Word: jap
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...were Japanese ships, headed toward New Guinea. The news was an answer to Lieut. General George C. Kenney's prayers. Taking cover under the gathering storm, a Japanese convoy had slipped out of Rabaul and was edging down the dark New Britain coast with reinforcements for Lae, main Jap base in New Guinea. The Japs, driven out of Guadalcanal and Papua, were obviously pouring men and supplies into the chinks of their outposts north of Australia...
...convoy plowed westward deep into the Bismarck Sea before Kenney struck. High above the convoy, Fortresses first laid a closely woven pattern of bombs. A 6,000-ton Jap cargo ship broke in half. A 10,000-tonner, hit five times, went up in flames. Another cargo ship caught fire. Twice again that day, Fortresses and Liberators returned to the attack, shot down five defending Zeros...
...cargo ships and destroyers. This fight was for the kill. The Mitchells swooped low to strafe lifeboats and rafts. A destroyer, three merchantmen and a transport were sunk. Eight others were hit. One squadron of Mitchells, skip-bombing at mast level, got twelve hits, despite the nail of frantic Jap ack-ack. More Zeros appeared, but they too were shot down. Kenney's bombers were blasting at Lae, nearest Jap airdrome, with such ferocity that effective aid for the convoy could not get into...
...machine-gun the battered, burning ships. Lightning fighters darted at a cloud of Zeros. A new wave of Fortresses came over, low. Flame cloaked a destroyer. A 5,000-ton merchantman burst open. Four others were hit. Low-flying fighters turned lifeboats towed by motor barges, and packed with Jap survivors, into bloody sieves. Loosed on the Japs was the same ferocity which they had often displayed. This time few, if any, Japs in battle green reached shore...
...based planes, carefully coordinated, over a concentration of ships and their escorting aircraft. Bombers operating at all angles and altitudes had shown new accuracy. But heavy and medium bombers, coming in low, had dealt the deathblows. U.S. airmen's bumbling failure to halt or even hit a similar Jap convoy bound for New Guinea last July had been retrieved...