JAPANESE SHIPS DESTROYED

Southland Times, Issue 25484, 3 October 1944, Page 5

JAPANESE SHIPS DESTROYED

Planes From Bases In Pacific

(Special Correspondent, N.Z.P.A.)

(Rec; 7 p.m.) SYDNEY, October, 2. In six nights United States Navy Catalina flying boats, operating from south-west Pacific bases have sunk or damaged 73,000 tons of Japanese shipping. Their prizes include 13 medium to large-sized freighters sunk and nine others damaged, The latest attacks were made on Saturday when a 10,000-ton tanker was crippled and an 8500-ton freighter was sunk. A number of smaller vessels were either destroyed or damaged. All the kills were made between the Philippines and the Celebes and the presence of such a large volume of enemy shipping suggests that the Japanese are making desperate efforts to supply and perhaps reinforce their bases in this salient. Some of the vessels destroyed were loaded with vital aviation fuel. The loss of tankers and several large freighters of between 8000 and 10,000 tons is a severe blow to the sorely-taxed Japanese merchant marine.

A Catalina which sank an 8500-ton freighter in Timor Strait (south-east of the Celebes) on Saturday night, made its way safely back to its base with one engine blown off by anti-aircraft fire. Other attacks reported by General MacArthur’s communique today included 100 sorties against the remnants of the Japanese 2nd Army in the Vogelkop area of Dutch New Guinea. A raid was made on Manokwari, formerly the main base for the Japanese 2nd Army, which is still held by a fairly strong enemy garrison.

BITTER JAPANESE ' RESISTANCE FIGHTING ON PELELIU

(Rec. 7 p.m.) WASHINGTON, Oct. 1. Isolated enemy forces, resisting bitterly from caves in Bloody Nose Ridge, on' Peleliu Island, were bombed by marine aircraft on Friday, numerous 1000-pounders being dropped to demolish the remaining fortifications, says the Pacific Fleet communique. Except for the resistance on Bloody Nose Ridge and a small pocket on Angaur Island, Peleliu, Ngesebus, Kongauru and Angaur have been secured and the elimination of the remnants of the defenders continues. More than 10,000 Japanese have been wiped out in the south Palau area since the invasion began. BIG MILITARY VENTURES STAGE CLEARED IN PACIFIC NEW YORK, October 1. The stage is rapidly being cleared for big events in the near future, says Gordon Walker, correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor, “somewhere in the Pacific.” The earlier Pacific campaigns, he says, will seem small compared with these military ventures, which are likely to set the whole Pacific ablaze,

A year ago I watched the preparations for the various campaigns in the Solomons and New Guinea. Task force commanders would assemble a mere handful of invasion craft, perhaps one or two divisions of troops and barely sufficient aircraft to meet the minimum requirements. The familiar shoestring on which the war out here was run was sometimes stretched so thin that it looked like a silk thread. That shoestring has now grown to be a steel cable. The south-west Pacific headquarters staff now talks in terms of hundreds of invasion craft, tens of thousands of troops and numbers of aircraft comparable With those employed in the big Allied strikes against Germany before the invasion. Touring the various south-west Pacific bases one sees thousands of motorized vehicles where there used to be hundreds, and the harbours are often so choked with various types of invasion craft that it is almost impossible to move among them. Dozens of new airstrips are so clogged with aircraft that it is not uncommon for a single field to land and send off planesdaily at the rate of one every two or three minutes.

ALLIED ADVANCE ON TIDDIM

JAPANESE POSITION PRECARIOUS

(Rec. 11.15 p.m.) KANDY, October 2. The Japanese defence of Tiddim is becoming a struggle to preserve an escape route from the Chin Hills—the mountain road back through Fort White to Kalemo and Chindwin—but their position is precarious, says the Associated Press correspondent. Sick and wounded have already been evacuated and it is believed that the enemy has blown up store dumps. While he fought hard to hold the main 14th Army drive along the Tiddim Road from the north, men of the sth Indian Division moved through the hills eastwards and are now endangering his right flank, with the twofold object of thrusting to Tiddim and closing the exit.

The Japanese have not yet thrown in the towel. They are determined to contest each step of the cratered road and have laid down booby traps and mines and are now heavily shelling our forward positions. Meanwhile engineers, working like ants, keep open the lines of communication along Asia’s worst road. Bulldozers working night and day are pushing landslides off the Tiddim Road, attempting to preserve some surface on the muddy thoroughfare where vehicles commonly sink down to their sides in the bog.