NAURU ATTACKED

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 102, 1 May 1943, Page 5

NAURU ATTACKED

US. BOMBERS STRIKE

LONG AERIAL MISSION

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) WASHINGTON, April 30. Striking twice in 36 hours, American Liberator bombers have severely damaged the important phosphate works and aerodrome areas in the outlying Japanese base of Nauru Island, and also at Tarawa, in the Gilbert Islands, writes an Associated Press correspondent with an American Army task force in the central Pacific. This, he says, is a foretaste of the industrial destruction that awaits Japan proper. The latest phase of the growing bombing offensive in the central Pacific involved one of the longest aerial task-force missions of the war. Nauru Island, which is 750 miles north-east of Guadalcanal, is reported to have suffered on April 21 a daylight assault unprecedented in this theatre. Tarawa was raided just before dawn. Both missions were led personally by Major-General Willis Hald, commander of the United States Seventh Air Force, He described the operations as extremely successful. The raid on Tarawa may be a prelude to an attempt to drive the Japanese out of the Gilbert Islands, according to the Washington correspondent of the Associated Press. He says that the raid is regarded by Washington authorities as particularly significant because of its relation to other recent events in this area. "Tarawa's triangular reef lies athwart short-cut routes for American supplies," he adds. "Any movement to drive the Japanese from the Gilbert Islands would transfer strategic advantages which are now possessed by the Japanese to the American forces, ■ shortening and strengthening the American supply lines. "For several weeks there has been a series of manoeuvres, indicating that the American strategy might be developing towards fulfilment of these purposes."