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

by Bruce Gamble

  When the crews went out to the flight line the following morning, Hanson gave Brewer the silent treatment. This irritated Brewer, who asked Hanson if he had any instructions. “Just do what you always do,” Hanson replied, walking away. After a few steps he paused and half-turned toward Brewer. “By the way,” he added, “we may go down and strafe Cape Saint George on the way back.”

  This didn’t surprise Brewer. Hanson had mentioned in his post-mission report on January 30 that he “ducked down and strafed a large house” there during the flight back to base. Brewer knew that if he pulled a stunt like that, “Big O” would ground him; however, Hanson, who hoped to be “on the next cover of Life magazine,” could make up his own rules.

  The mission went smoothly at first, although Hanson gave Brewer the silent treatment again. Brewer flew in perfect echelon formation, but the ace never acknowledged his wingman’s presence. Over the target, the SBDs dropped forty-three thousand-pounders in the revetment area and TBFs scored thirteen direct hits on the runway. Four of the bombers were slightly damaged by antiaircraft fire, while more than a dozen Zekes dropped phosphorus bombs with no effect. All bombers rallied at four thousand feet at the assigned point and headed back to their respective bases.

  With the bombers safely on their way, Hanson headed for towering clouds south of Tobera. Thus far, Brewer had not been challenged to keep his promise to Aldrich, but as he later explained, he was about to earn his pay:

  My anticipation was great. I expected to see some shooting very soon. As we approached this large cumulonimbus cloud I moved in tight, knowing visibility would be almost zero inside. I was totally unprepared for what happened next. We were only a few seconds into the cloud when Hanson wrapped it up in a steep (almost vertical) bank to the left. The cloud was so dense I could barely make out the outline of his plane. Then, without warning, he reversed to nearly vertical turn to the right. I had been riding high on the outside of the turn, and when he suddenly reversed I had to tuck under very abruptly to avoid a midair collision.

  He started another reversal, but this time I got smart. I pulled right under him and back about half a plane length, my prop spinning under the belly of his plane. From there I could match every movement of his wings and I vowed he wasn’t going to lose me unless we had a collision and both ended up in a big fireball—which would have happened on that first reversal if I had not acted so quickly. He made three or four more turns, and by then I was really angry.

  Brewer now understood what had happened to Sampler on previous missions: Hanson had deliberately thrown him off, and thus lost all credibility regarding his alleged kills. Brewer was appalled.

  As though he knew the secret was out, Hanson did not bother to look for enemy planes that morning. Unable to shake Brewer, he exited the cloud and headed for Bougainville. Brewer pulled back into formation on Hanson’s wing, taunting nonverbally: “I’m still here.”

  A few minutes later, Brewer spied a Zero below and to his right, heading toward the same cloud they had just exited. Two other Corsairs were chasing it, but had no hope of catching the Zero before it reached the cloud. Hanson was oblivious. Brewer briefly considered making a high-side run on the enemy fighter, then remembered his pledge to Aldrich. Unaware that he was passing up the only opportunity he would ever get to shoot down an enemy plane, he let the Zero go.

  While Brewer debated his choices, another Zero slipped unseen onto his tail and opened fire. Brewer saw tracer rounds as they zipped past his canopy. Reacting instinctively, he pushed the big Corsair over into a full-throttle power dive and managed to lose his antagonist. But the engine had been hit. Flames licked back as far as the cockpit. Brewer leveled off, jettisoned the canopy, and had up to bail out—then realized he was still over the Gazelle Peninsula. Greatly fearing capture, he sat back down and decided to make for Saint George’s Channel. He stood a better chance of survival, he thought, if he ditched at sea. He retarded the throttle, and much to his amazement the fire went out. Even better, the engine still felt smooth. Sans canopy, trailing a ribbon of black smoke that would attract prowling Zeros, Brewer steered for Bougainville.

  Then he got angry again. Hanson was gone. “Marines just do not go off and leave a crippled buddy,” Brewer reminded himself. “Not ever!”

  Seeing the Corsair in distress, two Hellcat pilots joined up with Brewer. Relieved to see their grinning faces, he settled down as they escorted him to Vella Lavella. Safely on the ground, Brewer’s attention turned back to Hanson. He headed for the operations tent, intending to reveal Hanson’s misdeeds—but the lone wolf hadn’t come back. “I quickly learned that Hanson had caught up with the squadron,” Brewer later wrote. “Then, when they were passing nearby Cape St. George, he pulled out of formation, dived down to strafe it just as he had told me we might do, and was blown out of the air by the Jap gunners before he even crossed the beach. Members of the squadron, looking down from high altitude, saw him crash into the water.”

  While the base buzzed with the news of Hanson’s death, Brewer reported to the intelligence officer. The nonflier showed little interest in Brewer’s report, except when he mentioned the Zero being chased by two Corsairs. Later, Brewer was incensed to discover that the facts had been deliberately misrepresented. In the story the Marine Corps released, Hanson dove to the rescue of two Corsairs being chased by Zeros.

  The whole affair left Brewer with “an abiding hatred of all public relations officers and the f---ing admirals and generals who encourage their staffs to tell bigger lies and put out bigger hype.” Hanson received a posthumous Medal of Honor. The hypocrisy of it, Brewer thought, deserved to be revealed, but he had a change of heart after concluding that Hanson’s parents, the Methodist missionaries, had already suffered enough pain. Blowing the whistle on their son would do more harm than good.

  THE JAPANESE HAD their lone wolves as well. Some units, such as Air Group 253, did not acknowledge pilots’ individual scores, choosing instead to record victories as shared by the entire group. Other units recognized individual achievement. Warrant Officer Tetsuo Iwamoto, one of the top aces in the Imperial Navy, arrived at Rabaul in November 1943 with a detachment of fifteen Zeros. Initially assigned to Air Group 204, Iwamoto shot down about twenty Allied planes in one month.

  Raised on a farm north of Hiroshima, Iwamoto began flying combat missions in central China in early 1938; later, as a member of the Zuikaku fighter group, he participated in famous events from Pearl Harbor to the Coral Sea. After a year and a half serving in the home islands, he went to the South Seas to defend Rabaul. So far, he had survived three intense months of combat there.

  Iwamoto experienced his share of narrow escapes. After one engagement over Rabaul, mechanics discovered almost 170 holes in his aircraft. Several slugs had struck his seat, and two were lodged in the frame. Close calls don’t come much closer. But for all his luck in combat, the top ace had no defense against tropical disease. Stricken with dengue fever and malaria, Iwamoto spent several days convalescing, then took off on a fighter scramble before he was fully recovered. At the end of the flight he wobbled back to the command post and collapsed. Within days, however, he was back in the air.

  Like many of his opponents, such as Hanson, Iwamoto preferred to fight alone. After the battles over Rabaul ended, while reminiscing with cronies, he told Warrant Officer Nishizawa, another top ace, “I would avoid the enemy when he came into attack,” confirming what many Allied pilots reported. “I would wait until he was withdrawing, chase after him, and then shoot him down. In other words, I would wait at altitude over Rabaul and pick off the ones who were leaving the fight with a single burst. These guys would already be thinking of home and didn’t want to fight any more. They would try to make a run for it, so it was easy to shoot them down. I once shot down up to five in one fight that way.”

  Nishizawa told Iwamoto he was “cheating,” and accused him of simply picking off strays that “were damaged or got cold feet.” Nishizawa thought that such kills should be shared.


  “But if I didn’t shoot them down,” replied Iwamoto, “they’d make it back to their base, wouldn’t they?” He then talked about situations when the Allies had the numerical advantage. “When there’s just too many of them, and I figure there’s no way to win,” he said, “I close my eyes and charge head-on into the middle of the enemy formation with my guns firing the whole time, and turning my control column like crazy until I go out the other side.”

  The repartee continued, but Nishizawa finally capped it by claiming he had downed more Allied planes than Iwamoto. “When I shot down 100,” Nishizawa added, “I got a personal commendation and a sword from commander-in-chief Kusaka.”

  Aside from their one-upmanship, the Japanese typically shared similar opinions about the strengths and weaknesses of Allied fighters. Warrant Officer Sadamu Komachi, a Reisen pilot from Ishikawa Prefecture, arrived at Rabaul in December 1943 after a lengthy home tour in Japan. A veteran of Pearl Harbor, the Coral Sea, and several other early battles, he noticed dramatic differences between the Allied fighters he had faced in 1942 and those he fought in the skies over Rabaul. Initially assigned to Air Group 204, he revealed some of his insights in a postwar interview:

  As the war progressed, the difference in aircraft development capability between Japan and the USA became marked. Take, for example, the specifications of the Zero Type 52 and the Grumman F6F Hellcat, both introduced in 1943. The differences are glaring. The F6F’s engine was 2,100 horsepower versus the Reisen’s 1,130 horsepower, while top speed was 611 kilometers per hour against the Reisen’s 565 kilometers per hour. Japan’s prized Reisen had by then been, developmentally, completely outclassed.

  The early Reisen’s greatest trump had been its small turning radius. In large-scale air combat we used all kinds of tactics to lure the enemy into a dogfight. And finally, the enemy stopped fighting on our terms, and with power and speed they carried out with all their strength frontal attacks and disengaged before we could turn after them.

  In that situation, we could not compete. Our only tactic then was to spot the enemy first, before they prepared themselves to attack, and vanquish them.

  With honest respect for the F6F, Komachi considered the Hellcat the best enemy fighter he faced. “It was faster than our Zero and more powerful,” he explained. “It could dogfight, whereas the F4U could not.”

  Nearly killed by an F6F during the Marianas campaign, Komachi added: “There is nothing more frightening than a Hellcat on your tail. They would just shower you with bullets. I used to have nightmares about that!”

  Warrant Officer Takeo Tanimizu, who received flight training after the Pacific war began, served on carriers before reporting to Rabaul in late 1943. His first combat coincided with the Fifth Air Force’s big raid on November 2, when Tanimizu battled Lightnings. “P-38s were not difficult to fight,” he later stated. “In 1942, the Americans lost many dogfights because their pilots did not fully utilize the capabilities of this fighter. They attempted to dogfight us and lost. At low altitudes, they were easy prey because they were not very fast. Later, their pilots got smart and stayed up where we couldn’t reach them. They would swoop down like hawks, make their pass and then climb for altitude. We always had to keep looking up.… The weakest part of the P-38 was the tail: one 20mm shell and the tail would snap off.”

  Tanimizu’s opinion of American naval fighters resembled that of his fellow Reisen pilots:

  The F4U was a tough plane. The only time you could shoot it down was when it was fleeing. You had to shoot at it from a certain angle—from the rear and down into the cockpit—or your bullets would bounce off.

  I think the toughest opponent was the Grumman F6F. They could maneuver and roll, whereas planes such as the P-38 and F4U made hit-and-run passes. The F6F could actually dogfight with us, and it was much faster and more powerful than our Zero.

  Kusaka even weighed in. As a fleet commander, he compared the Allied fighters through a much wider lens. “The Army planes—P-40s and P-38s—were both very difficult to engage in aerial combat, but once engaged they were shot down very easily,” Kusaka stated in a postwar interrogation. “The Navy plane—the F6F—was not so very fast, but it was very maneuverable and was very much adapted for aerial combat. The F4U was an excellent plane because of its superior speed, heavy armor and armament, and it was very difficult to shoot down in aerial combat. This plane was considered to be the best.”

  EQUIPPED WITH IMPROVED Reisens, and fighting vigorously to defend their own airdromes, the Japanese held their own for the first few weeks of the renewed aerial campaign. By late January, however, Admiral Kusaka decided to relieve the much-depleted Sixth Air Attack Force, which included Air Group 204. Needing reinforcements, he requested the aircraft of the 2nd Carrier Division at Truk. Underscoring the need for more planes, at least thirteen fighters were reported lost in combat over Rabaul on January 23, and the transfer was ordered by Admiral Koga.

  Two days later, the reinforcements arrived. Three carriers (Junyo, Hiyo, and Ryuho) sent sixty-two Zeros, eighteen Vals, and eighteen Kates to bolster Kusaka’s defenses and his limited attack capability. The exhausted Sixth Air Attack Force withdrew to Truk for recuperation and training, leaving behind twenty Zeros and a few other planes. In addition, approximately twenty pilots from Air Group 204 were transferred laterally to Air Group 253 at Tobera, a move that some did not embrace. Among them were warrant officers Iwamoto and Komachi. They felt hamstrung at Tobera, which lacked the width to permit the three-plane section scrambles they were accustomed to at Lakunai.

  One of the carrier division’s staff officers, Lt. Cmdr. Masatake Okumiya, flew to Rabaul on January 20 ahead of the main transfer. Previously assigned to the staff of the 26th Air Flotilla on Bougainville, he looked forward to a reunion with his old unit. He first paid his respects to Kusaka and was briefed about current operations, wherein he learned that the Eleventh Air Fleet was currently down to just eighty Zeros, with 30 percent of the aviators and ground crews sick. Okumiya was then driven to the building that the 26th Air Flotilla had commandeered for its headquarters, a large, handsome house built on pilings in the tropical style.

  Remembering his friends in good spirits, Okumiya received a shock when he saw their demeanor:

  I rushed out of the car as soon as it stopped, and ran up the staircase. I expected to see my dear old friends after four months of separation.

  The people I saw at headquarters were the same people in the same outfit. But their words and attitude were totally different from those I had seen several months before. They had been energetic and bright then; but now they were short-tempered, and their language was rough. Their fighting spirit, which everyone in the military had praised, had disappeared without a trace. The former harmony in the headquarters … was also gone. What had happened to them?

  Okumiya could not discern whether the staff members were simply war-weary or had given up. Knowing about their pending withdrawal to Truk, he realized they were anxious to leave Rabaul. He also detected a clear sense of remorse among the senior staff. “The commander and his staff members could not board the planes and take the lead because they had their own duty,” he wrote. “Yet, combat took their subordinates and friends with no mercy, day in and day out.”

  It gradually dawned on Okumiya that his outlook during the past few months had been naive. The mounting death toll among the air units had become a source of anguish for the staff at Rabaul. Physically and mentally, they were fast approaching burnout.

  HOPELESSNESS SOON BECAME common at Rabaul. The sixty-two Zeros that arrived with the 2nd Carrier Division provided only temporary improvement before their numbers eroded, and only ten additional Zeros were received in February. Approximately 150 planes had been delivered to Truk by carriers, many in crates, but there weren’t enough airframe personnel to assemble them or qualified pilots to test fly and ferry them to Rabaul.

  General Mitchell, meanwhile, continually escalated the size and frequency of Allied raids. On the mo
rning of February 10, just two weeks after the infusion of planes at Rabaul, fifty-nine SBDs and two dozen TBFs attacked Vunakanau with an escort of ninety-nine fighters. Two dozen B-25s escorted by twenty fighters hit the same target shortly thereafter. Later still, twenty-one Liberators escorted by twenty-eight Corsairs and Lightnings attacked Tobera airdrome. The three waves totaled 275 Allied planes—more than Kusaka had in his whole inventory.

  During the light bomber attack on Vunakanau, only fifteen to twenty Zeros were seen in the air, of which just five intercepted. Practically unopposed, the TBFs scored at least eleven direct hits with two-thousand-pounders on the concrete strip, rendering it temporarily unserviceable. While the Avengers pounded the runway, the SBDs targeted antiaircraft emplacements.

  A marine dive-bomber squadron, VMSB-241, was on its first mission over Rabaul. Captain Alphonse B. Sutton led a six-plane division of variegated blue SBDs on their first combat dives. Their targets were antiaircraft gun emplacements, mostly the big, high-angle “heavies” scattered around the airdrome complex, although some crews were assigned to dive on “autos” (multiple-barrel automatic cannons), while others attacked machine-gun emplacements. Scores of the light weapons ringed the big guns. “During our dive on the target,” recalled Sutton, “the enemy tracer bullets were coming at us so heavy that it was similar to flying through hail.” Sutton and his fellow pilots fired back, strafing their targets with two .50-caliber machine guns in the cowling while they plummeted almost straight down.

  Other than seeing ribbons of tracer fire in his dive, Sutton was hardly aware of his surroundings until after he released his thousand-pounder and pulled out. This was where his Dauntless was most vulnerable, but he also had an opportunity to look around:

  I looked up in the sky and saw hundreds of black puffs caused by the explosions of the Japanese large antiaircraft guns. I also witnessed several planes burning and spinning down toward the earth. At that moment I could not make out whether they were American or Japanese.…