1943 (Kirov Series Book 27)

by John Schettler

  Yet seeing hits for all four of the smaller scout and escort carriers triggered that reflexive impulse in Nagumo to preserve his ships. He had been selected by Yamamoto to return to Japan and lead these ships out into battle for the first time. They were gleaming new, with the fresh camo paint barely dry when he left Japan. Now he saw the inevitable scars of battle blackening the flanks and decks of his prized Shadō Butai, and he turned about, immediately ordering the group to withdraw north. Soon he learned that he had been wise to do so. Both of the escort carriers, Okami and Kitsune, reported their damage was sufficient to require all flight deck operations to be suspended. There would now be 48 planes that could not return to those two decks.

  Our own strike must inevitably take losses, he thought grimly. So surviving planes should be able to land on my two bigger battle carriers, and any others can divert to Luganville.

  He had thrown 150 planes at his enemy, but they were heading into increasing rain as they proceeded south. Only 46 strike planes with 44 fighters in escort, would find the Americans to deliver the first attack to be made by these new warriors of the Shadō Butai. Most of those were the torpedo planes, flying lower and avoiding many of the towering thunderheads that so confounded the dive bombers at 15,000 feet. Only eight D3A Vals and 17 D4Y Judy dive bombers would find the enemy, and the American fighters got all but eight of them. Not a single one would score a hit.

  The attack now rested with the torpedo bombers, and it looked like they were going to be cut to pieces. Eight were taken by the enemy fighters, and six more would fall to flak. So there it was, after nearly a year in the shipyards, the synthesis of steel and sweat and sinew, and after all the planning, training and effort to bring those ships to battle, it was coming down to seven pilots in seven torpedo bombers that would survive the American defense to deliver their ordnance.

  Halsey would come to call them the “Magnificent Seven,” counting them as they came in, one by one, flying bravely through the heavy flak.

  “My god,” he said to Duncan. “Look at them, steady as a rock. Magnificent, but I wish I could personally shoot every last one.”

  He kept his fingers crossed when he saw the torpedoes go into the water, but after observing a hundred practice drills at sea in his time, he knew the Japanese pilots had put their fish in the water with perfect precision. Amazingly, six of those seven torpedoes would find ships, two on North Carolina, another on South Dakota, two rocking Essex and one more on the Lexington.

  Halsey swore when he saw the tall white splashes rise up with those hits. “Get me damage reports as soon as possible,” he ordered. The news he got back wasn’t good. South Dakota had taken only minor damage and flooding, and the ship’s Captain said he could seal it off and remain underway. Being hit twice, he felt lucky when he learned his own flagship had only minor damage, but there was more significant flooding that was going to need a port soon. Her engines were not compromised, but he knew his game was over at that moment, particularly when he got the news on Lexington. The single torpedo had ignited an ammo storage area and the flooding was much more severe. She would need to get to the nearest port that could be found, and quickly.

  “That does it then,” said Halsey. “We’ll have to split the deck. Make to Enterprise and tell Spruance he’s about to have company. I want him to move over here to Essex and take the damaged ships safely to Australian ports.”

  “You’re transferring your flag?” said Duncan. No Captain ever wanted to see an Admiral blown off his ship like that, even if he didn’t really want to stand in his shadow.

  “Hell,” said Halsey. “I’ve still got MacArthur’s transports to cover at Noumea. I’ll take Enterprise, Yorktown, North Carolina and a couple cruisers back west to cover those landings. As for you and Spruance, take Essex, Lexington and the other battleship to Brisbane. If they can control the flooding on Lexington, you’d do better at Sydney, but save those ships at any cost. I’ll leave the bulk of the destroyers with you.”

  “Aye sir,” said Duncan, a bit crestfallen.

  It had come down to those seven pilots on the other side, and Nagumo would later learn that they were all among the handpicked veterans he had selected from the ranks of the men he had first led to Pearl Harbor. The younger pilots had fought bravely, but not with the skill of those Seven Samurai. If those last few planes had been foiled, Halsey would have won a resounding victory. Instead, the bravery and experience of those pilots meant that both sides had been hurt that day, and both forced to withdraw.

  The problem Halsey faced now was in thinking his battle was over, while all this time he had been shadow boxing. His real enemy was still out there, still unseen by any search plane, and now Admiral Hara would send 69 dive bombers, 15 torpedo planes escorted by 17 zeroes. If they had found Halsey as he regrouped and started west towards Noumea again, it would have been a heavy blow. As it happened, they were not aimed at him this time. They were out after the American landing at Noumea, hungry for blood.

  They came late in the day, flying between the high puffy clouds that were left on the wind like herds of grazing sheep. The storm front had passed north, and was now over Hara’s carriers, but his planes had punched through long ago and were over Noumea. There they could see that the Americans had landed at three separate locations.

  Noumea sat on an irregular peninsula that jutted about seven miles out to sea on the southwest coast of the island. The harbor was approached through Dumbea Bay, which could also serve as a large anchorage. Dumbea led further north to Gadji Bay where the coastal road north ran just meters from the shore, and the main harbor entrance on Moselle Bay. A series of small islands sheltered the main harbor there. The largest of these was Nouville Island, about five kilometers long and only a little over a kilometer wide. It acted as a breakwater for the harbor, which it reached for with its narrow tail.

  The US did not know how long they would have naval gunfire support, so they had planned to land artillery on that island, which had once housed up to 40,000 prisoners as a penal colony for the French. From there, the guns could command the entire city, while remaining relatively immune from a land based counterattack by the defenders.

  Directly across the narrow Moselle Bay was the Nickel smelting works on another spit of land to the north, then the main port area with the Grand Quay, Government House, High Commissioner’s Office, Main Barracks for the French Garrison, and Artillery Barracks for the shore gun emplacements. The town also had an electrical plant, waterworks, rail depot, radio station, a cathedral and several churches, library, and a girl’s school. A few hotels, the best being the Hotel du Pacifique, were on the inland side of the harbor town, and the wide open square called Place de Cocotiers was dead center, with expansive grounds, botanical gardens and a rotunda that served as a stage for the military band. A tall statue of the French Admiral Orly stood there, commemorating his victory in the Kanek Rebellion of 1878, putting down tribes the French called cannibals.

  Now new conquerors were coming, not cannibals, but the old doughboys that had once come to France to stop the Germans in the last war. The 41st Sunrise Division had shipped out with Pershing, though it did not fight as a cohesive unit in that war, its regiments being parceled out to buttress other divisions on the line. Now the French would have to face the descendants of the men who had fought for them at the Battles of the Aisne, Meuse-Argonne, Chateau Thierry and St. Mihel. Their names were still on the crosses in France, where LtC. John McCrae had written his famous poem….

  We are the dead: Short days ago,

  We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

  Loved and were loved: and now we lie

  In Flanders fields!

  A few more would die here as they assaulted the White Poppy, finally realizing where they were after they landed. Considered the best of all the National Guard Divisions, and one of the top three units in the Army, the 41st would give a good account of itself. The heaviest fighting in this part of the landings would fall to the 162nd Regiment, whic
h came in through Moselle Bay, and the smaller harbor approach to the south called the “little entrance.”

  Troops in this assault would arrive on the APDs, a few fast destroyers that could carry a company each. Their mission was to get in fast and get in close, the men having the benefit of the destroyer’s gunfire support as they took to their small rubber boats to make the short trip to the harbor. Coming at night, they had surprised the French Artillery Garrison, and fire from shore batteries was sporadic and ineffective. Any guns that did range on the landing site quickly became the focus of the destroyer gunfire, which was also blasting away at desultory machinegun fire coming from the edge of the harbor.

  It was a daring attack by 1/162nd Battalion, the riskiest part of the operation, but it would succeed in getting the men ashore to begin the fight for the harbor itself. Farther out the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of would begin their Ship-to-Shore movement with simple landing boats, there being few LVTs to support the operation. Amazingly, the found all the harbor approaches unmined and lightly defended. The Japanese had rested their defense on the presence of numerous warships in that harbor, and the planes on Tontouta airfield about 25 miles to the northwest, but those planes and ships were largely gone.

  Two days earlier, Halsey’s raid had hit that anchorage heavily, sinking four of five Japanese APs that had been in Dumbea Bay, and roughing up several destroyers and cruisers. Haguro was hit badly enough to force it to withdraw to Rabaul for repairs, and the Japanese squadron had put to sea, fleeing north to escape further harm.

  As for the planes at Tontouta, there had been 24 twin engine Nell bombers, six Kates and 12 Vals, and they were ordered to transfer to Luganville after the attack. Only 14 of Bombers survived to make that trip, and went those planes were transferred, the defense of Noumea rested on the single French Battalion, and 1st Battalion of the Ichiki regiment, which was scattered over a ten to twelve-mile area.

  So the Doughboys were going to get ashore that day, moving over the dark waters of Dumbea Bay in their tactical landing boats. The waning gibbous moon was just a little over half full, and it cast a silver sheen over the water, broken by the small dark intrusion of the landing craft. If MacArthur had waited a week, the invaders would have enjoyed the dark of the moon, but this being a first landing by the division, the US actually needed the moonlight to help keep order and prevent chaos in the darkness.

  Most would survive the journey to the coast easily enough, the rifle teams leaping ashore on the narrow strand along the waterway known as Anse du Tir. Others were confused by the many small bays to the north that all seemed to look inviting enough, and some wandered into Numbo Bay; others into Dames Bay near the headland that framed the north end of the harbor area, called Komourou. Company platoons got separated, mixed in with those of another unit, but in the main, most everyone got ashore somewhere and began sorting themselves out under the bawling, throaty urgings of their Sergeants.

  Further south, in the area designated “Plum Beach,” the 3rd Battalion of the 162nd would land on the seaward flanks of a high hill dubbed Mount Dore. There were shallow beaches in Plum Bay, with a small tree-studded settlement there. The main mission of this unit was to follow the road inland south and east of Mount Dore, and cut the main road on Route 7 to the south. This was the road that led to the mines at Goro, where full a third of Ichiki’s troops were stationed, many actually helping with the work there.

  While the 162nd move to isolate and secure the port itself, it soon found itself in hot firefights with the scattered Japanese defenders. Yet outnumbered three to one, with little help from the feckless French troops, Ichiki’s 1st Battalion was slowly being overcome, one house after another.

  Farther north, about 245miles up the main coastal road, the 163rd Regiment was landing at Anse Longue, or “Long Cove.” Well named, the landing site was the only location suitable for a landing aimed at seizing Tontouta Airfield, which was the real prize objective of the attack. Areas due west and north of the field saw the coastal bays overgrown with boggy mangrove swamps, so much so that one was named “Inaccessible Bay.” The beach at Long Cove was fringed on its seaward edge by rocky coral, but the boats would hit the submerged sandbars before they reached it, and it would be easy enough for the infantry to simply wade ashore. To their great surprise, there was no defense there whatsoever. An amphibious landing was the farthest thing from the minds of the local Japanese garrison, who were posted mostly at or very near the airfield itself, some six miles inland.

  To get there, the 163rd would be crossing relatively open ground, rising gently in elevation and presenting no real terrain obstacles beyond the winding course of a few small streams. One battalion veered right toward the small hamlet of St Vincent, its mission being to cut the main road there. The other two battalions assembled in the flat open ground and then headed north towards the airfield. The base itself was screened from on its northern flank by the Tambeo River, a small watercourse no more than 50 feet in average width. To the south, the meandering course of the small La Tamoa River joined the Tambeo before they made their way through thickening mangroves to the sea. There the river could widen to over 300 feet, and the boggy groves made an attack from that direction impossible.

  The only way to take the field would be to first cross the Tamoa River to reach the main road, called Route 1. The road and river then ran roughly parallel to one another, separated by a kilometer of open fields. As the troops approached, they would have scant cover in a few lines of trees gracing the course of small streams. Then they would meet the best organized defense on the island, for Colonel Kiyano Ichiki was at the airfield when the landings began.

  Chapter 24

  The 2nd Battalion under Major Nobuo Kuramoto was well concentrated to defend the field, with most of the machineguns in the detachment sited as AA emplacements on the edges of the long 3000 foot landing strip. He had four companies under Lieutenants Higuchi, Sawada, Maruyama and Chiba, all up to strength. The battalion was further strengthened by Lt. Komatsu’s MG Company, a small gun platoon under 2nd Lt. Hanami, and an engineer company to work on the field under Lieutenant Hideo Goto. In all, there were about 916 officers and men, and this was the same force that had been Ichiki’s first echelon when it had landed at Guadalcanal in Fedorov’s history.

  The reputation of Ichiki’s force had been forged over many years of fighting in Manchuria, and it was considered among the very best in the Army. It was a unit fired at the outset with rigid discipline and training, often brutal by American standards. The soldiers themselves endured physical hardships, severe beatings, the clenched fist of a superior officer, or a rifle butt or sword haft being liberally applied for any perceived shortcoming. It was no surprise then that the men forged by that training regimen were a hard hearted and brutal lot themselves.

  The Colonel had been chafing for some time, knowing that the Army had placed two full divisions on Viti Levu and believing that his detachment, the first to arrive in this theater, had been overlooked. He wanted to get into the war again, not to sit in garrison duty, with a third of his men working the mines before rotating to a two-week billet in Noumea, and then moving to the Airfield before they repeated that sequence. His men were restless, particularly after the Americans bombed the field, and all the planes were ordered out. The sight of the transports burning in the harbor was most disconcerting. The Colonel took that order very personally, thinking that he and his men had not been able to properly defend the airfield and harbor, but what more could they do?

  The Navy had sent only one squadron of the better Type-Zero fighters, and it was said that they were now busy moving new troops to build up forces in the New Hebrides. Rumors were flying like fireflies that the Americans had landed on Efate, which was the reason why all the ships and planes had been ordered elsewhere. He imagined that they were now busy preparing to attack the Americans, and had no word that any threat to his command was imminent.

  So it was with great surprise that Ichiki awoke in the darkness of
the early morning to hear the deep boom of heavy gunfire. He knew it was not his own artillery, nor that of the French. This was something bigger, more ominous sounding, and it immediately honed his guard up for battle. The Colonel would soon receive a call from Noumea where Colonel Mizuno had the 1st Battalion. The harbor was being shelled, and the dark silhouettes of many enemy ships could be seen in the bay.

  The sudden realization that the war had found him again at last was like a jolt of energy for Ichiki. He rushed out, soon fining his adjutant, Captain Yokichi Togashi, and ordered the battalion to stand to arms. Many of the men thought this was another of the Colonel’s surprise training drills, which had seemed endless in spite of their backwaters deployment, but now they could sense there was something more in the air that morning. The sound of battle rode the still airs like a rumble of thunder. The Americans were landing!

  Colonel Ichiki resisted the immediate impulse to send his men to the harbor defense, knowing that he was already sitting on the ground the enemy really wanted. So instead he ordered his men to begin strengthening all their defensive positions, and when the troops of the 41st finally began to approach the airfield, they would face a well concentrated defense. The Japanese troops would now be fighting under the eyes of their Regimental Commander, and were burning to get at the Americans once they realized the surprise landings had been carried out before dawn.

  “We are not going to the harbor?” asked Captain Togashi. “That is where they are landing!”

  “Do not worry, this is what they came for, not the harbor.”

  “But if they take the city they will have most of our supplies.”

  “There are two battalions there already.”

  “The French are useless!”

  “True, but Colonel Mizuno is there with them. He will hold the harbor, or die if he should fail. As for us, we must keep this airfield from falling into enemy hands at all cost.”