PALAU TRIUMPH

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 165, 10 April 1944, Page 5

PALAU TRIUMPH

Result Of American Attack

(British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, April 7.

A battleship was among 46 Japanese ships which were sunk or damaged in the United States naval attacks on the Palau Islands and other bases in the Central Pacific between March 29 and 31, says a Pearl Harbour communique. Twenty-five enemy ships, including two destroyers, were sunk, and 17 other vessels damaged, some of them being set on fire. At least 100 Japanese planes were destroyed in air combat or on the ground, and more than 50 other aircraft were probably destroyed or damaged. Installations on various islands were destroyed or extensively damaged. The operations cost the Americans 25 aircraft. Not a single American ship was damaged. The communique also says that on the night before the attack on the Palau Group an American submarine torpedoed a Japanese battleship as she was leaving the base with a destroyer escort. Though she was considerably damaged, the battleship was able to escape at moderate speed under the protection of her escort. Another naval communique reports that Liberators dropped 44 tons of bombs on Wake Island on Wednesday night. They hit storage and aircraft maintenance areas. It was the eighteenth raid on Wake Island. PONAPE HIT AGAIN (Received April 9, S.lO p.m.) WASHINGTON, April 8. The airfield and bauxite works on Pouape. were hit when the island was bombed by Mitchells on Thursday, states a Pacific Fleet communique. The antiaircraft fire was moderate. Other aircraft. strafed three enemy positions in the Marshalls, hitting ammunition stores at one objective and heavily bombing runways at another. All the planes returned.