NAVAL FIGHTING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 December 1943, Page 3

NAVAL FIGHTING

ON MAXIMUM SCALE EXPECTED DURING COMING ACCORDING TO COLONEL KNOX (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) WASHINGTON', December 5. Next year might produce some of the heaviest naval fighting the war has yet seen because many major elements of the Japanese Fleet have not'yet seen action, said the Secretary of the Navy, Color.*.! Knox, contributing to the “Army and Navy Journal” on the occasion of the anniversary of Pearl Harbour. He added that a third of the Japanese surface units had been destroyed in 1943, and he believed that 1944 would find the American Fleet sailing into a number of ports of call on the long voyage to total victory. Indeed .the Allies were now poised for drives against Japan from Pearl Harbour, the Solomons, New Guinea, the Aleutians, Burma, India, the Netherlands East Indies, and China.

STILL AT IT JAPANESE CLAIM SMASHING < SEA VICTORY NEW YORK, December 6. Another smashing sea victory has been claimed by Tokio official radio. It says that Japanese naval planes on Friday night south of Bougainville, in the northern Solomons, sank a United States battleship, three aircraft-car-riers and two cruisers, set fire to another battleship and possibly sank one heavy cruiser and one destroyer.' The Japanese losses were given as six planes. Last month the Japanese claimed to have sunk 10 carriers and three battleships, when in fact they sank only one .baby flat-top.