Invasion Rabaul

by Bruce Gamble

  The engagement was over in minutes. Three Wirraways were shot down in rapid succession, two others were forced down and crash-landed, one returned with repairable damage, and one landed safely with no battle damage. The Zeros had scored an entirely one-sided victory, killing six RAAF airmen and wounding five. Observers on the ground could scarcely believe what had happened. “We sat at our guns,” remembered Bloomfield, “shocked by the massacre we had just witnessed.”

  After swatting aside the Wirraways, the Japanese bombed specific targets around Rabaul. At Vunakanau, the men of C Company had a difficult time compensating for the incredible speed of the carrier planes as they fought back with rifles and Lewis machine guns. The Japanese dropped dozens of bombs on or near the runway, of which at least twenty buried themselves in the soft ground without exploding. They penetrated to an average depth of fifteen feet, reported Captain Appel, whose troops spent hours digging up the duds. Miraculously, no one was hurt.

  On the North Daughter, the antiaircraft battery opened fire with a continuous barrage the moment the enemy planes came into range. The crews finally succeeded in knocking down one plane, which crashed on the slopes of the Mother. An Australian tabloid later described the wreckage: “It was a bomber-fighter type, single engined. There were three dead Japs in it—stocky little fellows aged 24 or 25. Bombs were lying some little distance from the crashed plane.” The pilot of the aircraft, a Nakajima Type 97 of the Kaga’s horizontal bombing unit, was Flight Petty Officer 1st Class Michinari Sugihara. A few weeks earlier, he and his two crewmen had participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor; now it was their destiny to become the first Japanese aviators killed at Rabaul.

  Meanwhile, from their volcanic aerie atop Frisbee Ridge, the antiaircraft crews had a ringside view of an attack by several Type 99 dive bombers against the Herstein. The freighter was still loading copra at the Burns-Philp wharf when three aircraft swooped low and hit it squarely, starting several fires that quickly spread to the two thousand tons of oily cargo in her holds. Up in the superstructure, a defiant Norwegian sailor fought back with a mounted machine gun until forced by the flames to evacuate. Soon the intense fires enveloped most of the ship, which was set adrift when the mooring lines burned through. Eleven crewmen were killed and several others burned, some severely.

  Other Aichi dive bombers concentrated on the Westralia, a once-elegant liner that had been out of service for years. Used as a floating coal bunker, the stationary hulk was an easy target and soon sank out of sight. Next the attackers swarmed over Lakunai airdrome, dropping bombs and machine-gunning the adjacent coconut groves to destroy encampments and supplies dispersed among the trees. The coastal guns at Praed Point received minor damage, after which a few planes tried to knock out the antiaircraft battery. Nothing but a precise hit on the razorback ridge would have destroyed the guns, but the crews held their collective breath anyway until the bombs tumbled down the slopes and exploded harmlessly.

  Forty-five minutes after beginning the attack, the Japanese concluded it with a deliberate pageant. Zeros showboated with aerobatics and bombers wheeled overhead in formation, flaunting their power. Down below, plumes of smoke rose from the burning wharves and the red-hot hull of the Herstein, and clouds of dust swirled above both airdromes. Locally there had been few casualties aside from the Norwegian sailors, but the crewmen from the crash-landed Wirraways were hospitalized with an assortment of broken bones and bullet wounds.

  At Vunakanau, Squadron Leader Lerew was doubly frustrated. Not only had the Japanese destroyed most of 24 Squadron, but his own superiors at Port Moresby were becoming antagonistic. Soon after the attack, a message from RAAF Operations and Signals ordered him to strike back at the enemy with “all available aircraft.” Lerew had two Wirraways remaining, but one needed repairs and neither was fitted with universal bomb racks. The lone undamaged Hudson would have to do the job, a suicide mission against the powerful enemy fleet. A crew bravely manned the bomber and took off to find the Japanese ships, but they failed to find anything before darkness blanketed the ocean.

  Glad to have the Hudson back, Lerew sent a message to Port Moresby stating that he intended to use the bomber to evacuate his wounded men. Headquarters had other ideas, and their next message instructed him to keep the squadron in a combat-ready status. Exasperated, Lerew turned to his intelligence officer, Flight Lieutenant Geoffrey R. Lempriere, for help in drafting a suitably sardonic response. The two men decided that a particular Latin phrase seemed appropriate, especially in light of their current situation. Lerew encrypted just three words: “MORITURI VOS SALUTAMUS.” At Port Moresby, the staff was at first puzzled by the message, but eventually someone recognized it as the gladiators’ legendary hail to Caesar: “We who are about to die salute you.”

  * Page was awarded the rank of sub-lieutenant in the Royal Australian Naval Reserve in March 1942. Less than three months later he was captured by the Japanese and executed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAOS

  “The whole operation was a shambles to begin with.”

  —Private O. C. “Bill” Harry, 2/22nd Battalion

  In the shadows of the thick black smoke that towered above the burning wharves and crackling hulk of the Herstein, stunned townsfolk surveyed the bomb damage. Rabaul itself had been spared, apart from a few bombs that fell into a residential area on Crater Peninsula. Philip Coote, the supervisor for Burns-Philp operations in the territory, stumbled down Namanula Hill from his ruined home. Disheveled and weeping, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, he had survived by jumping into a slit trench moments before his fine new house was smashed by a direct hit. A large crater desecrated the lawn where his swimming pool and coral terrace had been.

  Other leading residents, Harold Page among them, were likewise nervous, and with good reason. The size and intensity of the attack made it all too clear that the Japanese were bringing a large invasion force. The assault, when it came, was bound to be even worse than the air raid, and the presence of carrier planes meant the enemy fleet was somewhere nearby. The Australians could only guess. What they truly needed was information—the sort gleaned from aerial reconnaissance—but 24 Squadron was no longer in commission. The nearest operational unit was two hundred miles away in the Solomons, where 20 Squadron maintained an Advance Operating Base (AOB) with a few flying boats. A request went out for their assistance, and at dawn on January 21, a twin-engine Catalina piloted by Flight Lieutenant Robert H. Thompson took off to search for the enemy fleet.

  Several hours later the flying boat was abeam Kavieng when the copilot, Flight Lieutenant Paul M. Metzler, spotted “a number of gray logs nudging the surface of the ocean.” Thompson radioed Port Moresby and reported four Japanese cruisers southwest of New Hanover. Before he could send additional information, bursts of antiaircraft fire chased the Catalina into a cloud. Minutes later, four Zeros attacked the flying boat from behind and shot it down. Thompson and Metzler maintained control just long enough to land the burning aircraft on the ocean, and they escaped the wreckage with three other crewmen. Metzler, convinced he could see the mountains of New Hanover in the distance, got the group swimming in that direction, but they made little progress. Two hours later the Japanese cruiser Aoba slid alongside the airmen. “Keep swimming,” advised Thompson, “don’t turn or look around, and for the love of God, don’t wave at the bastards.” Nevertheless the Aoba’s crew hauled the exhausted swimmers aboard, undoubtedly saving their lives. It was the Aussies’ misfortune to become POWs so soon after the war began, but all five survived the next three and a half years of captivity in Japan and were repatriated.

  WHILE THOMPSON AND HIS CREW WERE WINGING TOWARD THEIR FATEFUL encounter, Admiral Nagumo launched a carrier strike against the Australian defenses at Kavieng. The attack, conducted by fifty-two aircraft from the Akagi and Kaga, caused significant damage to the harbor facilities and disabled the 81-ton steel ketch Induna Star, the only seagoing transport available to the 1st Independent Company.

 
; At the height of the raid, the Star’s crew attempted to get her underway from the main wharf. A half-dozen planes attacked, punching numerous holes in the hull and mortally wounding two soldiers manning a mounted Bren gun. In the wheelhouse, skipper Julius Lundin lost steering control, and the Star ran aground on a reef two miles south of the harbor. The survivors jumped overboard, then began swimming for a nearby island. All reached dry ground except a native crewman who was killed by a shark.

  After the Japanese planes departed, the Star was refloated on the tide and taken back to Kavieng. With her leaky hull temporarily patched, she was moved down the southern coast of New Ireland and hidden in a remote cove.

  AT RABAUL, FORTRESS SIGNALS RECEIVED WORD OF THE AIR ATTACK ON Kavieng as well as the sighting of Japanese cruisers by Thompson’s crew. As the situation became clearer, Colonel Scanlan realized that enemy warships would be close enough to shell Rabaul by nightfall. His first decision was to call Lieutenant Colonel Carr into his command center for a private conference. Explaining that he had no intention of waiting for Lark Force “to be massacred by naval gunfire,” he ordered the evacuation of Malaguna Camp. He also gave Carr explicit instructions to tell the troops “that it was an exercise only.”

  Scanlan’s first order made sense, but the second was highly irregular. Carr never questioned it; instead he called his own staff together for a separate meeting and expounded on Scanlan’s odd instruction. Lieutenant Dawson later stated: “The CO told me that the Japanese fleet was on its way to Rabaul, and that the commander of NGA had issued instructions that no one apart from us was to be told that the enemy was about to invade. Defensive positions were to be manned, but everyone was to be informed that it was an exercise. The entire battalion, apart from those who had been put in the picture, therefore went out under the impression that they would return to camp within a few days.”

  Incredible as it seems, Scanlan fully intended to deceive his own men by promulgating the story that they were leaving camp on an exercise. Was he actually worried that they would abandon their posts if they learned the truth—that a huge invasion fleet was coming and their own government would neither reinforce nor evacuate them? If so, he had no faith in their courage and did not trust their judgment. His rationale for the deliberate deception remains an enigma.

  Obeying the instructions passed down by the senior officers, the men of Lark Force donned their dishpan helmets, tossed a few rations in their haversacks, and picked up their rifles. Otherwise, believing they were going out on an exercise and would return in a few days, they carried no essentials for an extended stay in the jungle. Hundreds of troops not already assigned to defensive positions—particularly A and B Companies and the Headquarters Company—marched out of the encampment that had been their home for nearly nine months.

  Scanlan’s order to evacuate Malaguna Camp was necessary. Other than a few slit trenches and primitive shelters, the facility had no defensive works and was completely exposed to aerial and naval bombardment. Before leaving the camp himself, Scanlan paused at the Fortress Signals switchboard, newly installed in an underground bunker. “I hope you will have time to use it,” he said to the men on duty. Then, turning to Captain Keith H. M. Denny, the officer in charge of the signalers, he ordered the evacuation of all remaining personnel except essential radiomen.

  Moving to the vicinity of Four Ways, an intersection atop the plateau along the road to Kokopo, Scanlan ordered new defensive positions for some of the rifle companies. He also cobbled together two new companies, forming Y Company with troops from the Pioneer Platoon, Protection Platoon, and quartermaster staff; and Z Company with headquarters personnel, vehicle drivers, and other nonessential troops. Because none had performed much infantry training during the past nine months, they would be used in combat only “as a last resource.”

  Most of the musicians from the band were scattered among the various companies as stretcher bearers. Sergeant Gullidge and two of the bandsmen were assigned to Fortress Signals, where their primary duty involved stringing telephone lines between the various defensive positions. However, Gullidge was subsequently hospitalized, his condition given as “seriously ill” due to an infected tropical ulcer. Two other musicians, Privates Austin B. Creed and Jack Stebbings, became dispatch riders because of their previous experience with motorcycles. Among the entire band, Private Kollmorgen was the only man with recent infantry training, and he was reassigned to a rifle company.

  Elsewhere, Major Owen was ordered to take A Company to Lakunai airdrome and prepare it for demolition. Supervised by army engineers, the soldiers worked all day and well into the night to bury dozens of bombs in the airstrip. The explosives were then wired to a detonator, ready to blow huge craters in the runway and render it useless to the Japanese. Likewise, C Company rigged Vunakanau for destruction. Captain Appel and his troops had spent weeks digging machine-gun pits and erecting new living quarters, and now they made preparations to destroy their own handiwork. They buried nearly one hundred individual bombs, then bored several deep holes in the runway and filled them with tons of explosives. Working through the night and into the wee hours of January 22, they paused only long enough for 24 Squadron’s lone remaining Hudson to take off at 0300 with a load of wounded men.

  There would be no rest after their all-night effort. Just after daybreak, the troops at Vunakanau were startled when dozens of planes suddenly swooped down and attacked the airdrome with bombs, machine guns, and automatic cannon fire. Fifty planes had launched from the Akagi and Kaga for a repeat attack on Rabaul, and this time none of the coastwatchers detected their presence. The Australians retaliated with rifles and Lewis machine guns, but the Japanese dropped an estimated 180 bombs on the airdrome. Amazingly, for all the fragments and bullets flying about, only one member of C Company was wounded and a weapons pit was damaged.

  Next, the attackers headed for the coastal gun emplacements on Crater Peninsula. They made a wide detour around Frisbee Ridge, much to the frustration of the antiaircraft gunners, who “stood and watched helplessly as the destruction of Praed Point commenced.” With deadly accuracy the Japanese dropped their bombs on the two big guns, and suddenly the conventional wisdom became clear. The upper gun, blown from its mountings, tumbled down the steep slopes and destroyed the lower emplacement. Eleven men were killed, some due to suffocation when a shelter collapsed. Major James R. P. Clark, the commander of the artillery detachment, suffered a severe case of shock after being buried in a slit trench for a brief time. Also wounded was Captain Herbert N. Silverman, the medical doctor assigned to the heavy battery.

  After demolishing the coastal guns, the carrier planes dive-bombed and strafed anything that moved. Altogether, they remained over Rabaul for approximately forty-five minutes before heading back to their ships.

  In the aftermath, conditions at Rabaul deteriorated rapidly. Word spread that the township itself was to be evacuated, prompting store managers to open their doors for residents to help themselves before a general exodus began. “Rabaul took on the appearance of a bustling business center,” recalled Alice Bowman, one of the civilian nurses. “Grim faced men arrived in the few derelict vehicles that were still around. Customers wasted no time with friendly greetings and idle chatter as they dragged boxes, bags, and any available containers to be filled with the essentials for the uncertain days ahead.”

  If some of the civilians had lingering doubts about their future, the same could not be said of Lark Force. Any questions about the enemy’s intentions vanished when lookouts on the North Daughter reported smoke on the northern horizon. Lieutenant Figgis, accompanied by the 2/22nd’s Brigade Major (Chief of Staff), Captain Norman R. “Tusker” McLeod, rushed up to the antiaircraft battery and peered through the powerful gun telescopes. By mid-afternoon they could clearly distinguish several types of ships coming directly toward New Britain, including cruisers, destroyers, and troop transports. They counted approximately twenty-five vessels before a shroud of mist from an approaching storm obsc
ured their view.

  Figgis and McLeod reported their observations to Scanlan, who found himself facing the greatest dilemma of his career. The coastal guns had been destroyed, the airdromes were prepped for demolition, and there was little left for Lark Force to defend. The antiaircraft guns were still intact, but they were isolated from the rest of the force, and there wasn’t time to bring them back down the mountain. Scanlan decided that they too would have to be destroyed, and sent McLeod to inform Captain Selby. After the job was done, Selby was to join B Company at Three Ways, an intersection on the Kokopo Ridge Road.

  FOR ALL THE RIBBING THEY HAD ENDURED—OR POSSIBLY BECAUSE OF IT—THE antiaircraft gunners had developed enormous pride in their two old weapons. The task of destroying them proved heartrending, though the idea of the enemy getting them intact was even worse.

  In response to Scanlan’s orders, each gun was loaded with a round in the breech and another down the barrel. Next, the recoil dampers were disconnected, the ring-sight telescope was placed across the muzzle of the Number 2 gun, and lengths of wire were attached to the firing mechanisms. Two of the gunners ran the wires to a distant bunker, then connected the leads to a detonator and awaited Selby’s signal. Unable to bring himself to give the order, he simply nodded. “The wires were pulled sharply, there was a great roar, then another, and flying pieces of metal whistled overhead,” he remembered. “We emerged from our shelter and surveyed the damage. Both barrels had split up and opened out like a sliced radish for a couple of feet from the ends of the muzzles. At least they were useless, except as scrap iron, to the enemy.”

  Leaving thousands of rounds of ammunition behind, Selby and his men headed down the mountain aboard two dangerously overloaded trucks. The cargo beds were packed with various weapons, including a Vickers machine gun, an antitank rifle, cases of .303-caliber ammunition, and boxes of grenades.