They went in and hit this troop ship. What I saw looked like little sticks, maybe a foot long or something like that, or splinters flying up off the deck of ship; they’d fly all around ... and twist crazily in the air and fall out in the water. Then I realized what I was watching were human beings. I was watching hundreds of those Japanese just blown off the deck by those machine guns. They just splintered around the air like sticks in a whirlwind and they’d fall in the water.
Garrett Middlebrook
Co-pilot of B-25 in strafing attack durring the Battle of the Bismark Sea, from March 2 to 4, 1943. My dad observed it, and told me of the horror of 5,000 Imperial soldiers bombed or machine-gunned to death in an insane run to reinforce Japanese forces on New Guinea. Just like at Coral Sea, he said, the ocean ran red for miles . . .