Milne Bay drew the curtain on the series of disasters that had befallen the Allied forces in Malaya, Rabaul, Timor, Ambon and Singapore, where men were sacrificed in the blind hope that penny packets could succeed where entire battalions had failed. It was the moment that halted the dangerous belief, which was beginning to take hold, that Australians simply could not overcome the Japanese.
Now, finally, the enemy was met in force and in good time by determined men, who decreed solemnly that this enemy would advance no further. They were led, for the most part, by some of Australia’s best senior and junior officers: thoughtful, cool-headed men with battle experience, who appreciated the enemy, and who would ask the utmost of their men – who, for their part, were prepared to sacrifice everything, confident that their lives would not be expended cheaply.
It was the moment when the two arms of ground and air power came together in a single, cohesive unit, with interservice rivalries buried. The army and air force, relying utterly on one another, fought as a single weapon of deadly efficiency.
The Japanese marines of the Special Naval Landing Force, selected for their height and strength, many already blooded veterans of China, Malaya, the Philippines and other campaigns, left their ships and landing craft and swaggered along the Milne Bay track, completely confident of another victory. It was not to be. In this sodden outpost on the far eastern tip of the Territory of Papua, the Australians of two infantry battalions – one experienced, the other raw – forced them back to their ships, leaving hundreds of their number dead or lost in the surrounding jungle, their ambitions to take Port Moresby extinguished.
Milne Bay also represented the first land defeat of Imperial Japan since its humiliation by the west in the 1850s, when it was wrenched open, and began its long descent into militarism, the endgame of which was now playing out in the south-west Pacific.
Of course, no battle in a conflict the scale of the Second World War’s Pacific theatre was fought in isolation. Milne Bay was part of a greater struggle, which played out over a vast canvas at places such as Port Moresby, Buna, Rabaul, Kokoda, the Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal and beyond. It was at Milne Bay, however, that the myth of Japanese invincibility was smashed forever. This was no less a shock to the American and Australian forces than to the Japanese themselves.
Yet Milne Bay was not inevitable. Had the Japanese not made the error of landing miles short of their objective; had they not grossly and arrogantly underestimated the forces set against them; had their aerial and tactical reconnaissance located the US and Australian hub at Milne Bay just a little sooner; had the RAAF failed to locate just a few of their targets; had the American assault on Guadalcanal not at the last minute drawn away precious resources earmarked for the Milne Bay assault; had the US engineers not performed a miracle of construction in creating an airstrip in the jungle in three short weeks, then the outcome of the battle, and the fate of Australia itself, could have been vastly different.
If not the turning of the tide, then, Milne Bay was most certainly the turning point.
CHAPTER 2
THE OBSCURE OUTPOST
Milne Bay sits at the extreme eastern point of the vast island of Papua, where the north and south coasts meet at the end of a mountainous, thousand-mile spur. It was named in the 1840s by an obscure British naval officer and surveyor, Owen Stanley, after the equally obscure Sir Alexander Milne, who had never been anywhere near the place and would not have cared less about it if he had. The far more spectacular mountain range which Stanley observed running the length of the island, however, he named after himself.
The bay is a perfect natural test-tube shaped harbour, its mouth roughly seven miles wide, running to its deep-water head twenty or so miles to the west. Here Milne Bay is enclosed on both sides by the steep, thickly wooded slopes of the Owen Stanley Range’s far eastern tip, the Stirling Range. Only a short distance back from the water, spurs and razorbacks rise quickly to peaks of up to 5000 feet, leaving only a small, flat ribbon of land hugging the coast both north and south.
In 1942, a somewhat feeble government-built dirt road, in places barely ten-feet wide, ran the length of the northern coast, connecting a series of villages, missions and coconut-processing plants, the largest of which was at the modest settlement of Gili Gili, at the bay’s western end. Here, the gigantic Lever Brothers company had established one of the largest coconut plantations in the world, producing the oil from which their internationally famous Lifebuoy soap was made.
Running east, the track hugged the mangrove shoreline, never deviating more than a hundred or so metres from the water as it meandered through smaller plantations and villages such as Goroni, Wagu Wagu and Rabi – the name curiously used by the Japanese for the entire campaign. It petered out at the northern side of the bay’s opening, East Cape.
Off the southern tip of the approach known as China Strait lay the tiny but beautiful island of Samarai, the administrative capital of this eastern section of the Territory of Papua, which had been under Australian government control since 1906. Despite its size, Samarai was the largest population centre outside Port Moresby, with approximately 300 people; it also boasted a flying-boat base, which was used by both civil and military aircraft, and which the Japanese would later plan to capture.
Before the war, the entire Milne Bay population was estimated to have been around 800 Europeans and Papuans, who were involved in a variety of vocations, including mission work, plantation growing and processing, and goldmining. Most of the European population were evacuated back to Australia soon after the Japanese seizure of Lae and Salamaua in March 1942, leaving mostly the locals, who were described in a Sydney newspaper article as ‘quiet and civilised, and generally speaking good English’.
Ten miles or so from Gili Gili lay the Catholic outpost of Koebule, or KB Mission, a 200-acre property founded half a century earlier by an English missionary, Charles William Abel; it would be one of the flashpoints of the Milne Bay battle. The nuns had been evacuated from this peaceful outpost months earlier, but pastors Father Baldwin and Brother Fraser had doggedly refused to abandon their flock of local Papuans.
Such ecumenical stubbornness was not confined to the lower ranks of the colonial church. In Port Moresby, the Anglican bishop Phillip Strong was likewise resistant to calls to abandon his several Papuan missions, declaring that ‘they would have to arrest us and take us away in handcuffs’ before he would leave his people. When informed that some missionaries had already been caught by the Japanese and beheaded, Strong remained adamant. ‘Whatever they were likely to do,’ he stated, ‘could not justify a betrayal of trust.’
This caused a headache for ANGAU, the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit, a military-based organisation hastily thrown together by the commander of the Australian forces in Papua and New Guinea, Major General Basil Morris, to fill the administrative vacuum created when most of the Australian civilian population fled or were evacuated.
Virtually the only flat expanse of Milne Bay, at its far western end, had been exploited by the Lever Brothers, who established vast tree plantations right up to the edges of low-lying boggy areas and waist-deep sago swamps. Around these were sprinkled a collection of colonial-style administration houses and huts and a rudimentary road system. The bay’s mangrove shoreline dropped away to deep water in just a few metres, allowing vessels of size to dock extremely close to shore; in some cases the branches of trees brushed up against the ships’ hulls.
And it rained. Unlike Port Moresby, which is one of the driest places in Papua New Guinea, with just under 40 inches of rain annually, Milne Bay is deluged by a massive 200 inches every year, and has a relentlessly high humidity at all times. Myriad creeks, rivers and gullies funnel vast amounts of water down from the Stirling Range, turning the lower-lying areas into impassable quagmires.
Hence, depending on who was asked, Milne Bay appeared as both a paradise and a hellhole. Many men of the 7th and 18th Infantry Brigades and others would later recall their firs
t sight of it as their transport ship turned from the China Strait into its wide entrance. Some were entranced by the lush jungle, with the dramatic mountains behind. Others saw it straightaway as a lonely, muddy, mosquito-infested dead end in the middle of nowhere. As one soldier described:
Even without the war, Milne Bay would have been a hell hole – it was a terrible place. The sun hardly ever shined and it rained all the time. It was stinking hot and bog holes everywhere; it was marshy boggy country. Even without the Japanese it would have been hard to live there … a terrible, disease ridden place.
As dubious a location as Milne Bay may have been on the ground, by the middle of 1942 everyone seemed to want it. For the Allied forces, the prospect of a base here would provide vital backup for their airstrips at Port Moresby, offer further protection to the sea lanes to the south, and serve as a place from which to launch air assaults against Japan’s new conquests to the north, without pilots having to negotiate the ominous 14,000-foot barrier of the Owen Stanleys.
For the Japanese, Milne Bay’s attractions were identical, but in reverse. It was the vital back door to the crucible of Port Moresby, the capture of which would enable their audacious plans for the conquest of the south-west Pacific to succeed. From Moresby’s magnificent natural deep-water harbour, adjacent airstrips and facilities, Japan would be able to control the seas to the south, neutralise Australia’s northern airfields and isolate Australia out of the war entirely. It would also bolster Japan’s newly captured territories in New Guinea and Rabaul, and secure the left flank of the next stage of their campaign: the conquest of Samoa, Nauru, Fiji and New Caledonia, a vast chunk of their proposed East Asian empire.
The race, therefore, was on to see who would be first to establish a military foothold in this lonely corner of south-east Papua. Australia’s leaders, sensing that the precious shield of its geographical isolation was on the verge of being shattered by the Japanese descent from the north, knew the stakes to be critical, and were determined to waste no time in making Milne Bay their own.
CHAPTER 3
THE RACE FOR A BASE
Milne Bay was not the Allies’ first choice for a base. Sitting in his hot and under-ventilated colonial-style office in Port Moresby in May 1942, Major General Basil Morris felt the awful reverberations as yet another stick of Japanese bombs exploded somewhere near the harbour facilities. Why they were actively trying to destroy something they would presumably need to use themselves, should they ever succeed in their ambition of taking Papua’s capital, was beyond him – but then again, Morris had always been more of a logistical and administrative general than a fighting man.
This, he presumed, was why he had the previous year been given the job of running Australia’s 8th Military District, covering the mandated territories of Papua and New Guinea. In 1941 these were considered by everyone – himself included – as something of a military backwater, a quiet reward for his organisational and diplomatic efforts in the Middle East. At the dawn of the Pacific War, however, this backwater and its somewhat reluctant commander suddenly found themselves on the front line of the most perilous battle in Australia’s history.
In January 1942 he had been forced to abandon the 8th District’s original seat of power in Rabaul and relocate to Port Moresby when the Japanese launched a savage and successful assault on the Australian island territory of New Britain. In April and May, the gallant efforts of the RAAF’s hastily formed 75 Squadron had seen a virtually untrained gaggle of pilots hold off the Japanese air force for a time, but it was only the intervention of the Battle of the Coral Sea which foiled what would otherwise have been an irresistible amphibious invasion of Moresby, one Morris knew he would be unlikely to survive. Yet the Coral Sea would not be the end of Japan’s ambitions towards Moresby. Another attempt, most likely overland, would be made – and soon.
It was with not a little relief, therefore, that Morris greeted the order to proceed to Melbourne to consult with the newly arrived American general, Douglas MacArthur, whose overview of the situation to the north was ominous. ‘I can’t afford to lose Port Moresby, Morris,’ MacArthur told the Australian general.
‘We have no intention of losing it, sir,’ he replied, with as much confidence as he could muster.
MacArthur explained that although the recent Coral Sea battle had been a success, the loss of the American navy’s aircraft carrier Lexington had been a disaster, and its replacement, Washington had made clear, would not be arriving anytime soon. Moresby’s air defences would need to be bolstered by another air base – somewhere within reasonable flying distance, and from which offensive operations could also be mounted. The only realistic area was to Moresby’s south-east, and a detailed aerial reconnaissance was ordered. ‘I could see that the location of an Australian airfield in the southeastern corner of Papua was of the paramount importance,’ Morris recalled years later.
The Japanese also understood the strategic value of the area. A base here would bring their bombers within an hour’s striking distance of Moresby, as well as giving their ground forces a staging post from which to begin an advance on the capital. That would be no easy task, with their men being required to cover a distance of over 200 miles, but they believed it could be achieved by utilising the island’s relatively flat southern coast.
In any case, the assault on Moresby from the east would not be undertaken in isolation, but as the second of a two-pronged thrust. The first would arrive from the north, along a steep bush track which Japanese aerial reconnaissance had revealed wound almost due south 60 or so miles – from the coast, over the Owen Stanleys and to the very back door of Port Moresby itself. This track passed close to a small airstrip at a village called Kokoda.
Assaulted thus from the north and the east, Moresby, the Japanese were confident, would soon fall.
•
On 22 May, soon after MacArthur’s instructions that an air base be established somewhere in the region, Catalina flying boats returned with the first detailed aerial photo mapping of the area. The first site to be considered lay close to the island’s eastern extremity, at the inland village of Abau, 12 miles or so from Mullins Harbour, on the south coast. It was not an ideal location, with MacArthur’s engineering officers warning that it would take at least four months to prepare and construct an airfield at this isolated spot. The decision, nevertheless, was taken to proceed – in the strictest secrecy, and with the codename Boston.
On the journey back to his office in Moresby, Morris was required to spend a day in transit in Townsville. Here he ran into Captain Sydney Elliott-Smith, also on his way back to New Guinea to resume his post as a magistrate and commander of his local detachment of the Volunteer Defence Corps. This impressive young army officer, described by a patrol officer as ‘stocky, forceful and very effective in his job’, knew New Guinea like few others, and had already been earmarked for high office in Morris’s new administrative structure, ANGAU. However, when Morris revealed to him the plans to build airfields in the suggested locations, Elliott-Smith was aghast. For a start, he said, the rainfall there was horrendous – well in excess of 118 inches annually – making the soil around Abau much too boggy for a strip of any kind. Besides, the nearby Mullins Harbour was an utter backwater, barely possessing a road or even a jetty. It would also be difficult to obtain fresh water, gravel and labour.
Far better, Elliott-Smith suggested, to consider the settlements further east, inside Milne Bay, particularly around the gigantic Lever Brothers’ coconut plantation, which was on a relatively firm plateau. Being already cultivated, it would be far easier to transform into an airstrip than raw jungle. It also possessed some houses and other structures, a local pool of labour, and at least a rudimentary road system, which could be reinforced by a readily available supply of gravel and crushed coral. The harbour was fine and naturally deep, and already had a few jetties which could be adapted to handle the largest ships.
Morris, a man capable of being swayed by reason, hastily made his way a
cross town, with Elliott-Smith in tow, to the office of the senior HQ Staff Officer of the RAAF’s Northern Area, Wing Commander William ‘Bull’ Garing. Arriving without an appointment, Morris had Elliott-Smith repeat his opinions to the stocky staff officer with three rings on his sleeve.
Both men were convinced enough to convey the new perspective to MacArthur, who had the good sense to request Garing to organise further aerial reconnaissance of Milne Bay, as well as to begin looking for available ground units which could be rushed to the area to provide security for construction crews. Local Australian administrators already in place in the area were ordered to immediately begin organising local labour crews to start work on wharf and dock facilities.
Upon inspection, Milne Bay seemed to bear out Elliott-Smith’s concerns, but a definitive on-ground assessment was needed. Garing, a renowned administrator known for making things happen – his sobriquet ‘Bull’ was not undeserved – gave the matter his utmost attention, as Major General Morris was to soon discover. Upon Morris’s return to his office in Moresby a few days later, he was surprised to find the senior engineering officer in New Guinea, Lieutenant Colonel Leverett G. Yoder, of the US 96th Engineer Battalion, accompanied by a small group of Australian and American engineers, standing ready and waiting to depart via Catalina flying boat to conduct initial inspections at Milne Bay.
Yoder concurred with Elliott-Smith, and the very next day submitted a favourable report about the siting of Milne Bay, adding the existence of a large diesel power plant, and a significant supply of Papuan labourers and white overseers on hand. He warned, however, that it was also a place ‘open on all sides to enemy attack’. On receipt of his report, on 11 June, the Boston operation was scrapped and an airstrip was ordered built at the Gili Gili plantation at Milne Bay. Again the operation was given a secretive codename borrowed from an American place name: Fall River.
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