , There was no interception and anti-aircraft was meagre. All the bombers returned.

Sixty-seven Marianas-based Super' Fortresses struck at industrial targets in the Tokyo area late yesterday afternoon, dropping 400 tons of demolition bombs on the Nakajima aircraft plant and the Tokyo arsenal area. Good to excellent results were reported. There was no fighter interception. One Super Fortress was lost to intense anti-aircraft fire. Toyama Mostly Destroyed The Twentieth Air Force, reviewing damage caused by bombing, states that Toyama is the most devastated city in Japan, being 95.5 per cent destroyed. The percentage of damage to other cities is as follows:—Tokuyama, 53.5; Imuta, 40; Uwajima, 52; Ichinomiya, 76; Ujiyamada, 39; Igaki, 36; Tsuho, 71; Nagaoka, 65.5; Hachioji, 56; and Mito, 61.3. The oil centre at Kawasaki, 35 to 49 per cent.

Okinawa-based Super Fortresses will carry a 15-ton bomb load, compared with the 10 tons from the Marianas.

A Dbmei news agency report said 300 American bombers and fighters attacked the Hiroshima and Yamasuchi prefectures before noon to-day.

Plans for the strategic and tactical employment of the American air forces in the Pacific are now under review, says the New York HeraldTribune Washington correspondent.. These plans may be radically altered in the light of the development of the atomic bomb, according to a high Army Air Forces spokesman, who emphasised that no decision could be reached until the effect of the Hiroshima bomb had been exhaustively evaluated.

PEACETIME JOBS

Sudden End Of War Would Find Australia Unprepared OVER 1,000,000 INVOLVED Rec. 1.30 p.m. SYDNEY, this day. More than 1,150,000 men and women will have to be fitted into peacetime jobs if the Pacific war ends suddenly, says the Daily Telegraph political correspondent. Of these 650,000 are in the Services and 250,000 in war or semi-war jobs. Another 250,000 are in jobs to which they went when their normal employment ended under wartime restrictions.

The Federal Government has stated a number of times that manpower control will end with the war. Australia's plans for conversion back to peacetime economy have been based on the Pacific war lasting at least until next March and, adds the correspondent, a sudden cessation of hostilities would catch the Government unprepared.