20-MINUTE RAID

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21151, 20 July 1943, Page 4

20-MINUTE RAID

BIGGEST IN PACIFIC SHIPS BLOWN FROM SEA U.S. FIGHTERS' HUGE BAG (By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Special Australian Correspondent.) ' SYDNEY, July 19. About 300 planes of all types — Allied and Japanese —fought out. the big aerial battle over the Buin-Faisi anchorage on Saturday morning. This, the greatest raid of the Pacilic war, lasted only 20 minutes. Under the cover of our weaving fighters, a powerful force of Avenger torpedobombers, Dauntless dive-bombers and' Liberators attacked the 15 ships scattered in the harbour. The seven sunk included most of the really worthwhile 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 divebombers pulled away from their tsr^Cts. Buin-Faisi is one of the main enemy bases in the present Solomons eamnaign. 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 lighters 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 before 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 per minute, 44 were Zeros and five were float-planes. At South Pacific Headquarters, Admiral Halsey disclosed that American destrovers on Thursday night penetrated deep into enemy waters to rescue 160 survivors of the cruiser Helene, which was sunk in the first battle of the Kula Gulf. These men had drifted on to an 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 a powerful .enemy naval base by an American destroyer force snaking through harrow, uncharted straits, risking air, surface and submarine attacks. Many of those rescued were in the water for two days before being washed ashore. U.S. RAIDS ON KISKA WASHINGTON, July 10. A Navy Department communique states: “Heavy arid medium bombers and fighters carridd out four attacks on Kiska Island in the Aleutians on July 15. Several fires were observed in the vicinity of the anti-aircraft batteries, :