OVER JAPAN

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 55, 3 September 1945, Page 6

OVER JAPAN

N.Z. NAVY FLYER

PACIFIC WAR SERVICE

Five years' service in the Fleet Air Army, including operations in the Western Desert and against Italian targets, reached a climax for Lieut.Commander D. K. Evans, of Welling^ ton, with service in the Pacific on the aircraft-carriers Indomitable and Victorious and carrier force strikes against the Sakishima Islands, Formosa, and the home islands of Japan. LieutCommander Evans, who is now on leave in Wellington, was the first New Zealander to hold the appointment of Commander (Flying) in a fleet carrier. He arrived at Auckland last week in the cruiser Achilles. Lieut-Commander Evans left NewZealand in 1940 with the first draft of volunteers for naval flying service and has been almost continuously on active service since then. During 1942 he was one of the Fleet Air Arm fighter pilots operating from . desert aerodromes in co-operation with the Army and the R.A.F. and attacking Rommel's transport in the advance against El Alamein. He later participated in various Italian operations and on one occasion, sighting a Üboat on the surface, strafed it with, his guns before it submerged. Following leave in New Zealand earlier this year he joined Indomitable, flagship of the carrier force, as Commander (Flying), and in this capacitywas in charge of all flying activities from the ship during the British Task Force's operations against Formosa and. the Sakishima Islands. He later applied again for flying duty, and led a Corsair squadron which contained several New Zealanders in strikes on Honshu and Shikoku. Interception of strikes by Japanese fighters was almost unknown during this period, and the Corsairs which escorted Navy Avenger bombers on attacks against Japanese bases also carried two 5001b bombs, which they added to the destruction caused by the bombers. The Japanese defence against these attacks, deprived of effective fighter interception of the attackers, took the form of intense antiaircraft fire, which was particularly accurate and caused several casualTHE "KAMIKAZES." Japan's other answer to the strikes was the use of the "Kamikaze" suicide attack planes which usually adopted the method of shadowing the carriers planes back to the task force_ and then coming in to the attack. "The 'Kamikaze' pilots were really good at the game," said Lieut-Commander Evans. "They adopted a variety of devices to gain their approach without being intercepted by the standing combat patrol of fighters which the task force kept continually above it in various layers up to the 30.000 ft mark "The Japanese would often do their shadowing at 30,000 ft, and then when picked up by the radar would dive right down to the deck, climb again, and continue their approach at a constantly-varying height. Task forces in the Pacific were so big that the Japanese suicide pilots had every chance of sighting them from, that height even when there was six- to Sight-tenths cloud. When their attack was made it was usually at an angle of 45 degrees, heading for the for the "Kamikazes," or such of them as penetrated the fighter and anti-aircraft defences of the force, they found that the large British carriers were a tough proposition. Flight decks of Admiral Fraser s "flat-tops" were made of three inches of toughened steel instead of the wooden decks normal in American carriers, and many a Japanese suicide fiver gained his destination and sacrificed his life only to have the humanguided bomb skid off the carrier s deck and explode in the sea alongside with only minor damage. On more than one occasion British carriers suffered suicide hits that would have crippled an American carrier, and were fully seaworthy in a very short time after. The toughened decks of the carriers, designed as a defence against bombins while operating in the Mediterranean particularly, proved their worth time and again in the Facinc against suicide planes. The disadvantage, compared with American carriers, was that the extra . weight reduced the number of aircraft that could be carried.