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

by Bruce Gamble

  Rain scrubbed the first attempt to hit Rabaul with land-based SBDs and TBFs, scheduled for January 5. A sweep the following day by Lightnings and Corsairs was disappointing: less than a third of the aircraft got through the bad weather to reach Rabaul. Those that did got into a spirited fight with thirty-three intercepting Reisens. It was a fairly even matchup, the Japanese losing two Zeros while the 44th Fighter Squadron lost two of sixteen participating P-38s, one of which exploded in midair.

  A single-engine bomber attack against Tobera airdrome on January 7 got as far as the target only to find it socked in beneath clouds. Met by some seventy interceptors, the bombers headed to the alternate target, the enemy radar site at Cape Saint George, New Ireland. As secondary targets go it was an expensive mission: three navy F6Fs were lost along with four navy and marine SBDs, although two of the dive-bomber pilots were recovered.

  At last on January 9, flying from Piva Uncle on Bougainville, sixteen TBF Avengers attacked Tobera airdrome with two-thousand-pound bombs while twenty-four SBDs went after antiaircraft gun emplacements. The effort was costly, with only one Japanese plane destroyed on the ground for the loss of four Allied aircraft (one SBD and three fighters), but the single-engine bombers could place their munitions with greater accuracy than the heavies. The Tobera runway was temporarily out of commission, signifying a major shift in the campaign to neutralize Rabaul.

  Two days later, B-25s of the 42nd Bomb Group completed the first medium bomber attack on Rabaul from the Solomons, hitting Vunakanau airdrome at low level. The attempt was not particularly destructive—only about half the bombers reached the target, damaging eight planes—but another new precedent was set.

  With the advent of light and medium bomber attacks from the northern Solomons, Maj. Gen. Mitchell proved to be an aggressive commander. Rather than working his light bomber crews against progressively harder targets in sequence, he ordered a strike against the most heavily defended airdrome, Lakunai, on January 14. The strike force—thirty-six navy and marine dive-bombers carrying thousand-pounders, and sixteen torpedo bombers hauling two-thousand-pound bombs—took off at dawn from Munda. After topping off at Piva Uncle, the formation approached Rabaul at fourteen thousand feet with an escort of nearly eighty fighters.

  Some of the eighty-four Japanese fighters that took off from Rabaul intercepted the Allied formation over New Ireland. As the strike planes proceeded toward Lakunai, Japanese numbers continuously increased, until sixty to seventy fighters were looping and slow-rolling above and behind the formation, occasionally peeling off to press ever more aggressive attacks against the outer elements. But the P-40s of No. 17 Squadron RNZAF, providing close cover, refused to be drawn away from the bombers. The well-coordinated protection kept the formation intact as the SBDs and TBFs maneuvered east of Crater Peninsula before turning inbound over Tavui Point.

  Despite the fighters’ efforts, two SBDs were lost before the attack commenced. A midair collision over Saint George’s Channel chopped the tail off one dive-bomber, flown by Marine Lt. Harold R. Tuck of VMSB-341. The Japanese pulled him and his gunner, Pfc. Paul F. McCleaf, from the water and took them to the Kempeitai POW compound. Antiaircraft fire shot down the other SBD, of VMSB-236. The fate of the pilot, Lt. B. R. Ramsey, is unknown. The gunner, Staff Sgt. Charles J. Sciara, was captured by and imprisoned by the 81st Naval Garrison Unit.

  Lakunai airdrome was clouded over, so the bombers went after shipping in Simpson Harbor and Keravia Bay. Mitchell praised the attack, which caused nine direct hits and sixteen near misses. The SBDs accounted for only one “effective” hit out of three total hits, while the TBFs, with just half the number of attempts, scored the balance. The latter caused major damage to the fifteen-thousand-ton oiler Naruto, which partially sank in shallow water just off Vulcan crater; another hit or near miss slightly damaged a destroyer, Matsukaze.

  Meanwhile a huge battle swirled over the caldera and Saint George’s Channel. An Avenger of VMTB-232, disabled by Zekes, made a water landing in the channel off the coast of New Ireland. The crew eventually drifted ashore on the south coast of New Britain, where the pilot and turret gunner were rescued with the help of islanders and coastwatcher Peter Figgis. No other bombers fell to the interceptors, but five Corsairs and two Hellcats either failed to return or were written off due to combat damage.

  Another noteworthy outcome was a sharp escalation in the exaggerations made by both sides. The Allies and Japanese engaged in a frenzy of overclaiming. The Eleventh Air Fleet recorded the loss of only three Zeros, yet American pilots and gunners were credited with shooting down twenty-seven Japanese fighters, a phenomenal figure eclipsed only by the Japanese themselves, who boasted that thirty-four American fighters and thirteen bombers had fallen to Japanese guns.

  Among the American pilots, one individual stood out. Like Boyington, he was a marine, and a Corsair pilot; and like Boyington, he was out to make a name for himself. The ace race was back in full swing.

  THE MEDIA COVERAGE of Boyington’s attempt to tie the victory record—and his dramatic disappearance while achieving it—garnered plenty of attention. He was the subject of dozens of newspaper articles; Ed Sullivan featured him on his radio program and in the “Little Old New York” column he wrote for the New York Times; major magazine coverage included Life, Time, Liberty, Colliers, and even Cosmopolitan.

  Such stardom motivated Boyington’s competitors. Military aviators, particularly fighter pilots, were (and still are) as competitive as any sports superstars, entertainers, or business personalities. Among American pilots, the matter of who would emerge as the most prolific plane-killer of World War II was still far from settled. As of early January 1944, Eddie Rickenbacker, Joe Foss, and Greg Boyington shared the record at twenty-six victories, but others were nipping at their heels. Army pilots Dick Bong (21) and Tommy McGuire (16), along with Corsair drivers Marion Carl (18.5) and Kenneth A. Walsh (20), were among those in the hunt. Foss, already crossing the Pacific in command of his own squadron, VMF-115, expected to add to his score.

  Squadrons were just as competitive as individuals. More than a few commanding officers wanted to rival or surpass the record of the Black Sheep, including Tom Blackburn, leader of the Ondonga-based Fighting Squadron 17. He and his pilots had gotten a big start in the air battle over Montgomery’s task force on November 11, finishing the combat tour in early December with an official tally of 48.5 aerial victories. After regrouping, Blackburn’s Irregulars were poised to move up to Bougainville for their next tour on January 24.

  Another squadron making waves, VMF-215, had a no-nonsense leader as capable and determined as Blackburn, Carl, or Boyington. Major Robert G. Owens, who had served as executive officer during the previous tour, brought the “Fighting Corsairs” back to the forward area in early January. His squadron was primed with aggressive, talented aces, including two senior flight leaders, captains Harold L. Spears and Donald A. Aldrich.

  But another rising star in VMF-215 eclipsed them all. Lieutenant Robert M. Hanson was more like Boyington than people realized. Aside from their obvious similarities as marine F4U pilots, they shared several characteristics. Compact and stocky, both men were trophy-winning wrestlers—Boyington a Pacific Northwest regional champion at the University of Washington, Hanson a champion in a province of northern India, where he spent most of his youth as the son of Methodist missionaries. Boyington and Hanson both scored their first marine victories in VMF-214, though they did not serve in the squadron concurrently. And most importantly, Hanson had his sights on the victory record.

  After graduating from a missionary high school in the Himalayas, Hanson cycled across Europe before returning to the United States to attend college. He subsequently left Hamline University and entered naval aviation flight training after Pearl Harbor. His first operational assignment was VMF-214, where he reported as a replacement pilot in the summer of 1943. As a Swashbuckler, he proved to be the ideal wingman. On his first combat mission, a patrol over Munda on August 4, he shot a
n attacker off his division leader’s tail. Three weeks later, while temporarily based at Munda, he shot down his second enemy fighter.

  After the breakup of VMF-214, Hanson and most of the Swashbucklers transferred to VMF-215 for their next combat tour. Returning to the forward area, Hanson was part of a division patrolling over Empress Augusta Bay on the afternoon of November 1 when an enemy raid approached the Bougainville beachhead. He splashed two Zekes and a Kate, thus becoming an ace, but was himself shot down by the rear gunner of a Nakajima. Hanson might have become a statistic that day, but the crew of the destroyer Sigourney plucked him from the water, assuring him of future deeds.*

  When the Fighting Corsairs returned to combat on January 6, Hanson started his third tour. Despite his ace status, he was neither a flight nor division leader. The squadron was fat with captains, leaving Hanson far down the pecking order as a section leader. Perhaps this led to Hanson’s emergence as a lone wolf, a characteristic he adapted soon after the start of the tour. Not that it made much difference initially. The first few missions brought no close encounters with the Japanese, with only one pilot in the squadron scoring a victory during the first week. Then came the raid against Rabaul on January 14, a record-setting day for both the squadron and Hanson.

  As part of the low cover element for the TBFs on the bombing attack, Hanson and his wingman, Lt. Richard V. Bowman, stuck with the Avengers as they dove. The two Corsairs descended to two hundred feet with the bombers, then followed them to the rally point southeast of Cape Gazelle. Seeing enemy fighters almost everywhere he looked, including “lots of Zekes cruising around low,” Hanson climbed into the fracas. With Bowman on his wing, he maneuvered into position behind a pair of Zekes at 1,500 feet. Both marines opened fire simultaneously, each flaming their respective target, but Hanson subsequently “lost contact with Bowman.”

  For the next thirty minutes, Hanson fought alone. When he returned to Vella Lavella, he reported the details of not just one victory, but five. An ace-in-a-day, he had doubled his overall record to ten victories. Bowman was credited with one Zeke, and other pilots in VMF-215 with an additional thirteen. Hanson’s score was impossible, considering that the Japanese reported only three fighters missing.

  HANSON’S BIG DAY coincided with the beginning of a shift in the air war over Rabaul. During the first two weeks of January, the damages incurred by both sides had been remarkably equal. The Japanese had approximately two hundred aircraft at Rabaul, with another ninety or so in New Ireland and the Admiralties. The Allies boasted roughly twice as many planes scattered among numerous airfields throughout the Solomons. But the Japanese had one important advantage as defenders: fighting within a few miles of their home fields, many a Reisen damaged in combat returned to fly again.

  On January 9, Warrant Officer Yasushi Shimbo of Air Group 253 was on his second intercept mission over Tobera airdrome when a Corsair attacked him from astern. The pilot, probably Lt. Robert B. See of VMF-321, opened fire at 250 yards and saw a flash of fire from the Zero’s wing tank. The squadron’s post-mission report stated: “The Zeke went down billowing black smoke. Captain [Marion R.] McCown confirmed this. Lt. See was therefore credited with a sure Zeke.”

  Although Shimbo’s fighter had been hit in the wing, he was unhurt and managed to land safely at Tobera. The case illustrated the advantage of fighting over a friendly airfield and showed that Japanese fighters sometimes defied their reputation for burning easily. More importantly, it highlighted the fallibility of claimed victories—even those with eyewitness confirmation.

  Like Shimbo, numerous Japanese fighter pilots landed at Lakunai, Tobera, and Vunakanau in planes that were shot up but repairable. The result was near-parity in actual losses on opposing sides during early January. Air combat over Rabaul cost the Eleventh Air Fleet and attached carrier groups twenty-seven fighters, while Allied losses amounted to seventeen fighters and seven bombers—a ratio that favored the Allies by only 1.1 to 1.

  But the parity began to change. At about the time Hanson made his big score, the ace race developed a life of its own. The top guns in each squadron began claiming multiple victories (together with probable victories) on virtually every mission. Some may have been true, but the number of Allied fighters over Rabaul was also increasing. This watered down the claims, making it even more difficult to reconcile the reports with actual enemy losses. And because more Allied fighters were involved, attrition within the Eleventh Air Fleet and attached units increased. The result was a gradual decline in the number of operational aircraft at Rabaul.

  Despite this shift, Rabaul was still dangerous. On January 17, the Japanese shot down twelve Allied planes, including eight P-38s. Also lost were one Hellcat, one Corsair, an SBD, and a TBF. Three days later, during an attack by Thirteenth Air Force B-25s on Vunakanau airdrome, two bombers were lost along with two P-38s and three F4Us. In an unusual happenstance, all three Corsairs were from one division in VMF-321.

  While scissoring above the B-25s in high cover, Bob See’s division was jumped near Cape Gazelle by Air Group 204, which had scrambled more than forty Zeros. See got away, his Corsair damaged by bullets in the cowling and a 20mm shell in his left wing, but the rest of his division failed to return. Captain McCown, either killed or incapacitated by enemy gunfire, was still in his Corsair when it augered into the jungle south of Rabaul; Lt. Robert W. Marshall was shot down and captured, but died that day of excessive blood loss (so said the Japanese), and Lt. Roger H. Brindos also became a prisoner. Although he evaded the Japanese for two days, he was eventually delivered to the Kempeitai compound.

  Weather permitting, Maj. Gen. Mitchell scheduled increasingly heavy attacks against Rabaul almost daily. The operations staff rotated assignments to give every squadron a fair share of tough missions and days off, but that didn’t keep aggressive commanders like Bob Owens and Tom Blackburn from campaigning for every mission they could get. Their Corsairs did no one (except the Japanese) any good sitting in a revetment. Although some pilots were content to fly when they were told, and others feared Rabaul, many regarded the missions as gravy trains: they wanted to shoot down enemy planes and improve their individual records. In Owens’ squadron, Harold Spears ran up his score with three victories on January 18, two on January 20, and one more (plus a probable) on January 22. So did Don Aldrich, who racked up ten victories in two weeks, including four on January 28.

  But no one could match Bob Hanson’s spree. He did not fly to Rabaul again until January 20, when he scored a single victory, then he destroyed three on January 22, four (plus a probable) on January 24, three (and one probable) on January 26, and four more on January 30. In just sixteen days, he was credited with a phenomenal twenty Japanese fighters shot down in aerial combat. Combined with the five kills he had achieved during his first two combat tours, his personal score stood at twenty-five.

  It was too good to be true. Other squadrons participated in the same missions, some claiming huge scores of their own. Blackburn’s VF-17 commenced their second combat tour at the new Piva Yoke airstrip on January 26, flying missions to Rabaul for five consecutive days. During that short span, the squadron was credited with the destruction of 57 enemy fighters. VMF-215 and the other marine squadrons, meanwhile, were credited with another 71 kills during the same five-day stretch. The aggregate claims (Hellcats and Lightnings shot down six more) added up to more than 130 enemy planes. Japanese losses were indeed heavy, with 36 planes missing or written off (and only a handful of pilots recovered), but the overclaiming ratio was still almost four-to-one. Competitive squadron commanders, complicit intelligence officers, and swaggering pilots all contributed to the phenomenon. As aviation historian Barrett Tillman would later describe it: “The process was wide open to error and abuse, and … the numbers raced out of all proportion.”

  Hanson’s personal score was too meteoric. By January’s end, his squadron mates noticed irregularities. “Hanson would land about a half hour after everyone else came back from the mission and report h
is kills,” recalled George W. Brewer, a pilot who had joined the squadron shortly before the tour began. “His wingman, Sampler, would return with the rest of us.”

  Lieutenant Samuel M. Sampler had flown the past few missions on Hanson’s wing, but only during the first portion of the flight. After escorting the bombers to their rally point, Hanson always managed to lose Sampler prior to engaging enemy fighters. Thus his claims could be neither confirmed nor denied. The squadron’s intelligence officer, relying on his own judgment and the honor system, rubber-stamped Hanson’s claims without verification. When questioned, Sampler would only state that “Hanson was a wild man and no wingman could stick with him.”

  Brewer got up the gumption to directly question the ace:

  I asked Hanson how he could get three and four kills per mission when Zeros were getting fewer and fewer. He told me his secret was that after the bombers dropped their bombs, instead of joining up with the squadron, he would proceed to the airfields south of Rabaul. He explained that there was always a cumulous buildup in that area, and that he would duck in and out of the clouds and shoot down Zeros that were returning to land. It seemed like a great idea to me.

  The whole squadron was off the day after Hanson’s four-victory effort. Then foul weather set in, precluding any missions on February 1 and 2. Finally, a strike was scheduled for February 3, the day preceding Hanson’s twenty-fourth birthday, with a preliminary briefing on the evening of February 2. After the essentials were reviewed—an attack on Tobera airdrome by SBDs and TBFs, with more than sixty fighters as escorts—flight leader Don Aldrich pulled Brewer aside for a confidential assignment. Aldrich had rearranged the division, putting Brewer on Hanson’s wing for the forthcoming mission. “He ordered me to stick with Hanson from takeoff to landing,” recalled Brewer, “so I could observe and confirm whatever happened.” Brewer understood the implications, and assured Aldrich that he had never become separated from his leader.