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

by Bruce Gamble

  WHILE HALSEY FRETTED about the Japanese cruiser force, members of his staff bent over a chart table and began to work out possible solutions. Halsey had brought some gifted individuals aboard his staff, including Capt. Harry R. “Ray” Thurber, the SOPAC operations officer. Described as “energetic, sleepless, but always urbane,” he was responsible for writing many of the plans used during the Solomons campaign. No one admired Thurber’s “brilliant solution of operations problems” more than Halsey, who had never needed the captain’s intelligence more urgently.

  In reviewing the available assets, Thurber noted a strong asset relatively close at hand: Sherman’s fast carrier force. Halsey had sent him to refuel his ships near Rennel Island, wanting the carriers well away from Rabaul-based bombers but not so distant that the force would be unavailable “for anything that might develop.”

  The “anything” had indeed developed. Fortunately for Halsey, his operations officer lived up to his brilliant reputation. Rather than thinking defensively, Thurber thought it might be possible to hit the Japanese fleet while it refueled. Knowing that every ship in Task Force 38 was built for speed, Thurber and his staff made some quick time-and-distance calculations. After checking their math, they drafted a message that would send Sherman on a dash to attack Simpson Harbor the following morning.

  Before taking the draft to Halsey for consideration, Thurber and his assistant briefed Halsey’s chief of staff, Rear Admiral Carney. He verbally approved the draft, and all three men walked over to Halsey’s quarters at Camp Crocodile to present the draft in person. The admiral’s face was pinched with worry. Without looking at the message he asked, “You’re not going to send Merrill to Rabaul, are you?”

  “No sir,” they answered. “This is Ted Sherman again.”

  The men watched Halsey’s reaction carefully, knowing that young Bill Halsey was aboard Saratoga, and that the elder Halsey had already been through the wringer once. Back in August, Bill had flown to Noumea on a TBF to pick up some spare parts. After visiting with his father overnight, he had hopped a ride back to Efate with a flight of three Avengers, none of which arrived. The admiral was informed two days later that his son was missing, and two more days passed before the emergency ended happily. The personnel from all three aircraft, which had ditched near an island, were rescued; however, from the admiral on down, it had been a troubling reminder of the hazards faced by every flyboy in the Pacific.

  Now Halsey was staring at a plan that would send his only son straight into the dragon’s jaws. “Every one of us knew what was going through the admiral’s mind,” recalled Carney. “It showed in his face, which suddenly looked 150 years old.”

  After studying the message in silence for a few moments, Halsey handed it back to Carney with his firm approval: “Let ’er go!”

  This was Halsey at his best, making a difficult decision without waffling. He believed that both Saratoga and Princeton would be damaged or perhaps even lost, and expected the air groups would be “cut to pieces.” Yet he had to send them. It all came down to Bougainville. If the carrier strike failed to prevent Kurita’s warships from destroying the American beachhead, the entire operation might unravel.

  TASK FORCE 38 had just completed refueling when the urgent dispatch arrived from COMSOPAC on the afternoon of November 4. The orders to Sherman were straightforward: he was to move Task Force 38 at all possible speed to a position south of Bougainville, where Saratoga and Princeton would launch a strike against Rabaul at first light. Targets were prioritized: enemy cruisers first, destroyers second.

  Relaying the message immediately to Cassady, Sherman then used the radio telephone to inform Princeton and the commander of the screening force. Next, the navigator worked out the logistics. In order to position the air groups close enough to the target—about two hundred miles from Rabaul—the task force would have to steam five hundred miles in fifteen hours. With the course plotted, Sherman ordered his ships to proceed northwesterly at flank speed. Soon, the entire task force had worked up to its “maximum formation speed” of twenty-seven knots (about thirty-one miles per hour), which it maintained throughout the night. “All of a sudden we were charging along,” recalled Marvin Harper. “The cans could hardly keep up with us,” agreed John Gavin, referring to the popular nickname for destroyers in World War II: “tin cans.”

  During the all-night dash, the staffs of Saratoga’s Air Group 12 and Princeton’s Air Group 23 scrambled to find information about Rabaul. Lacking aerial photographs and comprehensive charts, the planners had to ad lib. The only man remotely familiar with Rabaul was Sherman, who’d never actually been there. As captain of the Lexington in 1942, he had gotten within four hundred miles of Rabaul. Now he would finally get another opportunity.

  Saratoga’s three-thousand-man crew was highly motivated. Tired of ridicule, they wanted a chance to redeem their reputation. The circumstances certainly looked good, recalled Sergeant Towles, who stood duty as a marine orderly during the run toward Rabaul. While keeping his vow to protect sensitive information, Towles later recalled that Sherman commented aloud about what lay ahead, calling it “one of the most important and dangerous assignments ever handed to the Saratoga.”

  The remark was probably directed at Cassady, who then called Commander Caldwell and Sara’s squadron commanders into his cabin near the bridge. “Boys,” he told then, “we are hitting Rabaul tomorrow morning. This is a hell of a tough assignment.” He explained the threat to the marines at Bougainville, and assured the aviators that Saratoga would be within reach when the pilots came off the target. His conclusion was blunt: “You have damn little time. God bless you, boys.”

  In the squadron spaces, operations and intelligence officers spent the entire night working out the strike plan. Within hours, the pertinent information was typed on carbon paper, duplicated in the ship’s printing center, and delivered to the various ready rooms in time for the early morning briefings. Every detail was outlined on legal-sized pages: mission objectives, launch times, weapons loading, radio channels and kilocycle settings, contingency launch plans (in case of enemy counterattack), emergency procedures, and authentication codes.

  During the squadron briefings, pilots sat down with their lap-sized plotting boards and took notes. Intelligence officers handed out strip maps, which displayed the navigational details needed to reach the target. Placing the strip map beneath a clear compass rose on their lap boards, the pilots plotted the path of the carrier, thereby simplifying (in theory) navigation during the return leg.

  Because enemy fighter opposition at Rabaul would be heavy, Halsey had ordered a maximum effort strike by both air wings. Saratoga and Princeton would commit every available fighter to the raid. To protect the task force while the fighters were busy, Major General Twining, Commander of Aircraft in the Solomons (ComAirSols), arranged for two land-based navy squadrons in New Georgia to provide the necessary patrols. Fighting 17, based at Ondonga, and VF-33, based at Munda Point, would provide CAP over the task force and even trap aboard to refuel. The Jolly Rogers of VF-17, equipped with F4U Corsairs, had to reinstall their fighters’ tail hooks for the operation.

  Aboard Saratoga, intelligence officers and squadron commanders conducted final briefings. Many fliers gathered for an impromptu prayer. Clifton sat on a couch in Fighting 12’s ready room, pulled a pocket-sized Bible from his flight suit, and read aloud from the 23rd Psalm.

  Elsewhere aboard the carrier, Petty Officer Paul T. Barnett approached Caldwell with a request. Barnett, a photographer’s mate attached to Bombing 12, seldom got an opportunity to fly in the squadron’s two-seat SBDs. On this morning, he volunteered to photograph the attack. Caldwell gave his approval and told Barnett he could fly as a fourth man in his TBF Avenger, which would orbit high above Rabaul during the strike.

  At daybreak on November 5, Saratoga and Princeton reached a desirable launch position sixty miles southwest of Cape Torokina. Sherman was pleased with the weather conditions: a smooth sea, a steady breeze, and o
vercast skies with occasional rainsqualls to screen his task force from enemy snoopers.

  VICE ADMIRAL KURITA’S powerful cruiser force glided into Simpson Harbor at dawn on November 5. The warships disturbed Vice Admiral Kusaka, the ranking naval officer at Rabaul. Learning that Kurita was coming south from Truk, Kusaka had immediately voiced his objections to the commander in chief, Admiral Koga. Unlike the other admirals, Kusaka believed that the premise of sending a cruiser force to attack the American beachhead on Bougainville was based on flagrant exaggerations.

  Despite being defeated at Empress Augusta Bay on the morning of November 2, Rear Admiral Omori had convinced Koga and others that the outcome had been favorable. For evidence he relied on a statement from the crew of submarine I-104, which reported, “We saw many enemy seaplanes and surface ships busily engaged in rescue operations, indicating that a number of enemy ships were sunk in the battle.”

  A small transport convoy had managed to land more than nine hundred troops on Bougainville during the night of November 2–3, after which the commander reported no opposition from American ships. Believing that Merrill’s force had retired to “mend the wounds it received from the Omori force,” Koga sent Kurita’s cruisers to mop up the remnants at Bougainville. Having kept the cruisers in reserve for many months, Koga saw this as his best opportunity to send them into battle. “He felt that the patient waiting had paid off,” wrote destroyer captain Hara, “and that his chance had come for a showdown with the enemy in the Solomons.”

  Koga was complacent, as was Kurita, who had not seen combat for more than a year. Kusaka objected to the deployment of the cruiser force, but could not “explain his skepticism of Omori’s claims or his general uneasiness in terms convincing and meaningful to Koga.”

  When Kurita’s fleet arrived, Hara’s reaction echoed the concerns he shared with Kusaka:

  I gaped as flagship Atago nonchalantly dropped anchor in the narrow harbor, now jammed with seven cruisers and some 40 auxiliary ships. These new arrivals made me apprehensive and uneasy.

  At 0700 that same morning a patrol plane reported an enemy force of five heavy cruisers, seven destroyers, and two transports in position 150 miles distant, bearing 140 degrees from Cape St. George. Rabaul headquarters concluded that these ships presaged a landing attempt. Reactions were casual since staff officers had become accustomed to enemy landing operations in recent months.”

  Of course it wasn’t an amphibious fleet that the reconnaissance plane detected, but Sherman’s task force. Given the two hour difference between Tokyo time and that used by Allied forces (Greenwich Mean Time plus eleven), the discovery of the American fleet occurred just as Saratoga and Princeton prepared to launch their planes.

  SHERMAN WAS UNAWARE that his force had been detected, but it made no difference. With the temperature already in the eighties, the sweating flight deck crews began the launch evolution at 0700 local. The first to take off from the tapered flight deck of Saratoga was Clifton, followed by fifteen more F6Fs. Then sixteen TBF Avengers roared aloft, led by Lt. Cmdr. Robert F. Harrington, commanding officer of Torpedo 12. Next, twenty-two Dauntless SBDs of Bombing 12, led by Lt. Cmdr. James H. Newell, made their deck runs. Finally, the executive officer of Fighting 12, Lt. Cmdr. Robert G. Dosé, led another sixteen Hellcats off the deck. A seventeenth F6F, flown by Ensign Carlton W. Roberts, took off last to provide close escort for Caldwell’s TBF over the target. The entire evolution took almost two hours.

  Nearby, Princeton’s Fighting Squadron 23, led by Lt. Cmdr. Henry L. Miller, sent nineteen Hellcats aloft, followed by seven torpedo bombers from Composite Squadron 23.* No aborts or mishaps marred either launch cycle. Forming a combined strike force of ninety-seven aircraft, the two air groups joined up as they climbed and headed northwest toward Rabaul.

  At the bottom of the stacked formation, each big Avenger lugged a 2,200-pound Mark 13 aerial torpedo with a five-hundred-pound torpex warhead. Above them, the centerline trapeze sling of each SBD held a thousand-pound general purpose bomb. Clifton’s sixteen Hellcats separated into four-plane divisions and slid into assigned positions at all four corners of the formation. Dosé’s sixteen Hellcats flew approximately two thousand feet above the bombers in medium cover, while Miller led Princeton’s F6Fs in high cover, another two thousand feet above Dosé. One additional Hellcat, flown by Lt. j.g. Stanley K. Crockett, joined Roberts to provide close escort for Caldwell.

  Because of the short turnaround from concept to launch, there had been no opportunity for the two air groups to coordinate assignments or doctrine. During the first half of the two-hour flight to Rabaul, the group and squadron commanders worked out the mechanics of the raid using their VHF radios. Normally, strict radio silence would be observed to reduce the possibility of detection by the enemy, but the VHF radios only had line-of-sight range, making them ideal for plane-to-plane communications. When the details were finalized, squadron commanders passed the necessary instructions to their division leaders.

  Visibility was excellent as the formation passed the southern tip of New Ireland and turned north over Saint George’s Channel. Scattered clouds, estimated at two-tenths coverage, let the aviators see Rabaul easily from fifty miles away. As they drew closer, the attackers could scarcely believe their luck.

  Thanks to Thurber’s bold plan, the carrier planes had hit the jackpot. Six of Kurita’s heavy cruisers were moored there. Only Chokai was absent, having detached on November 4 to escort two ships back to Truk. In addition to the heavy cruisers, the harbor was crowded with targets: three light cruisers, eleven destroyers, and numerous noncombatants. The strike had been perfectly timed. Only a few hours earlier, shortly past dawn, Kurita’s force had glided into Simpson Harbor. A few heavy cruisers were still refueling; others rode quietly at anchor.

  Caldwell had determined—much like the B-25 strafer squadrons three days earlier—that the least hazardous profile would be to attack the enemy ships from the direction of Crater Peninsula and then egress straight out of the harbor. The formation skirted Cape Gazelle as Caldwell led them over the tiny Credner Islands. He steered the formation to the east of Crater Peninsula, remaining over Saint George’s Channel all the way to the village of Tavui on the peninsula’s northern tip. There the formation wheeled to the left in a 180-degree turn, rolling out on a reciprocal heading that would bring the attackers directly over Simpson Harbor. Simultaneously, the SBDs and TBFs began a gradual descent to their pushover altitude of ten thousand feet.

  The downside to this approach was that it required an additional seven minutes, giving the Japanese plenty of time to scramble up to seventy interceptors, depending on the source. Most were Reisen variants from veteran carriers Zuiho and Zuikaku, whose air groups had deployed to Rabaul as part of Operation Ro-Go; probably less than twenty were launched by the Eleventh Air Fleet, and five inline-engine Judys of Air Group 501 climbed from Lakunai airdrome toting aerial burst phosphorus bombs.

  While the formation worked its way around Crater Peninsula, the enemy fighters were observed in several groups. “We looked up with utter astonishment,” recalled Harper. “Way above us—it was just mind-boggling. With the number of airplanes and the altitude advantage they had, they should have decimated us.”

  None of the Reisens, however, tried to attack the tightly grouped formation. Many of the Japanese were not yet familiar with the boxy blue F6Fs. They apparently expected the American fighters to break away from the main formation, which would have opened the door for other interceptors to bounce the dive-bombers and torpedo planes from up sun. But Clifton held his fighters in close, and throughout the entire approach phase, the enemy pilots kept a respectful distance.

  The Zeros were also not inclined to expose themselves to their own antiaircraft guns, which cut loose as the American formation approached from the north. “The antiaircraft fire over the harbor area was of terrific intensity,” reported members of Fighting 12. “The shore batteries and the ships in the harbor put up a barrage from heavy and auto
matic guns which covered all levels from 10,000 feet on down. The CLs (heavy cruisers) and CAs (light cruisers) fired their largest guns.”

  Still the Hellcats maintained their position. The tightly grouped formation made an easy target for the Japanese gunners, and fighters on the outside of the formation took hits almost immediately. Lieutenant junior grade Tom G. Atwell, assigned to cover the torpedo planes, was the first fighter knocked down. He headed south over the Gazelle Peninsula at six thousand feet, his engine operating with at least partial power—but that was the last anyone saw him. A second F6F, piloted by Lt. J. A. Smith of VF-23, was seen to fall after taking a direct hit. Other planes received damage but stayed in formation.

  Reaching the shoreline of Simpson Harbor, Newell’s dive-bombers deployed to go after hastily selected targets. This was the signal for the torpedo bombers to separate into small groups and maneuver into their dropping positions. With Harrington calling out assignments, the TBFs descended rapidly, making big S-turns to prevent overshooting the cruisers. Leveling off at approximately 250 feet, the pilots throttled back to under 225 knots, the maximum recommended speed for torpedo release, and went after their targets.

  Caldwell remained at ten thousand feet, keeping his Avenger in a gentle left turn so he could observe the attack and call out recommendations. Standing in the cramped compartment behind Caldwell’s armor-plated seat, Paul Barnett pointed his camera past the leading edge of the left wing and photographed Simpson Harbor, where the cruisers were trying desperately to get underway.