PICTURESQUE FLYER

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 139, 9 March 1943, Page 5

PICTURESQUE FLYER

Pacific Reconnaissance Tradition (Received March 8, 9.40 p.m.) SYDNEY, March 8.

Four hundred miles au hour Lock-heed-Lightnings are being used extensively in the south-west Pacific area for photographic reconnaissance work. The men flying these planes have had narrow escapes, but they have managed to out-manoeuvre their Zero attackers and return safely. Their job is to avoid fighting and bring back their films intact.

“Theirs is the tradition of high flying and high speed which was set in the bad old days of Allied air inferiority by Captain, (now Lieutenant-Colonel) Karl Polifka, California, whose huge moustachios were a feature of the Papuan scene and who was ’Pop’ to the boys at the age of 33,” writes the “Sydney Morning Herald’s” New Guinea war correspondent. “He, too, flew a Lockheed Lightning, and he took on himself the whole burden of aerial photograph reconnaissance from the overworked Hudsons and, Catalinas. Fie serviced the machine himself ana slept under ifs wings. Not knowing fear, Polifka was the first exponent of the art of ‘Zero teasing.’ He flew on his luck all the time, and often came home full of holes. Once he had an engine shot out over Rabaul, but in spite of this major handicap he evaded the Japanese and went on to Lae to take more pictures. Here he met more Zeros, but he escaped them by using clouds and landed at his base out of petrol. “As a prelude to the American invasion of Guadalcanal, Polifka stripped a Flying Fortress and tilled every aperture be could find with cameras, and then he photographed the Japanese-held island thoroughly. His pictures made the basic maps on which the invasion plans were made.” Lieutenant-Colonel Polifka is now on duty in America, but the work of ms successors has been used to plan many of the successful aerial assaults on enemy-held points.

TOTAL ENEMY LOSSES South-west Pacific Area (By Telegraph.—Press Assn. —Copyright.) (Special Australian Correspondent.) (Received March 8, 9 p.m.) SYDNEY, March 8. More than 800 Japanese aircraft, 40 warships, and 78 cargo vessels have been definitely destroyed in the area of the South-west Pacific Command since the first isstie of the daily communiques from General MacArthurs headquarters on April 21, 1942. With the machines which were probably destroyed and damaged, the total of Japanese aircraft put out. of action in this period is close to 1000 while 2uo ships of all types have been either sunk or damaged. These figures are compiled from tnc day-to-day communiques, and they do not take into account the large numbers of enemy aircraft which are known to have been destroyed on the ground or the estimated ship losses in raids of which it has been impossible to confirm the results.