BEYOND HOLLANDIA

Grey River Argus, 11 May 1944, Page 5

BEYOND HOLLANDIA

ALLIED ATTACKS Harder Resistance Indicated (Special to N.Z. Press Assn.; (Rec. 9.30.) SYDNEY, May 10. Mopping-uP operations by American patrols at Hollandia, Dutch New Guinea, have brought the total oi Japanese killed to 871. A total of 183 enemy troops have been taken prisoner.

West of Hollandia an intensified Allied air offensive against Japanese bases is being maintained. To-day’s communique from General MacArthur’s Headquarters reports raids on six important points. Liberators, over Jef man Island, Geelvink Bay, on Monday encountered eleven intercepting fighters. They shot down one. Others were probably destroyed. One Liberator was lost.

Liberators and Mitchells, with a Kittyhawk fighter escort, raided tne nearby Schouten Islands. At Mokmer airfield, fires and explosions were caused in a dispersal area. There was no. interception. Three small Japanese vessels were attacked in the same area.

In the Wakde-Sarmi sector, about a hundred miles west of Hollandia, air patrols strafed Sawar aerodrome. The results have not been reported. Liberators, Mitchells and Beauforts have continued the daily pounding ot the Wewak-Hansa Bay area, in British New Guinea, where remnants of the Japanese Eighteenth Army arc concentrating. Large fires were started at Wewak. Allied patrol tor-pedo-boats sank two barges off Wewak.

Australian troops, driving from Alexishafen, have now reached a point seven miles inland and ten miles north, without encountering opposition.

To-day’s communique from General MacArthur’s Headquarters notes the first recorded loss of an; Alliea patrol torpedo-boat in the Southwest Pacific. The torpedo-boat was sunk in an engagement with Japanese shore batteries and armoured barges and float-planes off Aitara, in Bougainville Island, North Solomons. “It seems unbelievable that we could land such large forces so tar north as Hollandia with practically no opposition,” Rear Admiral Daniel Barbey, who commanded the amphibious and attack force, told war correspondents. “Up till now,” added Admiral Barbey. “the Allies have been extraordinarily fortunate in such operations in the Southern Pacific. But we are now approaching the inner rim of the Japanese defences, and our future losses might not be so light.”