Fortress Rabaul

by Bruce Gamble

  Unfortunately, the group’s run of bad luck continued. Eleven Liberators either fell out of the sky or never returned to base in just the first six weeks of operations. Most of the losses were the result of accidents or malfunctions, not combat, and the number of casualties was astounding: eighty-four crewmembers either dead or missing. Understandably, the group’s morale plummeted.

  One of the most unsettling losses occurred the day after Christmas, when another fifteen-bomber raid was attempted on Rabaul. In a tragic replay of the group’s first effort in mid-November, a Liberator crashed while taking off. The right outboard engine of Heavenly Body, piloted by Lt. Roy B. Kendrick of the 400th Bomb Squadron, apparently failed just as he lifted off from Iron Range on the rainy night of December 26. Slicing to the right, the heavily loaded B-24 crashed into the woods off the end of the runway, and the inevitable fire touched off three massive explosions. One badly wounded crewmember was found alive among the wreckage, but he died less than two hours after rescuers dragged him from the flames.

  Thirteen aircrews were still waiting in line to take off. Badly shaken by the horrendous crash, they were given the option of standing down from the mission, and several elected not to fly. Those that chose to continue, led by “Zipper” Koon, were ninety minutes behind schedule as they took off over the burning pyre of Kendrick’s aircraft.

  CHAPTER 24

  Medal of Honor: Kenneth N. Walker

  THE UNFORTUNATE LOSSES suffered by the 90th Bomb Group represented only one of several concerns facing Ken Walker during the closing weeks of 1942. Tasked with keeping pressure on the Japanese, both in New Guinea and the northern Solomons, he fretted almost daily over the lack of heavy bombers. He also experienced personal frustrations resulting from a series of disagreements with General Kenney. The two men usually got along, but on a number of specific issues their egos clashed.

  Walker had dedicated his career to the application of strategic daylight formation bombing, which made it difficult for him to accept some of Kenney’s innovations, such as skip-bombing and the use of parafrag bombs. One result was that he resisted when Kenney asked for a trial period using bombs fitted with instantaneous fuses against enemy shipping. Walker was supposed to be the bombing expert, and his strategies had been highly regarded in Washington. But in the Southwest Pacific, the situation was much different than Walker had expected. Kenney had his own agenda, and he also had the wholehearted support of his former aide, Major Benn, who now commanded the squadron involved in testing the fuses. Perhaps even more annoying, from Walker’s point of view, was the fact that Benn had a direct line of communication with Kenney.

  According to one of the 63rd Bomb Squadron’s pilots, Benn exercised the privilege routinely. “I shared a tent with Benn in Australia,” recalled James C. Dieffenderfer. “He’d go to the communications shack every night and teletype back and forth with Kenney. They’d plan missions and discuss what they were going to do.”

  There is little doubt that such cronyism created problems for Walker and probably fostered resentment as well. He was an outsider again, while Benn and Kenney shared their own private plans and ideas. After using instantaneous fuses for only a few anti-shipping strikes, Walker reverted to using delayed-action fuses for subsequent missions. Benn, well aware that Kenney had ordered a significant test period, placed himself in the crossfire by ignoring Walker and continuing to use the instantaneous fuses whenever his squadron was scheduled for a mission.

  The showdown came in Australia on October 15. All three men participated in a series of awards ceremonies, whereupon Kenney learned that Walker “had been giving Bill Benn the devil for not obeying orders.” Digging a little deeper into the controversy, Kenney discovered that Walker had stopped using the instantaneous fuses, which made his criticism of Benn seem hypocritical.

  Kenney tried a diplomatic solution. First, he reminded Benn that Walker was his boss—and his orders were to be obeyed. Next, he informed Walker that he wanted a month-long trial using the instantaneous fuses. If he heard any more about delayed-action fuses being used, he would rescind Walker’s privilege of specifying the settings. For the next month Walker adhered to the orders, but when Kenney returned to Port Moresby on November 19, Walker approached him again about using delayed-action fuses.

  Although the variation between an instantaneous fuse and a 1/10-second delayed fuse might seem miniscule, Kenney was eager to show that the effects could be remarkably different. Arranging a demonstration, he and Walker watched as several bombs with instantaneous fuses were dropped near the hulk of the SS Pruth. All of the bombs missed, striking the water at distances of twenty-five to seventy-five yards from the ship. The two generals then rode a motor launch out to the reef where they transferred into a smaller boat to be rowed in close to the old wreck. As they moved alongside the rusted ship, Kenney triumphantly pointed out fresh gashes in the hull, some of them impressively large. The evidence was overwhelming: the bombs with instantaneous fuses had exploded on contact with the water, sending shrapnel from the casings in every direction. Even when the bombs missed by a wide margin, the jagged shards caused serious damage.

  “Okay,” Walker conceded. “You win.”

  Kenney allegedly savored his victory by making Walker row the boat back to the launch. If true, the embarrassment must have infuriated Walker, but he “thawed out” at Brigadier General Whitehead’s quarters in Port Moresby after a few cocktails.

  Despite the fact that the dispute over fuses had been settled, Kenney apparently began to question Walker’s suitability and considered sending him back to Washington. He admired Walker’s determination and tireless work ethic but also regarded him as “stubborn, oversensitive and a prima donna.” Furthermore, Kenney was concerned that Walker, being “keyed up all the time,” would not hold up under the stresses he constantly placed on himself.

  Born in a remote New Mexico town in 1898, Ken Walker had spent most of his life with a chip on his shoulder. He was an only child whose father left when Ken was very young, and the abandonment had a lasting impact on his formative years. One of his own sons would later write: “My father was raised by his mother in a hardscrabble environment, and perhaps much of his personality was shaped by … the need to protect his mother and take on anyone who posed a threat.”

  As an adult, Walker was focused on his military career and the development of strategic bombing. One acquaintance remembered him for his “near total involvement with himself and his ideas,” which may explain Walker’s occasional defiance of General Kenney. On October 5, for example, Kenney told him in no uncertain terms to stop participating in combat missions. But Walker, ever the hands-on leader, continually ignored the verbal order.

  In his defense, Walker was not the only general flying over enemy territory. During a return visit to Port Moresby on December 16, Kenney learned that both Walker and Ennis Whitehead had recently participated in separate, hair-raising missions. Whitehead had been aboard a B-25 that returned from a reconnaissance flight with a big hole in one wing from an antiaircraft shell, and Walker flew as an observer in a B-17 that clipped a tree while barge-hunting along the New Guinea coast, ripping off a three-foot chunk of the left wing.

  Kenney chided both men, telling them once again “to stop flying combat missions.” He was worried not only about losing them in combat but by what they would suffer if captured. “We had plenty of evidence that the Nips had tortured their prisoners until they either died or talked,” he later wrote. “After the prisoners talked they were beheaded anyhow, but most of them had broken under the strain. I told Walker that frankly I didn’t believe he could take it without telling everything he knew, so I was not going to let him go on any more combat missions.”

  Several days after Kenney’s visit, Walker ordered another strike against Rabaul. For the past several weeks, his heavy bomber groups had been focused primarily on attacking convoys in the waters between New Britain and New Guinea. Consisting of heavily armed warships, the convoys were also pr
otected by Zeros, resulting in intense air-sea battles and the loss of several heavy bombers. During one particularly costly week ending in early December, the 43rd Bomb Group lost four B-17s and their crews in exchange for one Japanese destroyer sunk and three damaged. Determined to hit the enemy’s supply line where it would hurt the most—at the main terminal—Walker scheduled a major effort against Rabaul for the night of December 26.

  The plan called for both the 43rd and 90th Bomb Groups to take part, but the crash of Roy Kendrick’s B-24 at Iron Range that rainy night affected the latter group’s participation. Of the fifteen Liberators scheduled to take part, all but a few dropped out after the accident. The situation was nearly as bad at Port Moresby, where the 43rd Bomb Group had only six Fortresses available for the mission. Surprisingly, the small number of B-17s achieved one of the group’s most successful attacks to date. Led by Maj. Edward W. Scott Jr., the B-17s were officially credited with sinking one transport—but they actually sank two and also damaged a destroyer.

  Scott released four bombs while attacking a large merchant vessel anchored just off Lakunai airdrome. His crew reported that the ship, later identified as the 5,859-ton Italy Maru, briefly caught fire, though none of the crewmembers could offer additional details. A reconnaissance photo taken several hours later showed the ship on its side, and credit for the sinking was duly awarded.

  Other crews also scored but did not observe the results directly. An army cargo ship named Tsurugisan Maru was sunk that night, and the destroyer Tachikaze was badly damaged by a direct hit on the bow. The warship’s captain, Lt. Cmdr. Yasumi Hirasata, was among those killed. The successful attacker was probably Double Trouble, a B-17F whose crew reported making four runs on a “cruiser.” (One of the more creatively named bombers in the Fifth Air Force, the B-17 wore Double Trouble on the left side of the nose, and Ka-Puhio-Wela, the Hawaiian phrase for double trouble, on the opposite side.)

  At Truk, the damaging raid got the attention of the Combined Fleet chief of staff, Matome Ugaki, who had been promoted to vice admiral the previous month. He noted in his diary that “B-17s obstinately attacked Rabaul last night” and also expounded on the problems the raids were causing: “For some time we’ve keenly felt the need of devising some effective countermeasures against B-17s. Against their tactics of coming to attack at daytime without being discovered, or attacking at night, dropping parachute flares, we hardly could do more than fold our arms. If our losses add up in this way, finally we would be unable to do anything but live in caves, or retreat. Now we must study this hard.”

  Ugaki could not have known that his projections would come true. More than two years after his speculation, the Japanese garrison began tunneling an extensive and elaborate network of caves in the volcanic soil around Simpson Harbor.

  AS THE YEAR 1942 drew to a close, Allied reconnaissance flights revealed that Simpson Harbor was again crowded with ships. The hard-luck 90th Bomb Group did not fly another attack mission during the last few days of 1942, but seven Fortresses from the 43rd Bomb Group bombed Rabaul at approximately 0530 on December 30. Led by Major Scott and Captain McCullar, the crews made individual bombing runs at five thousand to six thousand feet. McCullar scored a direct hit on an unidentified vessel that caused a “large flash followed by fire and black smoke.” Another crew claimed a nearly identical result, perhaps not by coincidence.

  Jim Murphy, flying a B-17F named Snoopy, dropped down to skip-bomb two transports and claimed that he sank both with a single attack run, a feat he later described at length in his memoir. Murphy was officially credited with sinking one eight-thousand-ton vessel, while the second ship, which he estimated at ten thousand tons, was downgraded to a “probable.” (The only loss to the Japanese that night was Tomiura Maru, a small cargo ship that sank on the opposite side of Simpson Harbor from where Murphy described his action. Most likely it was the victim of Ken McCullar’s crew.)

  The following night, New Year’s Eve, six B-17s attacked Lakunai airdrome. Each Fortress carried a bomb load of eight 500-pounders wrapped with wire. “That package was the most positive method we had to ensure destruction of everything within a hundred yards,” wrote Murphy, who was taking part in his second Rabaul mission in as many days. The returning crews reported secondary explosions on the airdrome, but Japanese records show no corresponding damage. Whether or not the wire-wrapped bombs caused much destruction, the year ended noisily at Rabaul, with dozens of big explosions.

  AT TRUK, Admiral Yamamoto was probably not in a celebratory mood as he contemplated the end of 1942. Having opened the year with a string of brilliant victories, his naval forces were reeling. The concerns shared by many Japanese were expressed by Yamamoto’s right-hand man, Vice Admiral Ugaki, in his diary. “The year 1942 is going to pass tonight,” he wrote. “How brilliant was the first-stage operation up to April! And what miserable setbacks since Midway in June! The invasions of Hawaii, Fiji, Samoa, and New Caledonia, [the] liberation of India and destruction of the British Far Eastern Fleet have all scattered like dreams. Meanwhile, not to speak of capturing Port Moresby, but the recovery of Guadalcanal … turned out to be impossible.”

  The Allies were unaware of just how devastating the failed operations had been for the Japanese. Within days, Yamamoto would order KE Operation, a naval mission to evacuate the remnants of the units on Guadalcanal by warship. Ultimately some thirteen thousand emaciated troops would be rescued, but by the time the operation concluded in early February 1943, the Japanese had left nineteen thousand dead on Guadalcanal. Another thousand, mostly laborers, had been captured.

  In terms of deprivation, New Guinea was even worse. Between late July and mid-August 1942, the Japanese had landed more than twelve thousand troops in the Buna area for the push across the Owen Stanley Mountains. When that effort was thwarted on the Kokoda Trail in September, the starving survivors gradually withdrew to a narrow defensive pocket near Buna. Another five thousand reinforcements were delivered from Rabaul, but the persistent Allied air attacks on the convoys eventually forced the Japanese to use submarines for delivering supplies.

  As cargo vessels, the subs were completely inadequate. Although twenty tons of supplies were delivered on the nights of December 19 and 20, the Seventeenth Army chief of staff appealed for more food just four days later. The soldiers, he wrote, were “only keeping themselves alive by eating tree buds, coconuts, and seaweed.” Later it was discovered that some Japanese had resorted to cannibalism.

  The failed Buna campaign cost the lives of approximately twelve thousand men, including that of Major General Horii. On November 19, while scouting the coastline of New Guinea in a native canoe, he and two staff officers were swept out to sea by a sudden squall. The canoe swamped, drowning the conqueror of Rabaul and his chief of staff.

  And yet, despite the costly setbacks at Buna and Guadalcanal, the Japanese were still arguably stronger than the Allies in the Southwest Pacific. The Imperial Navy completed its new airdromes on Bougainville and New Georgia, and in mid-December, Eighteenth Army units landed at Madang and Wewak on the north coast of New Guinea. Construction battalions built a network of airdromes for Imperial Army air regiments, thus reinforcing the western flank of Rabaul. For every advance by the Allies, the Japanese put up additional roadblocks.

  EVIDENCE THAT the Japanese still held the advantage was photographed at Rabaul on December 30. No less than twenty-one warships occupied the anchorages, along with approximately seventy merchant vessels totaling an estimated three hundred thousand tons. “When the Jap accumulates that much tonnage,” wrote General Kenney on the first day of 1943, “it means trouble for me shortly.”

  It is likely that Kenney also received Ultra intercepts revealing enemy plans for the deployment of a vital convoy to New Guinea. (A term first coined by the British, “Ultra” became the catch-all name for message intercepts in World War II. The highest security classification then available was Most Secret, but message decoding was considered even more specialized, or ultra-sec
ret.) Separately, intelligence analysts noted a sharp increase in enemy air patrols over Lae and the Huon Gulf, a strong indicator of the convoy’s intended destination. Hoping to “break the movement up at the source,” Kenney told Walker to plan an all-out attack against Simpson Harbor. Only essential reconnaissance flights were to be conducted during the next few days so that the heavy bomb groups could perform much-needed maintenance.

  According to Kenney’s memoirs, Walker was instructed to schedule the attack for January 5, at dawn. Two days prior to the mission, Walker approached Kenney to request a change: he wanted to hit Rabaul at midday instead.

  Walker was evidently worried about the participation of the 90th Bomb Group, a logical concern considering the group’s string of bad luck, particularly during night operations. Recently, the group had implemented a program of rotating one squadron to Port Moresby for a week at a time while the other three squadrons operated from Iron Range. In order for the Australia-based Liberators to hit Rabaul at dawn, they would have to take off in the middle of the night and then rendezvous with the participants from Port Moresby—a daunting and potentially hazardous maneuver to attempt in the darkness. Walker wanted to delay the takeoff until after daybreak, reasoning that a noon attack would enable better concentration of defensive firepower and also yield a tighter bombardment pattern. Having spent his whole career advocating these tactics, Walker was anxious to implement them.