The harrowing flying and devastating outcome of another run were described by 1st Lt. Roy Moore: “During this run I ‘cork screwed’ the airplane by making undulating changes in altitude not varying from 50 to 100 feet, and at the same time skidded the airplane from one side to the other,” he recounted. “These evasive tactics were made to avoid any possible gun fire from the target. When in strafing range, I opened fire with my forward guns. The decks were covered with enemy troops. It is interesting to note that the troops were lined up facing the attacking plane with rifles in hand. However, the forward guns of the airplane outranged their small arms, as I saw hundreds of the troops fall and others go over the side before they could bring their guns to bear.”

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Last in line were the A-20s. Most A-20 attacks were made in groups of two or three aircraft, which increased their firepower. This massive volley of bullets had the effect of neutralizing deck gunfire, particularly on relatively underarmed transport vessels.

The attack was beautifully timed. Allied planes arrived just after Japanese navy planes protecting the convoy had departed but before their Japanese army aircraft replacements had arrived. Twenty minutes after the attack started, the majority of ships in the convoy were sunk, sinking, or badly damaged.

That afternoon, Allied air power returned to finish the job. At three o’clock, bombers sighted seven Japanese ships: four transports burning and stationary, one destroyer burning and immobile, another abandoned destroyer drifting low in the water, and a third that was picking up survivors. At 3:15 p.m., the attack recommenced. B-17 bombs found their mark simultaneously as B-25s finished their strafing runs. The day’s carnage ended twenty-one minutes later.

March 3 was a costly day for the Japanese. Eight transports and three destroyers were at the bottom of the Bismarck Sea. The destroyer Tokitsukaze floated helplessly all night and sank at sundown on March 4. Only the destroyers Shikinami, Asagumo, Yukikaze, and Uranami managed to escape. The Allies, in comparison, lost four aircraft: one B-17 and three P-38s. Thirteen American aircrewmen lost their lives: twelve in the four lost planes, plus a gunner on one of Ed Larner’s B-25s when battle damage caused it to collapse upon landing.

On the afternoon of the fourth, the Japanese mounted a retaliatory raid on the Buna area, the site of a base the Allies had captured that January, but their fighters did practically no damage. In his memoir, Kenney smugly wrote that the Japanese reprisal occurred “after the horse had been stolen from the barn.” Regarding his Japanese counterpart, he noted that “it was a good thing that the Nip air commander was stupid. Those hundred airplanes would have made our job awfully hard if they had taken part in the big fight over the convoy on March 3rd.”

For the next several days, American and Australian airmen returned to the sight of the battle, systematically prowling the seas in search of Japanese survivors. As a coup de grâce, Kenney ordered his aircrew to strafe Japanese lifeboats and rafts. He euphemistically called these missions “mopping up” operations. A March 20, 1943, secret report proudly proclaimed, “The slaughter continued till nightfall. If any survivors were permitted to slip by our strafing aircraft, they were a minimum of 30 miles from land, in water thickly infested by man-eating sharks.” Time after time, aircrew reported messages similar to the following: “Sighted, barge consisting of 200 survivors. Have finished attack. No survivors.”

Kenney’s chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Don Wilson, insisted that the Japanese “set the pace for ‘no quarter’ procedures” after an incident involving the only Allied bomber lost in the battle. During the initial assault on the morning of March 3, bullets penetrated the wing and radio compartment of the B-17 piloted by Lt. Woodrow Moore. Fire engulfed the plane and it went into a steep dive. Before the plane disintegrated, seven of the nine-man crew bailed out, but Japanese fighters strafed the airmen as they drifted to the sea six thousand feet below.

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