DIRECT ATTACK

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 21, 27 January 1943, Page 5

DIRECT ATTACK

URGED ONJAPANESE “ISLAND HOPPING” PROVES TOO COSTLY (Special Australian Correspondent—N.Z.P.A.) (Recd. 6 p.m.) Sydney. Jan. 26. “The Papuan campaign has shown clearly that the island-hopping offensive is the costliest, slowest and least effective way of getting at the Japanese,” declares the Sydney Daily Telegraph editorially to-day. “We have not yet begun to win the Pacific war and will not do so until we combine against the powerful Japanese forces based on China and the Aleutian Islands.

“Three factors combined to prolong the Allied Papuan offensive into a four months’ campaign. Firstly was the blind, fanatical tenacity of the Japanese, who held on to strongpoints long after resistance was demonstrated to be futile. Secondly, there was the wastage of soldiers through tropical disease, which caused more damage than the enemy. The third factor delaying the Allied success was lack of naval forces—warships and transports. The menace of disease is the most serious factor to contend with in an island-hopping offensive against Japan. For every man put out of action by a Japanese bullet, two will fall out with jungle ailments and these losses would be continuing right up to Formosa.”

The limited value of an islandhopping offensive against the Japanese has also been stressed by the British Labour peer and naval expert, Lord Strabolgi, writing in Reynolds’ News. Lord Strabolgi sees a direct attack on Japan through China as the only practical way of finishing off the Japanese. “This is the strategy the Allies are bound to adopt sooner or later,” he adds. “The protracted fighting both in the Solomons and New Guinea should warn us against the oft-pro-claimed intention of reconquering the many groups of Japanese-held islands between Australia and the China Sea. It would be too bloody a business altogether.” eManwhile from Washington comes suggestions that the American forces are likely soon to invade Munda, New Georgia Island. Possession of the area would give the Americans complete aerial superiority, ensuring domination of the Solomons and contributing largely towards . the complete security of New Zealand and north-eastern Australia. The New York Herald-Tribune correspondent says that intensive bombing attacks on Munda raise justifiable hopes that this enemy base is being softened up for an early invasion by American forces, who are rapidly completing the destruction of the Japanese on Guadalcanal Although American Navy officials have declined to comment, they admit that Munda, 10 miles north-west of the Henderson airfield, is a logical objective for an extension of the Allied offensive.