LASTED ONLY 20 MINUTES

Evening Star, Issue 24920, 19 July 1943, Page 3

LASTED ONLY 20 MINUTES

SOME SHIPS BLOWN OUT OF WATER (N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent.) (Rcc. 12.25 p.m.) SYDNEY, July 19. About 300 planes of all types—Allied and Japanese—fought out Saturday morning's big aerial battle over the Buin-Faisi anchorage. This, the greatest raid of the Pacific war, lasted only 20 minutes. Under cover of our weaving fighters, a powerful force of Avengers, Dauntlesses, and Liberators attacked 15 ships scattered in the harbour. The seven sunk included most of-the really worth-while targets in the concentration. Some of them were blown out of the water and sank in a few minutes. The' last of the seven vessels destroyed had gone to the bottom before the final wave of Allied torpedo and dive-bombers pulled away from their targets. ' Buin-Faisi is one of the main enemy bases in the present Solomons campaign. Recent Japanese naval forays against Allied positions in New Georgia have come from the direction of this heavily-fortified anchorage. The exact number of enemy fighters which endeavoured to protect the shipping has not been announced, but' it is known that at least 70 Japanese aircraft were located on the airfields in the Buin-Faisi area on the day beforo the raid and an even greater number earlier in the week. Of the 49 enemy fighters which were sent crashing into the sea at the rate of more than two a minute, 44 -were Zeros and five Avere floatplanes. At South Pacific headquarters Admiral Halsey disclosed that American destroyers on Thursday night penetrated deep into enemy waters to rescue 160 survivors of the cruiser Helena, which was sunk in the first battle of the Kula Gulf. These.men had drifted on to the enemy-occupied part of New Georgia Island. For a full week they were harried by Japanese patrols. War correspondents say that the rescue was made near the powerful enemy naval base by an American destroyer force sneaking through the narrow, uncharted straits ' and risking air, surface, and submarine attacks. Many of those rescued were in the,water for two days before being washed ashore.