Warning From MacArthur’s Headquarters

Manawatu Times, Volume 68, Issue 58, 10 March 1943, Page 5

Warning From MacArthur’s Headquarters

(By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Special Australian Correspondent.) Received Tuesday, 9.50 p.m. SYDNEY, Mar. 9. Japanese air strength throughout the Southwest Pacific is increasing. Despite recent defeats and heavy losses, it 13 being steadily built up. This official warning is given to-day by the spokesman at General MacArthur’s Headquarters. A statement on the position has been made by the Southwest Pacific Command. This is one of the few instances when the Command has permitted its name to be associated with a warning against the growth of Japanese air power. , Such action sets the seal of military authority on earlier warnings by wai correspondents that the margin oi Allied air superiority in this theatre should be quantitatively increased to ensure that our forces will be able to prosecute a successful holding war against the Japanese. The official Headquarters statement reads: “Japanese air power in this area at least is certainly not on the wane: quite the contrary. It is a wellknown maxim that power always looks bad even though the margin that brings success—sometimes overwhelming victory—may be hardly more than an eyelash. The Japanese air forces are increasing in strength here notwithstanding past losses and defeats. The enemy’s planes are good and so are his fliers. Any disparaging discount of his ail potential is not only incorrect, but dangerous. ” This statement comes a little more than a week after the dramatic communique announcement of growing enemy concentrations in the island arc north of Australia. It was then pointed out that the J apanese had been steadily building airstrips and supply bases along the semi-circular chain of islands. Don Caswell, American United Press correspondent at MacArthur’s Headquarters, says enough enemy airfields have been built to accommodate 1500 planes—a staggering number far outstripping Japan’s needs for perimetei defence. The Headquarter’s spokesman to-day pointed out that on Sunday, nine Japanese bombers and fifteen fighters attacked Goodenough Island. On Monday, nine bombers and thirteen fighters sank a small Allied cargo vessel in Oro Bay, on the north coast of Papua. The enemy raiders were intercepted by our Lightning fighters, one medium bomber and one Zero being shot down. Almost a hundred Japanese survivors from the smashed Bismarck Sea convoy reached shore on the coasts of Northern New Guinea and Goodenough Island. Fifty-five, who came ashore on New Guinea, were killed or taken s*isoner by Allied patrols. Of 42, who reached Goodenough Island, 34 were killed and three taken prisoner. Five escapees are being pursued. Correspondents comment on the great distance which the Japanese parties had drifted. Widespread Allied air activity was maintained on Monday, though most of the raids appear to have been on a smali scale. Our bombers attacked i£aukenau and Bobo (Dutch Guinea) ana Seumlaki (Tenimber Islands). O.ui Beaufighters strafed the Fuiloro (Timor) airfield, machine-gunning fifty J apanese on the ground. MacARTHUR ILL-EQUIPPED AND UNDERARMED. “General MacArthur has been left ill-equipped and undermanned in Australia exactly as in the Philippines, ’' declares the New York journal “American” editorially. “Despite American mass production and mass mobilisation he has been denied the supplies of men necessary for a mass offensive against the Japanese, but he has accomplished herculean, indeed almost miraculous results. He saved Darwin and Port Moresby and recovered Papua with little at hand but always with discouragement and desperation dogging his heels and always with a sense of frustration. “Every American believes a commander who has done so much with so little could have changed the whole course of the Pacific war and should be adequately armed and manned. With an adequate share of the men and goods produced in the past year General MacArthur could have cleared the Japanese from all New Guinea, Timor and Rabaui by now. MacArthur probably should command the entire American war effort on all fronts, but since he is delegated—in a sense relegated—to the Pacific, why don’t we supply him with the men, planes and munitions needed to win completely that important war?” The question of United States strategy in the Southern Pacific and particularly in the area northward of Guadalcanar has become of increasing interest to Washington naval circles as American bombers continue their daily attacks against Japanese strongholds in the Southern Pacific, according to the New York Times’ Washington correspondest. Observers are wondering whether the attacks are intended as “softening up” operations prior to a further forward move, as a means of attrition or merely to keep the enemy off balance. The correspondent points out that the Japanese airstrips must be severely crippled before American ships could move in a new offensive, but adds that there is no hint of whether this is the object behind the present ait attacks.