Japan Never Expected B-25 Eight-Gun Noses To Saw Ships Apart

Bismarck Sea, March 3, 1943, zero six hundred hours, and Rear Admiral Masatomi Kimura commanding the Lae Resupply Convoy stands on the bridge of his flagship, watching eight destroyers shepherd eight fully loaded transport ships through waters that Japanese naval doctrine says belong to the Empire. The convoy carries the 51st Division's desperately needed reinforcements, 6,900 soldiers who've been promised to Lieutenant General Hatazō Adachi at Lae, and Kimura has every reason to believe they'll arrive safely because Japanese warships have sailed these waters for more than a year without serious challenge from American surface forces. What Admiral Kimura cannot possibly know, what no Japanese naval officer could imagine in their darkest nightmares, is that American mechanics in Australian workshops have transformed medium bombers into something that will make these waters a killing field, and within four hours, modified B-25 Mitchell bombers with eight fifty-caliber machine guns protruding from their noses like the fangs of some mechanical demon will turn his convoy into burning wreckage scattered across the Bismarck Sea.
The Japanese Navy's confidence comes from experience, from victories at Pearl Harbor and the Java Sea, from the seeming inability of high-altitude American bombers to hit moving ships, and from the belief that their destroyers' anti-aircraft guns can handle any low-flying aircraft foolish enough to approach within range. Captain Tameichi Hara, commanding the destroyer Shigure, has sailed these waters between Rabaul and Lae multiple times, and he knows the Americans have tried everything to stop Japanese convoys, including high-level bombing from B-17 Flying Fortresses that rarely hit anything, torpedo attacks that require long straight approaches that make the attacking aircraft perfect targets, and medium-altitude bombing that gives ships plenty of time to maneuver away from falling bombs. The Imperial Japanese Navy has developed specific tactics for dealing with aerial threats, including rapid evasive maneuvers, concentrated anti-aircraft fire from multiple ships, and fighter cover from the 11th Air Fleet based at Rabaul, and these tactics have worked well enough that Admiral Gunichi Mikawa approved this convoy despite knowing the Americans would detect it.