Target: Rabaul: The Allied Siege of Japan's Most Infamous Stronghold, March 1943 - August 1945

by Bruce Gamble

  In the months since, there had been no daylight attacks on Rabaul. Respecting the stout fighter defenses, V Bomber Command restricted missions against the stronghold to nighttime, when there was little threat of interception. Not that the Japanese didn’t try. Air Group 204 occasionally sent Zeros up at night to attempt coordinated intercepts with searchlight teams, but their effect was minimal. At the time, the Japanese had no radar guidance systems capable of controlling night intercepts. The Zeros occasionally scored hits, but the bomber crews worried more about Rabaul’s antiaircraft batteries.

  One of the most innovative night raids on Rabaul had occurred while Kenney was in Washington. Just before midnight on March 22, nine B-17s of the 63rd Bomb Squadron and one from the 403rd took off from Jackson Field, Port Moresby. Most carried twenty-four 100-pound bombs wrapped with wire, called daisy cutters. Lieutenant James C. Dieffenderfer, flying Old Baldy, carried four 500-pounders with an early form of proximity fuse called the “advanced action fuse,” designed to explode the bomb three hundred feet above the ground; he also had four 500-pounders fitted with delayed fuses. Captain Harry A. Staley and the crew of Pluto carried eight 500-pounders with proximity fuses; and Maj. Jay P. Rousek, commanding officer of the 403rd, toted four 1,000-pound bombs with advanced action fuses.

  Captain Carl A. Hustad, flying a B-17E named Monkey Bizz-Nes, carried a bomb load with a unique purpose. Shackled in the bomb bay were two of the heaviest bombs in the Fifth Air Force inventory, each packing the explosive equivalent of two thousand pounds of TNT. After the other B-17s attacked Lakunai airdrome, Hustad was to drop his blockbusters, fitted with forty-five-second delayed fuses, into the crater of a nearby volcano. In theory, the huge explosions would trigger a spontaneous eruption, which might blanket Lakunai airdrome with lava or even wipe out Rabaul. The concept had merit. The Allies were aware that a major eruption had badly damaged Rabaul six years earlier, but no one knew what might happen when heavy bombs detonated inside a crater. Anticipating the worst, Hustad was to wait fifteen minutes after the other bombers had cleared the area. After releasing his bombs, he would dive steeply and gain as much speed as possible, thereby putting ample distance between his crew and the expected eruption.

  Although one B-17 turned back due to engine failure, the mission proceeded as planned. Searchlights and antiaircraft fire made several crews abort their bomb runs over Lakunai and try again. Eventually they hit the target area with all but four of the daisy cutters. Dieffenderfer silenced some of the antiaircraft fire and knocked out searchlights on Matupit Island, adjacent to the airdrome, with his four aerial-burst bombs. On his next run, he planted the four delayed-fuse bombs in the runway. The timers were set to explode the bombs twelve hours later, creating havoc among the Japanese repair crews.

  After the other B-17s turned homeward, Monkey Bizz-Nes conducted its bomb run. However, as described later in the 63rd Squadron’s war diary, the effort failed: “Major Hustad experimented on bombing Rabatana crater with 2 x 2000 demo bombs with 45 sec. delay fuses. The bombs fell within the crater but were not seen to explode.”

  Even if both bombs had gone straight down the pipe, the probability of an eruption was remote. For starters, there was no volcano named Rabatana at Rabaul; instead, the men were likely referring to Rabalanakaia, one of six volcanos on the promontory known as Crater Peninsula. But that particular volcano was dormant. Coincidentally, just two miles to the southeast sat an ugly, menacing volcano named Tavurvur, which had erupted violently in May 1937. Semiactive through much of 1943, it occasionally spewed great clouds of corrosive ash and noxious sulfur fumes. If the bomb experiment were to have a prayer of succeeding, then Tavurvur would have been the volcano to experiment on.*

  THREE DAYS AFTER taking part in the volcano-bombing mission, the B-17 Pluto failed to return from a reconnaissance flight. On board was Ramey, who three months earlier had replaced the late Ken Walker as head of V Bomber Command. Enthusiastic about skip-bombing, Ramey got along well with Brigadier General Whitehead and deserves a share of the credit for the victory in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea. Three weeks after the battle, on March 26, Pluto took off from Port Moresby for a routine reconnaissance mission. The radio operator sent an outbound message twenty minutes after departure, but nothing more was heard from the bomber or its crew. To date, no trace of them has been found.

  Ramey’s disappearance meant that Whitehead would have to serve once again as the temporary head of bomber command. He was qualified, but had been in the combat zone at Port Moresby for nearly eight months. Suspecting that his deputy was on the verge of exhaustion, Kenney headed up to New Guinea on April 10 and took over the day-to-day operations of ADVON, as well as V Bomber Command, for a few weeks. Whitehead departed that afternoon, with orders from Kenney to spend the rest of the month on leave in Australia.

  As the interim head of bomber command, the first responsibility Kenney faced was a disciplinary action involving one of his favorite pilots, whom he referred to collectively as his “kids.” Major Kenneth D. McCullar, one of the fastest-rising stars in the Fifth Air Force, was handsome, outgoing, and aggressive. A swashbuckling bomber pilot, he had demonstrated extraordinary ability and bravery, earning a spot on Kenney’s A-list. As an original member of Bill Benn’s 63rd Squadron, McCullar was an early pupil of skip bombing. A Mississippian with an affinity for gambling (the serial number of his first B-17, named Black Jack, ended in 21), he had scored direct hits during his inaugural effort—and on virtually every mission since.

  Kenney had grown fond of McCullar, whose bravery and fortitude became legendary during the battle for Buna. On November 24, 1942, after flying two daytime strikes against enemy positions on the New Guinea coast, McCullar took his crew up for a night attack. Black Jack accompanied six other B-17s to locate and destroy a high-speed enemy convoy headed for Lae. After spotting the warships in the Huon Gulf, McCullar descended to two hundred feet and raced over the waves for his first skip-bombing run. He released two bombs, which exploded near the stern of the target, possibly Otori. Classified as a torpedo boat, but nearly the size of a destroyer, the warship was slightly damaged that night by a near miss. In turn, antiaircraft fire rocked the tail of Black Jack, starting a blaze in an ammunition canister. One of the gunners smothered the flames with a blanket and flying gear while other crewmen rushed aft with extinguishers.

  With the fire out, McCullar made a second skip-bombing run on a big destroyer. His bombs hit “directly on or very near the boat,” and flames gushed from its starboard bow. This was almost certainly Hayashio, a 2,500-ton destroyer. Badly damaged, with fifty crewmen dead, she had to drop anchor while damage control teams fought unsuccessfully to contain the fire. When the flames neared the magazines, another destroyer took off the surviving crew before finishing Hayashio with a torpedo.

  Black Jack had not gone unscathed. Return fire from the warship had slightly wounded three crewmen; nevertheless, McCullar began a third low-level attack. He had to abort it when enemy shellfire hit the B-17’s left outboard engine. The controls were shot away, leaving McCullar unable to feather the prop. His Irish blood up, he climbed to 1,500 feet and assessed the damage, then descended slightly and initiated another attack. His bombs landed close, but Black Jack was hit again, this time in the fuel system for the right inboard engine. McCullar climbed again and took stock of the bomber’s condition. Incredibly, with one engine dead and another running roughly, he initiated a fifth bomb run.

  Just after the last bombs fell (with no reported results), the limping engine died. McCullar feathered the prop, but could not maintain altitude on two engines. While he and the copilot “tried to bring no. 3 in again,” they kept an eye on the left outboard engine, which glowed red from the heat of the runaway propeller. The navigator and bombardier were ordered out of the nose compartment in case the prop spun off. Finally the tortured engine began cooling down. Its reduction gear stripped, the propeller had literally ground loose at the shaft. Meanwhile, the pilots continued working
the controls for the damaged engine. Eventually they got twenty inches of manifold pressure, then twenty-five inches—just enough to maintain minimum rpm. After the crew jettisoned the ammunition and loose gear, Black Jack began to inch upward. Two and one-half hours later, McCullar had nursed the crippled bomber to ten thousand feet. The next challenge was the Owen Stanley Mountains, which soared to thirteen thousand feet. Luckily the navigator found a pass, and Black Jack squeaked through. The remainder of the flight was anticlimactic, as summed up nonchalantly by McCullar: “[We] landed okay and forgot about it.”

  Kenney thrived on such legends. And he was equally familiar with the rest of the hero’s story. Promoted to major in mid-January, McCullar was pulled from his beloved 63rd Squadron, a tight-knit outfit he had flown with for months, to assume command of the 64th. The squadron had a mediocre combat record and low morale, but by the end of March, McCullar had turned it around. The highest praise came from his former squadron mates, who claimed that the 64th could “accomplish any task assigned them.” Although McCullar had a different crew and no longer flew Black Jack, he led by example, taking his share of the difficult missions.

  When Kenney began his temporary stint as head of V Bomber Command, McCullar and the rest of the 43rd Bomb Group had been in combat for more than six months. Crews periodically received a week of R&R in Australia, but the cumulative effects of combat took their toll on both men and machines. Commissioned fliers could occasionally let off steam at the officers’ club, but taut nerves and alcohol could be a volatile mix. McCullar learned this the hard way on the night of April 9, when he and an inebriated army doctor had an unfortunate encounter.

  Arriving at Port Moresby the following day, Kenney learned about the disturbance and wrote a full description in his diary:

  Ken McCullar is a hard-hitting lad in many ways. Last night he was down at the officers club at Port Moresby with a few others of the 43rd Bombardment Group, enjoying himself, when he heard a medical colonel … discussing, in an over-loud manner, the shortcomings of the air force. Some of the phrases used had a lot of four-letter words in them, and finally a lot of names, including mine, were used. Ken disapproved and invited the colonel to eat his words. The colonel refused, quite belligerently, perhaps relying too heavily on his superior height and reach. Ken became a bit impatient, and with one or two (accounts differ) punches, knocked the colonel through a window and down to the muddy ground several feet below.

  Reasoning that “you can’t try a person twice for the same offense,” Kenney took swift action. He told his chief of staff at bomber command, Col. Roger M. Ramey (no relation to Howard Ramey), to “punish Ken with a reprimand” without delay if he was indeed guilty. This would prevent the obnoxious colonel from pressing more serious charges or seeking a court-martial.

  After the reprimand, Kenney called in McCullar for a face-to-face. The general said that he appreciated what McCullar had done, not only for him but for the Fifth Air Force; then he sternly told the young hero to “lay off colonels from now on.”

  On April 11, Kenney’s first full day at the helm of bomber command, the Japanese launched an aerial offensive against New Guinea. Approximately three weeks earlier, Imperial General Headquarters had introduced a new plan, the Joint Army-Navy Central Agreement on Southeast Area Operations, to establish “a superior and impregnable strategic position.” The great Southern Offensive, begun with such promise at the end of 1941, was dead. The Allied counteroffensive was now underway, resulting in crucial defeats for the Japanese at Guadalcanal and Buna. Tokyo had little recourse but to go on the defensive. With a coordinated effort by the army and navy to bolster the existing strongholds, the Allies would pay dearly for every advance.

  One offensive plan, buried deep in the Central Agreement, directed the navy to initiate an air campaign against Allied positions in the Solomon Islands—a counterattack against Guadalcanal. The task fell to the commander in chief of the Combined Fleet, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, whose staff knew the Allies were entrenched in the southern Solomons. In February, American forces had bloodlessly occupied the Russell Islands, seventy miles northwest of Guadalcanal. Seabees immediately began constructing a pair of airstrips to support the invasion of New Georgia.

  The main aviation component at Rabaul, the Eleventh Air Fleet, had been debilitated by the battle for Guadalcanal and could not undertake the new offensive alone. Yamamoto therefore ordered the Third Fleet to contribute its carrier planes. He and the Third Fleet commander, Adm. Jisaburo Ozawa, shifted their headquarters temporarily to Rabaul, arriving in early April. With Vice Adm. Jinichi Kusaka, who commanded both the Eleventh Air Fleet and the Southeast Area Fleet, they worked out the details of Attack X, scheduled for April 5. With Ozawa’s carrier planes, Yamamoto had approximately 350 attack aircraft at his disposal, so he decided to hit key Allied positions in New Guinea as well the Solomons. This decision led to plans for a series of raids on Port Moresby, Milne Bay, and other locations. Known as Attack Y, it was added to the overall plan, officially named A-Operation (I-Go Sakusen).

  Delayed two days by bad weather, Attack X was launched on April 7. More than two hundred aircraft, the largest Japanese strike force since Pearl Harbor, attacked the Tulagi anchorage and ships near Guadalcanal. The dive-bombers had limited success, sinking a destroyer, a corvette, and a tanker, but when the surviving crews returned to their units, they reported twelve major ships sunk. The fantastic claims, plus more bad weather, convinced Yamamoto that Attack X had succeeded. Subsequently, he shifted his attention to New Guinea.

  At half past noon on Sunday, April 11, a strike force of approximately a hundred planes from Ozawa’s carrier groups attacked Oro Bay, fifteen miles south of previously contested Buna. One small cargo ship was sunk, a second beached, and a minesweeper damaged. The effort was relatively feeble compared to the blow that Yamamoto could have delivered. Kenney thought as much, later stating that he was “puzzled” by the enemy’s choice of targets. The nearby airstrip complex at Dobodura, undergoing rapid expansion, housed dozens of aircraft. A concentrated attack there might have set the Allies back several months.

  Realizing he was fortunate, Kenney found himself in a grim chess match. The most pressing challenge would be to correctly anticipate the enemy’s next target and intercept the attack. Aware that Milne Bay was “full of shipping,” he moved the majority of his fighter strength to Dobodura and Milne Bay, on the other side of the Owen Stanley Mountains, leaving only twenty fighters at Port Moresby.

  His defenses established, Kenney knew he was not compelled to wait for the enemy to make the next move. Inclined to think offensively, he decided to hit Rabaul.

  THAT AFTERNOON, IN the 43rd Bomb Group’s tent city at Port Moresby, orders were posted for another night attack on Rabaul. Lieutentant Colonel John A. Roberts, who had assumed command of the group less than two weeks earlier, would lead the effort. Two of his squadrons, the 64th and 65th, were to commit every available B-17 to the mission.

  An hour after midnight on April 12, startup procedures commenced at Jackson Field, often referred to by its former name, Seven Mile airdrome. Roberts occupied the copilot’s seat of Lulu Belle, which had been fitted with extra fuel tanks in lieu of bombs to conduct weather reconnaissance and general observation. At 0130, the B-17 roared down the runway and climbed alone into the darkness.

  Fifteen minutes later, the main strike began. A B-17 named Blues in the Nite taxied to the downwind end of the runway. This was McCullar, heading up the main formation as commanding officer of the 64th Squadron. His aircraft had two extra sergeants aboard who had volunteered as spare gunners. Anyone who got to fly with McCullar owned a lot of bragging rights.

  Throttling up to full power, McCullar released the brakes at 0147. In the control tower, Maj. David W. Hassemer watched the heavy bomber accelerate normally. But something went wrong. The B-17 was about halfway down the runway, nearing takeoff speed, when Hassemer distinctly heard “a loud metallic crack” over the sound of the four radial engine
s. He later reported: “At a point opposite of the tower a long streak of bluish-white sparking flame appeared below the number-three engine nacelle and in the right wheel assembly. This flame lasted for five or six seconds and then went out momentarily.”

  Multiple failures may have occurred independently. The metallic bang was possibly the bursting of an expander tube in a brake line on the right landing gear. A stream of pressurized, highly flammable hydraulic fluid contacted hot metal, either the brake bands on the wheel or the engine exhaust outlet, igniting the fire seen from the control tower. Other witnesses saw the flames spread quickly from the engine nacelle across the upper and lower wing surfaces, until a stream of fire reached back the length of the aircraft. At roughly the same moment, just as the heavy bomber got airborne, the tire on the left wheel separated from the landing gear.

  Engines howling, its right wing burning brightly, Blues in the Nite pitched up sharply. After rising only a few hundred feet, it stalled. Rolling drunkenly to the left, it staggered along for several seconds at a sixty-degree angle of bank, an indication that McCullar and his copilot were trying to fight the stall. Gravity prevailed, however. A few hundred yards beyond the southeast end of the runway, Blues in the Nite pitched over and nosed into the ground, killing everyone on board. Flames mushroomed into the sky, accompanied by two small explosions. A few seconds later, the bomb load exploded with a tremendous blast.

  During the investigation of the grisly scene, a dead wallaby was found in the vicinity of the runway, leading to immediate and persistent speculation that a collision with a kangaroo had caused the mishap. Although related to kangaroos, the agile wallaby found in New Guinea are quite small, making it an unlikely culprit. Furthermore, the war diary of McCullar’s former unit, the 63rd Bomb Squadron, contained a detailed entry regarding the crash, but made no mention of any animal.