PACIFIC BATTLES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 June 1942, Page 3

PACIFIC BATTLES

VIEW OF BRITISH NAVAL COMMENTATOR JAPANESE APPARENTLY SURPRISED. AND DEPRIVED OF INITIATIVE. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, June 18. ' The conclusions drawn from' the Coral Sea and Midway battles by the British naval commentator H. C. Ferraby are that the Japanese have paid the penalty of unsound tactics and lost the initiative. The Japanese reverses, he writes, show that the American Pacific fleet is fully capable of large-scale offensive operations in widely-separ-ated areas thousands of miles distant from its main bases. The Japanese found that the basic sea strategy formed by sea fighters throughout 2000 years cannot be flouted with impunity even if air power has brought a new influence to bear. It is too early to conclude that air powei alone decided the battles. It is true that land-based planes took a prominent part at Midway Island, but it was probably the American floating aerodromes and their supporting warships that caused the Japanese withdrawal. Ship-to-ship encounter, in the circumstances, held for the Japanese admiral the possibility of a crushing disaster which might decide the Pacific war. The forces at Midway suggested that the admiral of the Japanese main fleet was present and that the fleet was the backbone of Japanese sea power. The Japanese apparently were taken by surprise both at Midway and in the Coral Sea, yet they had warning enough as the southern invasion ports had been visited daily by Allied machines. Early successes apparently made them rash and they paid the penalty. The Coral Sea and Midway battles were the first in naval history in which aircraft were fully employed in large numbers. Their use forced an early decision.