This was the end of the Japanese resistance in New Guinea.
MacArthur, General McArthur an American was the supremeo in charge of all our forces
American and Australian. The Japanese ships
they had
16 ships.
Eight warships and eight transports an army with all their gear, everything they needed to reinforce Lae
It was a time of
anxiety for everybody.
Now an Australian
Group Captain Bill Garing, he worked out this plan
which involved Beaufighters as a strike force.
Now they built a stack of aeroplanes like a big chimney into the sky. Over 100 aeroplanes.
Wow.
Beaufighters,
B-25 Skip-Bombers, B-25 Bombers,
Marauders,
Bostons,
Liberators,
Fortresses on top, up into the sky a chimney of aeroplanes. You've never see that sight ever.
So off went the Beaufighters, in this remarkable battle.
And they
approached the Japanese ships,
who saw these planes come in, they formed line abreast.
The Japanese Captains thought they were carrying torpedoes.
So they turned head on to the aeroplanes,
which is just what the aircrews wanted.
They just went straight down the ship and destroyed the bridges and
destroyed the Anti-Aircraft crews and left the ships blazing.
The American bombers came along in their times,
dropped their skip bombs.
One Wireless Navigator said he looked out and here was this skip-bomb alongside him,
It's hitting the water and going along and that's how low the Beaufighter was,
and he yelled out to his pilot to pull away quickly
because it hit a ship and of course blew it up.
And then there were bombers coming in all their patterns and destroyed 12 out of 16 ships.
Four Destroyers got away from the battle in the darkness.
They were the only ones to get away.
Now I was listening out,
and all I could hear was American voices from all these aeroplanes. They were dropping their bombs
and the Beaufightes were still flitting around the ships.
And the Americans were
calling these Australians sons of so and so's and all these
expletives in the most loving terms.
They were loving and loving brothers,
because the Beaufightes were down under their bombs when they were dropping them, and it was a hairy time.
But it was wonderful, absolutely wonderful.
I wish I could have made a recording of that at that time.
I can only just speak what I heard, I listened to the battle going on,
and informed all our fella's in the camp. Everybody's hanging around wanting news of what' s happened because everybody put their effort in
the planes wouldn't be there unless these fella's got them there and it was all a big squadron unity.
So the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, which you heard all over the radio from Port Moresby was the turning point
really in the battle for New Guinea.
Oh, yes. Yeah.
This was the end of the
Japanese resistance in New Guinea.