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

by Bruce Gamble

  Numerous Corsair and Hellcat pilots ignored the flak. A report from the destroyer Edwards stated: “Friendly fighters, both shore-based and carrier-based, were repeatedly observed pressing home their attacks with outstanding determination, even in the face of heavy antiaircraft fire from our surface ships. Their presence was very gratifying and every effort was made to keep our fire away from them.”

  At 1410 the low-flying Kates commenced attacking, and for the next ten minutes the task group faced the additional challenge of dodging torpedoes. Each of the skippers proved a superb ship-handler, adept at combing the torpedoes with careful timing. Not one direct hit was scored. A few bombs splashed near Bunker Hill, sprinkling the flight deck with steel splinters, but that was as close as the enemy got.

  Between the antiaircraft gunners, the original CAP, and the additional fighters launched prior to the attack, the U.S. Navy had a field day. Even some of the freshly launched strike planes got into the action, along with a couple of the Bombing 17 Helldivers returning from their patrol. The attack was stopped cold. None of the Kates returned to Rabaul, and seventeen of twenty-three dive-bombers fell to American planes and antiaircraft guns. Only two Reisens were shot down, but the blow to enemy morale must have been great: one of the pilots killed was Lieutenant Sato, the highly experienced leader from Zuiho.

  Lastly, two of the four Judys did not return to Rabaul. Four American pilots claimed to have shot down Ki-63 Tonys, but they were almost certainly cases of mistaken identity. The presence of the look-alike Judys has been well documented, whereas only a few abandoned Ki-63s remained at Rabaul by late 1943. Perhaps some of these were patched up sufficiently to defend their immediate surroundings, but it’s doubtful that four examples were in good enough condition to fly far out to sea, particularly when all the other Japanese participants were naval aircraft.

  Of the four so-called “Tonys” credited to American pilots, one was claimed by Blackburn, the commanding officer of Fighting 17. His squadron was credited with destroying seventeen enemy planes and damaging seven others during the intense fight. VF-9 did even better, as some twenty pilots were credited with destroying twenty-one Vals, seventeen Kates, two Tonys, and a twin-engine Betty. (One of the squadron’s high scorers, Lt. Eugene A. Valencia, downed 3.5 aircraft that day on his way to becoming the navy’s third-ranking fighter ace.) Similarly, VF-18s off Bunker Hill officially received credit for destroying twenty Vals, five Kates, three Zekes, and a Betty.

  The three fighter squadrons alone claimed eighty-six enemy aircraft shot down, more than the actual number of participants. The discrepancy begs a question: Were the excessive claims due to honest mistakes, or had the competition for recognition led to chronic exaggerations?

  After the war Blackburn penned one balanced approach to the dilemma. As a combat leader, he had earned the right to discuss the topic:

  Aerial combat, particularly over ships firing their own guns all out, is confusing, to say the least. And the results are confusing. Overzealous pilots tend to claim kills for every burst fired, and there is a marked tendency by each of the crews of competing warships to count shared kills as their own. For whatever reasons, claims of kills over embattled warships are usually inflated and, at best, should be taken with a degree of skepticism.

  But even Blackburn couldn’t be objective regarding his own squadron. His pilots submitted a multitude of victory claims on November 11, resulting in official credit for 18.5 kills. Blackburn stated rather hypocritically that he stood behind the number. Apparently, the tendency to overclaim applied only to other squadrons.

  The three carrier air groups and two land-based squadrons lost only a handful of planes between them. Two VF-17 Corsairs ran out of fuel and ditched (both pilots were rescued), two VF-33 Hellcats were shot down with one pilot rescued, and an Avenger from VT-9 was involved in an operational accident. The most regrettable loss was a Helldiver from VB-17, which never returned from its long-range patrol mission. The crew had been assigned to search the exact sector from which the Japanese raid appeared, and the hapless crew was almost certainly overwhelmed by dozens of enemy planes.

  Although the Japanese outfits suffered heavy losses, the surviving fliers conjured up an amazing victory back at Rabaul. As usual, their claims were accepted—or perhaps even manipulated—by the Johokyoku. Two days later, the newspapers proclaimed:

  The Imperial Navy air arm sighted a powerful enemy mobile unit comprised of aircraft carriers and warships in the waters to the west of Mono Island. Without losing any momentum, the Imperial Navy Wild Eagles carried out devastating attacks, blitz-sinking one cruiser, inflicting slight damage on two aircraft carriers, and setting three cruisers, possibly large destroyers, ablaze. In addition, two enemy planes were shot down. The number of Imperial Navy planes that crashed onto the enemy or have yet to return totaled 30. This is indeed regrettable.

  As the papers hinted, the regrettable fact for Kusaka and the Combined Fleet was the number of frontline aircraft and veteran aircrews lost in the past two weeks. The aviation units of the First Carrier Fleet had been squandered, and by the time Koga pulled the remainder back to Truk, he had lost half the fighters, 85 percent of the dive-bombers, and 95 percent of the torpedo bombers.

  Secondly, Halsey’s successful capture of Bougainville—and the two damaging raids by American carriers—had convinced Koga to never risk his capital warships in the Solomons again. From this point forward, Halsey had complete control of the island chain. Rabaul was neutralized as a naval base, and on Bougainville, construction battalions were hard at working building airstrips that would allow single-engine fighters to reach the once-mighty fortress.

  Within weeks, the aerial siege of Rabaul would resume. And just two months later, the funeral dirge that Halsey predicted could be heard clearly across the Southwest Pacific.

  *The SB2C would be the third American warplane to make its combat debut over New Britain. On April 6, 1942, the B-25 Mitchell and the B-26 Marauder both made their debut over the same small island.

  *As the bulk of the JAAF 4th Air Army was concentrated in New Guinea, the planes seen by Krantz were likely part of a small rear echelon or repair depot. Possibly attached to the 13th Flying Regiment, they wore the markings of an earlier unit at Rabaul, the 11th Flying Regiment, which had left its Ki-43s behind upon returning to Japan in mid-1943.

  *Destroyer Division Fifteen: Bullard, Chauncey, Edwards, Kidd, McKee, Murray, Stack, Sterrett, and Wilson. The task group fired tens of thousands of antiaircraft shells during the ensuing attack, which lasted forty-six minutes.

  CHAPTER 16

  Ferdinand the Bull

  BILL KRANTZ’S TBF Avenger had been the 170th Dash 1C model to roll out of the Iron Works in Bethpage, New York. Like all its carrier-based aircraft, Grumman had engineered the Avenger to withstand the rigors of repeated arrested landings. That built-in ruggedness was partially responsible for the survival of Krantz and his crew after their plane took a direct hit over Simpson Harbor. Trailing black smoke, the Avenger stayed in the air for 150 miles, getting the fliers most of the way back to the task force. The Wright “Twin Cyclone” fourteen-cylinder radial was almost as durable, but no reciprocating engine can withstand the loss of its oil supply. Krantz and his crew got tantalizingly close to Bunker Hill, but not close enough. Forty miles northwest of Buka Island, the engine seized with a violent shaking. Krantz had little altitude to spare, but he nosed over to gain speed for better controllability, then dropped his flaps, cut power to the engine, and notified the crew to prepare for ditching.

  As water landings go, this was routine. But in a big, heavy plane like a TBF—the largest single-engine combat plane of World War II—there was no way to avoid a hard, sudden stop. Krantz came out of it the worst. His face collided with the gun sight, which split his lips, loosened several front teeth, and broke his nose. Dazed, bleeding heavily, he crawled out onto the wing of the still-floating plane. Down in the ventral tunnel, Orville Miller was already underwater, but he unfas
tened his harness and escaped through the access hatch. His only injury was a wrenched middle finger. Case, sitting backward in his turret, had no injuries. After exiting the turret, he calmly retrieved the three-man life raft and Krantz’s single raft in its seat pack. He inflated both before stepping into the big raft as though he was going for a Sunday sail, barely getting wet past his ankles. Krantz, partially revived, swam off to retrieve a large package of emergency rations that was drifting away. Although an expert swimmer, he swallowed water and had to be hauled into the raft. Still dazed, he vomited seawater along with blood that was draining down his throat from his broken nose.

  Shortly before the Avenger sank, three other TBFs from Bunker Hill circled the survivors briefly. After they flew off, a pair of Hellcats showed up and orbited a couple of times, giving Krantz and his raft mates encouragement for a quick rescue. A few hours later, however, they heard repeated explosions in the distance. The carrier battle group had come under enemy air attack. After the noise faded, no one came looking for them.

  Together since training, the three crewmembers shared an unexpected odyssey. Initially their raft drifted south as they assessed their situation. Krantz, his face bruised and swollen, continued to vomit salt water and blood. Miller’s finger was patched up using sulfa power and a bandage from the first aid kit. Otherwise the crew was in good shape, with an ample supply of rations packed into the extra raft: twelve half-pint cans of water, some containers of malted milk tablets, nine tins of pemmican, a sail, a parachute canopy, a nautical chart, compasses, signaling devices, fishing tackle, and other small survival items. They all took off their shoes, but Krantz insisted on tying the footwear by the laces to the inside of the raft. So certain were they of being rescued that they didn’t touch any food that first day and shared only one can of water.

  After a chilly night, their clothing soaked by a rainsquall, the men rigged the sail on the second day. Krantz hoped they could sail to Empress Augusta Bay. At first they moved encouragingly southeast, but in the early afternoon the wind shifted—and with it, their fortunes.

  Pushed by the prevailing winds and currents, the men drifted back across the Solomon Sea. They could not see land on the third day, nor on the fourth until almost sundown, when they sighted low mountains to the north, probably the tip of New Ireland. Nearly out of fresh water, they started paddling toward the land, rotating the chore by twos for thirty minutes at a stretch. “I had one thing in mind: I was going to survive,” stated Krantz. “I made the other two paddle whether they liked it or not. And I made everybody get out of the raft every half-hour, so that we didn’t lose more water through evaporation. I made them cover up their heads when the sun was up, and I took my turn paddling like everybody else. That kept us occupied, and it kept our spirits up.”

  Soon after daybreak the castaways hit a strong current headed west, and they had to give up thoughts of reaching the land they had sighted. It was fortunate for them: the tip of New Ireland was heavily occupied by the Japanese, who had set up a radar station and several antiaircraft gun emplacements.

  Rain fell most of November 16, filling the empty cans, and an albatross as tame as a pet joined the men. None of them felt hungry enough to kill the bird, which stayed through the night, its beak tucked under one wing. At about 0400 the next morning, Krantz heard the distinct burble of diesel engines. He correctly surmised that a submarine was running on the surface, and soon it appeared, passing within two hundred feet of the raft. It was headed northwest, in the direction of Rabaul. The men had a strong hunch that its faint white markings were Japanese. They kept quiet, feeling no disappointment when the boat rumbled off into the darkness.

  With a steady wind out of the northeast, the survivors and their albatross sailed westerly all day on November 17. They could see land to the west and realized it was New Britain; however, because of their sluggish inflated raft and its tiny sail, another three days at sea brought them only marginally closer. The albatross flew off and the men ran out of water, which made the hours pass with agonizing slowness. On the night of November 18, a storm kicked up and they could finally slake their thirst. But waves broke over the sides of the raft, forcing them to bail. They unrigged the sail to catch rainwater, leaving the metal mast upright in hopes that a reconnaissance plane might pick it up on radar. Instead it caused an eerie electrical phenomenon known as Saint Elmo’s Fire. A spark grew from the tip of the mast into an inch-long blue flame, which soon attracted a lightning strike. The strike would momentarily dissipate the electrical charge, but the spark would then reappear, and the process repeated itself—over a dozen times. The mesmerized castaways, though soaking wet, were insulated by the rubber raft.

  As if the lightning strikes weren’t terrifying enough, a waterspout approached the men on the morning of November 20. They couldn’t possibly paddle fast enough to get out of the twister’s way. Moments before it reached them—so close that they heard it churning the sea—the spout collapsed.

  The castaways were now close enough to New Britain to smell its vegetation. Daybreak on November 21 brought the sound of breaking surf, and Krantz told them all to put on their shoes. Hours later, the rafts drifted into the surf line. The three men, badly sunburned, with festering sores from immersion in salt water and the chafing of their flight suits, tried to paddle through. But a large wave upended the raft, ejecting all three occupants into the shallows. This time Krantz and Miller avoided injury, whereas Case received a nasty cut on his left leg from an outcropping of coral.

  After ten days of sitting or lying down, the men had no strength in their legs. The last few yards were a desperate struggle, each step a battle against the surf, but at last they emerged from the water. After crawling onto the beach they sat down and prayed in thanks. “Whether we all three prayed out loud I don’t remember, but we all said a prayer,” Krantz said later. “I do remember looking out and seeing that hot sun. It looked like it was just burning. All I could see was that damn hot sun and I thought, Thank God we are not out there another day.”

  The winds and tides had pushed the crew more than 160 miles from their crash site—an average of sixteen miles a day—to the southern coast of New Britain near Cape Orford. For the remainder of the day they rested, then reconnoitered on wobbly legs and found a “Jap road.” They slept that night on the upturned raft, using the parachute for a mosquito net, then set out again the next morning, their main concern being water. “We were like animals,” recalled Krantz, “crawling along trying to suck the water off the damned leaves.”

  Deliverance appeared in the form of a frightened native family. Once the villagers realized the men were not Japanese, they provided water and food. The men drank their fill and ate their first “kau-kau,” a native-grown vegetable similar to a sweet potato, which boosted their energy. But the best tonic they received was a few brief words in Pidgin English: the natives reported the presence of a “masta” (white man) in a camp nearby.*

  THERE WERE SEVERAL mastas on New Britain and many of the other islands in the Bismarcks and Solomons, all linked by radio to a secretive unit called Ferdinand. Developed at the beginning of the war by two officers in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), the organization took its name from the 1936 picture book The Story of Ferdinand. The Aussies were more familiar with Walt Disney’s cartoon adaptation, “Ferdinand the Bull.” By the time the cartoon reached movie houses in Australia, Europe was on the threshold of war.

  Enter the naval intelligence director, Cmdr. Rupert Basil Michel Long, RAN. A World War I veteran, he realized that the hundreds of landowners along Australia’s coast and those living among the islands in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea could be organized into a network connected by two-way radios. Most already had the equipment. At the time, the state of the art in long-distance communications was low-frequency (LF) radio, known to most Australians as “wireless.” Compared with high-frequency radio waves, which provide excellent clarity over short distances (but quickly loose strength and are easily bent or t
urned by obstacles), low-frequency signals travel great distances without degrading. The government had a monopoly on two-way radio equipment in those days, having purchased a majority share of Amalgamated Wireless of Australasia (AWA) stock in 1922. So the company was obliged to provide communication services across the continent as well as to the hundreds of populated islands in the mandated territory. Two-way radios were essential for relaying messages and news among the plantations, airstrips, mines, and settlements across the Pacific islands, many of which were separated by hundreds of miles.

  Commander Long aimed to organize hundreds of civilians into a unified coastwatchers organization. In 1939 he appointed Eric A. Feldt, then a government administrator in New Guinea, to run the network in the islands from a headquarters in Port Moresby. A former RAN officer, Feldt was given a lieutenant commander’s stripes and spent several months traveling “by ship, motor boat, canoe, bicycle, airplane, and boot” along the coast of New Guinea, through the Bismarcks, down the Solomon chain, and finally to the New Hebrides. His four-thousand-mile journey achieved brilliant results. In the coming years, the coastwatchers would provide useful intelligence and perform extraordinary feats, many at the cost of their lives.

  Who chose the organization’s name is unknown. Feldt later explained the logic: “The code name, Ferdinand, was … an order to the coastwatchers, a definition of their job. It was a reminder … that it was not their duty to fight, and thus draw attention to themselves; like Disney’s bull, who just sat under a tree and smelled the flowers, it was their duty to sit, circumspectly and unobtrusively, and gather information. Of course, like Ferdinand, they could fight if they were stung.”

  During the opening months of the Pacific war, the swift, brutal Japanese onslaught cost Feldt many of his original coastwatchers, particularly on New Britain and New Ireland. Some individuals refused to leave, despite Feldt’s pleas. Others waited too long, or lacked the training and resolve needed to survive in the bush after the Japanese drove them from their homesteads. Those who were captured or turned themselves in were executed. By mid-1942, Feldt no longer had reliable eyes and ears anywhere near Rabaul.