Australian aircraft attacked a Japanese convoy, causing heavy troop
losses. In December 1942, the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters
decided to reinforce their position in the South West Pacific. The plan
was to move some 6,900 troops from Rabaul directly to Lae, New Guinea.
Strong Allied air power made it risky, but the alternative was for
troops to march through inhospitable terrain. The convoy (eight
destroyers and eight troop transports escorted by fighters) set out on
28 February 1943. The Allies had detected preparations for the convoy,
and codebreakers had decrypted messages indicating its intended
destination and arrival date. The convoy came under sustained air attack
on 2–3 March 1943. Follow-up attacks by PT boats and aircraft were
made on 4 March. All eight transports and four of the escorting
destroyers were sunk, and only about 1,200 troops made it to Lae.
Another 2,700 were saved by destroyers and submarines and returned to
Rabaul. The Japanese made no further attempts to reinforce Lae by ship,
greatly hindering their ultimately unsuccessful efforts to stop Allied
offensives in New Guinea.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bismarck_Sea>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1820:
The U.S. Congress passed the Missouri Compromise, which
balanced the addition of Missouri as a slave state with the admittance
of Maine as a free state.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Compromise>
1875:
French composer Georges Bizet's opera Carmen, based on the
novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, premiered at the Opéra
Comique in Paris.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen>
1913:
Thousands of women marched in Washington, D.C. (program
pictured) "in a spirit of protest" against the exclusion of women from
American society.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman_Suffrage_Parade_of_1913>
1943:
Second World War: During a German aerial attack on London, 173
people were killed in a stampede while trying to enter Bethnal Green
tube station, which was being used as an air raid shelter.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethnal_Green_tube_station>
1997:
The Sky Tower in Auckland, the tallest free-standing structure
in the Southern Hemisphere at 328 m (1,076 ft), opened.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_Tower_(Auckland)>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
beey:
(informal, rare) Reminiscent of or containing bees.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/beey>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
Parliamentary government is simply a mild and disguised form of
compulsion. We agree to try strength by counting heads instead of
breaking heads, but the principle is exactly the same. … The minority
gives way not because it is convinced that it is wrong, but because it
is convinced that it is a minority.
--James Fitzjames Stephen
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Fitzjames_Stephen>
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