AIR WARFARE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23413, 1 August 1939, Page 9

AIR WARFARE

SOVIET AND JAPAN:; MONGOLIAN BORDER; FOUR KILLED IN CRASH RUSSIAN OFFICERS By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright (Received July 31, 11.50 p.m.) MOSCOW, July 31 Four high Air Force officers, including' General Kholzunoff and Major Cherkassoff, a bombing expert, were killed in a cfash. An official communique states that they were killed while fulfilling their duties. '

The officers are believed to have died during the fighting on the border of Outer Mongolia. £hey will be given an elaborate military funeral, at which Marshal Voroshiloff, Minister of Defence and head of the Army, will be the chief mourner. Marshal's Tribute Many Army officers, including Marshal Voroshiloff and his aides, have signed a statement paying tribute to the dead men. Observers express tlio opinion that this belies stories of tho new purge recently published in the foreign press as the statement contains the names of ijien alleged to have been removed from their commands. Reports that General Shtern, Commander of the Ist Far Eastern Army, had been removed; are also dispelled by v his signature of the statement paying tribute to the dead fliers. A member of the Russian General Staff, Colonel Bogoluboff, writing in the newspaper Izvestia, frankly admits that Russian aeroplanes, tanks, artillery and troops are fighting, the Japanese forces on the border of Outer Mongolia. Diplomatic Victory The writer warns Japali that a war against the Soviet can only end in defeat for the "Fascist usurpers." He asserts that the Russian Army is the most powerful in the world.

The Japanese Foreign Oflko spokesman in Tokio announced to-day that the Soviet officials at Nicolaevsk, presumably acting on instructions from Moscow, had ordered the bailiffs to. postpone the attachment o;f the Japanese North Sakhalin oil and coal properties, in defence of which Japan.i recently threatened,to blockade the Russian coast.

ATTACK ON RUSSIA JAPANESE PLANS SOVIET PAPER'S CLAIM FORCES IN MANCHUKUO MOSCOW-, July 25 The Japanese to convert the Manchukuo" border lands into a springboard for an attack upon Russia." This claim of a Vladivostok newspaper is widely quoted in the Russian press. It asserts that 500 Japanese aeroplanes are concentrated in Manchukuo. %. Since 1932 the Japanese have built there 130 military airports, 3000 miles of railway and 10,000 miles of roads.