AERIAL KNOCK-OUT

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21227, 16 October 1943, Page 3

AERIAL KNOCK-OUT

MACARTHUR'S AIM ASSAULT ON RABAUL ALLIED MOVES PREDICTED (By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright.) (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY. Oct. 15. General MacArthur worked for 16 hours a day for weeks in making preparations for the record Allied air attack an Rabaul on Tuesday. Three days before the raid, General MacArthur took war correspondents into his confidence. He explained how the largest force of bombers and fighters ever assembled in the southwest Pacific had been secretly mustered for the attempt to knock out Rabaul from the air and how even planes of the near pensioned class had been patched up to augment the available strength for the job. It is revealed that hundreds of our aircraft took off from airfields on New Guinea mainland. Kiriwana and Woodlark Islands, both of which were occupied by the Allied forces last June. The construction of air bases 200 miles nearer New Britain permitted the employment of lighter cover for our bombers. This was provided by Beaufighters and Lightnings which were used in the greatest number ever seen in the Pacific skies.

The devastating raid lasted two hours. Our planes brought back many graphic photographs indicating the extent of the damage. The attack on Rabaul had been delayed until reconnaissance indicated that Japanese air and shipping concentrations were at their peak. However, the damage to installations, even more than the actual plane and ship losses, will disrupt Rabaul's effectiveness as an important base. Impetus to Allied Thrusts

The success of the raid must give an impetus to Allied aggressive thrusts in the south and south-west Pacific. The whole of Japan’s 750-miie southern Pacific front, extending from the Buin-Faisi area in the Solomons to Wewak in New Guinea has been endangered. Anticipating further Allied moves in the Pacific, the, Sydney Morning Herald says, in an editorial, that General MacArthur’s blow at Rabaul vividly illustrates what he called the “application of offensive power in swift, massive strokes.” Throughout the Pacific the Japanese have had to yield the initiative to the Allies whose main task henceforth is to gain buses from which their superior sea and air power can be brought to bear against Japan’s inner defences. Rabaul has been raided 122 times since General MacArthur established the South-west Pacific Command. Up to the end of July the Allies had dropped approximately 1000 tons of bombs on Rabaul this year. The previous heaviest tonnages were 60 tons on January 10 last year, 54 tons on March 24 this year, when 250 enemy aircraft were hit on the ground. The heaviest shipping losses to the Japanese at Rabaul were 80,000 tons destroyed, and 20,000 tons seriously damaged in raids extending over three consecutive days in October last year. The latest attack when the bomb load dropped was 350 tons, exceeded by 30 tons the previous Pacific record established in the raid on Wake Island earlier this month.