LAST-EFFORT THRUST

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 63, 12 September 1945, Page 7

LAST-EFFORT THRUST

JAPANESE PLAN TO USE PLANES

YOKOHAMA, September 10. Japan was saving her last planes for a desperate all-out thrust against the American invasion fleet, according to General Shpzo Kawabe. chief of the Japanese air force and one of the creators of the Kamikaze Corps.

Kawabe and other leading air force officers said in an interview with a correspondent of the Associated Press of America that they expected invasion late in October or early in November, and planned to hurl every available plane against the fleet. They* calculated that by reserving their planes and also by using army and navy trainers and obsolete craft they could Send 9000 planes, against the Americans at the rate of 500 an hour. They expected to lose every pilot, but anticipated that one plane in four would hit a ship, thereby punishing the invaders so severely that the Japanese ground forces would have a chance to win.

Japan was desperately short of aviation petrol, they said, but had plenty of, willing pilots, though many were inexperienced. They denied that captured American airmen had been selected for specially rough treatment, and professed amazement when they were told that pictures of the execution of Allied airmen had been published in Japan. When the war ended Japan had 3000 combat planes and 2300 others. American comanders said that the Japanese had been dreaming wildly, because the Kyushu airfields would have been bombed out before invasion and the total of Japanese planes whittled down to insignificance.