NORTH PACIFIC RAIDS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 31, 5 August 1943, Page 5

NORTH PACIFIC RAIDS

SOFTENING UP JAPAN

NEW YORK, August 4.

The attacks against Kiska, in the Aleutians, and Paramushir, in the Kurile Islands, are more than just a softening-up process, said MajorGeneral W. O. Butler, commanding the United States Eleventh Air Force when interviewed at an advanced Aleutians base. American airmen, he added, were out to blast the Japanese off the islands. Aerial and naval bombardments of Kiska were believed to have killed a considerable number of the enemy garrison.

"It is difficult to see how the Japanese garrison at Kiska can long hold out in the face of the terrific American bombardments," writes a "Christian Science Monitor" war correspondent who watched from a patrol plane 200 tonfe of shells being hurled on Kiska withiri 30 minutes. He adds: "The feebleness, of the Japanese response was due, first, to the probability that the' Japanese, lacking proper piers, have been unable to mount anything larger than six-inch guns; secondly, to the frequent American bombardments; and, thirdly, to the fact that the Japanese are believed to be receiving few, if any, reinforcements." The correspondent says. that the Japanese bases at Paramushir will undoubtedly receive further attention, but the weather will limit. the frequency of the raids. Only a handful of Americans have ever landed on Paramushir, which is about 880 miles from the nearest United States base. They, were the

crew of the destroyer Pope, -which went there at the tipie of- the Japanese earthquake in 1923. There was then no naval base. The weather is ugly, and black volcanic mountains rise sheer from the sea.

Paramushir Island, 15 miles wide by 53 miles long, winds like a silkworm. Its tip is barely 25 miles from the Russian Kamchatka Peninsula. Japanese submarines supplying Kiska run from the Kashiwabara naval base which the Japanese built on Paramushir, and it is also possible that planes are based there.

The well-known American plane builder Major. A. P. de Seversky, in a letter to the "New York Times," again makes a vigorous plea for the construction of super-bombers for carrying explosives by day and night into the vitals of Japan. He says that such aircraft are needed for ah independent strategic bombing force which has not yet been envisaged by the American military leadership..

Major de Seversky says that the Consolidated Aircraft Corporation has completed a giant plane capable of carrying 80 tons ,of bombs, and that Glenn Martin haj. already designed a 100-ton flying-boat capable of striking across the Pacific and returning with fuel to spare.

"Once the signal for production is given, the American aircraft industry can build within two years an air armada capable of dealing a death blow to Japan," declares Major de Seversky.