U.S. ADMIRAL’S REVELATIONS: WAR IN PACIFIC

Greymouth Evening Star, 31 July 1947, Page 7

U.S. ADMIRAL’S REVELATIONS: WAR IN PACIFIC

(Rec: 1.5 p.m.) NEW YORK, July 30.

The British Navy was given unimportant objectives in the final phase of ’ the Pacific war to prevent any post-war claim that Britain had taken any major pari-in the climatic blow against the Japanese fleet. This statement was .made by Fleet Admiral Halsey in the Saturday Evening Post. Admiral Halsey recalled the American carrier attack against Kurc naval base in July, 1945, after which •the Japanese fleet ceased to exist. Admiral Halsey said this attack was made solely by American planes, adding: “At Mick Carney’s insistence, I assigned the British an alternate target. Osaka, which also offered warships, but none of prime importance. Mick’s argument was that, although this division of forces violated the principle of concentration and superiority, it was imperative to forestall a possible post-war. claim by Britain that she had delivered even a part of the final blow that demolished the Japanese fleet. “I hate to admit a political factor into a military equation—my respect for Vice-Admiral Sir Bernard Rawlings and his fine men of the British Pacific Fleet made me hate it doubly —but Mick forced me to recognise that statement objectives sometimes differ widely from combat objectives and that an exclusively American attack was in America’s best interests.”