by Bruce Gamble
Simultaneously, surveyors began laying out a new airfield on the southern tip of Bougainville, near a village called Buin. (The Allies knew the location as Kahili in reference to a smaller but closer native village.) The engineers hoped to have the field ready to handle a chutai of Zeros by the third week of September, but excessive rain and harassing attacks by American planes caused delays. Declared operational approximately a month behind schedule, the field was plagued with problems. Rear Admiral Ugaki noted in his diary on October 25 that “every time it rained heavily, about ten planes were damaged due to skidding.”
While the new strip at Buin was being completed, the Japanese conceived a plan to build an advance base at Munda Point on New Georgia Island. By late October the American air presence at Henderson Field (named in honor of Maj. Lofton R. Henderson, killed at Midway) had been reduced by attrition, leading the Japanese to believe they could build the new field in secrecy. To disguise its location on the western coast of New Georgia, workers completed most of the perimeter areas first. They labored beneath gigantic screens made by wiring the tops of palm trees together, which created the illusion of intact coconut groves. Despite the clever concealments, the airfield’s presence was reported to Guadalcanal by coastwatcher Donald G. “Danny” Kennedy, a New Zealander. Reconnaissance flights also revealed extensive small-boat traffic and piles of crushed coral at the construction site. The Allies tried to intervene, but the Japanese had gotten a significant headstart and managed to complete the airfield in early December.
Venturing even closer to Guadalcanal, the Imperial Navy also constructed a seaplane base at Rekata Bay, Santa Isabel Island, practically on the Allies’ doorstep. Located only 155 miles northwest of Henderson Field, Rekata Bay served as a forward base for Mitsubishi F1M (“Pete”) float planes as well as A6M2-N “Rufes.” In addition, it provided a ditching location for aircraft that sustained combat damage over Guadalcanal.
WHILE THE JAPANESE improved existing airfields and built new ones, the Allies were doing the same on New Guinea. By late 1942 the number of bases at Port Moresby had almost quadrupled. The airdromes, named for their distance from town, included Three Mile, Five Mile, Seven Mile, Twelve Mile, Fourteen Mile, and Seventeen Mile. There was even a Thirty Mile strip used occasionally for fighter dispersal and emergency landings. The proliferation was such that new names were in order, simply to avoid potentially dangerous situations involving the takeoff and landing patterns associated with each runway. On November 10, all but the original Kila Kila airdrome (Three Mile) were renamed to honor dead warriors.
Seven Mile, still the biggest field and the hub of aerial operations at Port Moresby, was officially renamed Jackson Field as a tribute to “Old John” Jackson, killed in action while leading 75 Squadron during the desperate defense of Port Moresby. Five Mile was renamed Ward’s Airdrome (also known as Ward’s Strip), honoring the Australian whose battalion had begun construction of the field in mid-1942. Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth H. Ward was killed in action during the Kokoda Trail campaign in late August.
Compared to the deeds of Jackson and Ward, the criteria for some of the other selections were obscure. Twelve Mile was named for Maj. Jack W. Berry, lost on August 4 when his P-39 crashed at sea shortly after taking off from Port Moresby. Lieutenant Charles Schwimmer, 8th Fighter Group, 36th Fighter Squadron, was one of three Airacobra pilots who failed to return from a strafing mission against Lae on May 4, but for unknown reasons he was singled out as the namesake of Fourteen Mile. Another P-39 driver, Ed Durand, was the first American fighter pilot lost in action over the New Guinea region. Shot down during a fighter sweep over Lae on April 30, he was rumored to have been executed by the Japanese, and Seventeen Mile airdrome was renamed in his honor. Finally, Thirty Mile was renamed Rogers Airdrome for the popular Maj. “Buck” Rogers, commanding officer of the 8th Bomb Squadron, 3rd Bomb Group, whose A-24 dive-bomber was one of several shot down during a disastrous mission against Gona on July 29.
The new field at Milne Bay, which supported the campaign against the enemy strongholds on the northeastern coast of New Guinea, also deserves mention. Completed during the fall of 1942, it was named for Sqn. Ldr. Charles R. Gurney, killed when his B-26 flipped upside down in a swamp on Kirawina Island after a bombing mission against Rabaul.
BY LATE OCTOBER, despite heavy losses in men and materiel, the Japanese still dominated the territory. More importantly, Imperial General Headquarters’ commitment to winning the war in the Southeast Area had not diminished. A new plan to retake Henderson Field, scheduled for late October, received the fullest cooperation of Admiral Yamamoto. It was still his dream that Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo’s carrier fleet would smash the Pacific Fleet in a decisive battle. The opposing forces collided north of the Santa Cruz Islands on October 26, resulting in a tactical victory for the Japanese. Nagumo’s bombers and torpedo planes sank a carrier (USS Hornet) and a destroyer, while also inflicting serious damage on another carrier (USS Enterprise) and two additional destroyers. In exchange, the Japanese received crippling damage to carriers Shokaku and Zuiho. Of far greater importance was the loss of nearly 150 naval aviators. The toll was so great, in fact, that two undamaged carriers sailed back to Japan due to the lack of adequate aircrews.
At Truk, the Combined Fleet Staff was informed that Nagumo’s planes had sunk a “Saratoga-type” carrier, a “Yorktown-type” carrier, two “new type” carriers, a battleship, and one unidentified warship. In addition, the Japanese had allegedly damaged a battleship, three cruisers, and a destroyer. It appeared that Yamamoto’s goal of destroying U.S. sea power in the South Pacific had finally been fulfilled. Although the operation’s goal of capturing Henderson Field failed, the navy was pleased to claim an overwhelming victory at Santa Cruz.
As a result of their presumption that the Allied forces were greatly diminished, the Japanese initiated yet another offensive against Guadalcanal. But there was one important difference: due to the damage sustained by Nagumo’s carrier forces, aerial support for the next campaign would depend almost entirely on the Eleventh Air Fleet at Rabaul. A secondary difference, one not immediately apparent to the Allies, was a fleet-wide reorganization of the Imperial Navy. On November 1, the once proudly used names for aviation units were replaced with a standardized numeric system that identified groups by aircraft type and mission. The Tainan Air Group, for example, lost its fabled identity in favor of a bureaucratic number, becoming simply Air Group 251. After the shuffling, the forces available to Vice Admiral Kusaka included eleven air groups and two group detachments, divided among several flotillas. At Kavieng, the 1st Air Attack Force averaged about fifteen to twenty Zeros and twenty-five to thirty Bettys in operational status. The 5th Air Attack Force at Rabaul and Lae usually had twenty-five to thirty fighters ready at any given time, and the 6th Air Attack Force (Rabaul and Buin) typically had fifteen to twenty Zeros and thirty to forty Bettys in readiness. Additional aircraft included the Type 99 dive-bombers of Air Group 581, based at Buin, from which the Vals had adequate range to reach Henderson Field and return.
The Japanese air campaign against Guadalcanal resumed on November 11 as the Eleventh Air Fleet attempted to soften up Allied positions prior to the next big push. But the army’s portion of the shared offensive was doomed from the start. The transport force, carrying ten thousand soldiers and many tons of supplies, was attacked relentlessly on November 14 by nearly every Allied combat plane on Guadalcanal. Six of eleven transports were sunk or deliberately beached, and only a small fraction of the ammunition and food was delivered.
The air campaign fared no better. Lieutenant Commander Fumio Iwatani, who served with the land attack units, later provided a remarkable glimpse of the struggle from the Japanese perspective.
[It] was impossible for us to continue this affluent operation as long as our logistical strength was weak. Historically we were told that the chances of victory in war are 70/30. It was taught to us that even when we were gasping under heavy damage, the enemy was also s
uffering. Therefore, we should press the enemy even harder, with our all might, and grab the victory. However, facing an enemy seemingly immortal to damage, we felt utterly incapable of keeping up. In the face of this war of attrition, our replacement troops, which were sent to us several times, disappeared like bubbles. The food and arms supply for [soldiers on] Guadalcanal became increasingly difficult to provide, despite our best effort, and people started to call Guadalcanal “starvation island.”
In late November, recognizing that the Seventeenth Army was no longer capable of conducting effective operations on Guadalcanal as well as New Guinea, Imperial General Headquarters created the Eighteenth Army to take over the New Guinea campaign. To coordinate and administer the two armies, a new supervisory command, the Eighth Area Army, was established at Rabaul. Lieutenant General Hitoshi Imamura, placed in command of the new headquarters, paused at Truk during his journey from Japan and met with the Combined Fleet Staff. The outcome of their conference on November 21 was the difficult but necessary decision to give up the battle for Buna.
Lieutenant General Hatazo Adachi, commander of the newly created Eighteenth Army, also visited the Combined Fleet to discuss his forthcoming role. During supper that night in the wardroom of Yamato, Admiral Yamamoto made an astonishing prediction, telling Adachi that in all likelihood his soldiers would “never come back alive” from New Guinea. Yamamoto then smiled and said: “I, too, will not be able to go back home unless Guadalcanal is recaptured, so I am depending on your army.”
The commander in chief’s words were not only frank, but prophetically accurate.
CHAPTER 23
Heavy Bomber Blues
SHORTLY BEFORE GENERAL KENNEY headed overseas in the summer of 1942, he arranged for the shipment of fifty P-38 Lightnings from his previous command, the Fourth Air Force, to Australia. The first batch of twenty-five disassembled fighters arrived at Brisbane in mid-August, whereupon Kenney ordered his aviation support specialist, Brig. Gen. Carl W. Connell, to personally oversee the reassembly of the aircraft. Kenney also instructed Connell to obtain contracts with local sheet metal fabricators for the manufacture of ten thousand 150-gallon external drop tanks, which would greatly extend the Lightnings’ range.
The combat debut of the P-38 in the Southwest Pacific was eagerly anticipated. Already something of an icon among fighters, the twin-engine Lightning was a big, unorthodox aircraft. The pilot sat in a central pod between the in-line engines, which were mounted in long, streamlined booms that tapered back to twin vertical stabilizers. Twice the size of a Zero, the P-38 boasted a powerful armament package of four .50-caliber machine guns and one 20mm automatic cannon in its smooth, pointed nose. The pair of sixteen-cylinder, turbo-supercharged engines produced a total of 2,300 horsepower, enabling speeds of almost four hundred miles per hour. (A photoreconnaissance version, modified to hold a pair of vertical cameras in place of the standard weapons package, was even faster.) But the excitement that accompanied the arrival of the new fighters soon gave way to frustration. The reassembled P-38s were plagued by an embarrassing array of defects, including missing parts, leaks in the fuel tanks and intercoolers, and faulty electrical power inverters. Due to the time required to correct the problems, the first squadron would not become operational until mid-November.
In the meantime, Kenney looked forward to bolstering his heavy bomber force when the B-24s of the 90th Bomb Group arrived in Australia. But once again there were vexing problems. The fledgling group, formed in July, was presently attached to the Seventh Bomber Command in Hawaii. Oddly, the group commander had developed an aversion to the B-24, perhaps due to unflattering comments made publicly by Charles Lindbergh, the famed trans-Atlantic aviator, who questioned the safety of the big bomber. Immediately after arriving in Hawaii, Lt. Col. Eugene P. Mussett and one of his squadron commanders voiced displeasure with their Liberators and demanded B-17s. Catching wind of the conflict, General “Hap” Arnold advised both Kenney and the Seventh Air Force commander that an “acute problem” existed within the 90th Bomb Group’s leadership. Within days, Mussett and the squadron commander were replaced.
Under the new leadership of thirty-eight-year-old Col. Arthur W. Meehan, a West Pointer, the B-24s crossed the Pacific in early November. Considering the many inherent dangers of the five-thousand-mile journey, particularly the lack of navigational aids, it was a significant accomplishment that none of the forty-eight planes was lost. However, soon after the Liberators arrived in Australia, a rash of nose gear failures required the temporary grounding of the whole group. Replacement parts from the States proved faulty, so Australian machine shops were called upon to manufacture the needed items.
On November 13, three squadrons of B-24s moved to Iron Range, a brand-new airdrome on the remote Cape York Peninsula in northern Queensland. Having spent the past months in the splendor of Hawaii, the crews were dismayed to find primitive conditions at their new base. The two runways were not yet surfaced, and the living facilities consisted of tent cities.
Despite the unfavorable conditions, or perhaps because of them, Colonel Meehan scheduled the group’s first combat mission just two days later. The crews were green as grass, barely trained, but they were enthusiastic. Copying a trend that was spreading like wildfire throughout the army, they customized the billboard-sized noses of their Liberators with a vast spectrum of nicknames and colorful artwork. The B-24s were named for regions and girls and almost everything in between: Big Emma, Little Eva, Texas Terror, Cowtown’s Revenge, Hellzapoppin, Moby Dick, and dozens more.
On the evening of November 14, Meehan positioned nine Liberators at Port Moresby. The next morning, eight took off in the early hours to bomb the Buin-Faisi anchorage off the southern coast of Bougainville. No enemy ships were hit, and the inaugural mission cost the group two Liberators. One, damaged by antiaircraft fire, cracked up off New Guinea during a ditching attempt that went awry, and eight of the ten crewmembers perished. The other B-24 crash-landed on a beach near Iron Range with no casualties.
Determined to lead by example, Meehan ordered an even more ambitious strike the very next night. In hindsight, his choice of targets was ill advised. He planned to attack Rabaul, the most heavily defended bastion in the South Pacific, commencing with a night takeoff from the yet-unfinished strip at Iron Range. Fifteen crews from the 319th, 320th, and 400th Bomb Squadrons would depart at regular intervals beginning at 2300, and proceed individually at specific power settings designed to bring them together at approximately 0400 near Rabaul.
But large-scale operations are never easy, especially when conducted at night by an inexperienced unit working from an unfinished airdrome. Meehan got airborne on time in Punjab, piloted by Maj. Raymond S. Morse, commanding officer of the 320th Bomb Squadron, but immediately thereafter confusion set in. Due to poor airfield lighting and the absence of ground communications, several Liberators got out of position as they attempted to line up in the darkness. The crew of Big Emma, forced to abort the mission for mechanical reasons, pulled off to the side and parked among other non-participating bombers. Because there were no revetments, the planes were lined up dangerously close to the runway. Long minutes elapsed, and the next bomber did not take off until 2314, creating a sense of urgency among the remaining crews. To make matters worse, the whirling propellers of each departing Liberator kicked up a “Kansas-size dust storm,” making the dim runway marker lights virtually impossible to see.
The combination of problems created a recipe for disaster. The eleventh Liberator to accelerate down the runway, Bombs to Nippon, piloted by Lt. Paul R. Larson of the 400th Bomb Squadron, veered off center and clipped the nose of Big Emma. Going out of control, Larson’s B-24 impacted two other parked bombers with a sickening crash, and its 2,800 gallons of high-octane gasoline burst into orange-and-yellow flames. Moments later the payload of bombs exploded, wiping out Larson and his entire crew. An unlucky lineman, perched atop one of the parked bombers to observe the take-off, was also killed. Debris was scattered
everywhere, forcing the closure of the runway and stranding the last four bombers waiting to take off. It was just as well, for two of the idling B-24s had sustained damage from the accident.
The mission itself was no less disastrous. Of the ten Liberators that took off prior to Larson’s crash, only five reached Rabaul due to stormy conditions. Ultimately, only one B-24 dropped its bombs over the wharf area, causing no damage to the Japanese.
Later that morning, the news turned even worse. One by one, nine Liberators straggled back to Iron Range to find the cleanup from Larson’s crash still underway. But there was no sign of Punjab; in fact, nothing had been heard from the crew since their departure. Ten men had flown off into the night sky, never to be seen again. The most bizarre element of Punjab’s disappearance was the fact that Major Morse, a former B-17 pilot who had replaced the squadron commander sacked in Hawaii, was convinced he would die. Two weeks previously, just as he was about to board a B-24 for the trip across the Pacific, someone had offered to help him with his belongings. Morse declined, claiming “he had no gear (except a bottle of whiskey and a change of underwear) because he expected to die and didn’t want anyone to have to send all his stuff back to Hawaii.” But not even Morse could have foreseen that his first mission would be his last.
The loss of four aircraft and thirty men in two combat missions stunned the 90th Bomb Group. General Kenney, who was in New Guinea to oversee a new counteroffensive against Buna, ordered Ken Walker to restrict the group from combat “until they had learned more about night flying and navigation and had done some practice bombing and gunnery.” But this put Kenney in a bind. The 19th Bomb Group, having completed its final bombing mission over Rabaul on October 28, was now back in the States. With the B-24s temporarily out of combat, Kenney’s only heavies were the Fortresses of the 43rd Bomb Group. Therefore, after barely a week of remedial training, the B-24s resumed combat operations. Colonel Ralph E. “Zipper” Koon took command of the group, which primarily conducted reconnaissance missions. The next attempt to bomb Rabaul came on December 7, the one-year anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. But the weather was “abominable,” and none of the crews that reached the target area were able to pick out worthwhile targets.