by Bruce Gamble
How did the rumor become so entrenched? One contributor was Kenney, who wrote in his popular postwar autobiography: “The story was that just as Ken’s B-17 was ready to leave the ground, it collided with a kangaroo or a wallaby, which hit the turbo-supercharger exhaust, setting fire to the main gasoline tanks in the wing.”
An equally important factor was the collective shock of losing such a popular, talented man. No one wanted to consider that mechanical failures and human error caused the crash. By blaming an act of God in the form of a furry brown animal, McCullar’s stunned friends and squadron mates could put the disaster in perspective.
It is just as likely that the laws of probability caught up with McCullar. Bravado and determination will carry a man and his crew only so far. Lucky streaks end. There were numerous contributors to that tragic crash, attributable to the frenetic pace of the war. Issues such as combat stress and fatigue on the part of the flight crew, questionable maintenance on the aircraft, oversights during the preflight inspection—all could be factors in the accident.
Those dynamics were frequently overlooked in an effort to put more planes in the air and more bombs on the target. The result was an astonishingly high mishap rate. For every loss of a high-profile individual such as McCullar or Benn or Ramey, dozens of crews had come to grief in the mountains or the surrounding waters. Some accidents could be investigated, such as McCullar’s, but far more losses involved unexplained disappearances. The culprit was usually some combination of crew error (poor navigation or lack of awareness of the surrounding terrain) and low visibility (either at night or in bad weather). Crews got hopelessly lost and flew out to sea, or crashed into the slopes of the towering mountains. The aviators made grim jokes about a new type of cloud called “cumulogranite,” and shared cautionary phrases such as “every cloud has a rock and a tree in it.”
The statistics confirm their fears: during the first four months of 1943, three B-17s, five B-24s, a B-25, and three C-47 transports went missing in New Guinea.
THE NEWS OF McCullar’s death shocked the men at Port Moresby, from Kenney on down. Kenney was particularly upset, for his last words to McCullar had been a scolding.* But there was no time to grieve. That same morning, 500 miles to the northeast, Admiral Yamamoto sent off another strike against New Guinea. Wearing starched dress whites, he waved to the crews as forty-three Type 1 land attack aircraft (Mitsubishi G4M1s, code named “Bettys”) took off from Vunakanau airdrome. Also participating in the attack were 130 of the Imperial Navy’s most celebrated fighter, the Rei Shiki Sento Ki, or Type 0 carrier-borne fighter, commonly abbreviated as Reisen. An escort of sixty-five Zero fighters from the Eleventh Air Fleet and some carrier-based units took off from Lakunai airdrome to escort the bombers, while another sixty-five Zeros from Zuikaku, Hiyo, and Junyo formed an independent striking unit.
Heading toward Milne Bay, the attackers were detected by a radar station on the New Guinea coast at 0945. The task of intercepting them fell to V Fighter Command, headed by Brig. Gen. Paul B. Wurtsmith, who had led the fighter defense of Darwin in 1942. Normally he would have called his own shots at Port Moresby, but with Kenney on site, Wurtsmith had a three-star general to back his plays. How much input Kenney provided is unknown; but as an attack specialist, he probably left the interception decisions in Wurtsmith’s capable hands. Virtually every Allied fighter in northeast New Guinea was scrambled, with vectors to intercept the Japanese near Goodenough Island. It was the right call, given the circumstances, but shortly thereafter the radar signal was lost. At 0955 a different station issued an update: the enemy formation was now crossing the mountains near Kokoda, on a direct heading for Port Moresby.
The feint gave the Japanese an opportunity to cause serious damage at Jackson Field. Only eight P-38 Lightnings and a dozen outclassed P-39 Airacobras were available there—twenty fighters against well over a hundred attackers. Wurtsmith had no time to vector the main body of interceptors toward Port Moresby. Instead, they were instructed to head toward Lae, where the Japanese would probably land to refuel after the attack.
With all available fighters committed, Kenney could only step outside his headquarters and watch. He had a ringside seat as a melee among 150 aircraft unfolded overhead—an opportunity rarely afforded an air force commander.
They came into sight of my headquarters at 1023. Forty-five bombers in one beautifully flown mass formation … while above them were between 60 and 70 fighters for protection. The altitude of the Jap show was between 18,000 and 20,000 feet. The P-38s, flying practically abreast, took on the leading bomber formation in a head-on pass and shot down 3 of them right away. The bombers broke formation, shed their bombs, and started a big left turn heading back toward Lae. The P-38s then knocked off 2 more of the second Jap bomber formation, which held together as it passed over Laloki airdrome, where it started bombing. The [bombers] then began to break, and, unloading bombs all the way across Ward’s and Three Mile, finally turned and followed the first outfit.
In the meantime the P-39s were tangled with so many Nip fighters that it was almost impossible to see who was who. Every once in a while a plane would burn and start spinning down, and I’d wonder who it was. In a few minutes, however, the show was over at Port Moresby, and we could [only] guess whether the gang on the other side of the range could catch the Nips on the way back.
Of the fighters initially vectored toward Goodenough Island, most were too low on fuel to intercept the Rabaul-bound Japanese, but enough interceptors were available to make the mission costly for the attackers. Forty-four American fighters harassed the Bettys making for the New Guinea coast, where two Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) squadrons also joined in. The Allied pilots claimed thirteen bombers and ten Zeros shot down, plus six bombers and one fighter as probable victories. Antiaircraft batteries at Port Moresby destroyed two—possibly four—additional bombers.
The losses in Air Group 751 had indeed been heavy, with six bombers shot down and a seventh wrecked at Lae during an emergency landing. Air Group 705 lost no bombers in the air, but a crash-landing destroyed one, and eleven others sustained combat damage. Contrary to the claims, only two Zeros were shot down, bringing total Japanese losses to ten aircraft.
The April 12 raid marked the 106th air attack on Port Moresby. It was the largest to date, yet caused fairly insignificant damage. Kenney could scarcely believe his luck. Embarrassed at being tricked by the initial feint toward Milne Bay, he was happily astonished that the Japanese had squandered their opportunity to smash Port Moresby. In his diary he called the enemy “fools,” but reserved most of his criticism for himself: “If we had just guessed better today, I would have had about 75 fighters take on that Jap show, and we would really have made a killing.”
Anticipating that Milne Bay would be attacked the next day, April 13, Kenney and Wurtsmith arranged their defenses accordingly. But Kenney also kept an adequate number of fighters near Port Moresby. Throughout the morning and early afternoon of the 13th, the fighter groups waited for the early warning network to report an inbound attack. But nothing happened. Later that afternoon, reconnaissance planes reported bad weather from the Trobriand Islands all the way to the Bismarcks, which explained the quiet.
Despite the weather delay, Kenney had accurately guessed the enemy’s next target. On April 14, Yamamoto wore his dress whites again to send off the last attack of I-Go Sakusen. Seventy-five Zeros and twenty-three Vals from the Third Fleet, joined by fifty-four Zeros and forty-four Bettys of the Eleventh Air Fleet, took off to attack the harbor and airfields at Milne Bay. Several aircraft, including six Bettys, aborted along the way, but with almost two hundred aircraft involved, the attack force remained powerful.
Once again, however, the Japanese effort fell short. Three Allied ships were hit by bombs at Milne Bay, with only one seriously damaged. None sank. Yet the Japanese crews that returned to Rabaul claimed three large transports and one medium transport sunk, six transports heavily damaged, and forty-four Allied planes shot d
own for certain. The Allies had launched exactly forty-four interceptors, nowhere near the hundred Kenney wanted, because of fog at Dobodura. Contrary to the Japanese claims, only one P-40 was lost, along with its pilot. Four other P-40s were damaged and a P-38 crash-landed. The defenders, meanwhile, claimed nineteen “confirmed” victories, about twice the actual Japanese losses, which amounted to five Bettys, three Vals, and at least one Zero.
Among the Lightning pilots who claimed victories, Lt. Richard I. Bong of the 9th Fighter Squadron/49th Fighter Group was making a name for himself. Described by Kenney as “a little blonde-haired Norwegian boy,” Bong had already downed nine enemy aircraft before the clash over Milne Bay. But long before that, he had become another of Kenney’s “kids.” Accused of several flight violations in San Francisco, including a low-level pass down Market Street in a P-38, he had to stand at attention while Kenney chewed him out. Bong was the sort of fearless character favored by Kenney, who tore up the complaints. The instinct proved valid: Bong was a natural. During the combat over Milne Bay, he contributed to the downing of two Bettys. Although he received official credit for only one, the victory made him a double ace. Kenney advised his staff to “watch for that boy Bong.”
AT RABAUL, YAMAMOTO and the Combined Fleet staff accepted the outrageous reports submitted by aircrews after the Milne Bay strike. Their claims were never openly challenged; instead, the Johokyoku (Information Bureau) in Tokyo approved the alleged details for publication. Japanese newspapers printed front-page headlines such as “Navy Eagles Achieve Fine Results,” accompanied by stories even more fictional than the airmen’s claims.
Details of the April 12 attack, for example, were presented with great drama:
Over the airfield at Port Moresby, the enemy fliers avoided a clash with the Wild Eagles, knowing the power of the Nippon air force. Some of them, however, were left behind and were engaged in a battle by the Nippon Wild Eagles, with the result that 28 Grummans were shot down. Also, 10 large bombers and small aircraft parked on the field were destroyed by machine-gun fire.
The Nippon Wild Eagles moreover sank an enemy transport of 7,000 tons loaded with military supplies and fuel off the coast. Following this attack, other Nippon units blasted enemy military facilities to bits and rained bombs on 20 out of 40 enemy barracks on the eastern part of the airfield. The bombs burst with devastating effect, the fuel and ammunition warehouses being blown up with a terrific explosion.
Nippon losses in this raid were five planes.
Compiling reports from the attacks against Guadalcanal and New Guinea, the Combined Fleet staff believed the Allies had suffered tremendous damage. The bomber units supposedly sank a cruiser, two destroyers, six large cargo ships, and ten medium cargo ships. Japanese airmen claimed to have shot down 134 Allied planes and damaged 56 others. Thinking that I-Go Sakusen was a victory, Yamamoto concluded the offensive. His outlook was shared by Emperor Hirohito, who stated: “Please convey my satisfaction to the commander-in-chief, Combined Fleet, and tell him to enlarge the war result more than ever.”
George Kenney had a much different perspective:
The Nip just did not know how to handle air power. Just because he knocked us off on the ground at the beginning of the war, when we were asleep at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, he got a reputation for being smart; but the way he had failed to take advantage of his superiority in numbers and position since the first couple of months of the war was a disgrace to the airman’s profession.
Written after the war, Kenney’s assessment might be regarded as a victor’s scornful musings, but there were many instances of poor judgment by the Japanese to justify his disdain. The most obvious examples were Yamamoto’s decisions not only to end I-Go Sakusen, but to schedule the trip that led to his own demise. On April 13, after witnessing the emotional lift that his formal sendoffs gave the troops at Rabaul, Yamamoto decided to boost morale by visiting the Eleventh Air Fleet’s forward bases. That afternoon, his headquarters transmitted a detailed message to the appropriate commands outlining the admiral’s itinerary. His first stop, on the morning of April 18, would be the airdrome at Ballale, a tiny island a few miles off the southern tip of Bougainville.
At least one recipient considered the trip “a damn fool thing to do.” Admiral Ozawa begged Yamamoto to arrange for more escorts than six Zeros, but Yamamoto refused. As a result, the staff who boarded the two Bettys on April 18 flew into a deathtrap. Yamamoto’s detailed itinerary had been intercepted and decrypted by Ultra, enabling SOPAC Fighter Command to stage an ambush over southern Bougainville. Sixteen P-38s flew a low-level attack profile with remarkable precision and succeeded in downing both Bettys. Most of the occupants were killed, including Yamamoto.
No other dedicated fighter mission achieved a more important outcome than the interception of the Yamamoto entourage. Fearing a national panic, the Johokyoku withheld the news of Yamamoto’s death for weeks. When the information was finally released in late May, the government-controlled news provided only scant details of the late admiral’s “heroic death in battle,” but urged the people to “exemplify the spirit of Yamamoto.”
The newspapers also introduced the new commander in chief, Adm. Miniechi Koga, who moved the Combined Fleet headquarters back to Truk Lagoon aboard the flagship Musashi. A 1906 naval academy graduate, the fifty-seven-year-old Koga had ambitious plans. His operations, however, would be hamstrung by setbacks and attrition over his ten months of leadership.
WELL RESTED AFTER two weeks of leave in Australia, Brig. Gen. Whitehead arrived in Port Moresby on April 26 and resumed his duties as commander of ADVON. By that time, Kenney had decided that Colonel Ramey would take over V Bomber Command, with Colonel Davies as his chief of staff. The selection, according to Kenney, proved “very popular with the kids.” Although the choice was ultimately Kenney’s, day-to-day decisions in the forward area remained in the hands of Whitehead, who had authority to employ the Allied air units in New Guinea as he saw fit.
Confident that he was leaving “the show” in good hands, Kenney departed from New Guinea on April 27. He had several pressing concerns to deal with in Brisbane, including the enemy’s continued development of Wewak. In response to the Central Agreement issued by Tokyo, the Japanese were busily improving the airfields and harbor facilities. Wewak would eventually house the largest Japanese garrison on New Guinea. Navy presence, while comparatively small, included a base force and the civil administration, plus a seaplane facility on nearby Kairiru Island.
The main strength of the Wewak complex was its four army airfields. In addition to the original grass strip, which had been extensively improved, a second airfield was constructed about three miles to the east at Boram. Thirty miles to the northwest were two airfields that took their names from nearby villages: But and Dagua. In addition, there was a small emergency field near Cape Wom. Heavily defended with antiaircraft guns and fighters, the complex was becoming a real thorn for the Allies.
Meanwhile, the Allies were developing their own airfield complex on a coastal plain south of Buna. The airstrip at Dobodura, bulldozed during the Papuan campaign in late 1942, was proving to be a valuable acquisition. It was more than a hundred miles closer to the enemy’s bases than Port Moresby was, which saved time and fuel. The aircrews no longer had to cross the treacherous Owen Stanley Mountains on their way to and from assigned targets, and that saved lives. “Dobodura is the most valuable airdrome site of the whole lot,” Kenney wrote on April 13. “It is an ideal place in which to build airdromes from the viewpoint of speed in getting them constructed, and it is admirably located for all our operations except those directed at Buin-Faisi.”
During an inspection of Dobodura, Kenney was pleased to find the main field abuzz with activity. He counted five additional airstrips in various stages of completion, but the construction battalions were facing a major problem. The nearest harbor facilities were at Oro Bay, more than fifty miles distant; virtually all materials had to be flown in. A supply road was und
er construction, but the engineers faced nightmarish challenges as they cut through swamps and coastal jungle. Frustrated by the slow progress of the road, Kenney was eager to see “Dobo” become a more vital asset.
Kenney had another concern that made the issues with Dobodura and Wewak seem minor. Having warned MacArthur that the pipeline of new air groups and planes would not open up soon, Kenney was alarmed by the rate of attrition in his air units. Few losses were attributable to combat, causing Kenney to fear that his Allied air units were “going down fast.” Out of three U.S. Army fighter groups, he considered himself fortunate to count seventy-five aircraft available at any given time, equating to only a third of the groups’ nominal strength. Literally scraping the barrel, Kenney arranged for the last three fighters in Australia—a disabled P-39 and two damaged P-40s—to be repaired, armed, and sent to New Guinea.
The bomb groups fared slightly better, with about two-thirds availability. On the evening of his return from New Guinea, Kenney met with MacArthur and explained how he planned to conserve the strength on hand, striking only when a good target presented itself, and by continuing the policy of not scheduling daylight raids if the target was beyond the range of fighter escort. MacArthur approved.
The month of April closed with more bad news for Kenney. Another of his favorites was lost in a crash, this one even more preventable than the others. Earlier in the year, Kenney had entrusted the first squadron of modified B-25s to Edward L. Larner, then a captain, who simultaneously assumed command of the 90th Bomb Squadron, 3rd Attack Group. Larner had gotten Kenney’s attention while flying A-20s in the 89th Bomb Squadron, where he had earned a Silver Star for his aggressive style of attacking targets at low level. Larner was fond of showing off, but his personality and achievements—particularly his squadron’s superb results in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea—made great headlines for the Fifth Air Force. As Kenney later wrote, “The lad was a bit cocky, bragged some, and swaggered, too, but it was all right with me. He had a right to.”