Jap Trap

For the second time in the South Pacific the Japs got a bellyful of surprise. Chased out of bases in the Solomons, last week they decided to attack Milne Bay, which lies at the southern tip of New Guinea. They headed south in warships and transports. Allied fighter planes lugging small bombs spotted them, strafed their transports and sank a gunboat. But under a screen of low-lying clouds and a tropical downpour, they ducked into the ten-mile-wide mouth of Milne Bay, launched barges and poured out on the swamp-fringed shore.

Then came the surprise. The extent of military installations and the strength of the Australian holding force in Milne Bay had been a closely guarded military secret. It was a secret no longer. From their ambush, Australian combat forces under veteran Major General Cyril Clowes fell on the invaders, drove them from the narrow shore into the waist-deep mud of the mangrove swamps. Allied planes blasted them. The Japanese sent a rescue fleet of eight destroyers and a cruiser to evacuate the remnants of their forces. Lost were all their tanks and heavy equipment.

Not only was it a bellyful of surprise; it was a shoeful of irritation to the hop-skipping Jap, to whom the total conquest of New Guinea is becoming increasingly difficult. Ever since he landed at Buna on the north shore July 22, he has been trying to get at Port Moresby. His land forces have worn themselves out on New Guinea's sharp-humped backbone. Now a sweep around the seacoast had been wrecked.

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