JAPANESE SHIPPING SHORTAGE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 21, 26 January 1943, Page 5

JAPANESE SHIPPING SHORTAGE

(Rec noon.) CHUNGKING, January 26. The Japanese are suffering a severe shipping shortage and have been forced to transfer river boats to ocean duty, according to an exnewspaper man who escaped from Shanghai. The dockyards at Shanghai, he said, are working round the clock repairing vessels bombed and torpedoed by American planes and submarines. The growing American aerial offensive has impelled the Japanese to adopt stringent air-raid precautions in all the large occupied cities in China.

protected the coast from Japanese ships, and blasted the way for our infantry." General Mac Arthur declared that air power linked with ground strategy would eliminate any costly advance from island to island in the Pacific. By its fullest use many enemy strong points could be by-passed and decisive blows dealt to vital centres. "In a theatre where the enemy's strongholds are dispersed throughout a vast expanse of archipelagoes, air power will permit of swift and massive offensive strokes," he said. "With proper naval support, air, land, and sea co-operation points the way to victory." The Associated Press of America says that qualified military authorities in Washington interpret General MacArthur's comment as finally discardi ing the island-by-island strategy of advance in the Pacific, and the authorities add that General MacArthur is apparently advocating ' a policy of direct attack against Japan's key bases by outflanking, or literally I over-flying, the intermediate and less important bases. The American Naval High Command is understood to hold a similar i concept of the path to victory in the Pacific, the agency states. General Mac Arthur's reference to I "airfields and ground forces welded together with proper naval support" is held to be an argument against a separate air force and to express recognition of the need for the closest ! co-operation between the military and naval forces. It was recalled that General Mac Arthur has long advocated complete air and ground co-or-dination. Furthermore, the Associated Press'adds, as Chief of Staff of the War Department, he promoted the creation of a general headquarters of the army air force which, was the forerunner of the present autonomous army air forces organisation. General Mac Arthur • was supported in his assessment of the value of air power in the Pacific by Captain Ralph Ofstie, an aviation officer on the staff of Admiral Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief of the United States Pacific Fleet. Addressing the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce, Captain Ofstie said that bombing attacks on Japan were planned, but there were reasons why they could not be in the regular routine for the present. The progress of the war in the Pacific depended upon carrier-based aircraft, he added. The high speed and well balanced equipment of the carriers made them the best means of moving powerful forces of fighters, dive-bombers, and torpedo-bombers against the enemy. Guadalcanal was turning the tide of the war in the South Pacific, but carriers were needed to augment the limited Allied air bases. Thus our planes could reach the back areas and deliver heavy surprise air attacks, which would be an ver-increasing and 'tremendously effect.Ye factor in the smashing of Japan. It is understood that, if they are needed, many airfields can be built on the high, flat, grass meadows of Guadalcanal, supplementing the Henderson airfield, which is now enlarged to accommodate all types of planes.