MOPPING UP

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25394, 27 November 1943, Page 5

MOPPING UP

GILBERTS OPERATIONS VIRTUALLY COMPLETED (Rec. 10 p.m.) WASHINGTON, Nov. 25. Mopping-up operations on Tarawa, Makin, and Abemama are virtually complete, and few live Japanese remain in the Gilberts. The American aircraft-carrier division covering the operations in the Gilbert Islands yesterday shot down 34 enemy fighters, nine bombers, and three four-engined patrol seaplanes. The carrier division’s losses were three fighters and one torpedo bomber. This has been announced in a Navy Department communique, which also reports a raid by Liberators yesterday on the Emiji-Jaluit atoll in the Marshall Islands. Three Japanese floatplanes did not attempt interception. Jananese air strength had diminished steadily in the Gilberts in planes and in the will to fight, said the American naval spokesman when discussing the communique. He revealed that more than one Amercian carrier division" (comprising two or more carriers) had operated in the area. The War Secretary, Mr H. L. Stimson, described the Gilberts offensive as a series of conveffing attacks on the outer arc of the Japanese conquests. He hoped that the cracks made would develop into breaches—but it was still a long way to Tokio. Since November 1 the Japanese, he revealed,-had lost 74 war and merchant ships and 533 planes. America lost one destroyertransport and 91 planes. “ The Marshalls are likely to be the next Allied target,” says Mr Joseph Driscoll, the New York Herald-Tribune correspondent at Pearl Harbour. “ ‘ Seabees ’ (Navy Construction Corps men) have gone ashore at Tarawa, taking heavy machinery to restore the battered airfield on a 4000-yard coral strip. This airfield is 300 miles from the Marshalls.” Mr Driscoll believes that another airfield will be bpilt on Makin, only 200 miles from the Marshalls. Mr George Horne, the Pearl Harbour correspondent of the New York Times, says it will take several weeks to develop the captured Gilbert Islands as a springboard for further Allied advances.

JAPANESE DILEMMA

WOULD Noi RISK NAVY ' (N.Z.P.A. Special Aust. Correspondent) SYDNEY, Nov. 25. Evidently disinclined to hazard a major sea engagement with the growing naval might of the United States, the Japanese now face a serious dilemma. By the continued unchallenged use of their sea-power the Americans can continue to strike telling blows against Japan’s outer periphery. The military correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald to-day points out that the cheaply-won Gilbert Islands lead naturally to the Marshalls and to Nauru and Ocean Islands. Progressively aided by such air bases as Betio Island, the Americans can converge stage by stage upon the enemy’s two bases of Truk and Rabaul. “The Japanese yielded the Gilberts rather than hazard a naval engagement—and this week’s events can be repeated almost indefinitely,” he writes. “ The question immediately arises: How long will the Japanese permit this process of strangulation without counter-attack? It is evident that the only effective form of retaliation will be by the use of sea power. , «However strong the enemy may be at certain points of the island perimeter and however exhausting the fight may be to drive him out by land, the new Allied use of sea power gives a changed sense of values to the strategical, situation.” ~ . The correspondent points out tnax with American sea power already opening up the roads to Tokio from the east, the Japanese dilemma will be further complicated when British naval reinforcements allow of serious operations on Japan’s western Indian Ocean flank as well. The Japanese High Command will then have to decide whether to meet both attacks at once or to concentrate against one. ... The nature of the enemy’s dilemma is seen in Admiral Nimitz’s, carefullycalculated insistence upon the imperative need for a strategical concentration of naval strength in the Pacific war. Urgency is also given to Japans problem by the repeated failure of her light naval forces in the Solomons. The correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald in this area says: “ The four Japanese destroyers sunk on Thursday morning were attempting to reach Buka, in Northern Bougainville, probably in an attempt to evacuate certain personnel from there. The force was intercepted by an American destroyer squadron commanded by Captain ‘ Thirty-one Knot ’ Burke, who chased the fleeing enemy warships towards Rabaul. As an admiral said later of Burke, ‘He would have taken his destroyers right into Rabaul if necessary.’ The battle lasted two hours and was fought in the light of the moon, star shells, and flares dropped, by planes."