by Bruce Gamble
In addition to building heavy fortifications, the Japanese improved local utilities. Engineers upgraded the availability of fresh water by drilling at least thirteen new wells. Total yield reached 290,000 gallons per day, some of it going into tank trucks and water bowsers for distribution to remote sites. As for electrical output, there had been only a single 200-kilowatt, diesel-powered generator in Rabaul, which lacked the capacity to fully electrify the township. The Japanese added twenty-three diesel power stations, upping the kilowatt output nearly five-fold, and placed numerous portable generators around the peninsula to provide additional lighting at night.
The communication infrastructure at Rabaul was likewise revamped. Little remained of the slapdash telephone system installed by Lark Force—most of the lines had been cut during the invasion—so the Japanese dug an extensive network of narrow ditches and laid miles of new cable. Radio communications were improved by placing new receiver/transmitter sets, which covered a broad range of frequencies, across northern New Britain and the surrounding islands, and the navy built an independent communications center at a road intersection known as Three Ways.
The newest advancement at Rabaul was radar, which the Japanese had been developing quietly. Two naval Type 1 (Model 1) sets were installed at Tomavatur Mission, placed so that each covered a separate 180-degree sector out to a maximum range of about ninety miles. Nine newer Type 1s (Model 2) were placed throughout the Bismarck Archipelago, including three sets on New Britain and two on New Ireland. Twenty smaller radars were removed from aircraft for use as ground equipment, but only eleven of these went into service. Nonetheless the Japanese successfully combined radar stations, observation posts, and the communications network into “a most satisfactory air warning system.” In many instances, they were able to receive up to an hour’s advance warning of approaching raids.
Fully aware that Rabaul would be viewed as the most important military target in the entire theater, the Japanese made careful preparations to withstand a lengthy siege. Using the newly built roads, the army and navy each dispersed millions of tons of food, fuel, ammunition, clothing, spare parts, and other essential supplies—enough for each service to conduct six months of warfare—among hundreds of caches hidden across the peninsula.
Not all of the improvements were implemented overnight, of course. Some developments required months to complete, and more than a year passed before all of the weapons and other defenses were installed. But the Japanese eventually accomplished what the Australians could not. Using trucks, horses, native laborers, and prisoners, they developed Rabaul into the most heavily fortified stronghold south of the equator. Indeed, the Imperial Army and Navy poured so many shiploads of troops, weapons, materials, and supplies into the effort that the garrison experienced a food shortage in the summer of 1942.
Tokyo’s intentions were clear: with Rabaul as the center of operations, the Japanese could now expand their domination over the entire South Pacific, from the Solomon Islands to New Guinea—and possibly far beyond. Little did they realize, however, just how quickly the Americans would try to attack their burgeoning stronghold.
CHAPTER 8
Task Force 11
BARELY A WEEK after the Japanese captured Rabaul, events that would directly affect the fortress unfolded on opposite sides of the Pacific. Aboard the battleship Nagato, anchored in the Inland Sea at Hashirajima, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto and the Combined Fleet Staff were concerned about the free-roaming carriers of the United States Navy. On February 1, aircraft from two independent task forces had attacked Japanese bases in the Marshall Islands and the Gilberts. The simultaneous raids caused only nominal destruction, but they provided the American public with an enormous boost in morale while deeply embarrassing the Japanese. Rear Adm. Matome Ugaki, the Combined Fleet chief of staff, later admitted: “After experiencing defensive weakness ourselves, we could no longer laugh at the enemy’s confusion at the time of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.”
Soon after the attacks, Imperial General Headquarters learned that a third American carrier force was loose, this time in the South Pacific. The Japanese went on high alert, broadcasting the news across the Southeast Area. Even the lowest ranks were informed. Akiyoshi Hisaeda, serving as a cook in the 55th Division field hospital at Rabaul, entered some of the details into his diary on February 7: “Enemy aircraft carrier with 50 aircraft advancing on New Britain.”
The information obtained by the lowly private was not only timely but remarkably accurate. The stately USS Lexington, one of America’s most beloved warships, had crossed the equator into the South Pacific a mere two days earlier. She carried sixty-eight aircraft and served as the flagship of Task Force 11, consisting of two heavy cruisers, seven destroyers, and a fleet oiler. Commanded by Vice Adm. Wilson Brown, the task force had departed Pearl Harbor on January 31 for a variety of escort and patrol duties. First on the agenda was a mid-ocean rendezvous with Task Force 8, under the command of Rear Adm. William F. “Bull” Halsey Jr., whose ships had raided the Marshalls on February 1. His force would need to be refueled, after which Brown would take Task Force 11 south toward Canton Island for convoy duties.
Two days out of Hawaii, Brown received new orders. Halsey’s ships no longer needed refueling, so Brown headed straight for Canton. On February 6, a day after crossing the equator, his orders were amended once again: he was to proceed to the Fiji Islands and rendezvous with a newly formed multinational force known as the ANZAC squadron. A familiar name from World War I, ANZAC (Australian-New Zealand Army Corps) had been expanded to include American participation. The naval force included two American destroyers and the heavy cruiser Chicago along with two New Zealand light cruisers and some lightly armed corvettes. Rear Adm. John G. Crace, Royal Australian Navy, commanded the squadron aboard HMAS Australia, a heavy cruiser. The ships and other components of the ANZAC command were under the operational control of the senior American naval officer in Australia, Vice Adm. Herbert F. Leary. His task, as put forward by his superiors in Washington, was to seek a fight with the enemy. Since none of the Allied countries could challenge the Japanese on their own, the command had been formed to combine assets, but on the whole there wasn’t much to unify. Aviation units consisted mostly of RAAF reconnaissance planes, augmented by a few U.S. Navy Catalinas operating out the Fiji Islands. A fighter group and a light bomber group of the U.S. Army Air Corps had recently arrived in Australia, but their planes had neither the range nor the endurance to support naval forces.
Leary’s options improved when Task Force 11 became available. Together, the ANZAC squadron and the ships under Brown’s command gave the Allies a potent striking force. With that in mind, Adm. Earnest J. King, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Fleet (COMINCH), ordered Brown and Leary to go on the offensive.
Eager to do something positive after the debacle at Pearl Harbor, Brown recommended a strike on Rabaul. It was a bold, high-risk proposal, the equivalent of an onsides kick on the first play from scrimmage. Rabaul lay 1,700 miles beyond Fiji, and the oiler Neosho did not carry enough fuel to supply all of Brown’s ships plus those of the ANZAC squadron. Therefore, Task Force 11 would have to conduct the strike on its own. Despite the obvious risks, King, a former skipper of the Lexington, appreciated the audacity of Brown’s plan and approved it.
Task Force 11 rendezvoused with the ANZAC squadron near Fiji on February 16, whereupon Brown consolidated his plans and obtained the latest intelligence on Rabaul. The most recent reconnaissance mission had been conducted two days earlier by a Hudson of 32 Squadron. The crew reported an “aircraft carrier” (probably an aircraft transporter), five warships, eleven merchant ships, and twelve flying boats in Simpson Harbor, plus several planes at Lakunai airdrome. Brown was concerned about the location of Admiral Nagumo’s carriers, but the briefers assured him that the enemy flattops would not be a threat. This was true, for the ironic reason that the carrier force was sailing into position to launch a strike on the Australian mainland just three days hence.
Rabaul would be relatively unprotected, or so the experts thought. Hoping to maintain the element of surprise, Task Force 11 departed Fiji on the afternoon of February 16 and sailed deep into enemy waters.
UNKNOWN TO THE Allies, eighteen of the Imperial Navy’s newest attack planes had recently arrived at Rabaul. Two chutais (nine-plane divisions) of Mitsubishi G4M1s, known to the Japanese as Type 1 land attack aircraft, landed at Vunakanau on February 14. Veterans of the Takao Air Group, with extensive combat experience in the Philippines and Netherlands East Indies campaigns, the crews had been transferred into the 4th Air Group, a brand-new composite unit created at Rabaul on February 10.
Commanded by Capt. Yoshiyotsu Moritama, a non-aviator whose duties were primarily administrative, the group was not yet at full strength. A third chutai, culled from the Chitose Air Group in the Marianas, had recently transitioned to Type Is, and the crews were still completing the training syllabus. Eventually the 4th Air Group would consist of twenty-seven Type 1s and an equal number of Rei-sen fighters, all drawn from veteran units; however, as of mid-February, only the eighteen aircraft at Rabaul were operational.
In service for less than a year, the Type 1 rikko was considered the Imperial Navy’s premier land attack aircraft. Similar in appearance to the U.S. Army’s Martin B-26 Marauder, the Mitsubishi was both larger and heavier. The B-26 had a slender fuselage that tapered at both ends, whereas the Type 1’s fuselage was uniformly thick, prompting crewmen to nickname it hamaki (the cigar).
The roomy fuselage served its purpose. The rikko doctrine favored the use of aerial torpedoes against ships, a specialty demonstrated with stunning effectiveness on December 10, 1941, when waves of land-attack aircraft sank the British warships Repulse and Prince of Wales. The Type 1’s internal weapon bay was designed to carry either a Type 91 aerial torpedo, which was more than seventeen feet long and weighed 1,820 pounds, or the equivalent weight in bombs.
Mitsubishi engineers achieved this load-carrying capability without sacrificing speed, armament, or range. The twin Kasai fourteen-cylinder radial engines generated over 1,500 horsepower each and gave the aircraft a top speed of almost 270 miles per hour. Well armed with four 7.7mm machine guns and a 20mm tail cannon, the Model 11 flown by the 4th Air Group boasted a range of more than 2,300 nautical miles.
But to attain such impressive performance, the engineers had spurned critical components known to be essential for survivability in combat. To save weight, no armor plate was installed for crew protection. The engineers also chose to forego self-sealing liners in the fuel tanks, which were integrated within the main wing. The only thing separating hundreds of gallons of high-octane gasoline from enemy bullets was a few millimeters of aluminum skin.
Author-historian Osamu Tagaya, a renowned expert on Japanese aviation units of World War II, described the rationale behind the Type 1’s development:
The use of conventional fuel tanks, fully internalized within the airframe, would have left room for the installation of protective measures, but would also have reduced fuel capacity below requirements. The navy, in its collective wisdom, would not accept any shortfall in range or performance, and appeared quite willing to take the risks inherent in the design.
This was mute testimony to the extent to which a tactical doctrine favoring attack at all costs pervaded the Imperial Navy. The IJN was loath to accept the 300-kilogram weight penalty which the installation of rubber ply protection for the fuel tanks entailed. Ever focused on performance and range in pursuit of the offensive, navy airmen refused to give up that weight in bombs or fuel in exchange for a feature which many … considered nonessential.
The “land-attackers,” as the airmen called themselves, knew their planes had an Achilles heel. Yet they possessed supreme confidence in the Type 1, which had been unstoppable during the early campaigns over China, the Philippines, and the Netherlands East Indies. History, they believed, was on their side.
FOR THE FIRST few days out of Fiji, Task Force 11 benefited from long-range forward observation provided by a squadron of B-17s. The 14th Reconnaissance Squadron, pieced together from three different units in Hawaii, had been assigned temporarily to the U.S. Navy under Vice Admiral Leary. Led by twenty-eight-year-old Maj. Richard H. Carmichael, a square-jawed West Pointer with a dazzling smile, the squadron flew lengthy patrol sectors that extended seven hundred miles from Nandi airfield in the Fijis.
Aboard Lexington, Vice Admiral Brown and his staff completed their strike planning. The task force would steam toward Rabaul for four days, keeping well clear of islands to avoid detection, and launch a strike on the morning of February 21. “Plentiful shipping targets were expected,” wrote Capt. Frederick C. Sherman, commanding officer of the carrier. “We planned a surprise attack from north of the Solomons, with the planes approaching Rabaul over the intervening island of New Ireland and a simultaneous cruiser bombardment of the ships in the harbor.”
The ambitious plans also called for Carmichael’s B-17s to hit Rabaul in coordination with the navy strike. The heavy bombers were scheduled to arrive at Townsville, Australia, on February 19, then launch the following night for Rabaul. If all went well, they would arrive over the target at dawn on the twenty-first, the same time as Lexington’s aircraft. After refueling at Port Moresby, the Fortresses would return to Townsville, completing a mission of approximately 2,300 miles with an elapsed time of eighteen hours.
Long before anyone was in position to attack, however, the carefully laid plans began to unravel. Japanese listening posts intercepted segments of the abnormally high message traffic between admirals King, Brown, and Leary, enabling Imperial General Headquarters to issue alerts even before the task force departed from Fiji. The tension went up another notch on the afternoon of February 19, when an outpost southwest of Truk warned of enemy destroyers in the vicinity. Later it was determined to be a false alarm, but the warning prompted Rear Admiral Goto to order the Yokohama Air Group to prepare for an important mission. The flying boats would go out early the next morning with a single purpose: find the American task force.
AT DAWN ON February 20, three enormous Kawanishi H6Ks lifted majestically from the surface of Simpson Harbor and climbed eastward. The flying boats, each with a crew of ten, took slightly different headings to reach their assigned fifteen-degree sectors. For the first several hours the hunt came up empty. But just as the seaplane piloted by Lt. j.g.Noboru Sakai approached the outer turn point, a crewmember spotted the task force. At 1030 hours, Sakai radioed headquarters with the electrifying news that an enemy aircraft carrier and its screening force were 460 miles northeast of New Britain.
Sakai and his crew were undoubtedly ecstatic about their accomplishment, but they had little time to congratulate themselves. High atop the Lexington’s superstructure, a large, box-shaped antenna had already detected pulses of invisible energy reflected from the Japanese flying boat. The antenna was one of several integrated components that made up the carrier’s first-generation CXAM search radar, which fed the electronic data to a primitive scope inside the carrier’s combat information center. A trained operator called out the particulars to another man standing at an illuminated plotting board: unidentified contact, thirty-five miles, bearing one-eight-zero. Word of the “bogey” was passed by sound-powered telephones to the bridge, whereupon Captain Sherman ordered the launch of the ready CAP, or combat air patrol.
On the wooden flight deck, six gray-camouflaged Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat fighters sat with their engines idling, ready for immediate launch. The cloth-helmeted pilots were guided by deck handlers—sailors wearing yellow jerseys—who used specialized sign language to direct the pilots into position. The deck canted slightly as the 888-foot-long Lexington turned into the prevailing wind, and when her course was steady a green light illuminated on the superstructure. This was the signal for the yellow-shirted Flight Deck Officer to throw a quick salute to the first pilot in line; he then leaned toward the carrier’s bow, extended his right arm, and pointed
forward with a flourish.
Revving his engine at full power, the first pilot released his brakes. The stubby gray fighter accelerated down the deck and was quickly airborne, its wings waggling slightly as the pilot manually cranked up the wheels. One by one the remaining Wildcats followed, forming into two-plane sections as the lead pilots checked in by radio: the 1st Division leader (Lt. Cmdr. John S. “Jimmy” Thach), second section leader (Lt. Edward H. “Butch” O’Hare), and third section leader (Lt. j.g. Onia B. “Burt” Stanley), reported their fighters up and ready.
In Lexington’s darkened combat information center, the fighter director officer scanned the graphics written on the plotting board and made a quick decision. Communicating with the fighters by radio, Lt. Frank F. “Red” Gill vectored Thach’s section southward to investigate the bogey while holding the other four fighters in reserve over the task force.
Less than thirty minutes after the Kawanishi flying boat was detected by radar, the stage was set for Lexington’s first encounter with enemy aircraft.
CHAPTER 9
Medal of Honor: Edward H. “Butch” O’Hare
THIRTY-SIX-YEAR-OLD Jimmy Thach, commanding officer of Fighting Squadron 3 aboard the Lexington, had long been regarded as one of the navy’s best pilots. Nicknamed for his likeness to an older brother who’d preceded him at the Naval Academy, Thach was the Old Man personified, with deep-set eyes, drooping cheeks, and a receding hairline. But behind the hushpuppy face was a true gunnery expert. Thach had learned to shoot as a boy in Arkansas; and later, after graduating from the Naval Academy, he accumulated more than three thousand hours in all types of aircraft, including assignments as a test pilot and flight instructor.