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

by Bruce Gamble

  Whitehead’s renewed offensive continued for a third day on October 25, this time with a concerted effort to hit Lakunai. Throughout the first two weeks of the overall offensive, the main fighter base had not been touched. The 43rd and 90th Bomb Groups had tried twice, but the weather forced them to turn back or go after alternates. Whitehead therefore planned a heavy raid on Lakunai as the primary event, with a secondary goal to attack shipping in Simpson Harbor again.

  Despite forecasts of bad weather, more than sixty Liberators were ready for the mission on October 25. The plan called for two P-38 squadrons to sweep Lakunai just ahead of the bombers, while four additional squadrons escorted the heavies. Colonel Harry J. Bullis, deputy commander of the 90th Bomb Group and overall mission leader, had his B-24 poised on the runway at precisely the designated minute.

  Charles A. Rawlings, a correspondent with the Saturday Evening Post, observed as the event got underway. Later he penned a description of the first bomber’s takeoff:

  Harry Bullis was posed at the runway end. Suddenly his four props beat into life. Slowly, the big, muddy-colored bomber started to squash its great tires ahead, started to whine as the props fought for air. Then she went past, a tremendous hurtling giant of a thing, and you could hear her voice, the great deep organ voice of 4800 horsepower, unleashed and free and crooning with joy. Bullis held her nose down until she had her 60,000 pounds covering the ground at 120 miles an hour, and then let her fly. She went up steadily as if there were a perfect grade, basllasted, tied, and tracked up in the sky, and she was mounting it. Halfway up, she made her last clumsy gesture, a ludicrous spreading of her landing gear like a cow spraddling to empty her bladder, and then the legs and the wheels were gone up into their recesses in the wings and she was a creature of the air, supple, graceful, unafraid.

  The mission began normally. Sixty-one Liberators took off from Port Moresby and proceeded to the usual join-up location over Kiriwina Island. There, they met eighty-one Lightnings and the formation headed northward. Leading an understrength element of the 432nd Fighter Squadron this day was Major MacDonald, 475th Group headquarters staff, who later described how the weather—and the plans—quickly deteriorated:

  About 45 minutes out I heard the lead fighter squadron call that weather looked too bad and saw them turn around. The lead member must not have been on the right frequency for he never replied and kept going. The weather to the east of the target was bad. Rather than let the bombers go on alone, I took my seven men very high and covered the lead bomber squadron of the 90th Group, so that the Nips seeing us would be discouraged and perhaps figure there were lots more of us.

  Just like True a week earlier, Bullis and the 43rd Group commander reportedly never heard the calls from the lead fighter squadron. Seventy-three P-38s turned back, as did eleven B-24s, leaving fifty bombers in the formation with an escort of just eight fighters. Taking his small unit up to 27,500 feet, Major MacDonald got above the weather and then weaved back and forth over the lead element of bombers. His intention of numerical deception may have worked: a report issued later by the 25th Air Flotilla stated: “At 1020 [Tokyo time] about 40 P-38s and 50 B-24s attacked Rabaul.”

  What mattered most—to both attackers and defenders—was the fierce resistance over Rabaul. As the B-24s approached Lakunai, warships in Simpson Harbor fired a storm of shells that burst between twenty and twenty-five thousand feet, and dozens of shore batteries contributed to the barrage. Forty-four fighters and two Judy bombers (carrying aerial burst bombs) participated, too. A few aggressive Zekes got among the lead B-24s and MacDonald flamed one—a victory confirmed by other P-38 drivers and even B-24 crews—after which the enemy fighters were reluctant to mix it up with the P-38s.

  “Ack-ack was heavy and accurate,” noted Capt. William M. Waldman, one of MacDonald’s pilots. “Heavy and medium caliber was shot at not only the bombers but at P-38s, too. I saw one B-24 hit in the left outboard engine and he trailed black smoke for a long ways, staying right in formation. The destroyers, and I believe there were also cruisers, were firing everything they had at us. Four white bursts, as big as tents with white streamers trailing down, appeared off to our left.”

  Waldman’s statement was accurate. Two Japanese heavy cruisers and six destroyers had arrived from Truk three days earlier, which explains the intense antiaircraft fire. Waldman also confirmed that the two D4Y1 Judys dropped several aerial burst bombs, though none damaged the formation. The antiaircraft fire was more accurate. The B-24 that Waldman mentioned was Tear Ass (The Bull), flown by Lt. Charles B. Showalter and crew of the 400th Squadron/90th Group. A direct hit on the number one engine caused the fire and black smoke; then the number four engine was hit and stopped, too, though Showalter later got it started again. Then a prop blade on one of the two good engines was damaged, causing vibration, and Showalter was forced to reduce speed. Knowing he would soon be sucked out of the formation, he radioed Bullis to slow the whole formation. The group commander reduced the formation’s speed, thus protecting the crippled Liberator, and despite the heavy antiaircraft fire, the bombardiers performed well.

  At long last, the heavy bombers pounded Lakunai with scores of large demolition bombs and hundreds of frag devices. According to the Japanese, more than twenty parked aircraft were burned or severely damaged, including five twin-engine Type 100 command reconnaissance planes (Mitsubishi Ki-46 “Dinahs”) of the JAAF 10th Flying Regiment. Five others sustained lesser damage. The navy’s assessment reported thirteen fighters and bombers burned on the ground and the airfield temporarily “out of use.” Eight ships anchored near Lakunai in Matupit Harbor were damaged. A postwar summary stated that “about 10 petrol or oil wagons, machine guns, ammunition dumps and the greater part of the airfield installations were destroyed.”

  Following Bullis and the 90th Group, the participating crews of the 43rd Group proudly proclaimed, “We gave Lakunai drome at Rabaul a first-class plastering today in a daylight raid without fighter cover.” However, the rearmost 403rd Bomb Squadron faced persistent attacks from about thirty fighters. The B-24 piloted by Lt. John W. Carlson lost one engine, with another damaged. He couldn’t maintain formation, so two Liberators reduced speed to shepherd him home. All three B-24s came under heavy attack. After Carlson lost another engine, he could no longer keep up. The Zeros ganged up on the cripple.

  A Fifth Air Force operational summary later described the dramatic conclusion:

  For fifteen minutes enemy fighters literally waited in line for their turn to make passes. They riddled the B-24. Its bomb bay was awash with fuel and hydraulic fluid; only two engines were functioning; its top turret guns had jammed; ammunition was almost exhausted except for a few rounds in the nose turret. But one by one the Japanese planes gave up the fight until only six or seven remained. Unexpectedly these, too, turned back toward New Britain at a time when the quarry was theirs for the taking.

  Only a few minutes after the last Japanese plane had disappeared, both remaining engines cut out, and the Liberator was brought down upon the water. The nose ducked under with a terrific impact. The top of the fuselage broke open at the bomb bay, and the five crew members on the half deck crawled out and tumbled into the ocean. The flight deck and cockpit were filled with water. The radio operator, navigator, and engineer were badly injured, but they succeeded in crawling out the escape hatch. The pilot and copilot were trapped in the crushed cockpit. In the meantime, a call for help had been sent from the crashed plane’s flight. Approximately one hour later, a Catalina floated down on the water and rescued the surviving members of the crew.

  Carlson’s B-24 was the only American aircraft that failed to return from the mission—and Carlson and his copilot, Lt. Oscar M. Williams, were the only aviators lost that day. Even the badly damaged Tear Ass (The Bull), only one engine still functioning normally, squeaked into Kiriwina for an emergency landing. If only Rawlins of the Saturday Evening Post had been there to watch the battered Liberator as it used up all but twenty feet of the ru
nway before stopping, what an imaginative description he might have written.

  SOMETHING WASN’T ADDING up. An intelligence summary published by GHQ reported that the October offensive had destroyed more than 350 enemy aircraft at Rabaul. Based on official credits, the three consecutive missions from October 23 to 25 had been incredibly productive. The bomber crews claimed forty-two enemy planes shot down, thirty-eight of them on October 25, while B-25 gunners were credited with shooting down eight. During the same span, Lightnings reportedly shot down fifty-three Japanese fighters, including thirty-eight kills on October 24 alone. Total credits over those three days amounted to 103 aircraft, whereas Japanese records show three fighters lost and three damaged on the 23rd, ten shot down or force-landed on the 24th, and two lost with six others damaged on the 24th. The bombing and strafing attacks caused much more damage, though the claims were still exaggerated.

  Whitehead wanted to follow the high-altitude attack on Lakunai with another low-level raid against shipping, and scheduled it for October 26. The fourth raid in four days got underway with the launch of eighty-two B-25s, but a frontal system blanketed Kiriwina, preventing the P-38 escorts from taking off. This time, all the B-25s turned back.

  The intertropic front settled in, giving the Japanese a reprieve from bombing attacks. During the four-day hiatus, reports from the Solomons of an American invasion fleet sighted off the Treasury Islands caused concern at Eleventh Air Fleet headquarters. This was a preliminary element of Halsey’s planned assault on Bougainville, known as Operation Cherryblossom, the Allied code name for the island. On the morning of October 27, troops of the New Zealand 8th Brigade landed in the Treasuries and quickly grabbed the two main islands, Mono and tiny Stirling.

  About halfway between Vella Lavella and Empress Augusta Bay, the islands were only fifty miles from Buin and even closer to Ballale. The threat of an aerial counterattack from those bases no longer existed: the Japanese had withdrawn their few remaining planes a week earlier. Seabees of the 87th Construction Battalion began building a new airstrip on Stirling as soon as the island was secured.

  On the day of the landings, Kusaka advised Combined Fleet headquarters at Truk that only ten dive-bombers and about seventy Zero fighters were available for daylight attacks against the enemy invasion fleet. Thirty-six rikko were also available, but after the terrible losses during the Central Solomons campaign, Kusaka was no longer willing to risk them on long-range daylight attacks. He requested immediate reinforcements: four divisions of fighters and three divisions of dive-bombers. Meanwhile, Kusaka sent all ten dive-bombers and an escort of thirty-nine Zeros to attack the invaders. The Japanese fought past the CAP and claimed the sinking of “1 transport, 2 cruisers, and 1 small transport,” at the cost of four dive-bombers and a fighter. No ships actually sank, but the Fletcher-class destroyer Cony was badly damaged.

  AT PORT MORESBY, Whitehead waited impatiently for the weather to improve. When the forecast for October 29 finally showed promise, he promptly scheduled another Rabaul strike. Instead of sending the strafers to attack the heavily defended harbor, however, he ordered another high-altitude attack, this time with the 43rd Group leading. According to the group’s history, the B-24s and their P-38 escorts arrived over Rabaul with little difficulty:

  The Nips’ big Vunakanau drome was our target. For the first time, our entire group was loaded with 6-pound fragmentation bombs. We carried about 4,000 of those little hell raisers, and the 90th Group followed us with 500-pounders.

  The target was left a mass of smoke and flames—mostly from Nip airplanes which will pester us no more. The raid cost us one man, 2nd Lieutenant Earl R. Rich, bombardier of the 64th Squadron, who was fatally wounded when hit by a piece of ack-ack shrapnel over the target. He was toggling out his bombs when hit—only two bombs were left in his bomb bay. Our group shot down six Jap fighters who intercepted us over the target. As usual, the Nips were timid about coming in and slugging it out with us and our P-38 cover.”

  Despite the alleged Japanese reluctance, the skies over Rabaul were thick with Zeros. Seventy-five had scrambled, of which approximately fifty tangled with the bombers and fighter escort.

  Dick Bong, leading a division of the 9th Fighter Squadron, atoned for the loss of his wingman earlier. Flying at twenty thousand feet with the bombers, he observed eight enemy fighters diving almost vertically through the formation. After signaling his division to drop their belly tanks, he rolled over and dived to give chase. On the way down he fired at two Zekes, but found two more on his own tail. Plunging all the way to three thousand feet, Bong used his Lightning’s superior weight and speed to lose the Zekes behind him, then leveled off and attacked another Zeke head-on. He fired a long burst; the fighter flipped out of control and crashed. Next he ran down two more Zekes that fled toward Open Bay, flaming one and damaging the other before he was forced to break off “for lack of ammunition.”

  The damage caused by the B-24s on October 29 included at least seven aircraft destroyed at Vunakanau. For the Japanese the impact of the October raids was becoming serious. Although the aircraft destroyed were far less than the Allies claimed, such attrition could not be sustained. In a postwar summary of naval air operations, the Japanese admitted that the Allied offensive was having a cumulative effect, beginning with the raid on October 12.

  As this was the first large-scale enemy raid on Rabaul, our fighters were unable to intercept the raiding planes satisfactorily, and heavy damage was sustained by our planes and surface craft in the area. Following this, Rabaul was raided by about 100 planes on 18 [October] and by 100 to 150 planes on 23, 24, and 25 October respectively. At each attack, our fighters intercepted the enemy and shot down a considerable number of planes, but our losses on the ground were also quite heavy; and, at the same, time, enemy air raids became a great obstacle to the execution of operations.

  Even considering the effects of attrition, the October offensive did not devastate Rabaul. The initial raid surprised the defenders—it is sometimes called “the Japanese Pearl Harbor”—but there are few actual similarities. Simpson Harbor is several times larger than Pearl Harbor, giving warships ample room to maneuver in an air attack. Also, the Southeast Area Fleet had no need to berth its warships in tight clusters like those of the Pacific Fleet, which were moored side-by-side in crowded anchorages. And at the airdromes surrounding Rabaul, planes were parked in protected revetments, not lined up wingtip-to-wingtip as they had been at Hickam and Wheeler and Barbers Point on December 7, 1941. Furthermore, the harbor, town, and airdromes at Rabaul were spread out over an area of more than a hundred square miles. The bombing technology of the day was imprecise, such that many bombs landed in unused space; therefore, even after six raids between October 12 and 29, the level of destruction at Rabaul was relatively mild.

  What the Japanese—and the American POWs—feared most was an attack on Rabaul’s business district. Thus far the downtown area had been spared, although the proximity of Lakunai airdrome to Chinatown gave the prisoners plenty to worry about. Despite the promise of shelter, the POWs remained in their cells while the guards hid in the bunkers. The only benefit for the POWs was the temporary freedom to stand and watch the raids through small, barred windows. The result was an odd juxtaposition of pride in the American attackers and fear of becoming an accidental victim, remembered Joe Holguin:

  The air raids against Rabaul continued to increase with tremendous force … This was one of the most frightening experiences for the prisoners because Lakunai aerodrome was only a mile or two from the camp. Therefore, we could hear the roar of the engines, the firing of aerial machine guns and of antiaircraft batteries. But the most frightening sound was the swishing noise of the falling bombs increasing in noise and terror as they approached the ground. We were sure this would be our last day on earth. Once the bombs hit the ground and we were still alive to feel the impacts, we knew we would live a little longer—at least until the next air raid.

  The raids came almost without letu
p, interrupted only by adverse weather. Whitehead, encouraged by the results of the bombing offensive and the low number of American casualties, decided to strike again at the shipping in Simpson Harbor. After several false starts because of unfavorable forecasts, he eventually got his wish—but the next raid on Rabaul would be far more expensive.

  RAY WILKINS RETURNED from leave a happy man. Phyllis had invited him up to Rockhampton, where Ray asked her father for permission to marry her. They had set a date to tie the knot soon after Christmas. When he returned to Dobodura on October 31, Wilkins shared the good news with his friend and the 8th Squadron’s operations officer, Lt. William H. Webster.

  During Wilkins’s absence, Webster had attended the initial briefing for the low-level attack on Rabaul and had good news of his own: the first attempt had been scrubbed by foul weather. Wilkins was glad he hadn’t missed it. Now that he was back, he would lead his unit on the next attempt. The 8th Squadron had been given a vital role in the mission—and Webster had all the dope.

  The detailed plans called for two P-38 squadrons to sweep the airdromes and suppress enemy fighters. Next, four gunship squadrons from the 345th Bomb Group, carrying a mixed load of parafrags and Kenney’s Cocktails (iron bombs filled with white phosphorus) would neutralize the antiaircraft batteries ringing the caldera. On the heels of the 345th, two squadrons of the 38th Bomb Group and three from the 3rd Group would swoop in over Crater Peninsula from the northeast to attack ships in Simpson Harbor with thousand-pound bombs.

  The approach for the anti-shipping strike offered two distinct benefits: the volcanoes on Crater Peninsula would temporarily shield the B-25s from antiaircraft fire, and the prevailing tides would cause the anchored ships to swing broadside to the direction of attack.