by Bruce Gamble
The other five B-17s “took a beating,” with several casualties among the crews. The worst case was Plt. Off. Allan J. Davenport, a twenty-two-year-old RAAF navigator whose leg was nearly severed, evidently by a 20mm shell. Unfortunately the crew got lost for hours in the awful weather, and soon after they landed at Port Moresby, Davenport died.
In Brisbane, Kenney “got his dander up” after hearing about the mission. Not only had the effort been costly in exchange for minor damage to the enemy, there were reliable reports that Ken Walker had been aboard one of the B-17s. “I can always hire a 10 dollar a week man to sweep the floors,” Kenney chastised. “No more combat missions.”
The following day, MacArthur called Kenney into his office to discuss another big effort against Rabaul, again in support of Guadalcanal operations. Kenney later recalled: “I had already planned to do something about that place. For the past couple of weeks the Japs had been unloading supplies and troops there. They might be building up for a reinforcement of their forces in the Solomons or maybe around Buna. The shipping had not been a good target, as the Jap vessels had been coming in just before dark, unloading at night, and leaving before daybreak. The airdromes in the Rabaul area were well beaten up and the Jap air strength was low.”
Kenney’s vow to burn down Rabaul began with the positioning of three dozen B-17s from Mareeba to Port Moresby on October 8. The planned mission called for total efforts by both the 19th and 43rd Bomb Groups, which would coordinate their attack to follow a preliminary raid by RAAF Catalinas. Thirty-six Fortresses were scheduled to participate, making it the largest Allied bombing effort yet attempted in the Pacific. A follow-up attack was also planned for the night after.
But the initial event almost didn’t go off. After receiving a forecast of foul weather between Port Moresby and Rabaul that afternoon, Walker cancelled the mission. In his defense, three weeks earlier he had flown a night mission over Rabaul and saw firsthand the hazardous conditions created by the powerful storm system that routinely thwarted flights over the Solomon Sea. Kenney wasn’t convinced, however, as biographer Martha Byrd later explained: “When he learned that Walker had canceled the first of the two planned strikes, Kenney consulted a different weatherman, got a favorable forecast, and overruled his bomber commander.”
Kenney’s instincts were correct. The weather was not a factor, and the preliminary raid by the RAAF exceeded all expectations. Flying all the way from Cairns, four Catalinas from 11 and 20 Squadrons arrived over Rabaul at 2050 on October 8. Ordered to “light up the town and harbor perimeter,” the heavily laden flying boats carried an amazing payload. As they crossed over the township at several thousand feet, the Cat-boats dropped twenty demolition bombs, ten small fragmentation bombs, and sixty incendiaries. Approximately half of the incendiaries fell into the residential area north of Simpson Harbor, starting numerous fires. Six heavy bombs landed in the commercial district and ignited one of the many stockpiles of ammunition or fuel the Japanese had imprudently placed throughout the town, and an enormous fire flared up. The flames were still visible from sixty miles away as the Catalinas made their way back to Australia.
The Flying Fortresses, representing four different squadrons, began taking off just prior to midnight. Six bombers dropped out for various malfunctions, but the remaining thirty aircraft gathered at a marshalling point one hundred miles south of Rabaul. Grouped in elements of two or three planes each, they headed toward the target in a strung-out line at altitudes ranging from 4,500 feet to 11,000 feet. Even in the darkness, the crews could see Rabaul from many miles away. The fires started by the RAAF eight hours earlier burned brightly, casting a reddish glow over the township.
The attack commenced at 0400, and for nearly two hours the heavy bombers made individual passes over Rabaul. Japanese antiaircraft positions reacted by shooting wildly, while the searchlight crews tried to pinpoint B-17s. The night sky was turned into a bizarre montage of arcing tracer rounds and brilliant fingers of white light, punctuated by the staccato flashes of exploding antiaircraft shells. Inside the bombers, pilots whose vision was adjusted to the soft red glow of instrument lights were temporarily blinded. To the men in the trailing B-17s, the view up ahead was spectacular. One pilot likened the scene to “a colossal fireworks display.”
Although the sudden loss of night vision and the intense pyrotechnics created a nerve-wracking experience for the Americans, the bombardiers took advantage of the fires illuminating Rabaul to release an impressive amount of ordnance. Ninety 500-pounders, more than two hundred 300-pounders, and fifty-five incendiary clusters followed the path of the bombers from west to east, blasting a swath of destruction across the township. Bombs damaged the coaling jetty on the western shore of Simpson Harbor, hit the Malaguna Road encampment, exploded stockpiles of fuel or ammunition in the Bayloo district (centered around a large Chinese construction business), and demolished several buildings in Chinatown.
The following day, listeners tuned to Radio Tokyo heard the announcer complain that a bomb had struck a hotel in Rabaul, killing fifty “Geisha girls.” The Allies would have been incredulous to learn that the enemy had indeed transported some three thousand conscripted prostitutes to Rabaul in early 1942. Known as “comfort women,” most were Koreans and Formosans taken from their homes or hired under false pretenses, then forced to provide a sexual outlet for the troops. The army and navy each maintained three “special purpose houses” in Rabaul, and the 3rd Infantry Battalion set up a brothel at Vunapope in a monks’ dormitory (after first evicting the Brotherhood of the Sacred Heart).
AT LEAST ONE PERSON on the ground at Rabaul actually celebrated the destructive night raid. The previous day, when Captain Mitzusaki of the 81st Naval Garrison Unit took Harl Pease and five other prisoners out for execution, he had pointed at Father George Lepping and said, “You go tomorrow.”
Mizusaki may have been toying with the priest, but Lepping believed he was about to be killed. For the remainder of the day, he received an outpouring of sympathy from his fellow prisoners. However, the situation changed after dark. “During the night the American B-17s came over and bombed Rabaul for hours,” Lepping recalled. “The Japanese gave us permission to seek shelter in a small dugout. While the Commandant was running for a dugout he was struck in the leg by shrapnel.”
Miraculously, no prisoners were hurt during the raid, but Mizusaki was evacuated aboard a hospital ship. A new commandant took over the next day, and the planned execution of Father Lepping was soon forgotten.
FOUR HOURS AFTER the raid, a crew from the 435th Bomb Squadron took photographs of the damage. The results confirmed numerous bomb hits and showed the supply dump near the Bayloo construction company still in flames. But the photos came with a price. Four Zeros attacked the B-17, killing the tail gunner and severely wounding the Australian copilot, Sgt. David R. Sinclair, whose left lung was punctured by a 7.7mm bullet. Even more disturbing, the photos revealed that Simpson Harbor was full of ships: a whopping twenty-six transports, two subs, a sub tender, a cruiser, four destroyers, and two minelayers. Similarly, seventy-two fighters and six twin-engine aircraft crowded Lakunai airdrome.
Obviously, Kenney’s speculation about Japanese air strength was inaccurate. A few units—particularly the fighters of the Tainan Air Group and the land attackers of the 4th Air Group—had been depleted by heavy losses at Guadalcanal, but replacements came quickly. Vice Admiral Tsukahara moved the headquarters of the Eleventh Air Fleet to Rabaul in August and was busy funneling whole air groups to the Southeast Area. In one remarkable move, fourteen Zeros of the 6th Air Group flew all the way to Rabaul from Japan. Guided by two bombers, the Zeros made refueling stops at Iwo Jima, Saipan, and Truk before arriving at Lakunai airdrome on August 21. The island-hopping journey, which spanned nearly three thousand miles, was considered “without precedent” for single-engine aircraft in the Imperial Navy.
Other units were likewise shifted to the Rabaul area. The 26th Air Flotilla, consisting of the 6th Air Grou
p (fighters) and the Misawa and Kisarazu Air Groups (land attack), arrived in August. The land attack component of the 21st Air Flotilla was ordered to move south from the Philippines on August 27, and the fighter component of the 24th Air Flotilla was sent from the Central Pacific to Rabaul. For operational control, the flotillas were given additional designations. Rear Admiral Yamada’s 25th Air Flotilla became the 5th Air Attack Force, the 26th Air Flotilla under Vice Adm. Seigo Yamagata became the 6th Air Attack Force, and the 21st Air Flotilla became the 1st Air Attack Force, headquartered at Kavieng with approximately twenty Type 1 land attack aircraft.
Thus, as the reconnaissance photos taken on October 9 indicated, the airdromes at Rabaul were full of planes. Available air strength included approximately fifty medium bombers, eighty Zeros (equally divided between A6M2s and the newer A6M3s), twenty dive-bombers, eight flying boats, and three reconnaissance planes. Nevertheless, the night attack on the township was deemed so successful that another effort was scheduled immediately. Fires were still raging as seven RAAF Catalinas attacked at 0330 on October 10, scattering more than a dozen large fragmentation bombs and five hundred small incendiaries across the town. Thirty minutes later, eighteen Fortresses dropped almost two hundred demolition bombs and thirty-eight incendiary clusters along the waterfront from the Toboi Wharf all the way around the harbor to Sulphur Creek, as well as in the commercial district. Simultaneously, three B-17s hit Lakunai airdrome with sixteen modified 300-pound bombs, a new innovation that Kenney employed “to annoy the Nips.”
In his memoir, Kenney described the bombs’ lethal effects:
To cut up aircraft on the ground we had wrapped these bombs with heavy steel wire, and dropped them with instantaneous fuses on the end of a six-inch pipe extension in the nose. They looked good. The wire, which was nearly one-quarter inch in diameter, broke up into pieces from six inches to a couple of feet long, and in the demonstration it cut limbs off trees a hundred feet away which were two inches thick. The noise was quite terrifying. The pieces of wire whirling through the air whistled and sang all of the notes on the scale and wailed and screamed like a whole tribe of disconsolate banshees.
To what degree the bombs fitted with “special extension instantaneous fuses” terrorized the Japanese is not directly known, but an impressive fire was observed in the dispersal area after the attack. Overall the second raid contributed to the widespread destruction caused the previous day. Rear Admiral Ugaki, back aboard Yamato in Truk lagoon, noted in his diary that casualties at Rabaul amounted to 110 dead and wounded.
Kenney was pleased to declare the raids on consecutive nights a major success, and MacArthur sent him a glowing message about the “fine performance over Rabaul.” When Kenney next met with Ken Walker, on October 12 in Brisbane, the latter was allegedly in a sulky mood because his orders to cancel the first mission had been countermanded. Walker hated to be proven wrong. Kenney could not resist teasing him about it, but after twisting the proverbial dagger, he applied a bit of diplomacy by describing the enormous pressure he was under to take out Rabaul. This reportedly had the intended effect on his subordinate’s bruised ego.
THE 19TH BOMB GROUP conducted two additional raids on the Rabaul airdromes in mid-October, but the crews had to force themselves to concentrate. Rumors had been circulating for weeks that they would be sent home, an event that was all but confirmed when Kenney, accompanied by Walker, held awards ceremonies at both Townsville and Mareeba on October 15. Altogether they decorated more than 250 personnel of the group. “By the time I got through,” Kenney wrote, “I had worn most of the skin off the thumb and forefinger of my right hand. It was a great show.”
The 19th’s relief had been pending since late September, when General Arnold toured the SWPA on a visit from Washington. Kenney had asked for a replacement group, explaining that the men of the 19th were “beaten down psychologically.” Kenney sought fresh crews from the States who were eager to fight. Richard Carmichael, though not a veteran of the group’s early campaigns, was a popular commander with the 19th and had led them long enough to appreciate their difficulties. He especially admired what they had accomplished with the early C and D models of the B-17, which he called “a bastard mixture of airplanes,” but he could also understand Kenney’s desire to exchange the group for better airplanes and fresh crews.
The 19th could not return to the States, however, until adequate replacements were available. Kenney was delighted when General Arnold agreed to send over the 90th Bomb Group (Heavy), currently based in Hawaii. Their arrival in Australia, planned for November, would give Kenney four squadrons of Consolidated B-24D Liberators. He was unconcerned about the logistics of maintaining two different types, knowing that most of the new B-17 groups were being sent to Europe anyway. “I was not particular,” he later wrote. “I’d take anything.”
In the meantime, the punch-drunk 19th Bomb Group and Bill Benn’s 63rd Bomb Squadron would have to handle all of the heavy bombing assignments for a few weeks until the remaining three squadrons of the 43rd Bomb Group—the 65th and 403rd at Torrens Creek and the 64th at Iron Range, a new field in northern Queensland—became operational. The “Kangaroo Squadron” would also continue to fly single-ship reconnaissance missions over New Guinea, the Bismarcks, and the northern Solomons. The long-distance flights were hazardous but vital, providing the only reliable intelligence regarding the enemy’s concentrations of shipping and aircraft. Photos of Rabaul taken on October 20 and 22, for example, revealed more than seventy ships in the anchorage. As a direct result, Benn was ordered to conduct the mission he had been anticipating for weeks: the first skip-bombing attack by American aircraft.
The mission profile called for an initial wave of B-17s to attack Rabaul from conventional altitudes to distract the Japanese antiaircraft gunners. Seven Fortresses of the 19th Bomb Group accomplished this at 0145 on October 23, dropping twelve tons of bombs on Simpson Harbor with no direct hits observed. Approximately an hour after they departed, Benn approached with seven B-17s from the 43rd Bomb Group. He rode as an observer in one of the Fortresses until they neared the target area, at which point he tapped the copilot, Lt. Charles L. Anderson, on the shoulder. “Andy, why don’t you move over and let me sit in the copilot’s seat,” he said, “and I’ll decide when to drop the bombs.” After weeks of training, Benn was determined to call the shots himself for the inaugural attack.
Four of the B-17s attacked the harbor area from several thousand feet, again to distract enemy gunners, while the remaining three crews initiated the skip-bombing methods they had practiced so diligently. After picking out individual targets, the pilots descended to about two thousand feet and maneuvered to set up their first attack. Flying at right angles to the intended bombing path, they watched the moon’s reflection on the surface relative to the position of the target, thereby judging the moment to execute a ninety-degree turn inbound. On completing the turn, they chopped power on all four engines and glided down to about two hundred feet above the water. Some pilots allowed a few extra feet, compensating for the “pucker factor” of taking such a huge bomber almost to the surface. Regardless of the exact altitude, each of the Fortresses flew an attack profile that Boeing’s engineers had never imagined. These were the original stealth bombers, dropping quietly out of the night sky and leveling off well below the terrain surrounding the great caldera. The aircraft were invisible to the Japanese lookouts, yet the B-17 crews could clearly see their targets. “We had good moonlight,” recalled Anderson, “so we could see the ships.”
The first attack was made by Benn’s aircraft, piloted by Lt. Franklyn T. Green. Aiming for a light cruiser outside of Simpson Harbor, they dropped a heavy bomb and crossed over the warship’s superstructure mere feet above the radio mast. The passing shadow of the bomber apparently shocked the Japanese gunners into action, but the B-17 was already a hundred yards past them when their guns lit up the night sky. Next, Green attacked a five- thousand-ton cargo ship, after which he climbed for a conventiona
l attack on a fifteen-thousand-ton merchant ship inside Simpson Harbor. Direct hits were claimed against all three vessels, and both of the merchantmen allegedly sank. The cruiser was last observed in flames, sinking by the stern. Ken McCullar, already credited with sinking or damaging four ships with Black Jack, claimed two direct hits on a destroyer. Finally, the Fortress flown by Capt. Carl A. Hustad made a successful attack, hitting a ten-thousand-ton vessel that was subsequently reported on fire.
Altogether, the skip-bombers and the high element claimed four direct hits, nine “very close near misses,” and four near misses that allegedly sank a cruiser, a destroyer, and two large noncombatants while damaging a transport and a “small cargo vessel.” But as so often happened, the results of the first skip-bombing effort were not as effective as the crews presumed. Based on Japanese records and the postwar JANAC findings, only two ships were hit on October 23. Both were submarine chasers, 160 feet in length and displacing slightly more than four hundred tons each. They could easily account for the “cruiser” and “destroyer” claimed by the bomber crews, especially considering the vagaries of the moonlight and the adrenalin rush of combat, but neither ship sustained serious damage. As for the claims totaling more than thirty thousand tons of cargo shipping, there is no evidence that any noncombatants were hit, let alone damaged.
Of course, the JANAC report would not be revealed until after the war. In the absence of any other evidence, Kenney eagerly chalked up the claims as legitimate and summoned his former aide to Brisbane. Benn arrived that afternoon and was escorted straightaway to the eighth floor of the AMP Building, where General MacArthur personally pinned a Distinguished Service Cross on his uniform. Kenney beamed with pride. Benn was his protégé, and it was no secret that Kenney regarded the major’s squadron as “the hottest outfit in the whole air force.”