PACIFIC AIR WAR

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4558, 10 April 1942, Page 3

PACIFIC AIR WAR

WELDING ALLIED FORCES GENERAL BRETT’S TASK The men of the Allied Air Force in the Anzac Area believe that the Battle of Australia will be fundamentally an air battle, writes the defence correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald. It will be primarily fighter and bomber aircraft they say, that will stop the Japanese advance and form the spearhead of the future Counter-offensive. Under General Douglas MacArthur, as Commander-in-Chief of all Allied Forces, the Air Force has, in its leader, Lieutenant-General George 11 Brett, a soldier who has seen the war at close quarters in England, the Middle East, China, Burma, and Java, and is one of the outstanding operational commanders and administrators ofthe American Army Air Force. Tlie present’ task demands first-rate ability, both as an operational commander and an administrator, because General Brett has the double job of welding the American Air Force in Australia and the R.A.A.F. into one force, and, at the same time, of directing an air battle now being fought over northern Australia, New Guinea, and Timor. On the operational side we are witnessing already some examples of the new offensive tactics. On the administrative side General Brett has given evidence of a determination to appoint the best men to the vital posts, regardless of seniority. When General Brett was in the Mid-

die East, he made a tour of the Western Desert during the offensive, visiting the crack No. 8 squadron, R.A.A.F., there. From Egypt he went to Iraq, Iran, and then to Rangoon; and then on to Chungking, to be President Roosevelt’s representative at the conference at which General Chiang Kai-shek and General Wavell were the other principal members. It was during this tour, evidently, that General Wavell decided that General Brett was the man he wanted beside :.him in his command of the Allied forces in the Indies and Malaya. CHASED BY JAPANESE In a DC3 passenger aircraft General Wavell and General Brett left Chungking on Christmas Eve. The pilot lost his way over ■ Thailand and, at one stage, was only 20 miles from Japan-ese-occupied Bangkok. By the time they had discovered where they were and were flying towards Mingaladon aerodrome, at Rangoon, 54 Japanese bombers and 17 fighters were on their tail. As their machine landed officers rushed cars to the plane and hurried the leaders off to slit trenches. They had hardly left the centre of the aerodrome before the Japanese bombers began dropping 2501 b bombs. Three hundred bombs were pasted across and around the field, and then the fighters came down to machine-gun the buildings. Twenty-six fighters muined by pilots of the American volunteer Group and the R.A.F. were in the air by this time, and they brought down 25 of the Japanese aircraft. A twentysixth was shot down by anti-aircraft fire. Seven Allied fighters were lost. Neither General Wavell nor General Brett was touched, although bombs, fell 20 yards from the slit trenches in which they were sheltering. At Bandoeng, in Java, where he had his headquarters as deputy to. General Wavell, General Brett had more firsthand experience of Japanese air tactics. Men who have been close to General Brett are emphatic that his exceptional calm, his ability to see the other man’s point of view, his power of gaining the respect, though never the awe, of his juniors, combine with his talents as an administrator and a campaigner to make him an ideal leader for the combined air forces.