ATTACKS CONTINUING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 June 1942, Page 4

ATTACKS CONTINUING

ON SHIPS IN KISKA HARBOUR UNITED STATES SEIZING INITIATIVE. IN NAVAL AND AIR WAR. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day. 12.30 p.m.) NEW YORK, June 15. Six heavy air attacks have been launched on the Japanese forces occupying two small islands in the Aleutians, says a military spokesman at Washington. Hits were scored on cruisers, destroyers and gunboats in the Kiska Harbour. The attacks are continuing. Opinion is practically unanimous in Washington that the initiative in the Pacific is passing to the United States from Japan. There has been a resurgence of confidence as more accurate estimates of the significance of the Coral Sea and Midway Island battles confirm some of the more hopeful first conclusions. Admiral Yates Stirling, naval commentator of the United Press, however, voices the belief that the United States needs more island bases, since these two battles proved that land-based planes are superior to carrier-borne aircraft, Major George Eliot, writing in the “Herald-Tribune,” says Japan has lost all her important aircraft carriers. He adds that the enemy has been seriously, if not fatally, handicapped for new naval offensives in the Pacific and that the initiative has now passed to the United States. Major Eliot estimates that Japan began the war with eleven naval carriers, five of which were small and useful only in protected waters. The real strength of the Japanese carrier-borne aviation lay in six much larger ships all of which have now been lost. He points out that the war thus far has not only proved the value of big aircraft-carriers, but also ■their vulnerability.