BATTLE IN CORAL SEA

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 114, 16 May 1942, Page 5

BATTLE IN CORAL SEA

PROOF OF ENEMY PLAN

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) (Special Australian Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, May 15. Sailors who fought in the Coral Sea battle have now landed at an Australian port. Some arrived as casualties, and others had been given shore leave. The first intimation that the sailors ashore had been through the ordeal of what is described here , as "the greatest naval action since Jutland" came from a gathering at a hotel bar, where three sailors drank silently and then bwoke the stems of their glasses. "What did you do that for?" demanded the hotelkeeper. They replied: "You had better gD away. We are toasting our shipmates who did not come back." Nothing more was said. The significance of the Coral Sea, battle continues to be widely debated, and the Japanese threat to Australia and the American supply line is generally admitted to be unabated. PROOF OF BIG PLANS. "The strength of the forces which the Allies hammered in the Solomons and beat back in the Coral Sea," says the "Sydney Morning Herald" in an editorial, "shows how deeply the Japanese are committed to a continuance of their southward drive, with invasion or immobilisation of Australia as their primary aim. "Military necessity would dictate this policy even if ambition and appetite had been satisfied by the victories and territories already won. It is in the New Guinea-New Britain area that the most pressing danger lies. There the enemy has great and growing force." All commentators emphasise thai the Japanese certainly have been building up their air forces in the area, and probably also their naval forces. The struggle for air mastery over the islands is described as proving "protracted, bitter, and costly." Emphasis is also laid upon the growing threat of Japanese naval forces to Australia, its outposts, and its supply lines, and it is held that this threat must be decisively countered if the fruits of the Coral Sea victory are not to be lost.