War at the End of the World

by James P. Duffy

  Rabaul soon attracted attention from the U.S. Navy. Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, had few resources with which to strike a serious blow at the enemy. Instead, he settled for a series of harassing hit-and-run raids by the three operational fleet carriers he had—Enterprise, Lexington, and Yorktown. On January 31, Task Force 11 under Vice Admiral Wilson Brown left Pearl for the South Pacific. Lexington was the centerpiece of the task force, which included four heavy cruisers and ten destroyers.

  Admiral Brown’s first target was Rabaul, where intelligence reports claimed the enemy was gathering forces for attacks against American bases in New Caledonia and New Hebrides in order to cut the supply line from America to Australia. Brown’s plan of attack was to launch his aircraft 125 miles from Rabaul in what he hoped would be a surprise strike. The launch would take place at four a.m. on Saturday, February 21.

  From Rabaul, four Kawanishi Type 97 long-range flying boats were sent out each day to search an area five hundred miles out. At dawn on February 20, Lexington launched its own scouts, composed of six dive-bombers, to patrol three hundred miles out from the task force. At 10:15 a.m., the carrier’s radar detected an intruder roughly thirty-five miles away. It was one of the Japanese flying boats. Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters scrambled from the deck in pursuit. Meanwhile, the pilot of the flying boat reported seeing the task force en route to Rabaul. The pilot, Lieutenant Noboru Sakai, then took his plane into a thick cloud cover for protection. Two of the Wildcat pilots, Lieutenant Commander John S. Thach and Ensign Edward R. Sellstrom, following instructions from the Lexington’s Flight Director Officer, Lieutenant Frank Gill, chased Sakai into the cloud. When the big four-engine plane exited the cloud cover, both fighters opened fire. The Japanese aircraft burst into flames and crashed into the sea below.

  In a few minutes, a second intruder appeared on the radar. With Thach and Sellstrom returning to refuel, Gill sent Lieutenant (j.g.) Onia B. Stanley Jr. and Ensign Leon W. Haynes in pursuit. Aboard this flying boat, Warrant Officer Kiyoshi Hayashi was ordered to confirm the sighting reported by Sakai. Those orders cost Hayashi and his crew their lives as the two Wildcats sent their plane down in flames.

  Admiral Brown realized he had lost the element of surprise; rather than subject his ships to an attack from land-based bombers, he decided to postpone the attack until he could obtain the assistance of a second carrier. Meanwhile, at Rabaul, unable to send fighters because the enemy strike force was beyond their range, the Japanese instead sent seventeen new Mitsubishi G4M1 Type I, Model 11 twin-engine bombers without fighter protection. Known to the Allies as Bettys, each bomber sported four machine guns and a 20mm cannon in its tail for protection. Although structurally sound, the absence of armor and self-sealing fuel tanks caused it to catch fire when struck by enemy shells. American fighter pilots nicknamed the bomber the “flying Zippo.”22

  The Lexington continued rotating planes for combat air patrol over the fleet, and sending search planes farther out for the next few hours. At 4:15, a six-fighter relief patrol lifted off her deck to replace the existing patrol that was running low on fuel. Just as it prepared to land, radar revealed a number of enemy planes heading directly for the patrol. Lieutenant Gill instructed the patrol to remain aloft and join the new patrol to intercept the approaching aircraft. The Japanese bombers came under fighter attack and most went down before they could reach the ships. Four managed to drop their bombs, but none came closer than three thousand yards from the carrier. Three of these then fled with the American fighters in pursuit. Three went down in flames while one managed to escape. The final bomber tried a strafing attack on the carrier, but gunfire from the ship brought it down.

  Suddenly radar detected a second group of nine bombers coming in from a slightly different direction than the first. Since most of the fighters were chasing the remnants of the first wave of bombers, only two were available to attack the second wave, and they were running low on fuel. As they turned to attack the bombers, the guns on one of the fighters jammed, leaving only the Wildcat piloted by Lieutenant Edward H. “Butch” O’Hare of Chicago to stop them. O’Hare shot down two bombers almost immediately; three others received damage serious enough to turn back. O’Hare continued to press his attack despite the explosions of antiaircraft shells around him, putting two more into the sea. A third crashed for reasons unknown.

  Two American fighters were lost in the battle. Search and rescue crews succeeded in recovering only one pilot. Japanese losses were two four-engine flying boat patrol planes and sixteen two-engine bombers. For his actions that day, “Butch” O’Hare received the Medal of Honor, the first awarded a naval aviator in the war.23

  Lieutenant Commander Thach told an American journalist on board Lexington that the battle with the bombers had demonstrated that the Japanese pilots attempted to carry out their mission “with great determination. The first lot went right for the Lex. They never hesitated a second, despite our attack, until their leader was shot down. The second nine never faltered and came right on in to the bitter end, even though O’Hare was eating them up from behind and we were coming in from ahead.”24

  Rear Admiral Matome Ugaki, chief of staff of the Combined Fleet, referred to the battle between the bombers and the American fighters as “most regrettable.”25

  At Rabaul, the loss of so many new bombers forced Admiral Inoue, who had planned an invasion of Lae and Salamaua on New Guinea, to delay the action by one week. Concerned he did not have enough fighter protection for the invasion, he also demanded the addition of at least one aircraft carrier to the invasion fleet.26

  CHAPTER 3

  First Landings in New Guinea

  Converting Rabaul into a major air and sea base required that the Japanese protect it from enemy air attacks, which, launched from Port Moresby and airfields in New Guinea and Australia, had begun almost immediately after the town had fallen. The Japanese plan was to encircle the entire island of New Britain with a defensive ring. A major component of this ring was denying access to the Bismarck Sea to the Allied forces in Australia.1

  Two villages on the northeastern coast of New Guinea, across the Solomon Sea from the western end of New Britain, were the anchors for this protective ring: Lae and Salamaua. Created in response to the gold rush era of the 1920s and ’30s, both had been staging areas for thousands of miners and prospectors heading to the gold mines of the central mountain area around Wau, forty-six miles southwest of Lae and over 3,500 feet above sea level. Lae briefly gained international fame when Amelia Earhart took off from its small airfield on July 2, 1937, and headed east to America. It was the last time anyone reported seeing the famed aviator.2

  The Japanese invasion and occupation of Lae and Salamaua was code-named SR Operation. Planning for the invasion began in early February. The primary objective was the airfield near each village. Each airstrip was between 2,600 and 3,200 feet long and 328 feet wide. Both served as forward bases for Allied aircraft from Darwin and Townsville attacking Rabaul and other targets on New Britain. Major Tadashi Horie, commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion of the 144th Infantry Regiment of the South Seas Detachment, whose troops were among those scheduled for the invasion of Salamaua, was told these “important bases” were only lightly “guarded by approximately 100 volunteer troops.”3

  The invasion force led by Rear Admiral Sadamichi Kajioka’s 6th Torpedo Squadron (six destroyers, one light cruiser, one seaplane tender, three minesweepers, and five troop transports) left Rabaul at one p.m. on March 5 and sailed along the south coast of New Britain, heading west to New Guinea. Aboard the transports were three thousand troops, including Major Horie’s battalion, one company of mountain artillery, and the Maizaru 2nd Special Naval Landing Force. Three hours later the three heavy and two light cruisers and two destroyers of the support group of Rear Admiral Aritomo Goto’s 6th Cruiser Division followed. Air cover included two reconnaissance planes from the seaplane tender Kiyokawa M
aru and fighters from the 24th Air Flotilla at Rabaul.4

  On the afternoon of March 7, an RAAF Hudson bomber from the 32 Squadron piloted by Flying Officer Alfred Hermes was returning from a photoreconnaissance mission over Rabaul when Hermes and his crew were shocked to see the ships of the invasion convoy below. Unfortunately, the ships were only fifty-five miles from the New Guinea coast, so there was not enough time for Allied bombers staging out of Horn Island Airdrome off the coast of Queensland to attack them before they reached their destination. Other RAAF aircraft flying a routine reconnaissance over Rabaul reported that the harbor, jammed with warships a few days earlier, was virtually bereft of them now.5

  At nine that evening, the convoy separated into two divisions. The transports carrying the naval troops headed toward Lae, while the army transports went to Salamaua. Escorting warships accompanied both groups of transports and began shelling Lae and Salamaua as soon as they arrived. Despite increased rain and a violent storm, with winds exceeding thirteen miles per hour, and coastal seas running eleven feet, the army transports lowered their landing barges at eleven p.m. Horie’s soldiers hit the beaches at 12:55 a.m., just as a single aircraft took off from the Salamaua airfield. They rushed toward the field, which they fully occupied by three a.m. The entire Salamaua town and surrounding area were under complete Imperial control by four thirty a.m.

  The naval troops went ashore at Lae two thirty a.m., also in a driving rainstorm. They immediately occupied the town and the nearby airfield.

  It was soon determined that the Australian forces had withdrawn up the Francisco River valley toward Wau, as had most of the civilian inhabitants of both villages. The only route to the mining center was a single path called the Black Cat Track. After he had become a world-famous film actor, Errol Flynn described his ten-day trek as a gold prospector through the leech-infested jungle rife with typhoid and black water fever: “. . . You tried to sleep, and fought off mosquitoes, leeches, bugs, giant roaches, even New Guinea bats, night bloodsuckers. I have seen Central Africa, but it was never anything like the jungle of New Guinea.”6

  Bad weather over the airfields at Rabaul had prevented the arrival of Zero fighters from acting as air cover for the invading forces. Therefore, there were no Japanese aircraft in the area when Squadron Leader Deryck Kingwell, along with five RAAF Hudsons of the 32 Squadron from Horn Island, arrived at midday on the eighth and made a desultory bombing run that caused only minor damage to one of the transports at Salamaua.7 Another bombing run, by three U.S. Army B-17 Flying Fortresses from Townsville, also produced negligible results.8

  The Japanese landings had been unopposed because the Australian units at both locations included only members of the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles and a handful of soldiers from the 2/22 Battalion who had survived Rabaul and managed to escape from New Britain. They had no guns big enough to resist the enemy troops sweeping ashore.9

  After destroying anything of military value they could not take with them, including the RAAF radio station at Salamaua, the Australians had withdrawn ahead of the invasion forces and headed into the nearby hills. From a safe distance, they watched as Japanese engineers at both villages immediately went to work repairing and expanding the nearby airstrips. In thirty-six hours, the strip at Lae was able to welcome fighter aircraft from the 4th Air Group at Rabaul. The airfield at Salamaua was ready soon after.

  In a bit of irony, the senior Australian officer at Salamaua when the Japanese invaded was Captain Alan G. Cameron of the 2/22 Battalion. After surviving the invasion of Rabaul, Cameron had retreated west with twelve of his men. On February 20, they boarded a twenty-one-foot boat with a two-stroke engine and made for the New Guinea coast. After eleven days at sea with minimum rations, the party arrived at Salamaua on March 3, just four days ahead of the Japanese.10

  Cameron was at the airfield when he received word the Japanese were invading. He immediately told the pilot of the only plane at the field, a Hudson, to take off and fly to Port Moresby. He had members of the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles set fire to rags that had been soaked in kerosene on each side of the runway so that the pilot could take off in the dark. Once the plane was airborne, the fires were extinguished and the NGVR men spread out to blow the nearby fuel storage tanks. In a final act of defiance before retreating, Cameron and three of his men ambushed a party of Japanese soldiers, killing their officer. This is believed to be the only Japanese casualty from land action at either landing site. They then blew the previously prepared demolitions laid around the airfield and hangars before slipping away into the jungle.11

  Most of the fleeing Australians crossed the rope swing bridge over the Francisco River, cutting the bridge’s support ropes behind them so it dropped into the river. They left one man, Sergeant Hilary Farr, on the enemy’s side of the river to round up several men who were staffing observation posts. Farr’s group would move upstream and cross via a smaller hidden bridge.12

  —

  Unknown to the Japanese at Lae and Salamaua, serious danger lurked on the other side of New Guinea. Approaching Port Moresby from the Coral Sea was a powerful fleet that included the aircraft carriers Lexington and Yorktown and eight cruisers and fourteen destroyers. Commanded by Vice Admiral Wilson Brown, this force had just completed escorting a transport convoy of eight ships, mostly former luxury liners, taking fifteen thousand American soldiers from Melbourne, Australia, to the island of New Caledonia, 750 miles to the east on the far end of the Coral Sea. The Americans, who had spent a week in and around the Australian city during a stopover, would soon form the heart of the new Americal Division. They would later join the U.S. Marines in the fighting on Guadalcanal.

  Still feeling the sting of his failed attempt at a surprise attack on Rabaul the previous month, Brown was planning a new approach to the Japanese stronghold when he learned of the invasions at Lae and Salamaua and received reports that few ships remained at Rabaul. This necessitated a change in plans, with new targets. There was a genuine sense of urgency throughout the entire Allied command structure that the Japanese not develop secure bases on New Guinea itself. The first obvious plan of attack would be for the two-carrier fleet to sail across the Solomon Sea and along the northeastern New Guinea coast between New Guinea and New Britain. The problem with this plan was the inability of the ships to make this passage without being subjected to attack by enemy ships and land-based bombers out of Rabaul. The element of surprise was important to a successful attack: catch the enemy while he is still busy preparing his bases and defenses.

  Brown decided the best approach to strike the beachheads while protecting his ships from detection and counterattack was to continue northwest through the Coral Sea toward Port Moresby and launch his assault from the southwest coast of New Guinea. This would put the fleet beyond the reach of Rabaul bombers, and avoid exposure to patrolling enemy ships and planes. However, it also meant his pilots would have to fly across New Guinea from coast to coast, and over the Owen Stanley Range. With some peaks reaching a height of nearly thirteen thousand feet, Brown’s air group commanders were concerned that their heavily loaded planes would not make it across in the thin air above the mountains.

  Having little useful knowledge about the New Guinea east coast, much less the interior, Brown sent two officers on March 9 in search of information before the fleet arrived at the planned launch site some forty-four miles off the southern New Guinea coast. The Lexington’s air group commander, William Ault, flew to Port Moresby, while Commander Walton W. Smith, a member of Brown’s staff, hitched a ride on a dive-bomber to Townsville. Both men were looking for a way through the uncharted mountains. They both learned valuable information, but Ault had the luck to speak with several Australian civilian pilots who had routinely flown between Port Moresby and Lae before the war. They explained that they had used a pass that cut through the mountains at 7,500 feet. The downside was that there was only a small window of opportunity when clouds and mist did not reduce vi
sibility to dangerous levels that closed the pass entirely. This usually happened at about ten a.m. each morning, and meant the carrier aircraft would have to complete their missions and return to the western side of the mountains before that time.13

  At ten minutes before eight the following morning, March 10, Lexington began launching her attack planes and fighters. Less than fifteen minutes later, Yorktown did the same. In all, 104 planes sped toward the pass through the mountains, guided and controlled by Commander Ault. As the overall commander, Ault orbited his plane above the pass, reporting weather and route conditions to the pilots passing below him. The attack group consisted of sixty Douglas Dauntless dive-bombers, twenty-six Douglas Devastator torpedo bombers, and eighteen Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters.14

  The attack caught the enemy by complete surprise as the American planes swept down out of the misty mountains and bombed and machine-gunned Salamaua and Lae. The Japanese cruisers and destroyers that had escorted the troopships responded by quickly raising their anchors and heading to open water. Several dive-bombers gave chase, scoring some hits and near misses on the warships. The ships threw up a thick smoke screen to help cover their escape. Antiaircraft fire at Salamaua accounted for the only loss by the attackers when it knocked a Dauntless out of the sky. The pilot managed to make a landing in the harbor and had a good chance of reaching shore, but his fate remained unknown.15

  Crashing into the waters along the New Guinea coast in the area of the beachheads brought its own special dangers. A Japanese fighter pilot related how he had pursued and machine-gunned an American B-26 Marauder medium bomber over Lae that resulted in an event that “sickened” him. Just before the plane burst into flames he saw four men parachute out of it. Their plane hit the water and exploded, sinking out of sight. The pilot continued to watch as a “small bright life raft popped up. As I circled the raft, I saw them clung to its sides. Since they were only two miles from Lae air base, it was only a matter of time before a boat would pick them up and make them prisoners. Suddenly one of the men thrust his hands high above his head and disappeared. The others were beating fiercely at the water, and trying to get into the raft. Sharks! It seemed that there were thirty or forty of them; the fins cut the water in erratic movements all about the raft. Then the second man disappeared. I circled lower and lower, and nearly gagged as I saw the flash of teeth, which closed on the arm of the third man. The lone survivor, a big bald-headed man, was clinging to the raft with one hand, and swinging wildly with a knife in the other. Then he, too, was gone. When the speedboat (sent to pick them up) returned to Lae, they reported that they found the raft empty and bloodstained. Not even a shred of the men was visible.”16