Japan
The Battle of Coral Sea — Plus 75 Years
May 4th 1942 was the beginning of the Battle of Coral Sea. The world’s first naval engagement where surface forces of both sides never saw one another.
The engagement happened as a Japanese invasion force covered by headed towards Port Moresby covered by two large Imperial Japanese Combined Fleet aircraft carriers, Zuikaku and Shokaku, and the light carrier Shoho.
American code breaking tipped off the US Fleet in time to dispatch the two fleet carriers USS Lexington and USS Yorktown under Admiral Fletcher to counter the invasion.
In the course of the 4 – 8 May battle the Japanese lost the light carrier Shoho, and over 100 carrier planes with 66 highly skilled and irreplaceable air crews lost in aerial combat.
The American fleet lost the carrier Lexington with the carrier Yorktown being heavily damaged plus the sinking of the fleet oiler USS Neosho.
The Battle of Coral Sea was a tactical victory for the Imperial Japanese fleet…but a strategic win for the Allies as the invasion of Port Moresby was checked.
However, the tactical victory the Japanese won at Coral Sea would echo in the Guadalcanal campaign months later. In 1942-43 the USS Neosho was a hugely important strategic logistical asset whose loss would later play a large part in Adm Fletcher’s controversial decision to withdraw carrier coverage early during the invasion of Guadalcanal, and contributed heavily to the Imperial Japanese victory at the First Battle of Savo Island.
For those looking for a really good article on this battle, see Peter Dunn’s “Oz At War” website article at this link —
BATTLE OF THE CORAL SEA
FOUGHT OFF THE FAR NORTH QUEENSLAND COAST,
4 – 8 MAY 1942
It is the most complete article you will find on the web showing the entire Battle of Coral Sea, including the air units participating and losing planes from Australia and New Guinea based RAAF and USAAF squadrons, Ultra intelligence reports, damage reports, maps and appendixes listing the names, planes (with serial numbers!) and ships lost in the 4 – 8 May 1942 battle.
Free Trade with a Hostile Mercantilist Empire?
2017 marks the 200 year anniversary of David Ricardo’s publication on the theory of comparative advantage that underlies the economic case for free trade. Several years later Frederic Bastiat wrote the satirical Candle Maker’s Petition debunking the arguments in favor of protectionism. This was an ironic choice, as candle makers were politically protected by the Founding Fathers as necessary for the Revolutionary War. These protections lasted several centuries, and in 2016 Senator Chuck Schumer sought it re-instated on grounds of unfair competition from China.
President Trump’s trade representative economist Peter Navarro is making both the political and economic case against free trade with China, which he considers a mercantilist trader with military ambitions hostile to the U.S.
Navarro’s political case is an update of that faced by the Founders regarding candle making. China is viewed as pursuing a trading strategy to accumulate wealth and technical know-how to challenge the U.S. militarily in the South China Sea and globally. China’s mercantilist trade practices result in huge export surpluses with the U.S. He argues that China uses this advantage to weaken America’s industrial base and future defensive capability.
While economists can’t reject this political concern out of hand, it does seem several decades premature given the relative size of the two countries’ navies. At present the US could quickly secure sources of supply for military purposes, and protectionism tends to linger for decades or even centuries.
The second case against free trade with a mercantilist trader relates mostly to the loss of jobs due to “unfair” competition, i.e., not due to inherent comparative economic advantages as much as political subsidies, in China’s case a purportedly cheapened currency and weak labor and environmental protections. The standard argument is that such trade generally benefits consumers at the expense of high cost producers, resulting in a less political more fair distribution of consumption as well as a higher overall level.
Air Raid Darwin, This is No Drill — Plus 75 Years
Seventy five years ago today, on Feb 19, 1942, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia had been turned from a backwater port supporting a railway distribution system for cattle and other agricultural products into the forward staging air and sea facility for the Allied Defense of Java against the Imperial Japanese Military juggernaut that was over running the Philippines and South East Asia. And in this role, Darwin became “Australia’s Pearl Harbor” as four carriers of the IJN 1st Air Fleet — the dreaded Kidō Butai — arrived. They delivered a raid of 188 strike planes comprised of 36 A6M Zero fighters, 71 D3A “Val” dive bombers, and 81 B5N “Kate” torpedo bombers that arrived at around 10:00am. This raid was followed later around noon the same day by 54 high altitude, land based, twin engine bombers (27 Mitsubishi G3M medium bombers and 27 Mitsubishi G4M medium bombers) that gutted the RAAF Darwin airfield.
The strike on the port of Darwin sank 11 vessels — including the US Navy’s only seaplane tender in the South Pacific — saw another 3 vessels grounded and left an additional 25 ships damaged.
RAAF Darwin was the forward staging base for the “BRERETON ROUTE“, a pre-WW2 air ferry route through Australia to the Philippines named after General Lewis Hyde Brereton that avoided Imperial Japanese territorial possessions. The route was being used at this time predominantly to support the movement of P-40 fighters, B-17 and B-24 heavy bombers plus A-24 dive bombers (USN SBD’s in USAAF service) to Java. As such, the field was filled with planes. Of the RAAF aircraft present, six Hudson light patrol bombers were destroyed and another Hudson and a Wirraway (a trainer re-roled as a fighter for the lack of anything else) were badly damaged. Two American P-40s and a B-24 Liberator bomber staged for Brereton Route the were also destroyed.
These strikes doomed the defense of Java logistically and were the beginnings of a series of 53 strikes on Australia lasting two years.
Below are a series of links commemorating the battle —
It has been 75 years since the bombing of Darwin
Bombing of Darwin 75th anniversary: Darwin’s underground shelters | NT NewsSTILL hidden within the hilly terrain and dense bushland are a network of bomb storage shelters that reveal a desperate cat-and-mouse tale of hide and seek from Japanese bombers.
Bombing of Darwin 75th anniversary: attacks inspired Territory resilience | NT NewsTHE resilient Territory spirit was born the day Darwin was bombed Lord Mayor Katrina Fong Lim told the 75th anniversary marking the event.
Bombing of Darwin 75th anniversary: Veteran Peter Hackett recalls Top End experience | NT News
ON Christmas morning, 1941, Peter Hackett slipped into a coma as the Ghan pulled into Oodnadatta.
World War II attacks outside of Darwin need more recognition, historians say – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)While Darwin bore the brunt of World War II attacks in northern Australia, historians are calling for more recognition for places outside of Darwin that were bombed by the Japanese.
75 years since the Japanese attack on Darwin – Sunday Morning – ABC Radio Does commemorating events like the attack on Darwin or the fall of Singapore show how little remembering does to change who we are and what we are capable of?
Darwin bombing: 75 year commemorationONE of the last surviving World War II veterans to witness the Darwin bombings says the diggers involved never got the recognition they deserved. Tasmanian Brian Winspear can still picture the sun glinting off the bombs like confetti as hell rained down on the city 75 years ago.
75 years on, Darwin bombing remembered | Photos, video | Illawarra Mercury The first wave attacked the CBD and harbour infrastructure. The second wave came for the RAAF base.
As it happened: Japanese bombers attack Darwin The bombing of Darwin 75 years ago was the single largest attack ever mounted by a foreign power against Australia. WWII had come to the Australian mainland.
Bombing of Darwin commemorations mark 75th anniversary since Japanese attacks – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Survivors and veterans of the bombing of Darwin 75 years ago have been honoured for their role in preserving freedom and rebuilding peace.
‘They’ll be over tonight‘: veteran recalls Darwin terror raids – 9news.com.au Seventy five years to the day after Japanese bombs devastated Darwin, Warren Stickley vividly remembers the night he shone a spotlight on an enemy bomber so fellow soldiers could blast it out of the sky.
Happy V-J Day, Plus 71 Years and a Few Days
It has become something of a tradition for the Chicagoboyz web site to commemorate the major events closing out World War II in the Pacific, Where the worst recorded war in human history became a nuclear war — the August 6th and 9th 1945 A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — the Imperial Japanese acceptance of the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, and the Sept 2, 1945 formal surrender on the battleship USS Missouri. See the link enabled list below —
2015 — Happy V-J Day, at 70 Years Plus a Day and Hiroshima, Nagasaki & The Invasion That Never Was (+70)
2014 — History Friday — The WMD Back-Up Plans for the Atomic Bomb
2013 — History Friday: US Military Preparations The Day Nagasaki Was Nuked
2012 – Nagasaki Plus 67 Years
2011 – Happy V-J Day!
2010 – Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Saving Hirohito’s Phony Baloney Job and
Hiroshima — The A-bomb plus 65 years
Since that ceremony, a whole mythology about that period of history has grown, driven by various institutional and political imperatives following those events. And in particular, with regard to the use of nuclear weapons to end the war.
This year’s Chicagoboyz commemoration deals not with those myths, but with the war plans of the US Army Air Force (USAAF) from May thru August 1945. Too understand the use of the A-bomb in August 1945, you have to understand it in terms of the context of those May to August 1945 plans, not the institutional games that came after, games ably laid out in Michael Gordon’s recent WW2 book FIVE DAYS IN AUGUST — How World War II Became a Nuclear War”.
The short form was that the USAAF institutional leadership, Chief of Staff of the USAAF, General Arnold; operational commander US Army Strategic Air Forces (USASTAF) General Spaatz and Far Eastern Air Forces (FEAF) General Kenney were trying to win the war with conventional bombing via
1. The Small City Target Plan — Bombing out the smaller, 100,000 person or less, Japanese cities within range of Saipan to ‘induce’ a surrender;
2. The Transportation Plan — A massive two month (1 Oct – 30 Nov 1945) long campaign intended to destroy Japan’s rail system; and
3. Beach Preparations on Kyushu — The proposed B-29 carpet bombing of Kyushu beaches on 29, 30 and 31 October with 100 B–29 per beach per day.
Between the agenda of the USAAF bomber generals to form and independent air force and the coming merger of the Navy and War Departments into the Defense Department, much about these three plans never made it out of the secret files — particularly the use of the then high tech SHORAN radio navigation system — to the general public…until now.
(More at page 2)