JAPANESE FORCES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 May 1942, Page 3

JAPANESE FORCES

WOULD HAVE KNOCKED OUT UNITED NATIONS IN BATTLE OF CORAL SEA. BUT FOR BAD WEATHER. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) NEW YORK, May 13. According to a United Press of America dispatch, the Japanese naval spokesman at Shanghai asserted today that bad weather and nothing else prevented the Japanese fleet from achieving a knock-out victory in the aerial and naval battle in the Coral Sea. The spokesman added that if it had not been for the weather, the Japanese would have been able to pursue and completely destroy the United Nations' forces. He declared that the United Nations’ forces consisted of two aircraft-carriers, two battleships, three 10,000-ton cruisers, and six or seven destroyers. Tokio official radio tacitly admitted the importance of the Coral Sea battle by a disclosure that the Japanese warships were commanded by Admiral Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, to whom the Premier, General Tojo, cabled a message of felicitations on the “brilliant achievements attained by the Japanese Navy against the combined British and American Fleet.”