JAP KEY BASE

Grey River Argus, 16 August 1944, Page 6

JAP KEY BASE

CRUMBLES IN THE PACIFIC. BOMBERS SETTLING HALMAHERA. zr, (s L’ e £ ,al to N - z - Press Assn>. (Rec. 7.40.) SYDNEY, August 15. The Japanese stronghold on Halmahera Island, between New Guinea and the Philippines, is crumbling ■under the weight of attacks by General MacArthur’s 'planes. The road to the Philippines is being forced wide open. A failure by the Japanese to retrieve this weakness will threaten the main line of defence of tne enemy’s conquered empire in tne South-west Pacific, extending through Halmahera and the Philippines. Air attacks have immobilised enemy troops at Halmahera, practically neutralised airfields there, and denied that base to the Japanese maritime, forces.

The .Allied South-west Pacific communique says that since the seizure of Biak, Noemfoor and Sansapor, m Dutch New Guinea, 250 miles from Halmahera, and 620 miles from tne Philippines, effective sustained aerial assaults against enemy positions in the Dutch East Indies, especially air bases, have greatly weakened the Halmahera bastion. Flexibility of this great base, from which previously Japanese forces in all categories could be distributed rapidly to points where needed, is now lost.