IN CORAL SEA

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 124, 28 May 1942, Page 6

IN CORAL SEA

AIRCRAFT DOMINANT

LESSONS OF BATTLE

More and more evidence is to hand that an over-sanguine outlook on the Pacific controls official and service views abroad. The distant view of the Pacific war has been disastrously over-confident from the first, said Sir Keith Murdoch in a recent article in the Melbourne Herald. . . . We must get it into the minds of the Washington authorities that aeroplanes and ships in much greater quantities are needed, and we must induce Mr. Churchill to press in Washington for a larger share for the British Empire of American production. Under the Roosevelt - Churchill arrangement the allotments within the British Empire appear to be in the hands of Whitehall.

We need aeroplanes and ships. Australia cannot do without the maximum army strength she can train and equip, but her first line of defence is at the moment the allimportant one, and it consists of aeroplanes and ships.

Wesson Driven Home The battle of the Coral Sea was fateful for Australia, even more in its implications and teachings than in the loss and disruption it caused the enemy. The lessons of this battle cannot be too often set out. I believe that other battles will write in still deeper colours the foundation needs of Pacific Ocean strategy, but they have already been made clear. The Japanese dive-bomber and torpedo aircraft destroyed Allied ships off Malaya and sunk all that was left after the battle of Java. The British Bin cruisers were helpless against them in the Bay of Bengal. In the Coral Sea the lesson was driven home one point further, and we reached the vastly important truth that aircraft so dominate surface vessels that fleets cannot come into action so long as aircraft-car-riers can send up swarms of longdistance destroyers. Much has still to be told about this important engagement of fleets and it will be told officially when its telling can no longer give to the enemy useful correction of his false impressions about damage. It will tell of the surprising effects of aircraftcarriers. Naval guns were impotent in this battle. The fleets did not see each other or engage in the traditional way. Before anything like that could happen the aircraft had fought the action. The enemy had many ships sunk, including one important aircraftcarrier, arid some greatly damaged, including another carrier. All the damage on either side was done by aircraft. Plane and Carrier Base Thus is thrown into strong relief the importance of quantity and quality of aircraft and the necessity for the United Nations to make of Australia a great aeroplane and air-craft-carrier base for its own defence and for the conquest of Japan. It is fruitless at present to debate the rival approaches to victory against the Japanese. Some strate-

gists in America claim that the direct approach to the enemy's home country is the right course of victory; others see that there must be a reconquest of island bases, with its steady and rapid attrition of Japanese aircraft and shipping strength. The first policy may be likened to the striking at the head of an octopus; the second is the recognition that the octopus has powerful tentacles of defence and that these tentacles of defence must be cut and bled. The Japanese are already exploiting their island conquests. They are getting aerodromes and supplies ready for shore-based aircraft to attack our navy and transports. They will defend their new territories and the sea courses of China by interlocking aerodromes covering all the approaching seas. But they have a limited capacity to produce aeroplanes and a limited amoLint of shipping. These must be attacked constantly by otir aircraft and our shipping. It is not too much to say that upon an active appreciation in Washington and London of the lessons of the Coral Sea action the future of the South-west Pacific depends.