BATTLE STRATEGY

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 270, 13 August 1942, Page 5

BATTLE STRATEGY

U.S. Aircraft-Carriers’ Blows (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, August 11. "Japan’s soldiers have shown themselves masters of • fighting in the tropics. No one can imagine that the expulsion of these stolid fighters from the very many positions which they have seized will be either quick or easy," states the "Manchester Guardian” in discussing the battle in the Solomons. The battle is to the enemy’s advantage, the newspaper stales, because he is fighting from land while the Allies have bad to begin from transports. The Japanese are reported to have built air bases on Guadalcanal - , and these will bb stocked with defensive bombers. Japan’s aim would be to send reinforcements to these bases, and the Allies are attempting to destroy them before they can take off from New Guinea and New Britain. “How successful we have been with our carrier-based planes against the land-based Japanese we do not yet know,” the newspaper continues, "but it is remarkable that in the long list of successes claimed by Japan no mention is made of any Allied aircraft-car-rier being hit, though these ships, in tlic background, would have been the first largets."