THE FIRST RAID

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25309, 20 August 1943, Page 5

THE FIRST RAID

LANDMARK IN PACIFIC WAR (N.Z.P.A. Special Aust. Correspondent) SYDNEY, Aug. 19. “Japan’s aerial Pearl Harbourjr-is the apt description given by the Sjrtiney Morning Herald’s military correspondent to the astounding destruction of the great enemy air fleet on four aerodromes at Wewak. From every point of view the Wewak raid is recorded as a striking landmark in the Pacific War. “Most gratifying was the rapidity with which on receipt of a reconnaissance report the Allied High Command launched so great a force to the attack,” says the Herald’s correspondent, “for such targets do not usually last long. Wewak has been increasingly taking the place 9f Rabaul as the enemy’s major base in the northeastern sector, and reinforcements of planes are known to have been steadily arriving. This accounts for the packing of so large an aerial armada into one circumscribed area, and the Jap-anese-fears for their bases at Lae and Salamaua (threatened by the Allied land drive) must have been very real to permit such a dangerously exposed aggregation. “A catastrophe of the kind that has taken place must exercise a gravely limiting effect on their entire aerial strategy in this war zone. The aerial weapon on which they must have counted to hamper the next stage of Allied aggression has been badly blunted, and the heavy 4 toll in trained personnel is quite as serious considering the recently noted deterioration in the calibre of the Japanese air crews.” “Neither Borum nor Wewak aerodrome is a target any more after our attacks,” Major-general E. C. Whitehead, who directed the raid, told war correspondents. He added that he believed that the striking Allied success had proved that the decisive way to fight an air war was. at tree-top height, and that the attack bomber was the most dangerous weapon available to the South flecific air forces. The official calculations are that more than 50 per cent, of the enemy aircraft caught on the ground and 75 per cent, of the remainder badly damaged. More than 225 aircraft were attacked on the four aerodromes at Wewak. The Allied losses were three plane*, and other machines were damaged, but the returning crews expressed surprise at the lack of anti-aircraft opposition.

Indicative of the thoroughly surprise nature of the attack was that at Wewak aerodrome the Japanese provided a perfect target by switching on the airfield landing lights for our bombers, which they evidently mistook for some of their own aircraft. Bombing and strafing sweeps were made from a low level.