The Importance of Precision Mission Planning

The pilots were told that the Aussie coast watcher had seen a high ranking naval officer boarding a flight at Rabaul. They knew exactly and we're going to get to some specific radio traffic that talks about this year in a second. At 0725 on April 18th, the 38s took off from Guadalcanal. They took off from Fighter II at Kukum. The outward leg would be 600 miles to return leg and before. Why? Because the 38s were basically going to fly a dog leg into the route area to avoid any kind of detection by roaming Japanese patrols.