On April 5th, 1942, two Royal Navy heavy cruisers, hms Cornwall and Dorsetshire, were patrolling the Indian Ocean west of Ceylon. They were unaware that the full strength of the Japanese First Air ...

In April 1942, just days after crippling two British cruisers off Ceylon, Japanese carrier-based dive bombers struck again. Their target: the Royal Navy’s hms Hermes, Britain’s first aircraft carrier.