Fortress Rabaul

by Bruce Gamble

  But the Americans counterpunched first. Six Marauders took off from Port Moresby and attacked Vunakanau airdrome, dropping dozens of 100-pound demolition bombs on the runway area. They found the Japanese bombers parked in the southwest corner of the airfield, and the Marauder crews claimed the destruction of twelve to fifteen G3Ms. According to Japanese records, however, only five were actually hit—and all five were deemed repairable. Evidently, much of what the American airmen saw was the combination of several large fires as fifty drums of fuel, two gasoline trucks, and a utility vehicle went up in flames at Vunakanau.

  Continuing to react to the threat posed by Fletcher’s warships, Yamada ordered additional patrol planes to cover the Port Moresby Invasion Force as it got underway from Simpson Harbor on the afternoon of May 4. Australian POWs could not help but be impressed by the size of the fleet steaming out of the harbor. Counting nearly thirty ships, they began to refer to the spectacle as the “Day of the Armada.” Civilian nurse Alice Bowman, held prisoner at Vunapope, watched in amazement as “a sleek Jap aircraft carrier” headed down St. George’s Channel in company with four heavy cruisers.

  The carrier was Shoho, centerpiece of Rear Adm. Aritomo Goto’s Support Force. The flattop and its escorts from the 6th Cruiser Division had provided cover for the Tulagi operation the previous day, then made a quick dash to Rabaul to cover the departure of the Port Moresby Invasion Force. Once the transports were safely away, the support force turned toward the last reported position of the American carriers. The invasion fleet, meanwhile, headed south for the Jomard Passage, which would lead them through the Louisiade Archipelago en route to Port Moresby.

  Intent on finding these naval forces, the Allies launched dozens of reconnaissance flights from Queensland, Horn Island, and Port Moresby. At 1035 on May 4, a Mitchell crew from the 90th Bombardment Squadron reported “a carrier and two heavy cruisers” sixty miles southwest of Bougainville. Before they could send more details, the B-25 was driven away by enemy fighters. The next day, another B-25 from the 90th found the carrier, which turned out to be Shoho, and loitered overhead for more than an hour while the radio operator transmitted a homing signal. The idea was that B-17s would track the radio frequency and attack the carrier, but no friendly bombers responded.

  At Port Moresby that evening, a crew from the 40th Recon Squadron prepared to continue the surveillance of the Shoho. “We are to go out tomorrow at 12:45 A.M. and locate an aircraft carrier & its escorts,” John Steinbinder noted during his overnight stay. “Three B-17s came in tonight loaded with 600# bombs. We are to go out and spot [the carrier] so that we can radio its position and these 3 are to bomb it.”

  The B-17s, all from the 19th Bomb Group at Townsville, would augment the 40th Recon Squadron over the next several days. Their presence at the crowded airdrome was a calculated risk. The big bombers made easy targets for Japanese raiders, but the Allies were determined to put as many aircraft as possible into the skies over the Coral Sea.

  The early morning mission went off as planned, although the recon Fortress did not take off until 0345 due to mechanical problems. By 0800 the crew found the Shoho in company with two destroyers, two cruisers, and a seaplane tender. “We circled above them at 14,000 and radioed their position back to Moresby,” noted Steinbinder in his diary. Back at Seven Mile, the waiting B-17s rumbled into the air and headed for the coordinates given by Steinbinder. For a while, the lone Fortress continued to shadow the Japanese warships, but when a pair of fighters took off from the carrier’s flight deck and climbed rapidly, the B-17 judiciously headed north “at full speed” to begin the next segment of its scheduled mission.

  The B-17s from Port Moresby attacked Shoho in the vicinity of Bougainville, but just as with every previous attempt to bomb ships from high altitude, the Fortresses failed to record a single hit. The lack of success did not surprise Dick Carmichael. “We couldn’t hit the side of a barn,” he acknowledged later. “With the Norden bombsight, which is all we had at that time, on a clear day at twenty thousand, twenty-five thousand, or thirty thousand feet … a B-17 or B-24 is not going to make any hits on a ship maneuvering below, any kind of a ship.”

  The first attempt to sink Shoho had been a failure, but now the carrier’s location was well known—and the next attack would have a much different outcome.

  AT ALMOST EXACTLY the same hour, the crew of a Kawanishi flying boat sent an important message to Rabaul. They had allegedly sighted “one battleship, one aircraft carrier, three A-class cruisers and five destroyers” approximately 420 miles southwest of Shortland Island. The news thrilled Rear Admiral Yamada and his staff, who presumed Yorktown and Task Force 17 had been located. Fletcher had no battleships, but he did have three cruisers and six destroyers. The Japanese simply mistook the 9,950-ton Astoria, largest of the cruisers, for a battleship. At Vunakanau, ground crews again began loading torpedoes into G3Ms of the Genzan Air Group, but headquarters decided the American fleet was too far away, and the attack order was never issued.

  By the afternoon of May 6, after casting about for two days in search of each other, the opposing forces had developed a relatively clear tactical picture. Yamada ordered the rikko units at Vunakanau to prepare for dawn searches and possible strikes against the American carriers. Aboard Yorktown, now in company with the Lexington task force, Fletcher deduced that the Port Moresby invasion fleet would pass through the Louisiade Archipelago. He ordered his combined forces—which also included Rear Admiral Crace’s cruiser support group—to cut them off.

  Daybreak on May 7 found the opposing sides sending out dozens of planes to reconnoiter the Coral Sea. Before long, the radio channels were filled with sighting reports. First, the crew of a Nakajima B5N from Shokaku found two American ships, the oiler Neosho and the destroyer Sims, approximately 160 miles south of the MO Striking Force. Somehow the airmen mistook the big oiler for a carrier, possibly because it was located approximately where Rear Admiral Hara expected to find the American flattops. Upon receiving the erroneous sighting report, Hara began launching strike planes from Shokaku and Zuikaku at 0800.

  BUT TASK FORCE 17 was not where the Japanese anticipated. Instead, the carriers were more than three hundred miles to the west, approaching Rossel Island in the Louisiade Archipelago. Nearby, the cruiser support group under Rear Admiral Crace had just detached from the main force and was proceeding directly toward the Jomard Passage, where Crace planned to block any attempts by the invasion fleet to reach Port Moresby. His warships had hardly separated from Task Force 17 when a floatplane from the heavy cruiser Furutaka found them.

  The floatplane’s sighting report reached 25th Air Flotilla headquarters at approximately 0830, and amplifying information was received from two additional search planes soon thereafter. Yamada responded by ordering an immediate strike. Lieutenant Kuniharu Kobayashi led twelve Type 1 rikko armed with torpedoes aloft at 0950, followed by an escort of eleven Zeros. Slightly more than an hour later, nineteen Type 96 rikko carrying bombs took off and headed independently toward the last position given by the Furutaka’s floatplane.

  Meanwhile, the crew of an SBD scout bomber from Yorktown had found Shoho about forty miles northwest of Misima Island at 0845. Yorktown and Lexington both began launching aircraft at 0926, and within forty-five minutes a force totaling ninety-three aircraft was on its way to attack the Japanese flattop. Ironically, there were now four different attack groups in the air—three Japanese and one American—each searching for distant targets.

  The blue-gray planes of the U.S. Navy struck first. A trio of dive-bombers opened the attack on Shoho at 1110, and for the next twenty-one minutes the flattop was at the mercy of dozens of dive-bombers and torpedo planes. But no mercy was given. For the first time since Pearl Harbor, American forces had the upper hand on an enemy carrier. The Navy pilots literally smashed the diminutive Shoho, hitting the flattop with thirteen bombs and seven torpedoes. It sank at 1135, only four minutes after the captain gave the order to abandon ship.


  AFTER A LENGTHY SEARCH, Lt. Cmdr. Kakuichi Takahashi, leader of the combined strike force from Zuikaku and Shokaku, reached the frustrating conclusion that the American carriers were not where the scout planes reported they would be. Only two ships had been found, a large oiler and a destroyer. The Nakajima Type 97s with their heavy torpedoes were getting low on fuel, so Takahashi directed them to return to their carriers along with the Zeros. He then turned his thirty-six Aichi Type 99 dive-bombers loose on the oiler and its escort.

  The antiaircraft gunners aboard Neosho and Sims could not cope with so many attackers. At 1126 three bombs struck Sims in quick succession and broke her back. The destroyer sank quickly, stern first. Scores of sailors leapt into the water, but two powerful explosions from the ship’s depth charges killed many of the struggling swimmers. A whaleboat picked up only fifteen survivors, all enlisted men, two of whom later died from massive injuries.

  The much larger Neosho was pummeled by seven direct hits, and the pilot of a crippled dive-bomber deliberately crashed his plane into the mangled ship. Eight more bombs struck the water near Neosho, causing severe splinter damage, but the sturdy oiler refused to sink. Dead in the water, the oiler drifted for four days, her wretched survivors trapped on board. Help did not arrive until May 11, when the American destroyer Henley rescued what was left of the crew and then finished off the abandoned wreck with torpedoes.

  HUNDREDS OF MILES to the west, eight B-17s lumbered into the air from Townsville to attack the Japanese invasion fleet. Major Edward C. Teats recalled, “We were to find the Jap convoy and hit it before sunset, if possible.” It was a tall order. The enemy ships were more than seven hundred miles to the northeast, yet General Brett sent the heavy bombers in the hopes of accomplishing something positive for a change. Two B-17s turned back because of engine trouble, but the remaining six crossed the Coral Sea in pairs, each element separated by about five minutes. After several hours of flying, the first element sighted the Port Moresby Invasion Force. Bursting antiaircraft shells alerted the other two flights, and Teats looked down to see ships “maneuvering wildly in all directions, like an aggregation of excited water bugs.”

  Observing from the rearmost element, Teats noted that the first and second pairs of B-17s failed to score any hits. Presently his own bombardier, 1st Lt. M. D. Stone, selected a target and announced that he was ready to make his run. Teats turned to the specified heading and was about to switch the autopilot over to the bombardier’s control when heavy flak began exploding directly ahead, precisely at their altitude. Shoving the yoke forward, Teats dropped the big Fortress several thousand feet “to mess up the Jap gunners’ range,” but the enemy gun directors quickly adjusted their aim. The effect, recalled Teats, was alarming.

  Neither before nor after have I seen such heavy and well placed antiaircraft fire as those cruisers and destroyers threw at us. We could see the orange flashes as the ships’ batteries fired. Things grew hotter and hotter. The side-gunner reported some [bursts] close behind us, and then my wing man peeled off and took some distance because one burst was so close, the side-gunner thought the plane had been hit.

  The split-second the bombardier reported “bombs away,” I made a sharp diving turn away to the left and at that same instant, the tail-gunner began to chatter excitedly through the interphone. [In] the turn, I saw a line of shell bursts on the level course we had just left, and later the tail-gunner reported that one burst really had our name on it. If we had not turned when we did, someone else might be relating this story … but it wouldn’t be me. I knew that those Nip gunners were in the groove, and I also knew that they were getting close. The tail-gunner reported that the bursts started about a mile behind and each one came a little closer, directly on our level. By his report, we evaded by a split second either a direct hit, or one just as bad.

  Teats credited the Japanese warships with “beautiful antiaircraft gunnery,” but remarkably no B-17s were hit. In turn, there is evidence that the bombers scored either a hit or a near miss on at least one transport. The diary kept by Private Hisaeda, embarked in Matsue Maru, refers to one of the transports requiring damage repair.

  MUCH LIKE THE “Navy Wild Eagles” from Shokaku and Zuikaku, Lieutenant Kobayashi and the land-attackers of the 4th Air Group were frustrated. By midday on May 7 they had failed to locate the American carriers, though they had actually gotten within seventy-five miles of Task Force 17. Suddenly headquarters ordered Kobayashi to turn west and search a new location. Finding no ships, the strike leader sent his Zero escorts back to Rabaul. Nearby, the bomb-carrying G3Ms of the Genzan Air Group also searched in vain for the American carriers.

  By sheer coincidence, the Zeros headed for Rabaul stumbled upon Rear Admiral Crace’s cruiser support group. During the morning, search planes from Rabaul had shadowed the warships from time to time, but no other aircraft had been seen overhead until the Zeros approached from astern at 1447. The fighters, described by one Allied source as “a formation of 10 or 12 single-engine monoplanes with retractable landing gear,” flew past the ships on a parallel course a few miles to the west. Aboard the heavy cruiser Australia, eighteen-year-old Midn. Dacre H. D. Smyth counted eleven fighters (the correct number) and recalled that they turned away when some of the screening destroyers fired at them

  The presence of the Japanese fighters greatly disturbed Crace, who was justifiably worried about the lack of air support for his warships. Only five months had passed since Prince of Wales and Repulse were overwhelmed off the Malay Peninsula, and his own formation was vulnerable to bombers and torpedo planes out of Rabaul. If fighters were in the area, the dreaded attack planes were not far off.

  Oddly enough, the next aircraft to appear was a Yorktown dive-bomber, its crew lost. The pilot, a young ensign, radioed for directions to his carrier but was instead ordered to fly to Port Moresby. He was fortunate. Arriving as he did on the heels of enemy fighters, he might have been blown out of the sky by jumpy antiaircraft gunners.

  No sooner had the Dauntless flown off than another formation of planes approached, this time from straight ahead—and this group was not friendly. The Zeros had reported the cruiser group’s location to Lieutenant Kobayashi, who alerted the Genzan flyers nearby and then ordered his torpedo-carrying G4Ms to attack. He evidently planned to use the same strategy that had sunk Prince of Wales and Repulse the previous December, coordinating both formations to strike simultaneously from different directions. While the Genzan Air Group maneuvered southward to attack the warships from astern, Kobayashi led his rikko straight toward the enemy.

  Down below, the six warships gathered into a diamond-shaped defensive alignment known as Formation Victor. The flagship, the ten-thousand-ton Australia, was in the center of the diamond with the American destroyer Perkins in the lead and two more destroyers on the outer flanks. Bringing up the rear were the heavy cruiser USS Chicago, outfitted with a new radar system, and the light cruiser HMAS Hobart. Plotters in the Chicago’s combat information center tracked the incoming planes while the formation plowed ahead, each ship taking ample separation from the others to allow for hard maneuvering.

  Unfortunately for Kobayashi, the Type 1 rikko approached the Allied formation several minutes ahead of the bomb-carrying G3Ms, rather than simultaneously. Mistaking Australia for a British Warspite-class battleship, the torpedo bombers commenced their attack at approximately 1430. Descending in a tight V, they leveled off just above the wave tops and bored in from dead ahead at 250 miles per hour. Midshipman Smyth recalled seeing them “bunched together and flying very low” a few degrees off the Australia’s port bow. What he couldn’t see were the huge Type 91 torpedoes, one inside the belly of each plane. Upon release, the eighteen-foot-long weapons would race beneath the surface at more than forty knots, making them difficult to evade.

  In a coincidental case of mistaken identity, numerous sailors aboard the ships thought the Japanese attackers were Army Type 97 heavy bombers (Mitsubishi Ki-21s). The combat narrative published by the
Office of Naval Intelligence observed that the features of the Type 97 “best fitted” the description of the attacking aircraft, and it was an understandable mistake. The two Mitsubishi designs were virtually indistinguishable when viewed from head-on, but the Ki-21 was not equipped to carry torpedoes.

  The shipboard antiaircraft gunners cared little about the attackers’ identity. Beginning with Perkins, the destroyers of the outer screen opened fire with 5-inch guns when the low-flying planes drew within 6,500 yards. Due to extraordinary luck or superb marksmanship, two rikko were shot down in quick succession—and Kobayashi’s plane was the first to crash. Dividing into two elements, the remaining ten G4Ms roared past Perkins on both sides and headed toward the two biggest ships, the cruisers Australia and Chicago. Now inside the warships’ defensive ring, the twin-engine torpedo planes faced a hailstorm of fire from all sides. Twisting and turning, each ship fired every gun that could be brought to bear. With remarkable bravery the Japanese aircrews maintained their discipline, closing to within fifteen hundred yards to drop their “fish,” but due to the intensity and accuracy of the antiaircraft fire, only half managed to release their torpedoes.

  On the bridge of Australia, Capt. Harold B. Farncomb gave instructions to the helmsman and with skillful maneuvering dodged two of the torpedoes by the narrowest of margins. Inside the hull, having just reached his battle station, Midshipman Smyth could hear the high-pitched whine of the motors as the torpedoes passed by. Several hundred yards aft of Australia, Capt. Howard D. Bode was equally adroit at maneuvering Chicago between the three torpedoes aimed at his cruiser. None hit, but Chicago did not escape without damage. Gunners in the torpedo planes strafed the upper decks of the cruiser as they flew past, wounding seven sailors, two of them mortally.