Fortress Rabaul: The Battle for the Southwest Pacific, January 1942-April 1943

by Bruce Gamble

  AMAZINGLY, AS IF unaware that 24 Squadron had been nearly wiped out, Townsville ordered Lerew to go on the offensive. A message received at 1630 on January 21 instructed him to use “all available aircraft to … attack the enemy shipping concentration southwest of Kavieng.” Lerew was exasperated. He had already informed his superiors that he had only two airworthy planes. What was he supposed to accomplish by sending one Hudson and a Wirraway against a fleet of forty enemy ships?

  Despite his frustration, Lerew understood intrinsically that he could not disobey the order. His duty, as Lord Tennyson had expressed so eloquently in his 1854 poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” was “not to reason why … but to do or die.”

  Bill Brookes volunteered to pilot the Wirraway, but when he and an ordnance man inspected it that afternoon, they found that the wing-mounted bomb racks had been removed to configure the plane as a fighter. That left the Hudson, which had been hidden in a stand of trees at Vunakanau. Dozens of native laborers muscled it out into the open and hauled it to the runway, where Sqn. Ldr. Jack Sharp climbed aboard with his copilot and two gunners. Just before dusk, the four men courageously took off to find the approaching fleet. Fortunately for them, darkness fell rapidly after the sun dipped below the horizon, and an approaching weather system made visibility even worse. Forced to abandon the search, Sharp returned safely to Vunakanau.

  With the Hudson back in one piece, Lerew signaled his intention to evacuate the wounded airmen using the bomber as an ambulance. The reply, from Air Cdre. Francis M. Bladin at Townsville, was blunt: “Rabaul not yet fallen. Assist Army in keeping airdrome open. Maintain communications as long as possible.”

  Lerew ignored Bladen as well. Heading to the hospital on Namanula Hill, he picked up the men who had been wounded on the 20th. The doctor advised that they were unfit to travel, but Lerew insisted on their release. Leaving them to the Japanese was not an option. Thus, wearing casts and fresh dressings, still dopey from the effects of morphine, they were driven to Vunakanau airdrome in the middle of the night.

  A light rain fell as the wounded were loaded aboard the Hudson. At 0300 on January 22, with Jack Sharp back at the controls, the Lockheed accelerated down the soggy runway and lurched into the air, one propeller over-revving loudly due to a problem with its constant-speed control. Other mechanical troubles plagued the journey, but the last Allied plane out of Rabaul stayed in the air long enough to reach Port Moresby. After refueling, Sharp continued to Australia with his cargo of wounded airmen. Thanks to his determination and Lerew’s stubbornness, they would heal—and return to fight again.

  WHATEVER SATISFACTION Lerew may have felt as he watched the Hudson depart lasted only a couple of hours. Just before dawn, forty-five carrier planes from Akagi and Kaga returned to finish the job of destroying the fixed defenses at Rabaul. Dive-bombers pounded the coastal gun battery at Praed Point, and this time succeeded in dislodging the upper gun from its emplacement. The heavy weapon tumbled down the steep slope onto the lower gun, killing or wounding more than twenty artillerymen. Other carrier planes attacked the two airdromes, and several dive-bombers tried, again without success, to knock out the antiaircraft battery.

  The Aussie gunners apparently scored hits on at least two of Kaga’s Type 99 dive-bombers, which later made forced landings in the water alongside the carrier. If their loss was indeed the result of damage from antiaircraft fire, then Selby’s young militiamen accounted for a total of five enemy carrier planes—a tremendous accomplishment considering the gunners’ lack of experience and unsophisticated weaponry.

  Soon after the raid ended, lookouts on Watom Island observed the enemy fleet only twenty miles north of their position. By midday, the ships could be seen from Rabaul itself, leaving no doubt whatsoever that an invasion was imminent.

  AT HIS NEW headquarters on high ground near Vunakanau, Colonel Scanlan decided he was no longer bound by his original orders regarding the defense of Rabaul. With the coastal guns in ruins and 24 Squadron out of action, Lark Force’s essential purpose had all but evaporated.

  Determined to leave nothing useful to the enemy, Scanlan issued orders to demolish the two airdromes and the antiaircraft guns. The rigged explosions added to the chaos that gripped Rabaul that afternoon, but the biggest blast was yet to come. At 1600 hours, a stockpile of approximately two thousand bombs, offloaded from the freighter Herstein a week earlier, was destroyed by Lark Force engineers. Lacking the time to do the job methodically, they set off the entire dump in what was later described as a “rather botched demolition.” The explosion was disastrous, leveling houses and buildings within a quarter-mile radius and causing extensive damage as far away as half a mile. Electrical service was knocked out all over town, and the delicate glass vacuum tubes in the radio transmitters were smashed. In the blink of an eye, communication with the outside world was cut off. Even worse, several local natives had been caught in the open. Their corpses, torn open grotesquely by the massive concussion, lay in the middle of the street.

  LATE THAT AFTERNOON, Lerew paid a visit to Scanlan’s new headquarters to make a determination about his squadron. Almost all of his remaining men were either mechanics or support personnel, he told Scanlan. None had received any infantry training, and only a few had fired a rifle during basic training. Should they stay and fight with the infantry?

  The weather was beginning to deteriorate, matching Scanlan’s mood. Sharing a last drink with Lerew, he decided after a brief deliberation that the RAAF personnel would be more of a hindrance than an asset and gave Lerew his consent to withdraw. Shortly thereafter, the remnants of 24 Squadron started toward the south coast of New Britain in an assortment of trucks and staff cars.

  WORKING STEADILY throughout the afternoon to treat the wounded men brought in from the wrecked coastal guns, the medical personnel on Namanula Hill were nearly oblivious to the crisis developing outside the hospital. But when the explosion of the bomb dump cut electrical power, they decided to move the sick and wounded to a safer location. Nearly eighty patients were transported in a caravan of ambulances, utility trucks, and other vehicles to Vunapope, where Bishop Isidoro Leone Scharmach, the vicar apostolic of Rabaul, made the mission’s “native boys’ hospital” available. It was well after midnight by the time the vehicles rounded the caldera and arrived at the clinic, normally used by male islanders. After settling the patients, the six army nurses attached to the 2/10 Field Ambulance trudged up the hill to a women’s dormitory for a few hours’ sleep. But there would be no rest for the two doctors, Maj. Edward C. Palmer and Capt. Sandy E. J. Robertson, who elected to return to Rabaul. They were battlefield surgeons and intended to perform their duty with the troops. It was not an easy decision. Sooner or later, everyone left behind at Vunapope would be captured by the Japanese.

  Before leaving, Palmer approached Chaplain May and said, “You’ll stay, will you, Padre?”

  It was not a question. Both men understood that the doctor was politely telling May to assume responsibly for the patients, nurses, and orderlies from the 2/10 Field Ambulance, not to mention the civilians from the administration hospital and local missions. The chaplain, responding with a simple “Yes,” knew that he would be one of the first officers captured.

  WHILE 24 SQUADRON put some distance between themselves and Rabaul, a radio operator raced ahead to hunt for a working radio. Finding one at Tol plantation on Wide Bay, Sgt. Frederick G. Higgs encrypted a short message to Port Moresby: “Send flying-boats. [The men] will identify themselves with torch.”

  By this time, dozens of other evacuees, including civilians and even a few army personnel, had joined the exodus from Rabaul. When the last segment of navigable roadway ended at the Warangoi River, the rabble numbered 150 men.

  Due to the heavy rainfall, the river was now a raging torrent. Two native canoes were available for crossing the river, but the process took hours. Afterward, the men continued on foot through the dripping jungle, fording another river before they finally reached a larg
e, stylish plantation called Put Put in the middle of the night. Allowing only a brief rest, Lerew split the group into two parties. He put Bill Brookes in charge of the civilians and married RAAF personnel, numbering about fifty men, and commandeered two boats to take them the rest of the way to Tol plantation.

  Brookes was appalled by the behavior he witnessed that night among certain civilians. “Numerous cases occurred where [men] were deliberately dumped and left behind,” he reported, “in order that a particular person could make his escape either a little more certain or faster.”

  Among those left behind was Harold Page, the former territorial administrator. No longer a young man, he decided to walk back to Rabaul with three other officials. Reaching the convoy of trucks abandoned at the Warangoi River on January 25, they made camp and waited for the Japanese to pick them up.

  Lerew and his party, meanwhile, continued their journey from Put Put on foot, covering another fifteen miles to Adler Bay. Stopping at another plantation to rest at midday on January 23, they were driven under cover a few times when enemy scout planes flew over. That afternoon, the drone of aircraft engines sent the men scurrying under the trees again. But then some of the men, probably mechanics, recognized the distinctive note of Bristol Pegasus engines. An Empire flying boat was somewhere nearby.

  As it turned out, two of the gigantic, four-engine seaplanes, formerly used by Qantas for luxury international passenger service, were searching for Lerew and his men. The radio message sent by Sergeant Higgs had been received at Port Moresby the previous day, and 20 Squadron sent the Empires on a rescue mission. The crews had elected to stop for the night at Samarai on the tip of the Papuan Peninsula, then took off again on the morning of January 23 and searched along the coast of New Britain. Eventually they made contact with Lerew’s party at Sum Sum plantation.

  Ninety-eight men were ferried out to the two seaplanes, which were so overloaded they could not break contact with the water on their first two attempts. Only after dumping fuel were they able to stagger aloft. The planes landed at Samarai, where the evacuees received clean clothing and spent the night in a company store. The following day, one of the Empires returned to New Britain and picked up Brookes’s party at Wide Bay.

  Considering the shoestring nature of the mission, the rescue of 24 Squadron was almost miraculous. Unfortunately, as word of the successful airlifts trickled back to the men of Lark Force by “jungle telegraph,” scores of soldiers struggled across the rugged mountains to Wide Bay in the mistaken belief that the RAAF would send more flying boats.

  Cruelly, disastrously, the rumors proved false.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Fall of Rabaul

  CONTRARY TO THE WISHFUL, speculative stories published in Australian newspapers, Lark Force suffered a humiliating defeat. During the moonless night of January 22, Japanese troopships carrying approximately five thousand soldiers of the South Seas Force and hundreds of naval infantrymen moved stealthily to their embarkation points in Blanche Bay. Amphibious operations commenced shortly after midnight, and by 0230 the landings were underway at three different beachheads around the caldera. Lark Force fought back at two locations, but the enemy forces easily overwhelmed the Australian defenses. Resistance weakened rapidly as the Japanese poured troops ashore, taking full advantage of their military supremacy on the ground and in the air.

  Planes from Akagi and Kaga roamed the skies with almost no opposition, streaking down to strafe and dive-bomb targets identified by reconnaissance floatplanes. Only one pilot, a member of Kaga’s fighter air group, was lost during the entire day of operations. Before taking off that morning, FPO 2nd Class Isao Hiraishi had offered his parachute to Lt. Yoshio Shiga, his section leader. A descendant of the old samurai class and the son of a rear admiral, Shiga felt compelled to turn it down. They wouldn’t need parachutes, he told Hiraishi, as there were no enemy fighters to oppose them.

  But the twenty-seven-year-old lieutenant later regretted his optimism:

  As I predicted we saw no enemy fighters over Rabaul, and ground targets also were scarce. I went low for a single strafing run and Hiraishi-san followed me down. After pulling out I saw him speeding towards [my aircraft] to join formation. I was alarmed to see fire shooting out of his exhaust stacks. Hiraichi-san pointed to his mouth, which was a gesture for not having enough fuel and that he couldn’t return to the carrier. He then banked sharply, and I saw that his Zero fighter was shot in the belly by ground fire. Sadly, Hiraishi-san went into a split-S and crashed into the sea. I still blame myself for his loss because I told him not to wear a parachute.

  Despite the death of Hiraishi, the air attacks proved effective at breaking down the Australians’ flimsy communications system. Within hours Colonel Scanlan lost control over his scattered rifle companies, which began to fall back in disarray.

  SEVERAL WEEKS PRIOR to the invasion, Scanlan had chastened subordinates for suggesting that food and supplies should be cached in the jungle, berating their attitude as “defeatist.” He reinforced his point on New Year’s Day with two unyielding proclamations, distributed to all hands: “EVERY MAN WILL FIGHT TO THE LAST,” and “THERE SHALL BE NO WITHDRAWAL.”

  But on January 23, as his defenses fell apart around him, Scanlan reversed his position. During his last radio contact with Lt. Col. Howard H. Carr, commanding officer of the 2/22nd Battalion, Scanlan stated that the situation appeared hopeless. It had become, he said, a matter of “every man for himself.” The unimaginative Carr, interpreting Scanlan’s words as a directive, ordered the phrase transmitted to the scattered companies. He even sent out runners to make certain the message was delivered.

  Scanlan then did the unthinkable. Accompanied by several members of his staff and a native houseboy, he walked off the battlefield while the fighting was still in progress. A short while later, all resistance by Lark Force collapsed. What had begun as an organized withdrawal degenerated into a pell-mell dash for the sanctuary of the jungle.

  Among the hundreds of Australians who “went bush,” almost none were prepared for long-term survival in the wilds of New Britain. Much of the blame lies with Scanlan’s bizarre decision to deliberately mislead his men into believing they were deploying on an exercise of two or three days’ duration. His earlier refusal to allow caches of food to be hidden in the jungle also came back to haunt him, because there were several trailheads and other strategic locations where supply dumps might have been placed. A veteran of trench warfare, Scanlan had no background in jungle fighting. As a direct result of his intractability, hundreds of men entered the jungle with little more than the lightweight khaki uniforms they wore.

  A FEW OF THE firefights, though brief, had been intense. At various sites, mostly on the plateau south of the caldera, fifty-seven Australians lay dead, and dozens more were wounded. The Japanese captured most of those who could still walk, but men immobilized by their wounds were generally finished off.

  At least five Lark Force officers were murdered by General Horii’s soldiers. On January 26, Lt. Lennox D. Henry, an infantry officer, and Capt. Herbert N. Silverman, a medical officer with the Royal Australian Artillery, were captured with a small party of evaders following a skirmish northwest of Rabaul. The Japanese beheaded Henry on the spot and took Silverman to Rabaul, only to execute him four days later after refusing to recognize his status as a doctor. Captain Richard E. Travers, who led a rifle company in the 2/22nd Battalion, voluntarily surrendered with approximately one hundred of his men on January 27 and was immediately murdered. His death was apparently intended as a warning to other Australians contemplating evasion.

  In the minds of the Japanese, the killings were justified. On the day of the invasion, thousands of leaflets had been air-dropped to the Australians hiding in the jungle, warning them in no uncertain terms that their situation was hopeless:

  To the Officers and Soldiers of this Island!

  SURRENDER AT ONCE!

  And we will guarantee your life, treating you as war prisoners. Those
who RESIST US WILL BE KILLED ONE AND ALL. Consider seriously, you can find neither food nor way of escape in this island and you will only die of hunger unless you surrender.

  January 23rd, 1942

  Japanese Commander in Chief

  Horii must have anticipated quick compliance, for that was how the system worked in the Imperial Army. His decree was more than a warning: it was a direct order. But the Australians had no intention of complying. As the days passed, only a few surrendered, mainly because no one in Lark Force took the threats seriously. Their defiance proved to be a huge mistake. Horii was undoubtedly offended when Scanlan and hundreds of Aussies, including all of the senior officers, disregarded his decree.

  To make matters worse, while the Japanese chased the Australians through the jungle, a sudden outbreak of malaria caused numerous deaths among Horii’s men and incapacitated hundreds of others. Almost the entire 1st Battalion and a significant percentage of the 3rd Battalion fell ill, creating a near catastrophe for the medical staff of the South Seas Force. The doctors failed to diagnose the disease for days after the outbreak began, which resulted in far more casualties from malaria than from Australian bullets.

  Pulling his troops back from the jungle, Horii decided to monitor the evaders rather than pursue them. Imperial Navy ships patrolled the coastal areas, reconnaissance aircraft watched the jungle trails from above, and villagers were bribed or forced to reveal the whereabouts of Aussie soldiers. By the beginning of February, Horii was satisfied that two large groups of Australians were encamped at plantations on the south coast. He was correct. Due to the rumors that had spread after the successful airlift of 24 Squadron, dozens of Aussies had headed for Wide Bay. Ultimately some two hundred men gathered near Tol plantation, most having arrived by way of the precipitous Baining Mountains.