FEW SKILLED MEN

New Zealand Herald, Volume 79, Issue 24194, 9 February 1942, Page 6

FEW SKILLED MEN

JAPAN'S AIR FORCE DUTCH PILOTS' VIEWS THE FIGHTING IN BORNEO BANDOENG, Feb. 2 Japanese airmen have no except tional skill, declares Major-General L. H. van Oyen, Commandant of the Dutch East Indies Air Corps. "They seem to have one capable man in each formation. The others, much less capable, just follow him," he said. "From the moment we have equal numbers, and our fighters are technically equal to the Japanese machines, we shall begin til) shoot them all down, he added. e Major-General van Oyen bases his opinion on reports of his pilots, writes Geoffrey Tebbutt, a special representative of the Sydney Sun in the Dutch East Indies. "Our fighter pilots say that many Japanese fly badly," he went on. "Our Buffalo and Curtiss P36 fighters, which are much slower than the Japanese fighter ; nevertheless have a good chance against them. The average Japanese airman is much below- ours, Britain's and America's." Superior Bomb-sights 4 Major-General van Oyen is gratified at the accuracy of Dutch bombing, which greatly exceeded expectations based on theoretical results. He said that both the British and American bomb-sights, especially the American, were superior to the Japanese. -Major-General van Oyen related how, during a raid on a Dutch aerodrome in Borneo, a Bofors (Swedish) twopounder anti-aircraft gun directly hit one fighter, decapitating the pilot, whose head dropped on the aerodrome. Wreckage from the machine fell several hundred yards away. Before the fall of Tarakan (rich oil port in north-east Borneo), the Japanese were unaware of the location of a Dutch aerodrome in the Borneo jungle near Samarina (250 miles south of Tarakan), and made several vain attempts to find it. However, their advances later enabled them to make shorter-range reconnaissance and perhaps through taking a map from a Dutch aeroplane that had been shot down they ultimately pin-pointed the aerodrome, which has since _ been persistently bombed and machine-gunned. It was from this aerodrome that the Dutch earlier made many successful raids. Praise for Australians Dutch officers were attached to Australian Imperial Force units in Malaya to study jungle warfare. These observers have now returned to Bandoeng to report to headquarters. Captain F. W. Schultze. a Dutch infantryman who was attached to a Queensland infantry battalion commanded by LieutenantColonel Boyes, on the central front, praises the coolness and discipline of the battalion. It fought a -long, hard rearguard action for 10 days while withdrawing from Gemas to Singpam Rongain, where he loft them on January 28. still in good order. The Australians had the advantage of knowing the country, but the Japanese terrorised the natives into disclosing jungle paths. ENORMOUS NAZI BOMBS LONDON, Feb. 2 "Satan"—the heaviest type of high explosive bomb which the Luftwaffe has dropped in attacks against Britain —weighs 40001b. It is 13ft. 3in. long, and 2ft. 3in in diameter. Its official German weight is 1800 kilograms, while the other well-known German bomb—the Goering—weighs only 500 kilograms, and is short and fat.

WAR DAMAGE REPAIRS (Reed. 5.35 p.m.) LONDON, Feb. 7 Detailing war damage repaired "to the end of 1941, the Vichy radio claimed that 587 road bridges had been permanently repaired out of 2500 destroyed. It was also stated that 80 per cent of the destroyed railway bridges had been reconstructed and that practically the whole of the 3000 miles of destroyed canals were now in a state to he used. CHANNEL BLIZZARD LONDON, Feb. 7 Snow has been falling for 12 hours over the Straits of Dover, with heavy seas and the worst gale for years.