“On Thursday, 15 June 1955, thousands of people as usual were on the streets of downtown Buenos Aires. Some curious citizens had heard something about an air parade, and they were in the Plaza de Mayo looking up at the sky. At around 12:40 p.m., some Naval Aviation North American AT-6, PBY-5A Catalina and Beechcraft AT-11 planes appeared on the horizon, But they were not there for a parade; they were there to simply bomb Government House in an attempted coup against Juan Domingo Perón. This raid left behind more than 300 dead, 600 wounded and dead everywhere. The Army units that should have been mobilized to support the uprising never did. The coup attempt was aborted within a few hours. But unlike the bombing of the city of Guernica in 1937, the planes that bombed and the pilots who flew them were national forces. Perón would be finally overthrown three months later by the so-called Liberating Revolution.”

Volume Five of this series chronicles aerial warfare primarily in the New Guinea theatre in the critical period between September and December 1942. It can be read alone or as a continuation of the previous four volumes which span the first nine months of the Pacific War.

By early September the strategic picture in the theatre had changed markedly within just six weeks. From their new Buna beachhead the Japanese Army commenced a Papuan mountain campaign which threatened the Allied bastion of Port Moresby. Meanwhile the battle for Guadalcanal was raging, with the outcome of the wider Pacific War in the balance.

Against this background a strengthened US Fifth Air Force took the fight to the IJA with direct air support. While this was being conducted by P-39s, P-40Es, A-20As and B-25s, raids by B-17s against Rabaul aided US forces in the neighboring Solomons. RAAF Beaufighters, Beauforts, Bostons and Hudsons also contributed substantially to these efforts.