Guinea Exploits
pp. 15-16 · Read in the full issue
Won DFC for New Guinea Exploits
THE handful of RAAF Australian-built Wirraway aeroplanes that so gal lantly engaged the Jap air armada when it came to blitz Rabaul on January 20, fought magnificently until they were shot down. The man who led them into combat was Wing-Commander John Lerew, CO of the Rabaul station.
Lerew’s bullet-ridden plane crashed, but he managed to escape injury and! later, got away to Port Moresby (Papua)’ with other RAAF airmen and ground staff, when they had no more machines to fly.
Vengeance is sweet; and, a couple of weeks later, it was Wing-Commander Lerew, grim and determined on revenge, who showed the way in a particularly daring low-level bombing raid with Hud sons on Japanese shipping concentrated at Gasmata Bay (south coast of New Britain). He scored a direct hit on a 10.000 tons transport, which sank; his companions set fire to two other smaller vessels.
In the ensuing melee with fast Jap “Zero” fighters, Lerew’s plane was hit and caught fire. He bailed out. Port Moresby listed him as “missing”: then, days later, he unexpectedly turned up at another base, after a series of hectic adventures.
On April 10, Wing-Commander John Lerew was one of the first three RAAF pilots to be decorated for bravery in the Australian war zone. He arrived in Sydney from Moresby in mid-April on well deserved leave—wearing the coveted blue and white ribbon of the Distin guished Flying Cross beneath his wings.
A Victorian, graduate of Melbourne University in engineering, Lerew was a prominent race track driver before he joined the RAAF 10 years ago. He now is 29 years of age.
The two other pilots who received the DFC were Flight-Lieutenant David Campbell and Flight-Lieutenant William Pedrina, both of the RAAF station at Port Moresby.
Dr. Mayrac, formerly of New Cale donia, has been appointed to a post in the Free French civil administration of Tahiti.
Mr K W T. Bridge, who was Assistant District Officer at Buka, Bougainville, New Guinea, before the Jap. invasion recently enlisted in Victoria and now is in camp with the AIF.
Mrs. Frank Green, wife of the mana ger of the Bums, Philp branch at Futuna, an isolated French territory between Fiji and Samoa, has spent the last 15 months in New Caledonia and the New Hebrides, trying to rejoin her husband. Mr. Green went to Futuna with his young wife in February, 1940, but owing to illness she had to leave him and return to Australia a few months later. Late in 1940. France col lapsed, and the French colonies m the Pacific repudiated Vichy and adhered to de Gaulle. This caused great political confusion and interruption of com munications. so that Mr. Green has not been able to get away from Futuna and Mrs. Green has not been able to reach Futuna since December, 1940.