What Japanese Convoy Survivors Wrote About the Australian Bombers at the Bismarck Sea

#BattleOfBismarckSea #RAAF #MilitaryHistory In March 1943, a Japanese Rear Admiral stood on the bridge of his flagship and heard aircraft engines below his masthead. No naval aircraft flew that low. He had thirty-six years at sea and had never heard the sound. He looked up. Twelve Australian Beaufighters were closing at a hundred and seventy knots. Twenty minutes later, his entire convoy was gone. This documentary reveals the untold story of the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, the moment Australian airpower broke the back of the Japanese reinforcement strategy in the South-West Pacific. While Tokyo believed air attack on a defended convoy was "essentially impossible," No. 30 Squadron RAAF and the American Fifth Air Force had spent six weeks at Port Moresby practising a low-level cannon strike and a new bombing technique that nobody in the Imperial Japanese Navy had ever seen. Discover the secret tactics that humiliated the Combined Fleet, from the 30-foot Beaufighter approach that killed the bridge crew of a destroyer in three seconds to the skip-bombing technique invented by an American officer named Pappy Gunn that turned medium bombers into ship-killers. 🔥 In this video: Operation 81: Why Tokyo gambled an entire division on a daylight convoy to Lae. The 30-Foot Approach: How No. 30 Squadron RAAF broke the convoy's defences in ninety seconds. Skip-Bombing: The technique that bounced 500-pound bombs into the hulls of seven transports. Rear Admiral Kimura: The Japanese commander who watched his flagship sink under him. The Aftermath: Why Japan never sailed another major convoy to Lae for the rest of the war. Sources of Where I get my facts: McAulay, L. (1991) Battle of the Bismarck Sea. New York: St. Martin's Press. Gillison, D. (1962) Royal Australian Air Force 1939–1942. Canberra: Australian War Memorial. Odgers, G. (1957) Air War Against Japan 1943–1945. Canberra: Australian War Memorial. Bullard, S. (trans.) (2007) Japanese Army Operations in the South Pacific Area: New Britain and Papua Campaigns 1942–43. Canberra: Australian War Memorial. Watson, R.L. (1950) The Fifth Air Force in the Huon Peninsula Campaign. Washington: USAF Historical Division. Disclaimer: This video is a historical documentary intended for educational purposes. #BattleOfBismarckSea #RAAF #MilitaryHistory #Beaufighter #WWII #PacificWar #SkipBombing #AustralianHistory