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

by Bruce Gamble

  COMAIRSOLS PLANNERS TRIED a different tactic on December 24. A fighter sweep consisting of fifty Kittyhawks and Hellcats headed from Torokina in advance of a bomber strike. Due to a delay between events, the Japanese met both waves, scrambling ninety-four fighters for the first intercept, and eighty-one to meet the bombers. Again the victory claims were exaggerated. The Eleventh Air Fleet claimed to have shot down fifty-five Allied fighters in the first wave—more than the number of participants. New Zealanders claimed twelve enemy fighters and suffered heavily for their effort, losing six of their own (only one pilot was rescued), while the Hellcat pilots of Fighting Squadrons 33 and 40 claimed six Zeros destroyed.

  One of the latter victories was credited to Lt. j.g. David A. Scott of VF-33, who disabled a Zero over Saint George’s Channel and followed it until it hit the water. While Scott circled, another Zero got behind him unseen and opened fire. Startled by a sudden explosion in his engine from a 20mm shell, Scott saw his oil pressure drop. He immediately turned southeast, getting as far south as he could before the engine seized, and made a smooth water landing about ten miles west of Cape Saint George. Scott was observed paddling briskly in his rubber boat—and Dane Base acknowledged receipt of his position—but he was not picked up that day or the next. (Scott survived an entire week in his one-man raft. Sighted by a PV-1 Ventura, he was rescued by a Dumbo on January 1, 1944.)

  Christmas brought no letup. The assault on Rabaul continued for the third straight day, this time with an escorted bombing raid but no dedicated fighter sweep. Fifteen B-24s, escorted by approximately fifty P-38s, F4Us, F6Fs, and P-40s, unloaded almost forty tons of bombs on their targets. The Eleventh Air Fleet responded by scrambling eighty-eight fighters, resulting in numerous sharp engagements. The American pilots claimed fourteen kills (the Japanese lost three), including eight by Corsair pilots in VMF-214 and -223. The Japanese claimed four Liberators shot down, along with twenty fighters. Although no B-24s actually fell, three of the escorting fighters did. A few days hence, the families of a Corsair pilot and two P-38 pilots would get the wrenching news that their loved ones had been lost on Christmas Day.

  One lucky pilot who almost ended up in a War Department telegram was the commanding officer of VF-33, Lt. Cmdr. Hawley Russell. After shooting down a Zeke from dead astern—a victory confirmed by his wingman—Russell was in a turn at full throttle when a Zeke approaching from his left opened fire. With uncanny shooting, the enemy pilot hit Russell’s F6F with the first 20mm round fired. The shell exploded in the Hellcat’s left wing, taking out the hydraulic system and damaging the landing gear. Fragments pierced the cockpit, wounding Russell in the left leg. He and his wingman pulled out of the fight and returned to Ondonga airstrip, New Georgia, where Russell made a successful belly landing.

  THE PARTY IN Boyington’s tent on December 23 continued into Christmas Eve. But Boyington’s initial exuberance wore off, leading to a prolonged binge. One can only guess what depressed him. Stress and fatigue were proportionately worse because of his drinking, and it’s likely that he experienced a phenomenon known as “survivor’s guilt” when the likable Carnagey went missing. (“It’s sure lonesome here without old Pierre,” Boyington admitted to Walton).

  Years later one of Boyington’s cousins, a healthcare professional, described him as bipolar. His outward behavior was certainly erratic. Within three days of his professed happiness, Boyington’s mood had changed dramatically. During an interview on the night of December 26, war correspondent Fred Hampson asked Boyington if he was as eager to break the record as everyone assumed. “Sure I am,” Boyington replied. “Who the hell wouldn’t be? I’d like to break it good and proper. If I could just get on the ball again I might even run it up to thirty or thirty-five. Lord knows the hunting’s good enough when the weather lets you in there, but I’m not right. I’m not right at all.”

  The next morning, scheduled to lead a fighter sweep over Rabaul, Boyington still felt hungover. His customary cure was to plunge his head into a rain barrel. “I repeated the dunking several times … until I was able to steady myself down a bit,” he related later. “This little aid had become standard procedure with me by then, for the pressure was really on me, I felt.”

  After hopping up to Torokina with three divisions of Black Sheep, Boyington got the sweep underway at 1000. Sixty Corsairs and Hellcats formed up and headed toward Rabaul in a formation stacked to thirty thousand feet. The Japanese reaction was less vigorous this day, because Kusaka had sent a large strike (seventy-eight fighters and fifteen bombers) to attack the invaders in the Cape Gloucester area. Those planes were just returning, minus seven downed fighters, when the American fighter sweep approached.

  In an ideal position to observe the estimated fifty interceptors rising up from Rabaul, Boyington guided the sweep appropriately. Figuring that some of the pilots would be overeager, he keyed his microphone. “Take it easy,” he said, “and let down slowly.” He added that “the Japs would be up in about four minutes.” He then led the formation in a wide, 360-degree turn to the left, rolling out approximately a thousand feet above and slightly behind a dozen Zekes.

  In an uneven melee, Corsair pilots scored sixteen official victories (two Hellcat pilots shared credit for one additional Zeke), with VMF-216 accounting for a slight majority. Carl, leading the VMF-223 contingent, splashed one and was credited with a probable. Black Sheep pilots claimed five, including one confirmed Zeke for Boyington. Making an overhead pass at fourteen thousand feet, he opened fire at a hundred yards and the unarmored fighter ignited.

  It seems incongruous that Boyington did not record multiple victories. One probable reason: his wingman was not McClurg. Lieutenant Edwin A. Harper, wounded over Kahili during the previous tour, did not let Boyington out of his sight. Savvy and dedicated, he even managed to flame a Zeke over Simpson Harbor without losing contact with Boyington.*

  When the combat subsided, only one American fighter failed to return. A Corsair from VMF-216 was last seen going down over Rabaul with smoke streaming from both oil coolers and two Zekes giving chase. The pilot, 2nd Lt. Frank G. Putnam, was never recovered. The Eleventh Air Fleet, however, had six fighters missing and a seventh listed as “set on fire.” This was an interesting description. When a Zero was seen to burst into flames—a fairly common occurrence—the Japanese typically applied Bushido philosophy to explain its loss. The pilot had not been vanquished; instead, because his plane was damaged, he had elected to blow himself up. This was purely symbolic, as the pilots did not actually have a suicide switch inside the plane. Yet the Japanese had a unique word for the made-up phenomenon, jibaku, which means “to self-explode.”

  Returning to Vella Lavella, a tired-looking Boyington swung his Corsair around in the revetment, shut off the engine, and held up his index finger—a single victory. His score now stood at twenty-five, still a victory shy of the record. The correspondents didn’t care: they crowded around, anxious for details. Then someone pointed to a neat hole in the right wing of the Corsair, made by a 7.7mm bullet. It was a harmless hole, but the unseen bullet unsettled Boyington. Matheson later said, “It shouldn’t have been anything to rattle anybody, but this one damn round through his wingtip shook Boyington up.”

  Despite his fatigue and the bullet hole, Boyington spent only ninety minutes on the ground. No missions had originally been planned for the following day, but late in the afternoon, word got around that Major Rivers of VMF-216 was going to lead another fighter sweep to Rabaul in the morning. Hastily gathering three divisions, Boyington jumped in a different Corsair and took off at 1745 for Torokina. The Black Sheep scrounged some cots for the night, then arose at 0400 for chow and the mission briefing.

  The composition of the sweep was ideal. It was an all-Corsair formation, including eighteen from the host squadron, twelve Black Sheep, and eight each from Carl’s VMF-223 and newly arrived VMF-321. But the cobbled-together mission had flaws. The pilots of VMF-321 were inexperienced, having arrived in the combat zone just four days
previously, and Morrell had never led a sweep before.

  An hour after departure two Black Sheep turned back with mechanical problems. The rest had an uneventful flight. Upon reaching Saint George’s Channel at twenty thousand feet, Morrell mimicked the full turn that Boyington had used the day before. However, this was a much wider, more time-consuming circle, with the formation in a slight descent the whole time. When the Corsairs reached the west side of the caldera, they saw enemy fighters climbing over Lakunai airdrome. Morrell guided the formation across Simpson Harbor toward the enemy, apparently unaware that another large group of Zeros, to the southeast, circled above his formation. With the sun behind them, the Japanese sprang with unprecedented ferocity.

  At the rear of Boyington’s division, Lt. Donald J. Moore was last seen lagging behind his section leader, Lt. Christopher L. Magee. The separation made Moore easy for the aggressive Zekes to pick off.

  Farther back in the formation, Cameron Dustin turned the Corsairs of VMF-214’s third division to face the oncoming Zeros. He pulled hard into a climb, and the other three pilots tried to stay with him. But the maneuver was a tactical blunder, recalled Olander, flying wing on Dustin: “He flew us right up into the sun and held us on course until bullets were tearing off parts of our planes.”

  Self-preservation took over. Olander rolled into a dive; so did Matheson, leading the second section. The Zeke that had been putting arrows in Olander’s wings overshot him and paid the price, falling after a long burst from the marine’s six machine guns. Matheson, with several Zekes on his tail, dodged for his life until he reached a cloud. When he popped out, the Zekes were in front of him and slightly below. Matheson blasted the Tail-End Charlie, then firewalled the throttle until he was safely away from Rabaul.

  No one knew what happened to Dustin or to Lt. Harry R. Bartl, flying in the fourth position. Both men evidently fell to the swarm of Zeros. At one point during the action, a pilot from VMF-216 saw a Corsair in distress with a Zeke hot on its tail. Lieutenant Robert E. Foote was too far away to assist, but tried to distract the enemy pilot. “From a distance clear out of range I gave the Jap a burst,” he reported. “About that time he evidently was sure the F4U was going in, so he turned away. I followed the F4U and saw him make what appeared to be a normal water landing.”

  Foote said he was “unable to determine” if the pilot got out of the Corsair, which sank within fifteen seconds. He circled the crash site for “several more minutes,” but his report never stated clearly that he saw the pilot—raising the possibility that the pilot was incapacitated or had already bailed out.

  While the other Corsair squadrons claimed numerous victories, most of the Black Sheep fought indecisively. Boyington sighted a fighter four thousand feet below and dove to approach the enemy plane from astern. But when Boyington opened fire, the fighter suddenly zoomed with “a terrific rate of climb.” He misidentified it as Army Type 2 fighter (Nakajima Ki-44 “Tojo”), a model never based at Rabaul. Boyington likely fired on a clipped-wing Hamp, which he claimed as a probable victory, citing the fact that he saw smoke trailing behind the fighter as it climbed above him. However, he simply may have witnessed a common situation—one that fooled many Allied pilots and aerial gunners.

  Throughout the Pacific war, hundreds of Japanese planes Allies fired upon were classified as “smokers.” Many of these were declared probable victories; if the engine had been damaged badly enough to emit smoke, the aircraft probably crashed before reaching the nearest friendly field or flattop. But the “smoke,” especially in the Zero, was a common phenomenon. After a years-long study of Japanese aircraft vulnerability, Richard Dunn noted: “Zero fighters left a trail of smoke when the engine boost was increased for maximum combat performance. A sudden advance of the throttle might also result in a backfire and momentary flash of flame.”

  Several factors led to the “dirty” output, including low-octane gasoline, moisture contamination of fuel, carbon buildup, and a decline in maintenance quality. The result was an incomplete burn or improper ignition of the fuel-air mixture, especially under wide-open throttle settings. The situation was so common, according to Dunn, that Japanese pilots were cautioned not make sudden throttle changes if they suspected a fuel leak, lest a backfire ignite the leaking gasoline.

  Boyington may have hit the Hamp, but its trail of smoke was not proof of damage. He claimed a probable victory, which did nothing for his overall score. And there was nothing in his combat report to indicate that he attempted to reenter the big scrum over Rabaul that day. After the Hamp zoomed out of his sight, he apparently decided he’d had enough. Four of Boyington’s pilots, including Olander and Matheson, were credited with single victories, and members of VMF-216, -223, and -321 reportedly shot down another twenty-two Zeros. Again the total claims were preposterous, considering that the Japanese lost three fighters and their pilots, with two other Zeros badly damaged. Still, Boyington came up comparatively empty.

  Unwilling to deal with intrusive correspondents at Vella Lavella, Boyington returned to Torokina airstrip, where conditions were primitive but quiet, and remained there overnight. He had not only failed to advance his score, but he three of his own men were missing. Losing Moore, a popular Texan and one of the original pilots selected by Boyington at Turtle Bay, was especially difficult.

  Matching Boyington’s mood, heavy rains washed out December 29. After sitting around at Torokina for most of the day, he finally hopped down to Vella Lavella late in the afternoon. He landed at 1800 hours, by which time the mission orders for the following day had already been posted. It was to be another two-pronged effort, with Carl leading a fighter sweep in conjunction with a bombing raid by Thirteenth Air Force B-24s—and Boyington was not on the schedule.

  Heading straight to the VMF-223 camp area, Boyington asked Carl, “How about trading flights tomorrow?” Then he rephrased it: “Let me take your hop tomorrow.”

  Carl asked why. Boyington said, “I’m due to rotate, and I don’t think they’ll let me come back up again. I’ve got [twenty-five] airplanes and I’d like to get the record.”

  Carl figured he had plenty of time to make up the difference. “Okay, I’ll trade you,” he answered.

  Taking off at 0700 with four divisions, Boyington flew back up to Torokina on December 30. There, he received more bad news. The forecast called for lousy weather over Rabaul, and the fighter sweep portion of the mission was cancelled. Boyington’s trade had been wasted. He later wrote of feeling “helpless,” although hindsight helped ease his frustration. “I came to realize that a record meant absolutely nothing; it would be broken again and again, in spite of anything I did. I was worried only about what others might think of me,” he noted.

  The bombing mission went as planned. The two divisions of Black Sheep assigned as escorts were led by Maj. Henry S. Miller, formerly the operations officer, who had become executive officer after Carnagey’s loss. Joined by twenty Corsairs and twenty Hellcats, the fighters took off from Torokina at 0920 to rendezvous with two squadrons of Liberators out of Guadalcanal and Munda. Colonel Marion D. Unruh, commanding officer of the 5th Bombardment Group (Heavy), led the mission in a B-24 named The Pretty Prairie Special.

  Poor visibility delayed the join-up and approach to the target. Unruh led twenty B-24s, with Hellcats of VF-33 providing close cover, up Saint George’s Channel at twenty-two thousand feet. After overflying Rabaul, the formation made a 180-degree left turn and set up the bomb run, dropping more than seventy thousand-pound bombs through the scattered cloud cover. Heavy antiaircraft fire burst over Rabaul and Simpson Harbor, causing no apparent damage. However, within seconds of the formation’s collective bomb release, Unruh called to Maj. Charles L. Peirce, commanding officer of the 72nd Bomb Squadron, “Take over, Charlie, we’re going down.” Peirce moved his Liberator into the lead slot while Unruh steered toward New Ireland. (Crews were still advised to seek out the islander named Boski for assistance.) The Pretty Prairie Special, its left inboard engine smoking badly
and several Zeros closing in, was last seen descending into clouds approximately ten thousand feet over New Ireland.

  Unruh managed to ditch the B-24 just off the coast with two fatalities among the crew of eleven. Islanders paddled out and rescued the survivors, whom search planes spotted on the beach the next day. However, before a rescue could be coordinated, Unruh and his men were captured by the Kempeitai and taken to the POW compound in Rabaul.

  Unruh was popular with the crews of the 5th Bomb Group. They grieved his absence, but his loss probably did not shock them. Unruh had already flown dozens of missions—far more than most group commanders, and even more than some of his high-time crews. Lieutenant Donald MacAllister, 31st Bomb Squadron, had approached Unruh one day and suggested some reasons for him to stop leading hazardous missions: foul weather, mechanical trouble, damage from enemy action. “You can only dodge that black bean so many times,” MacAllister said. “It’ll come up and something real bad will happen to you.”

  The conversation mirrored one that had taken place in New Guinea a year earlier, when Kenney told Ken Walker to stop flying combat missions. But Unruh, like Walker, refused to listen. In fact, Unruh waved off MacAllister’s concern, saying, “Well, lieutenant, let me tell you, sir, they can’t shoot me down.”

  Of course the Japanese could—and did. And Unruh, along with the other men in his Liberator, paid a steep price for thinking he was invincible.

  WHILE GLOOM SETTLED over the 5th Bomb Group’s camp on New Year’s Eve, Boyington became testy. He spent most of the day in the tent he shared with Walton, staring at the steady rain. He was “jittery” by the time they sloshed though puddles to the mess tent for evening chow. Hampson, the AP correspondent, sat down across the table and badgered Boyington about the record. After two or three questions, Boyington lost his temper. “Goddamn it,” he shouted, flipping Hampson’s plate of food onto his lap, “why don’t you guys leave me alone? I don’t know if I’m going to break [the record] or not. Just leave me alone till I do or go down trying.”