IMPORTANT PART

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 June 1942, Page 3

IMPORTANT PART

PLAYED BY LAND PLANES IN CORAL SEA BATTLE. MOVEMENT OF ENEMY FORCES. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, June 15. The Allied air defences in the north have been considerably strengthened since the Coral Sea Battle. It is now revealed that our land-based planes played an important part in determining the outcome of that battle. Reconnaissance planes from northern bases found the Japanese naval forces and gave regular reports of their progress, and bombers from the same base took a prominent part in the actual battle. The general impression of how the battle began has been that the Japanese naval forces advanced between New Britain and the Solomons to engage the Allied fleet somewhere southeast of the Louisiade Archipelago. It appears, however, that only a part of the Japanese forces came down the straits, and most of the enemy ships, including the aircraft-carriers, went round the top of the Solomons, down their east coast and round the southern tip. Whether they were bound by a circuitous route for Port Moresby or hoped to make an encirclement of an Allied force which they imagined to be in those waters, the fact is that they met a much superior force and were turned north again. Australia regards the proof of the effectiveness of land-based air power as the chief lesson of the battle. “Landbased aircraft in sufficient numbers and of modern type, with plenty of range, can make Australia safe from sea-borne invasion,” declares a military observer.