Heavy Attacks on Rabaul and Lae Carrier May Have Ferried Jap Planes

Manawatu Times, Volume 68, Issue 151, 28 June 1943, Page 5

Heavy Attacks on Rabaul and Lae

Carrier May Have Ferried Jap Planes

(By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.)

(Special Australian correspondent) Received Sunday, 7.40 p.m. SYDNEY, June 27.

The concentrations of Japanese shipping in Rabaul harbour now includes a small converted aircraft-carrier. The latest reconnaissance also shows 170 planes on the Rabaul airfield network. This figure shows a slight increase on the numbers recently sighted. It is possible that the carrier has been used to ferry aircraft to this key enemy base. The Japanese shipping concentration in Rabaul, including warships, remains substantially unchanged.

The aircraft concentrations on the Vunakanua aerodrome and the Rabaul dock installations were again attacked by Generl MacArthur’s heavy bombers in a pre-dawn raid on Saturday. More than 20 tons of high explosives and incendiaries were dropped. Intense antiaircraft fire was encountered and two of our bombers are missing. Today’s communique makes no special claims as to the damage inflicted.

An Australian Beaufort bomber on Friday scored a near miss on one of the three 1000-ton Japanese vessels in a convoy between New Britain and the Northern Solomons. A destroyer was escorting the merchantmen which appeared to bp heading in the direction of Bougainville. The Beaufort attacked 65 miles south-southeast of Cape St. George in the Rabaul area. Lae, in Northern New Guinea, has been under heavy attack by Allied medium bombers, but dense smoke prevented an accurate assessment of the damage. The Madang and Finschafen areas were also raided in the past 48 hours. Offensive activity by General MacArthur’s bombers in this period has been limited and there axe no reports of Japanese air activity. North of Australia enemy aerodromes at Penfoei and Dili! (Timor) have been attacked and fires were started in the dispersal areas. The United States Navy Department says that on June 24 Wildcat fighters strafed a Japanese J)arge southeast of Vangunu Island in the New Georgian group, and yesterday four Japanese bombers unsuccessfully attacked a

United States light surface unit in the Solomons.