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

by Bruce Gamble

  Kenney’s recollection was inaccurate. Halsey did take over responsibility for the next phase of Cartwheel, but the airstrip at Torokina Point was nowhere near completion. Only ten days had elapsed between the invasion of Bougainville and Halsey’s second carrier raid; although the 71st Construction Battalion began bulldozing a new airstrip almost immediately, the Seabees could not perform miracles. It would take them until mid-December to complete the field—a remarkable accomplishment, especially considering that the field was scraped out of an uninhabited jungle in less than six weeks.

  Those weeks were important. On November 12, the day after the second carrier raid, Admiral Koga ordered the remaining aircraft of the 1st Carrier Division back to Truk. During their time at Rabaul, the carrier-based planes and the Eleventh Air Fleet rikko units had sortied every few nights to attack American convoys shuttling back and forth from Torokina. The surviving crews kept submitting excessive claims, which aviation historian Osamu Tagaya would later ascribe to “crew inexperience and the chaos and confusion of explosions in the night.” The result was a twisted naiveté: with every bright flash, the bomber and torpedo crews assumed they had sunk a mighty ship. And of course the Johokyoku kept releasing fantastic stories to the press, resulting in a whole series of “Air Battles Off Bougainville” that were ballyhooed in the newspapers for weeks. Nobody in Japan, it seemed, doubted the combined claims, which added up to five battleships, ten aircraft carriers, nineteen cruisers, seven destroyers, and nine transports—all supposedly sunk during Operation Ro-Go.

  Emperor Hirohito even issued a rare Imperial Rescript to praise the units involved, but in reality, the airmen had scored only a few torpedo hits, causing repairable damage to cruisers Birmingham and Denver in the 2nd and 4th Air Battles Off Bougainville, respectively. Sandwiched in between was the attack on Montgomery’s task group, which went down in Japanese lore as the third great air battle in the series.

  After the withdrawal of the First Carrier Fleet’s aircraft—which had lost 120 planes and about half its aviators in two weeks—Vice Admiral Kusaka had to rely on the planes of the Eleventh Air Fleet. He reported a strength of 202 aircraft on November 12, but Operation Ro-Go had greatly reduced his combat readiness. Out of 113 Type 0 fighters on hand, for example, twenty-five needed major repair and twenty-nine others needed lesser maintenance, leaving only fifty-nine Reisens operational—a readiness rate of just over 50 percent. Among the land-attack units, the ratio was similar: only seventeen serviceable rikko out of thirty-six G4Ms were parked on the airdromes. Accounting for the operational Vals, Kates, Judys, and a handful of Gekko night fighters assigned to the Eleventh Air Fleet, Kusaka had perhaps 110 aircraft available for combat.

  Even if the fleet’s readiness status jumped significantly, another problem was the debilitation of men due to illness. At any time, approximately one-third of the aviation personnel were grounded with malaria or other diseases; thus, the maintenance crews that fixed the planes were understrength. If they managed to raise aircraft availability above 67 percent, there wouldn’t be enough healthy fliers to man the planes. The combination of environmental factors and combat attrition created a cyclical drawback that the Eleventh Air Fleet could not overcome.

  Given such limitations, Kusaka had difficulty mounting further counterattacks against the American beachhead on Bougainville or the convoys supporting it. Yet he continued to try. Shortly before 0400 on November 17, a flight of nine Bettys and five Kates initiated a torpedo attack on a convoy of LSTs and APDs escorted by destroyers, which the Japanese glorified as a large carrier force. Superior Flight Petty Officer Gintaro Kobayashi of Air Group 702 put a torpedo into McKean, one of the APDs. The destroyer-transport sank in about fifteen minutes, prompting the Japanese to claim another hugely inflated victory known as the 5th Air Battle Off Bougainville. Four rikko did not return from the raid, and a fifth, along with one of the Kates, “suffered great damage.”

  In a raid later that morning, ten Vals escorted by fifty-five Zekes found and attacked another convoy, claiming to have sunk three transports, beached a fourth, a left a destroyer burning. No ships actually sank. A large CAP intercepted the Japanese planes, ten of which were shot down. The day’s two raids cost the Eleventh Air Fleet fourteen aircraft and their crews, with two more planes badly damaged.

  Thereafter, except for small-scale night harassing attacks on Bougainville, enemy air raids ceased. Conversely, with the Fifth Air Force out of the picture, the Japanese enjoyed another extended break in daylight bombing. Their only disruptions were periodic nighttime attacks by the three squadrons of RAAF Beauforts in No. 9 Group, based on Goodenough Island. Throughout November and the first few months of 1944, the twin-engine Beauforts alternated between low-level torpedo attacks in Simpson Harbor and medium-altitude bombing attacks against the airdromes, wharves, and business district. The raids were unescorted. Aircraft that incurred battle damage or became separated from their squadron faced a long, lonely return flight in the darkness.

  A mission on the night of November 14–15 provided a prime example. In what was described by contemporary newspapers as “the heaviest all-RAAF raid on Rabaul ever launched,” thirty-two Beauforts attacked in three waves, spending a total of two hours over the target. In the first wave, a crew from No. 6 Squadron reported sinking an eight-thousand-ton transport, which they bombed from 150 feet. (No corresponding loss was reported by the Japanese.) In the second wave, half the Beauforts carried a torpedo, but the attacks fared no better. One aircraft from No. 8 Squadron failed to return and was last seen circling a tiny island fifty miles due west of Kiriwina. A search for the missing plane the next day failed to turn up anything except a floating fuel tank. Then in 2000, noted Australian diver and historian Rodney Pearce discovered the wreck in sixty feet of water near the island. About a year later, after suctioning out sand, divers discovered the remains of all four crewmen inside the cockpit.

  Joseph Hewitt continued to send Beauforts to Rabaul, mostly to keep the Japanese uneasy. Warrant Officer Stanley J. Mars, a gunner-radio operator, reported on the moonless night of November 30: “As we approached Rabaul, we could see our target very faintly. Then the searchlights came on, and we picked out the bay clearly. We dodged around the lights and dropped our bombs, but there was no antiaircraft fire till we were on our way out. It was half a mile away by then, and didn’t worry us.” One of the pilots spotted enemy night fighters aloft. Their navigation lights were on, making them easy to avoid.

  For the Beaufort crews, who typically flew low-altitude attack profiles, the Japanese and foul weather were not the only hazards. On the evening of December 4, a torpedo strike by six aircraft of No. 8 Squadron ended unexpectedly for one crew. Flying over Saint George’s Channel, Squadron Leader Noel T. Quinn hit an unknown object at 150 feet, which made the Beaufort nosedive into the sea. Quinn must have slowed the plane before it hit, because he and the navigator, Flying Officer Ross B. O’Loghlen, survived the crash—even though both were ejected from the cockpit on impact. Suffering from concussions, both men were picked up by the Japanese and taken to the 81st Naval Garrison Unit POW compound. The other two crewmen, severely injured, were allegedly rescued as well but died in the naval hospital on Namanula Hill.

  Less than three weeks after the mishap, Quinn was flown to Japan. Joining him were two U.S. Navy pilots from the Kempeitai compound, Bill Welles and Stefan Nyarady. As the only known carrier-based pilots (both from Saratoga) held at Rabaul, they were undoubtedly of top priority to the enemy’s intelligence community. In Japan they would undergo thorough interrogation, but all three POWs survived.

  During the last weeks of 1943, in light of the heavy bombing in October and November, Lieutenant Matsuda, 6th Field Kempeitai, professed concern about the well-being of the local civilians, conscripted prostitutes, and even the captives in his unit’s compound. Years later he would write: “As planned in advance, Commander Kikuchi visited chief of staff Kato to advise [him] that non-combatants, such as nurses and ‘comfort
women,’ be sent back to the homeland at the earliest opportunity. His suggestion was accepted. The reason for it was that keeping women on the battlefield in the fight to the finish was not a humane thing.…”

  Despite Lt. Gen. Rimpei Kato’s apparent agreement, the response by high command was sluggish. Two months later, nothing had been done to send noncombatants away, or to provide air raid shelters for POWs. During an RAAF attack in mid-December, Matsuda was sheltering in a slit trench with two Japanese nurses when a heavy bomb detonated nearby. The concussion tossed all three of them out of the trench. Realizing that their safety was getting more tenuous by the day, Matsuda urged his superiors to send the comfort women and nurses elsewhere:

  I reconfirmed the necessity of sending them away from such violence, and it was December, 1943, when non-combatants were put aboard the last hospital ship bound for home. Later, the MPs were the focus of attacks from several quarters for sending the comfort women away, even getting such demands as providing white nuns and Chinese women in their place, which was firmly refused, of course, and rightly so.…

  Civilian internee Gordon Thomas confirmed Matsuda’s timeframe, writing on December 18: “Of late the number of men bound for the House of a Thousand Delights has diminished … these ladies are few now. They have been sent away for safety’s sake.”

  Knowing they faced an uncertain future because of the stigma of prostitution—forced or unforced—the comfort women left Rabaul between November 1943 and early 1944. Rumors have long suggested that few of them survived the voyage, because so many Japanese cargo and merchant ships were sunk by the Allies.

  At least one sinking involving comfort women is partially documented. An unknown number were aboard Himalaya Maru, part of a seven-ship convoy that left Rabaul in the early morning of November 30. The aging, pre–World War I cargo vessel, displacing five thousand tons, was crammed with 2,400 passengers. Late that night, Himalaya Maru was bombed and sunk ten miles south of New Hanover Island by a “Black Cat” U.S. Navy Catalina. Only two of the comfort women perished—the survivors were rescued by other ships in the convoy—but the sinking was an unfortunate conclusion to their sad tale of exploitation.

  WHEN KENNEY’S RESPONSIBILITY for the aerial siege of Rabaul ended, he did not pass the baton to his counterpart in SOPAC. Halsey’s chain of command was complex. Whereas Kenney was the top airman in SOWESPAC, dominated by the Fifth Air Force with a RAAF contribution, Halsey’s aerial forces were diverse. Marine air had its heyday in the Solomons, and U.S. Army presence in the form of the Thirteenth Air Force was also large; land-based U.S. Navy squadrons made a major contribution, as did the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF). The multinational, multiservice forces came under the bailiwick of Vice Adm. Aubrey W. Fitch, designated Commander, Air, South Pacific Forces (ComAirSoPac); however, only the long-range reconnaissance and transport commands were under his direct operational control.

  The man who called the shots for tactical missions held a subordinate position, ComAirSols, which Halsey rotated among the services. On November 20, 1943, command passed to Maj. Gen. Ralph J. Mitchell, USMC, who was also commanding general of Marine Air South Pacific (MASP) and 1st Marine Air Wing. His staffs included Bomber Command, Fighter Command, and Strike Command. A fourth element, Commander, Aircraft Northern Solomons (ComAirNorSols), would be activated as soon as the airstrip at Torokina Point became operational.

  All eyes were on that small piece of real estate. After twenty-one months of hobnobbing, from Morocco to Washington to Brisbane, after all the planning sessions that led to the evolution of the Elkton Plan, the moment was finally at hand. With a small beachhead on Bougainville in Allied hands, the spotlight turned to the Seabees. The plan was to quickly construct a fighter strip, which would support almost round-the-clock fighter cover while a larger base was built to support bombers.

  The unit chosen to build one of the most crucial airfields in the Southwest Pacific was untested. Activated near Williamsburg, Virginia, in April 1943, the 71st Naval Construction Battalion had arrived overseas in September and had no experience working in a tropical jungle. But the Seabees excelled from the moment the invasion of Bougainville began. Led by Cmdr. Austin Brockenbrough Jr., fourteen members of the battalion waded ashore with the first wave of marines. Almost immediately they offloaded two International Harvester TD-9 bulldozers and began clearing roads and pads for supply dumps; they also used the dozers to drag heavy loads across the beach.

  By day two, working under periodic sniper fire, the Seabees began to survey the only suitable location for the airstrip: an east-west alignment running to the tip of Torokina Point. The land was swampy and heavily forested with trees too huge to push over with dozers. Each had to be cut down by hand, and the stumps blasted with dynamite. To provide drainage, fifty-foot-wide ditches were cut, turning Torokina Point into an island. With the arrival of each reinforcement convoy from Guadalcanal, additional echelons of the battalion came ashore—several arriving under enemy air attack—which greatly expanded the workforce. More heavy equipment arrived aboard the transports: dozers, graders, rollers, and even draglines for hauling dynamited coral from the shallows. (Run through a crusher, the coral was used to surface roads and aircraft ramps.)

  Progressing eastward from Torokina Point, the Seabees cleared 50 percent of the airfield by D-day plus twenty. Surfacing began using sections of interlocking perforated steel planking (PSP), also called Marston mat. By D-day plus twenty-three, enough of the runway was completed to allow a navy SBD with an inflight emergency to land safely. The unofficial first landing drew a large crowd, after which the Seabees helped repair the dive-bomber’s broken oil line.

  Two weeks later, at 1510 on December 8, the airfield was nearing completion when three Vought F4U Corsairs buzzed the strip. Waggling their wings, the fighters turned downwind and lowered their landing gear. Realizing that the pilots intended to land, the Seabees quickly moved heavy equipment out of the way. The fighters completed their turn, took appropriate intervals, and plopped down on the steel mat. They bounced slightly on the newly laid planking, which did not cover the full length of the landing area. Luckily the Corsairs were rolling at a safe speed when their wheels rolled from the Marston mat onto the base of packed dirt.

  The fighters drew plenty of attention. Other F4Us, such as those from Blackburn’s Fighting 17 and a few marine squadrons based in the Central Solomons, had been patrolling over Torokina for the past five weeks. On several occasions, the Seabees had watched them mix it up with Japanese attackers. But this trio had not been among them. They were members of Marine Fighting Squadron 214, the Black Sheep, which had just started a combat tour. Operating from Barakoma strip on Vella Lavella, the squadron conducted a few uneventful Cherryblossom patrols over Bougainville. On this afternoon, while dodging strong thunderstorms, a four-plane division led by Capt. J. Cameron Dustin lingered a little too long. One pilot returned to base early because of a leaking wing tank, but the other three, lacking enough fuel to return to Vella Lavella, landed at Torokina for gas. The unfinished field, drenched by a recent downpour, looked like “a quagmire” to Corsair pilot Lt. Edwin L. Olander.

  The three fighters were stuck overnight. The weather was bad, and the Seabees had nothing more sophisticated than a hand-cranked wobble pump for refueling the aircraft. All three were ready the next morning, however, and the marines were back on Vella Lavella by 0830. There, Olander told his commanding officer, Maj. Gregory Boyington, that the Torokina airstrip was a muddy mess.

  Later that day, ironically, the ground echelons of VMF-212 and -215 arrived at Torokina to establish servicing and maintenance facilities for fighters. The following day, December 10, the airstrip was declared operational. It had taken the Seabees only forty days—working through the night and enduring enemy artillery fire and aerial bombing that killed several personnel—to complete the airfield. Its single runway, 4,750 feet long by 200 feet wide, was paved to a width of one hundred feet and featured berms of crushed coral. A parallel
taxiway of the same length, forty feet wide, was also surfaced with steel planking. Numerous crossovers, connecting roads, administrative and utility buildings, bombproofed operations buildings, water towers, camp and messing facilities, latrines and showers, and electrical wiring completed the infrastructure.

  Although three Corsairs of VMF-214 had used the strip two days before it became operational, another squadron received official recognition for being the first to land at Torokina. Seventeen F4Us from VMF-216, a brand-new squadron that had arrived overseas a few weeks earlier, touched down on December 10. Later that morning, Boyington flew up from Vella Lavella to investigate the new strip for himself.

  IT IS DOUBTFUL that anyone had a greater personal interest in the new airfield than Boyington. Renowned as an aggressive, daring combat leader—and also as a troublesome, heavy drinker—Boyington desperately wanted to redeem his reputation.

  His Marine Corps career had been shaky from the start. A collegiate wrestler, Boyington had earned a degree in aeronautical engineering and worked for a year as a draftsman at Boeing. Then, as a naval aviation cadet in 1936, he had his first drink in Pensacola, Florida. Boyington fell into the grip of alcoholism in the days before anyone had seriously studied the disease. To complicate matters, he was married and had three children, strictly against regulations for cadets. A gifted flier, he excelled in the high-g environment and was assigned to a fighter squadron—the only community he cared about. But because it was necessary to keep his family hidden, he accumulated debts that he could not possibly hope to overcome with his Depression-era pay. By 1941, with his marriage imploding and his drinking becoming more erratic, Boyington found himself frequently in trouble with his superiors.

  In the summer of 1941, Boyington’s creditors caught up with him. Stationed in Pensacola as a flight instructor, he was in debt for more than four thousand dollar—and a thick file of complaints had been forwarded to the Commandant of the Marine Corps.*