“DOMINION'S AIR CREWS HELPED TO DEAL BLOW ON JAPS AT COLOMBO,” Toronto Star. April 10, 1942. Page 38. ---- Nipponese Planes Sink 22-Year-Old Aircraft Carrier Hermes Off Ceylon, But Most of Crew Believed in London to Have Been Saved ---- BRITISH FLIERS DAMAGE JAP CARRIER AND COUNT 18 FOE PLANES SHOT DOWN ---- H.M. AIRCRAFT CARRIER HERMES ---- London, April 10 - Canadian air crews are manning huge flying boats over the Bay of Bengal and already have performed heroic service against the Japanese, it was learned today.
"They have played an exceptionally important and heroic part in recent air operations against the enemy," the air minister said.
It was a Canadian air crew that played a primary role in the disastrous defeat dealt Japanese bombing squadrons in the enemy attack on Colombo, Ceylon, last Sunday, the air ministry revealed.
At the same time the admiralty announced that Japanese planes have sunk the 22-year-old, 10,850-ton aircraft carrier Hermes off the coast of Ceylon, and that British fliers materially damaged a Japanese aircraft carrier and knocked down 18 planes in the same waters.
One informed source said the attacks in which the Hermes, Dorsetshire and Cornwall were sent to the bottom cost the Japanese fully 75 planes. He said the Hermes was sunk by bombs, not plane-launched torpedoes.
A Canadian-manned aircraft first spotted the Japanese bomber fleet headed for Colombo and "hence was instrumental in thwarting the attack," said an air ministry spokesman.
The reconnaissance crew flashed word enabling the city to prepare for the raid, with the result that a large portion of the 75 enemy aircraft were destroyed for certain. The admiralty said that Japanese claims of cruisers in addition to the Cornwall and Dorsetshire sunk off Trincomalee were known to be "quite untrue."
[AL: This is very slanted reporting, as we should expect war reporting. Colombo was not a disastrous defeat and the Japanese airplane losses were very low - Hermes was caught with its planes on deck, for one. A disastrous loss for sure.]
