by Bruce Gamble
CHAPTER 3
Gladiators
THE WAR CAME TO RABAUL on a pleasant Sunday morning, the fourth day of 1942. Dawn broke rapidly, as it always does in the equatorial latitudes, giving the antiaircraft gunners atop the North Daughter a breathtaking sunrise. Accustomed to such splendor after weeks of sitting at their posts, they might have assumed that yet another monotonous day awaited them. If so, they were in for a surprise.
At approximately 1000 hours, plantation manager Cornelius L. Page sent an urgent radio message from the tiny island of Tabar, ninety miles north of New Britain. Recruited two years earlier into the network of coastwatchers, he had observed a flight of Japanese bombers as they passed over his coconut plantation on a direct course for Rabaul.
The formation consisted of sixteen Navy Type 96 land attack aircraft of the Chitose Air Group, currently attached to the 24th Air Flotilla at Truk. Known to the Allies as Mitsubishi G3Ms, the twin-engine aircraft were fast and well armed. They also possessed an extraordinary combat radius that allowed them to reach Rabaul easily from their airfield seven hundred miles away. The Imperial Navy’s unique category of land-based attack aircraft, rikujo kogeki-ki (commonly abbreviated as rikko), emphasized the use of aerial torpedoes against ships, but the aircraft could also carry bombs, and on this mission the Mitsubishis were armed with 60-kilogram fragmentation bombs.
The air-raid sirens began to wail in Rabaul shortly after 1100. High atop the North Daughter, the young antiaircraft gunners fidgeted with excitement as they strained to catch a first glimpse of the enemy. Suddenly the planes appeared—sixteen bombers coming straight toward the gunners in perfect V formation. The Aussies were enthralled by the size and splendor of the enemy formation, and many thought the planes looked beautiful in the sunlight.
One keyed-up teenager, having never experienced the guns in action, asked, “Can we really fire this time?”
“Too right we can,” answered Lt. David M. Selby, the battery’s commanding officer. He gave the order to fire, and the old guns belched flame a split second apart, causing the gunners to flinch reflexively. They held their collective breath until the shells detonated at thirteen thousand feet, far below the enemy planes. Recovering from their surprise at the initial blast of heat and noise, the gunners set the fuses for the maximum range of fifteen thosand feet and quickly settled into the familiar routine they had practiced for months, getting off round after round from the two vintage weapons. But still the shells failed to reach the enemy planes. The only noteworthy outcome was the successful performance of the cracked breach; otherwise the Japanese bombers continued toward Lakunai airdrome with nary a scratch.
At the airdrome, Flight Lieutenant Brookes and Sqn. Ldr. Archibald R. Tindal scrambled aloft in two Wirraways just as the bombs began falling. They should have been airborne much sooner, but for unknown reasons the fighters did not take off in time to intercept the formation. Not that the delay made much difference: the Japanese bombers were at least ten miles per hour faster than the Wirraways. Two other Wirraway crews tried to scramble from Lakunai but were forced to abort, their vision obscured by thick clouds of volcanic dust churned up by the exploding enemy bombs.
Without interference from the Wirraways or the antiaircraft battery, the Japanese should have smashed the airdrome. Surprisingly, however, only three bombs out of forty actually hit the target. Twenty struck the water, and the other seventeen landed within the Rapindik native housing complex and infirmary adjacent to the airdrome. Shrapnel from the small fragmentation bombs caused horrific casualties in the confined area, killing a dozen islanders outright and severely injuring thirty others.
Shortly before dusk, eleven Navy Type 97 flying boats (Kawanishi H6Ks) of the Yokohama Air Group attacked Vunakanau airdrome. With their long parasol wings and slender fuselages curving upward toward twin vertical stabilizers, the four-engine seaplanes resembled giant dragonflies as they droned overhead. An estimated forty bombs were dropped, all of which missed Vunakanau by a wide margin due to the rapidly waning daylight. Twilight fell so quickly, in fact, that the antiaircraft gunners did not even fire at the formation.
The first raids on Rabaul made headlines in Japanese newspapers. One article, citing a report from Melbourne, stated that the “radio station” had been an objective of the attacks. But the bombers were clearly targeting the airdromes, and the powerful civilian radio facility operated by Amalgamated Wireless of Australasia was untouched.
The next raid occurred on the afternoon of January 6, when nine huge Kawanishi flying boats returned to hit Vunakanau again. This time, with no early warning from “Con” Page, the attack caused serious damage: a direction-finding station smashed, a Wirraway destroyed, a Hudson damaged by a near miss, and the runway pocked with craters. The Japanese reported “intense” antiaircraft fire, which caused minor damage to one Kawanishi. Four Wirraways took off to intercept the flying boats, but due to their pitiful climb rate only one managed to get close enough to open fire. Flight Lieutenant Bruce H. Anderson chased the formation beyond New Ireland and expended all of his ammunition at a retreating bomber from maximum range. Although he failed to register any hits, he was credited with being the first Allied fighter pilot to engage the enemy in the Southwest Pacific. The achievement counted for very little, however, and Bill Brookes noted sourly that “the enemy took advantage of cloud cover and their superior height to get away.”
The following morning, another rikko formation attacked Vunakanau. Page radioed the alarm at 1030, having counted eighteen Type 96 bombers overhead. Wirraways took off immediately, but the Japanese bombers dropped their ordnance on the airdrome without opposition because the Australian planes were too underpowered to catch them.
On this occasion the bombardiers’ aim was accurate. Two parked planes—the Wirraway assigned to Bruce Anderson and a Hudson loaded with bombs—caught fire. Anderson and another pilot attempted to save the Wirraway, but John Lerew noticed the danger posed by the burning Hudson and shouted a warning. The squadron doctor drove up in his sedan just as the bomber’s fuel tank erupted, and all four men dived under the vehicle. Seconds later the Hudson’s bombs exploded, peppering the car with debris. After struggling from beneath the car, Lerew marveled at the shallow space he and the others had squeezed into when the need was urgent.
THE JAPANESE CEASED raiding for several days, sending only a few reconnaissance flights over Rabaul instead of bombers. During the same period, a specially prepared Hudson of 6 Squadron flew a photoreconnaissance mission from Kavieng to Truk lagoon on January 9. The crew returned from the daring flight, the longest undertaken by the RAAF to date, with evidence that a large enemy fleet was gathering in the lagoon.
The 24th Air Flotilla resumed its bombing campaign on the morning of January 16, when another formation of rikko destroyed stockpiles of fuel, bombs, and flares at Vunakanau. Two Wirraways tried to intercept the Mitsubishis but never got closer than a thousand yards—nowhere near effective gunnery range. “Owing to the superior speed of the enemy,” noted Brookes, “they had no trouble escaping.”
Six hours after the first attack, a handful of flying boats dropped strings of fragmentation bombs on Lakunai, narrowly missing the ordnance dumps. Bombs exploded all around Lerew and several other men sheltering in slit trenches, but no one on the ground was hurt. From the systematic nature of the attacks, it was obvious to everyone in Rabaul that the Japanese were preparing to invade. Harold Page, the senior territorial official, pleaded with the government in Canberra to evacuate the remaining civilians. The Norwegian freighter Herstein, docked at Rabaul since early January after unloading a cargo of aviation fuel and bombs, had plenty of space available, but the officials in Canberra were adamant: the vessel was to take on a load of copra. Stunned that the government was more concerned about a few tons of coconut meat than two hundred civilians, Page continued to appeal for evacuation. Finally he received a terse message: “No one is to take the place of the copra on the Herstein.”
FLUSH WITH
VICTORY after the easy conquest of Guam, Major General Horii and the troops of the South Seas Force were already en route by the time Page got his answer. R Operation commenced on January 14 when the invasion fleet, escorted by a powerful screening force of three light cruisers, nine destroyers, and two large minelayers, departed Guam and headed south toward New Britain.
Three days later, according to plan, a much more powerful fleet of warships sailed from Truk lagoon. Commanded by Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo, the aircraft carriers of the First Air Fleet had just replenished in Japan after their triumphant return from Pearl Harbor. The fleet was reduced from six aircraft carriers to four for R Operation, but these were four of the best. From the 1st Carrier Division came the big flattops Akagi and Kaga, with a combined complement of fifty-four Type 0 carrier-borne fighters (Mitsubishi A6M2s), forty-five Type 99 carrier-borne bombers (Aichi D3A1s), and fifty-four Type 97 carrier-borne attack planes (Nakajima B5N2s). Zuikaku and Shokaku of the 5th Carrier Division brought an additional thirty A6M2s, fifty-four D3A1s, and fifty-four B5N2s. To protect this floating arsenal, Nagumo had battleships Hiei and Kirishima for fleet support, which in turn were shielded by the heavy cruisers Tone and Chikuma, the light cruiser Abukuma, and nine destroyers. Additionally, two squadrons of submarines were deployed from Truk to secure the sea lanes around the Bismarcks.
Nagumo planned to rendezvous with the South Seas Force on January 20 at the equator. Horii’s invasion fleet crossed the line at 0500, whereupon the South Seas Force held a ceremony to commemorate their achievement as the first army force to cross the equator in Japan’s 2,600-year history. Nagumo’s fleet joined them at mid-morning, and soon thereafter the carriers began launching a massive strike against Rabaul. The attack force consisted of eighteen horizontal bombers and nine fighters from Akagi, twenty-seven horizontal bombers and nine fighters from Kaga, and nineteen dive-bombers each from Shokaku and Zuikaku.
The strike leader, thirty-nine-year-old Cmdr. Mitsuo Fuchida, was trained as an airborne observer rather than a pilot. A 1924 graduate of the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy at Etajima, he was renowned for his brilliant tactical ideas and leadership of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Eminently qualified to lead the first carrier strike against Rabaul, he coordinated the assorted air groups by radio from the cockpit of a B5N2.
Fuchida’s trademark method was to attack the target from multiple directions simultaneously. For the strike on Rabaul, he separated the attackers into three groups—the smallest numbering about twenty planes, the largest more than fifty. The groups headed outbound from the carriers in three different directions; then, on Fuchida’s cue, they converged on the target from the east, west, and north.
AT 1214 ON JANUARY 20, Cornelius Page reported twenty aircraft passing over his plantation. Half an hour later, the antiaircraft gunners at Rabaul watched slack-jawed as Zeros roared overhead in flights of three.
The militiamen’s reaction was not uncommon. All across the Pacific, the Allies were stunned by their first encounters with the celebrated fighter known to the Japanese as Rei Shiki Sento Ki (Type 0 carrier-borne fighter), commonly abbreviated as Rei-sen. No other aircraft better represented the dominance of Japanese air power at the beginning of World War II. Designed in the late 1930s and accepted by the Imperial Navy in 1940, the Zero was a marvel of economical engineering. The A6M2 Model 21 weighed only a little more than 5,300 pounds fully loaded (about the same as a modern-day SUV), yet its 950-horsepower radial engine gave the diminutive fighter tremendous speed, an astonishing rate of climb, and superior aerobatic capability. The Zero’s armament—a pair of rifle-caliber machine guns in the nose and two 20mm automatic cannons in the wings—was fairly effective, and the Imperial Navy pilots were thoroughly trained. Their favorite tactic was to single out an enemy aircraft and overwhelm it with superior numbers.
When the Rei-sens appeared over Rabaul at 1248 that afternoon, two Wirraways were already airborne on routine patrols. Three others scrambled from Vunakanau, and three more attempted to take off from Lakunai, but the Aussie crews were at a terrible disadvantage. Displaying what David Selby later called “desperate gallantry,” they rose skyward like so many gladiators to face the Japanese.
Only two of the Wirraways at Lakunai actually got airborne. The engine on Bruce Anderson’s plane faltered, and he crashed-landed on the runway, injuring both himself and Plt. Off. Colin A. Butterworth in the legs. Thus a total of five Wirraways took off to join the two already on patrol.
Seven underpowered fighters—nothing more than glorified trainers—would face 109 of the Imperial Navy’s best.
The Rei-sen pilots did not wait for the Aussies to get organized. “There could be only one conclusion to this fantastically uneven combat,” wrote Selby after witnessing the action from his perch atop the North Daughter. “There was a puff of white smoke from the cannon of a Zero, a red flash as the shell found its mark on one of our planes, and before the boom of the explosion floated down to us a Wirraway was screeching earthward, angry red flames and black smoke pouring from it.”
The first to die were Flg. Off. John C. Lowe and his observer, Sgt. Albert C. Ashford. Both were twenty-six years old when their Wirraway spiraled into the waters off Praed Point.
In the other patrolling Wirraway, the two crewmen were a study in contrasts. The rear seat observer, Plt. Off. Albert George Claire, was eight years older than the pilot, Sgt. George Albert Herring, and outranked him by several pay grades. But Herring, who had turned twenty-one only the day before, was a capable pilot. When a swarm of Zeros fired on the Wirraway, hitting both men in the legs and mangling the plane’s tail, the aircraft went out of control. At the last possible moment, Herring regained control of the spinning fighter and bellied in at Lakunai. Both men were pulled to safety moments before Zeros swooped down and strafed the crumpled Wirraway, destroying what was left of it.
Several miles to the south, Sgt. Charles F. Bromley and his observer, Sgt. Richard Walsh, took off from Vunakanau and were still clawing for altitude when six Zeros attacked them over Blanche Bay. The two Aussies never stood a chance. Bromley, only nineteen, was killed instantly by a bullet to the head. Walsh evidently tried to jump just before the Wirraway hit the shallows near Praed Point, but his chute did not fully deploy.
Of the two Wirraways that took off successfully from Lakunai, one was flown by Sgt. William O. K. Hewitt, who had dashed to a parked plane and gotten it started while Flg. Off. John “Jack” Tyrrell manned the rear gun. After getting airborne and working his way up to nine thousand feet, Hewitt spotted a formation of enemy planes attacking the wharves at Rabaul. He turned toward them, but before he could get into a firing position, he saw a Zero heading him off from above. Pulling up in a hard, climbing turn, Hewitt tried to meet the Japanese fighter head-on, but his anemic Wirraway could not sustain the climb and stalled.
For a few seconds the Aussie fighter hung almost motionless in the air. Hewitt was completely vulnerable, and the Japanese pilot immediately took advantage. Pieces of Hewitt’s unarmored plane flew off as bullets and cannon shells ripped through the little Wirraway. One 20mm shell exploded in the cockpit, severing hydraulic lines and wounding Hewitt in the left knee.
The Wirraway pitched over, nosing down so abruptly that the negative g-forces lifted Jack Tyrrell completely out of his seat. Flailing as he fell, he grabbed for the D-ring of his parachute and discovered to his horror that it was gone. Moments later, the parachute obliged him by opening. Tyrell drifted serenely over the plateau south of the caldera and landed unharmed in the branches of a tree. Later, while walking cross-country toward Vunakanau, he came across a group of Lark Force soldiers hunting for “a supposed Japanese parachutist.”
Hewitt, meanwhile, his knee full of shrapnel and his face covered with hydraulic fluid, steered the damaged Wirraway toward the sanctuary of a cloud. He remained hidden until conditions were clear and then crash-landed at Vunakanau without further difficulty. He would live to fight another day, but the Wirraway was beyond repair.
In another Wirraway, Sgt. Ronald C. G. Little and his gunner, Sgt. Donald R. Sheppard, endured a similar experience. More than a dozen Zeros attacked them, damaging the tail of their aircraft, but Little managed to duck into a cloud. Each time he tried to poke out of it, however, he was forced to hide again by the swarming Zeros. Eventually he made a dash for Vunakanau and landed safely with no injuries to either crewman.
Twenty-year-old Sgt. Robert A. Blackman took off from Vunakanau and was last seen “in combat with several Zeros.” But nothing more was heard thereafter from either Blackman or his gunner, Sgt. Stanley E. Woodcroft. Eventually their official status was changed from missing to dead.
Only one Australian pilot, Sgt. Malcolm G. Milne, landed with an undamaged Wirraway. After taking off from Lakunai with Sgt. Raymond S. Harber in the back seat, Milne headed straight into a cloud. According to the official RAAF history, he played “a grim game of ‘tag’ with a greatly superior force of Zeros,” but they failed to draw him into combat. Eventually the Japanese withdrew to concentrate on stationary targets, and Milne returned to Lakunai without a scratch.
The fight was over in seven minutes. Selby later observed, “There was something sickening in that sudden merciless extermination, something inspiring in the cold-blooded heroism of those Wirraway pilots, diving splendidly to what each man must have realized meant certain death. Every incident of that horrible fight had been visible to us, but we were powerless to help.”
The casualties suffered by 24 Squadron were heavy, if not as absolute as Selby implied. Of the eight Wirraways that participated, one crashed during takeoff, three were shot down in combat, two crash-landed with irreparable damage, one landed with moderate damage, and one came back without engaging in combat. The final toll among the airmen was six dead and five wounded. There is no evidence that any of the attacking Zeros were damaged, making for a completely lopsided massacre.