(3 of 5)
The Jap worked hard to hide what he was doing. He struck daily and with increasing fury at the Allied base at Port Moresby on the south shore of New Guinea, seemed willing to spend men and planes recklessly to drive the United Nations from their bases there. He also smashed at Darwin, but with less determination, presumably because it was harder to get to, and because it could wait its turn.
Its turn had not yet come. The Allies hung on to Port Moresby, went on scouting and raiding the Jap to the north. And finally it was time for the Jap to move south.
Destination Unknown? Where he was headed is still a layman's mystery, but the course of the battle indicated generally what he had in mind. In the first day of his movement south from his concentration area it looked as if he might be headed for a land attack on Port Moresby, which he had not been able to reduce by air raiding. But as he plowed south, it became clear that he was after a more important target. He was headed either for the northeast coast of Australia, or for the strategic prize of New Caledonia, 1,200 miles to the east on the Australian lifeline, where the U.S. had already landed.
The battle was divided into three phases, and in all three the striking force of U.S. aircraft, both Army & Navy, was predominant. It began on Monday, May 4, off the Solomon Islands, when a U.S. naval force jumped a light Jap force, probably a flanking screen, and hammered it hard.
Meanwhile MacArthur's Army airplanes from Australia and New Guinea had picked up the main Jap body moving south, presumably near the Louisiade Archipelago. In that first phase, while the U.S. naval force left the Jap to wonder where it had gone after striking him. Army aircraft plastered him continually, day after day.
The big scrap was in the battle's second phase. At Army Air Forces fields, bomber crews sprinted from their huts, swung into parachute harness. "This is it," airmen called as they climbed in. "This is it." ground crews agreed as the bombers became light-footed on the runways and sped into the air.
Tuesday and Wednesday from dawn to dark they hammered at the Jap. He kept coming, and the harder he came the easier it was to get at him, for he was coming closer & closer to U.S. land bases. Thursday they hit him harder than ever, and tired-eyed pilots reported to their operations officers that the enemy had been badly hurt.
Friday morning before dawn's crack they headed for him again. To their surprise, 450 miles off the coast, they saw below them not just the Jap Fleet but a Donnybrook Fair that had all the earmarks of a private fight between the Jap and U.S. Navies. A U.S. flotilla had taken on the Jap by sea and by air.
That day on the sunbathed Coral Sea the Jap caught hell. The bombers piled in after the Navy, and planes from both branches went after the enemy hot & heavy with flat bombers, dive-bombers and torpedo-carriers. It was too much. Airmen finally saw the Jap swing around to the north. He had had enough.