TARGETS IN BURMA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25866, 9 June 1945, Page 7

TARGETS IN BURMA

BRITISH FIGHTER GROUP SUPPORT FOR THE ARMY (R.N.Z.A.F. Official News Service) (Rec. 7 p.m.) RANGOON, June 6. It would be a grave mistake to assume that, because the Port of •Rangoon has been recaptured, the Burma campaign is finished. Retreating slowly through the Shan States in Eastern Burma, the Japanese continue to resist fiercely. Their morale appears to be undamaged, and it is still necessary to kill every man before their positions are taken. In addition, it is estimated that there are 15,000 Japanese behind the British lines in the territory not yet occupied. Fierce clashes occur frequently, usually in the vicinity of the Meiktila-Rangoon road, as they endeavour to escape to the east. This is proving a menace to British communications, and armoured cars must accompany convoys.

Hampered by heavy thunderstorms and incessant rain in the monsoon area, and by intense heat in the dry belt, the R.A.F. Fighter Group continues to fly almost non-stop in support of the army, above which it has fought so magnificently throughout the entire Burma war. In their role of mobile artillery, the fighters are steadily winkling the Japanese from their foxholes and bunkers, and driving them down through Tenasserim. On a barren, treeless, dry belt airfield a fighter pilot, Warrant Officer E. J. (Ted) Caskey (of Toko. Taranaki). described a typical sortie. "The army gave us the target,” he said. “We could see nothing, but we thoroughly bombed and strafed the position, although we thought there might have been a mistake. Later we got a ‘ strawberry ’ for killing 300 of 400 Japanese entrenched there.” The pilots arrive back from these sorties tired and drenched with sweat from hours of low flying in the fierce sun. Although it is cooler, squadrons operating in the monsoon areas south of Rangoon are constantly endangered by heavy storms, but attacks against enemy airfields, installations, and communications never falter.