Devoir de Philosophie

Bismarck Sea, Battle of the

Publié le 22/02/2012

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Thanks to U.S. Navy Ultra decrypts, Allied forces learned well in advance of the movement on February 28, 1943, of 7,000 Japanese reinforcements to Lae and Salmaua on New Guinea's northeastern coast. Fully alerted, the Americans moved large numbers of aircraft into forward positions, and, on March 2, fighters and bombers of the Fifth U.S. Air Force attacked the Japanese troop convoy. One Japanese transport was sunk, and two more were severely damaged. At dawn on March 3, Australian aircraft and more U.S. bombers attacked again. Some of the planes had been equipped for skip bombing, a special antiship technique by which bombs, dropped at low altitude over the water, skip over the surface, making contact with the target vessel below the waterline. Other of the attacking aircraft concentrated on strafing. The skip bombing proved devastatingly effective. Of 37 500-pound bombs dropped in the first wave of the March 3 attack, 28 hit their targets. The disabled ships were then vulnerable to successive waves of attack from the air throughout the day. With nightfall, U.S. PT boats were deployed, so that by daybreak on March 4, only six destroyers had escaped destruction. U.S. bombers sank two of these. Of the 7,000 troops in the convoy, only 950 reached Lae. Many others were fished out of the water by the surviving destroyers. Total Japanese fatalities numbered 3,660.

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