184 - Another Naval Disaster for Japan - WW2 - March 5, 1943

So they’re just leaving it after all this time? But between the two side they’ve had

way more than a million casualties there. And they’re just pulling out. No no, I get why,

it just seems... anticlimactic somehow... Huh? That’s what war ususally is? Good point.

March 5th, 1943

A perfect score! That’s a good thing, right? Well, in war it sure is… for one side, because

for the other side a perfect score, in this case 8 out of 8, is complete and utter failure.

I’m Indy Neidell; this is World War Two.

Last week, Erich von Manstein launched an Axis counterattack against the overextended

soviet forces in Ukraine. There were also new Axis attacks in several parts of Tunisia,

even with uncertainty in Axis high command there.

It’s been a month since the Japanese left Guadalcanal,

and a few weeks since the Japanese failed to take the Australian air base at Wau on New Guinea.

At Rabaul, General Hitoshi Imamura thinks that the failure of his forces to take that base

threatens all his bases in New Guinea, so he sends in 7,000 men at midnight on the last day

of February, after getting weather reports that cloudy skies for several days will conceal his

transport convoy from enemy planes. However, the clouds begin breaking up already the 1st,

and the convoy is spotted that day in the Bismarck Sea off the coast of New Britain,

and they are hit from above starting the 2nd. Japanese sailors at their machine guns

are really surprised by the skip bombing techniques used by the 5th Air Force. This

is what it sounds like- skipping a stone across the water. Flying in low and dropping the bomb

so it skips across the surface of the water, so as long as your left-right aim targets the ship,

the bomb will hit it. They are also using the mast height technique,

which again is what it sounds like, dropping the bombs from mast height around 300 m away.

This is the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, foiling the Japanese attempt to send men to Lae and

Salamaua with planes and spare parts. They are hit over three days by 114 American bombers,

with 54 Australian and American fighters as escort, destroying all 8 transports and drowning

3,500 men, and taking out 4 destroyers to boot. The Allies lose five planes but shoot down 25,

or 60, depending which sources you read. The lifeboats carrying the survivors

are attacked by a flotilla of PT boats, so only like 2,000 men are rescued in the end.

This is not only a major victory for the Australians and Americans,

it is also the end of large scale Japanese efforts to reinforce their garrisons on New Guinea.

So they’ll be even more on their own,

kind of like the Axis forces in North Africa have been at a fair amount of times.

This week there, their Operation Ochsenkopf continues. In its first day of action last week

it achieved success in the north and along the coast, though not in the south.

This week it reaches its conclusion. On the coast,

spirited Allied defense, though costly, holds the Axis back most of the week,

but on the 4th, the British retreat from Sedjenane to Djebel Abiod, which stabilizes that front.

The Northern part of the attack toward Beja has big hiccups already February 27th, as a British 25