FIRST LINE GONE?

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 32, 8 February 1943, Page 3

FIRST LINE GONE?

JAPANESE AIR FORCE

LOSSES RUN INTO THOUSANDS

(By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright.) (Special Australian Correspondent.) (Rec. 1 p.m.) SYDNEY. Feb. 7. Both the Americans and the Japanese have great naval forces protecting their respective bastions in the Solomons, says the "New York Daily News." , After nine days, these two forces are still feeling for each other's weaknesses. However, the humiliating Japanese air defeats, such as that in Saturday's battle over Wav, are being accepted in the United States as evidence that Japan has already lost one important phase of the Pacific Discussing the recently-reported reorganisation of the Japanese air force, the American Office of War Information states that enemy aircraft losses now run into many thousands, meaning the virtual liquidation of the firstline aircraft and personnel with which Japan embarked on the war. The losses are claimed to have impaired the morale of the enemy flyers, and Washington says that Japanese pilots openly blame deficient training for these losses. , Brigadier-General Claire Chennault, head of the American air force in China, has joined Australia in the demand for the employment of greater air striking' power against Japan. He has declared that with five hundred mores combat planes he would "can every Japanese out of China and short circuit enemy shipping between Japan and the Solomons." China, he says, has the necessary air, bases already established within 300 miles of the Japanese shipping lanes, not only to the Solomons but to Saigon, Burma, and Indo-China.