SIX ATTACKS MADE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 140, 16 June 1942, Page 5

SIX ATTACKS MADE

JAPANESE STRENGTH LOWERED

(Rec. 12.45 p.m.)

NEW YORK, June 15

Six heavy attacks have been launched from the air on ihe Japanese forces occupying two small islands in the Aleutians, says the military spokesman at Washington. Hits were scored on cruisers, destroy ersy and gunboats in Kiska Harbour. The attacks are continuing. [ The opinion is practically unanimous in Washington that the initiative in the Pacific is passing from Japan to the United States. There has been a renewal of confidence as more accurate estimates of the significance of the Coral Sea and Midway Island battles confirm some of the more hopeful first conclusions. Admiral Yates Stirling, jun., naval commentator of the United Press, however, is of the opiriion that the United I States needs more island bases, since these two battles proved that landbased planes are superior to carrierborne aircraft. ALL MAJOR CRAFT GONE. Major George Fielding Eliot, writing in the "New York Herald Tribune," says that Japan has lost all her important aircraft-carriers, and adds:— "The enemy has been seriously, if not fatally, handicapped for new naval offensives in the Pacific and the initiative has now passed, to the United States." Major, Eliot estimates that Japan began the war with 11 naval carriers, of which five were small and useful only in protected waters. "The real strength of Japanese carrier-borne aviation lay in six much larger ships, all of which have now been lost," he says.

He points out that the war, so far, has not only proved the value of big aircraft-carriers, but also their vulnerability.