NEW BASES BOMBED

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 9 February 1943, Page 5

NEW BASES BOMBED

ALLIED PLANES ON PATROL ENEMY’S DEFENSIVE ARC THICKENS Sydney, Feb. 8. After being swept out of the skies over Wau, New Guinea, on Saturday, the Japanese Air Force in the SouthWest Pacific area stayed on the ground on Sunday. General MacArthur’s latest communique does not mention activity by a single enemy machine, although Allied air offensives ranged from the Celebes to New Britain. There is, however, a further indication of the thickening of the enemy’s defensive arc to the north of Australia. Timika, Dutch New Guinea, to-day mentioned in a communique for the first time, was bombed and strafed by Liberators. Another enemy base in the same area, Kaukenau, which first appeared in a communique last week, was also attacked. Timika and Kaukenau are eight miles apart and about 550 air miles from Darwin.

During the past month evidence has mounted of a steady Japanese infiltration along the south coast of Dutch New Guinea towards the Allied base of Merauke. Boston and the Wangiwangi Islands, at the south-eastern tip 0 f the Celebes, were reconnoitred by an Allied Hudson bomber which damaged two Japanese luggers. A Liberator killed numbers of Japanese when two troop-laden 50ft motor barges were attacked in Riebeck Bay, New Britain. Low-level strafing forced the barges, each of which carried about 75 men, to run ashore. One barge was in flames. An enemy aerodrome at Lae, New Guinea, which was the base for Saturday’s singularly unsuccessful air assault against Wau, has again been raided by Allied Beaufighters and Liberators. Fires were burning and buildings shattered when our planes turned for home.

Only intermittent patrol skirmishing is reported from Wau. Forty more Japanese have been killed in the area. At Bakumbari, near the Kumusi rivermouth, a further 20 Japanese stragglers were killed by Allied patrols. In an earlier action in this neighbourhood 75 enemy troops were killed.—P.A. Special Australian Correspondent.