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

by Bruce Gamble

  The first was Lt. j.g. Howard L. Johnson, whose fighter was hit by gunfire from a fleeing bomber. He boldly attempted to keep pace, but as he drifted back he was sucked directly behind the Mitsubishi. Its tail gunner slammed several 20mm rounds into the Wildcat, wounding Johnson in the legs and putting the engine out of action. After bailing out and landing safely in the water, Johnson floated for only a few minutes before one of the screening destroyers picked him up.

  Not so fortunate was Ens. John W. “Jack” Wilson of the 3rd Division, whose fighter was performing sluggishly as he tried to chase down a bomber from astern. Thach saw what was about to happen and keyed his radio to shout a warning, but before he could utter a word, Wilson’s canopy was smashed by a direct hit from a cannon shell. The ensign probably never knew what hit him. No parachute appeared as his fighter fell into the sea five miles from the carrier.

  Thach opened fire at the offending bomber and it went down in flames, a demise that was becoming commonplace. He also aided in the destruction of another bomber, one that had probably been damaged earlier. Several other Wildcat pilots went after the last two bombers still in the air—or so everyone thought. No one noticed that Nakagawa’s crewmates had miraculously regained control of their crippled bomber at very low altitude. Gradually working their way around to a new attack position, they got within two miles of Lexington before being detected.

  Aboard the carrier, hundreds of men held their collective breath as they watched the dark-colored aircraft approach at wave-top height, knowing instinctively that the pilot intended to crash into them deliberately. Considering the size and speed of the twin-engine Mitsubishi, not to mention its load of bombs and high-octane gasoline, a holocaust would occur if the suicide attempt succeeded.

  Sherman kept Lexington in a constant turn, presenting only her narrow stern to the attacker. When the menacing bomber got within 2,500 yards, the carrier’s rapid-fire cannons and machine guns opened up with a withering blast, but the big aircraft kept coming. Finally, at three quarters of a mile, the antiaircraft fire began to take effect. Pieces flew off Nakagawa’s bomber, yet it still wobbled onward, momentum carrying it to within a few dozen yards of the ship before it finally stalled and hit the water with a mighty explosion.

  TWELVE MINUTES had elapsed since Noel Gayler and Dale Peterson first attacked the enemy formation. As the noise of the antiaircraft guns died away, rising plumes of smoke marked the watery graves of seven medium bombers and two fighters. Don Lovelace and his division, desperately low on fuel, circled the carrier while waiting for the deck crew to clear the landing area. Most of the remaining fighters were scattered miles away as they chased down the last two bombers. Ultimately the 2nd Chutai was annihilated, though one bomber got as far as eighty miles before it was finished off by a patrolling SBD dive-bomber.

  In the meantime, only a single section of Wildcats remained on CAP, orbiting faithfully over the carrier. “Butch” O’Hare and his wingman, Lt. j.g. Marion W. Dufilho, were extremely unhappy with their assignment. Twice now the fighter director had held them over the ship during engagements with enemy aircraft—first when the flying boats were shot down and more recently when the medium bombers attacked—and both times O’Hare and Dufilho had missed all the action. Of course, “Red” Gill was simply doing his job by keeping a few planes in reserve. At the moment, with all of the other combat-ready Wildcats off chasing down bombers, O’Hare and Dufilho represented the only fighter defense for the entire task force.

  As if on cue, the eight bombers of Lieutenant Commander Ito’s 1st Chutai approached the warships. He had initially led them too far to the north, and by the time they found the task force, the 2nd Chutai had been all but destroyed. This was fortunate for Admiral Brown. Had Ito and Nakagawa arrived together and attacked with seventeen bombers simultaneously, they might have completely overwhelmed the task force’s defenses. As it turned out, the fact that only two American fighters stood between his chutai and the enemy ships now worked in Ito’s favor. “Red” Gill was so busy dealing with the first attack that he paid scant attention to the new contact, which first appeared on radar scopes at 1649. Minutes later, a lookout aboard the destroyer Patterson reported a visual sighting, by which time Ito’s bombers were only ten miles from the outer screen. Alarmed, Gill vectored O’Hare and Dufhilo to intercept them. But while going through their combat checklists, the two pilots were dismayed to discover that Dufilho’s guns did not work. Evidently the ammunition belts were stuck, a fairly common gripe with the early model Wildcat, in which negative-g maneuvers were prone to cause jams in the linked ammunition.

  O’Hare, beside himself with frustration a few moments earlier, was suddenly the only Wildcat pilot capable of defending the task force. In the wings of his stubby gray fighter, the ammunition boxes held enough rounds for eighteen seconds of firing time. With that, he would have to take on the entire enemy formation alone.

  At 1705, as the bombers closed on Lexington, Gill hollered on the radio for the other Wildcats to buster back to the task force. “The rest of us were heading his way, climbing up toward the oncoming Jap bombers,” remembered Jimmy Thach, “but we all knew we could not intercept them before they reached the bomb-dropping position.”

  In training, O’Hare had impressed Thach with his grasp of combat theory and smooth gunnery. Now, fully aware that the enemy bombers “were coming on fast and had to be stopped,” O’Hare knew that his first performance in actual combat would have to be flawless.

  Down below, Lexington turned northward into the wind to recover Lovelace’s division. This greatly simplified matters for the Japanese bombardiers, who would not have to compensate for crosswind in setting up their bomb runs. However, Ito wasted valuable time by wheeling the formation around to approach the Lexington from astern. This enabled O’Hare and Dufilho (who stayed with his leader despite his malfunctioning guns) to cut inside the bombers’ turn.

  As O’Hare closed rapidly from the right side of the enemy formation, some of the Japanese gunners opened fire, intent on killing him first. Ignoring the tracers, O’Hare took aim at the rearmost Mitsubishi and triggered a short burst with perfect deflection. The bomber piloted by FPO 2nd Class Ryosuke Kogiku careened out of formation, its starboard engine trailing smoke. O’Hare lined up his sights on the next aircraft and got the same result. Ribbons of vaporized gasoline streamed from the perforated wing of FPO 1st Class Koji Maeda’s bomber, which also veered out of formation.

  Pulling left to avoid the two stricken aircraft, O’Hare let his fighter’s momentum carry him under the formation. He crossed to the opposite side and then climbed back into firing position behind the rearmost bomber on the left side of the formation. Aiming for the aircraft’s opposite engine, he squeezed the trigger, and again his aim was true. The bomber shuddered under the impact of the heavy bullets and fell back, its right engine damaged and the left wing fuel tank punctured. O’Hare then fired a burst into the next bomber in line, which caught fire as he closed to nearly point-blank range. With just two brief firing runs, he had carved half of the bombers out of formation.

  A few miles away, Thach was practically bending his throttle in an effort to join the fight. Later he marveled at his protégé’s gunnery.

  As we closed in I could see O’Hare making his attack runs with perfect flight form, exactly the way we had practiced. His shooting was wonderful—absolutely deadly. At one time as we closed in I could see three blazing Japanese planes falling between the formation and the water—he shot them down so quickly.

  How O’Hare survived the concentrated fire of this Japanese formation I don’t know. Each time he came in, the turtleback guns of the whole group were turned on him. I could see the tracer curling all around him, and it looked to us as if he would go at any second. Imagine this little gnat absolutely alone tearing into that formation.

  The streams of tracer fire crisscrossing the sky so impressed Thach that he later described it as “the red rain of battle.” Gunners in the Japanese formati
on fired hundreds of rounds at O’Hare, but incredibly only one bullet struck his Wildcat, disabling the airspeed indicator. Meanwhile, Dufilho gamely made several feints at the formation, drawing some of the heat away from O’Hare.

  Although half of the 1st Chutai had been shot out of the formation, only the fourth of O’Hare’s victims fell all the way to the sea. The first three, despite various degrees of damage, were brought under control by their well-trained pilots. No one noticed as the Mitsubishi piloted by Kogiku actually climbed back into formation. Petty Officer Maeda snuffed out his engine fire with a built-in carbon dioxide extinguisher but lagged behind the formation because of his reduced speed. The third bomber, piloted by FPO 1st Class Bin Mori, was too badly crippled to climb back into the formation, so he released his bombs over the water and withdrew, descending nearly to the ocean as he tried to escape.

  When the remnants of the 1st Chutai neared the task force, bursts of antiaircraft fire suddenly erupted near O’Hare’s Wildcat. At least two pieces of shrapnel pierced his plane, yet he continued to set up his third gunnery run. Unaware that one of the planes he had hit on his first pass was now back in formation, he was misled by the size of the attacking group. “By this time the Japs … were right on top of the release point. They had to be stopped any way at all: there were five of them still. I came in close, shot into the fifth one till he fell away, then gave the remaining four a general burst until my ammunition was exhausted.”

  O’Hare fired at the outermost bomber on the left side of the formation, piloted by Lt. j.g. Akira Mitani. It fell in flames, giving O’Hare a clear shot at the formation’s lead aircraft. Contrary to his statement that he fired “a general burst,” O’Hare targeted the port engine of Ito’s bomber, and once again his aim was precise. The bullets ripped through the nacelle with such kinetic force that the fourteen-cylinder radial engine was literally torn from its mountings. The entire engine, propeller and all, tumbled crazily from the left wing, and an instant later the bomber itself spun out of control due to the sudden absence of weight and thrust.

  With the lead bomber out of the way, O’Hare fired the last of his ammunition—perhaps forty rounds—into the lagging bomber flown by Petty Officer Maeda. Remarkably, despite the additional damage, the Mitsubishi stayed in the air.

  BECAUSE OF O’HARE’S extraordinary shooting, only three bombers of the 1st Chutai were able to attack Lexington. Maeda, being too far out of position to bomb the carrier, aimed for the heavy cruiser Minneapolis off the carrier’s port bow, but both of his bombs missed. At 1709, just as the last Wildcat from Lovelace’s division squeaked aboard Lexington, the three Mitsubishis arrived at the release point and dropped their bombs. Sherman calmly ordered the rudder hard over, and all six bombs fell wide of the carrier, though one hit the water near enough to sprinkle the flight deck with shrapnel.

  In all, seventeen rikko had charged at the carrier in two waves, yet “Lady Lex” was hit by nothing more than a few metal shards.

  AT THE POINT of bomb release, two of the three attackers were still relatively unscathed. That soon changed as “Doc” Sellstrom shot one down approximately eight miles from the task force. This was probably the G4M flown by FPO 2nd Class Tokiharu Baba. The other undamaged Mitsubishi, piloted by FPO 1st Class Kosuke Ono, was subsequently hit in the starboard engine by antiaircraft fire. Several fighters gave chase, resulting in a high-speed gunfight as Ono tried to evade them at low altitude. His bomber proved unusually rugged, enduring intense attacks from both the left and the right that killed or wounded several of his crewmen. But return fire from the surviving gunners was still accurate. One bullet hit Noel Gayler’s windscreen, starring the Plexiglas, and eventually the Wildcats withdrew.

  Similarly, Petty Officer Mori’s damaged bomber came under heavy pursuit as he tried to get away from the task force. Lieutenant Edward H. Allen of Scouting Squadron 2, having already knocked down a Mitsubishi of the 2nd Chutai with his Dauntless scout bomber, spotted the fleeing G4M and gave chase. Mori made no attempt to maneuver. It was a life-and-death race, with both planes going flat out. Allen’s SBD was a mile or two per hour faster, and over a stretch of several minutes he gradually overtook Mori’s damaged aircraft. Seeing no defensive fire from the left waist gun, Allen exploited the weak spot. He pulled almost directly beneath the bomber, as if flying in formation, and positioned the SBD so that the rear gunner could fire his flexible .30-caliber Browning machine gun straight up into the belly of the G4M at point-blank range. At least two crewmen were killed aboard Mori’s aircraft, but despite the casualties and heavy damage, the rikko was uncharacteristically rugged and refused to fall. Lieutenant Allen, finding himself 150 miles from the carrier, had to give up the chase.

  THE MOST REMARKABLE feat of flying that day—O’Hare’s gunnery aside—was accomplished by the pilots in Ito’s lead bomber. Somehow, after the aircraft went out of control with its port engine blown clean off, the crew not only regained control but doggedly resumed the attack. Sans engine, the rikko was completely unbalanced. Where its port engine should have been was a tangle of broken and twisted structural parts that produced an enormous amount of drag. The pilots countered it with full opposite rudder and maximum power on the good engine, their superb airmanship keeping the crippled bomber aloft, if only for a few minutes. Ito and his crew knew they were doomed. Despite the aerodynamic handicap, they boldly attempted a taiatari, literally translated as “body crashing,” hoping to destroy Lexington with a suicide attack.

  Just as with Nakagawa’s attempt earlier, Ito’s plane approached the carrier from astern at low level. And just as before, the rapid-fire weapons cut loose when the suicidal bomber came within range. But this time the mangled aircraft made no effort to match the ship’s maneuvers. Perhaps it was all the crew could do to hold the plane straight and level; perhaps the Lexington’s withering gunfire killed them at the controls. Whatever the case, the bomber flew beyond the carrier and then plunged into the sea less than a mile off the port bow, leaving a slick of burning fuel that remained on the surface for several minutes.

  With the skies finally clear of attackers, the Wildcats returned to Lexington and bounced down one by one on their narrow landing gear. Hundreds of the ship’s crew converged on the flight deck, cheering wildly as the sweat-soaked pilots climbed from their cockpits. O’Hare was mobbed. Almost everyone topside in Task Force 11 had witnessed his marksmanship as he singlehandedly saved the Lexington from severe damage—or worse.

  A FEW HOURS LATER, at approximately 1945, two battled-scarred rikko landed at Vunakanau. A total of four bombers from the 1st Chutai had escaped the immediate area of the task force, but only petty officers Kogiku and Maeda made it back to Rabaul in their damaged aircraft.

  Although no other bombers returned to the airdrome, one got close. Petty Officer Mori and the survivors of his shot-up bomber struggled homeward without the benefit of maps or charts, all of which had been destroyed by a burst of antiaircraft fire. Using a navigation method known as “dead reckoning,” Mori headed toward New Britain while worrying about the fuel state. The left wing tank had been punctured by Butch O’Hare’s bullets, and it was obvious the remaining fuel would not last long.

  Soon after night fell, the Mitsubishi ran out of gas. Mori made a wheels-up water landing in the darkness, hitting the surface with “a strong impact,” and then swam clear with a few other crewmen. The wreckage sank with the bodies of the dead still inside, leaving the survivors afloat in the darkness, uncertain of their whereabouts. Seeing a distant light, they shouted wildly but got no answer. They fired a signal flare, and the light drew nearer, causing moments of apprehension. The crew agreed among themselves that if they were in enemy territory, they would commit suicide. To their great relief they heard “voices speaking in the Nippon language” and were soon rescued. Their rikko had come down in Simpson Harbor, only a few miles short of their destination. Considering the circumstances, it was an extraordinary feat of airmanship and navigation.

  The o
ther bomber, piloted by Petty Officer Ono, limped away from the task force with its right engine shot out, several crewmen dead, and gasoline leaking from the left wing tank. The plane was still two hundred miles from Rabaul when the left engine quit from fuel starvation, but at that very moment, “like a blessing from heaven,” an island appeared. Ono had stumbled across the Nuguria Islands, a tiny atoll east of New Ireland, and he quickly ditched the bomber alongside a beach. Ono and two other crewmen survived the crash-landing and staggered ashore, where islanders offered them coconuts and food in exchange for cigarettes. After the ordeal they’d just experienced, however, the aviators were “in no mood” to eat.

  The next morning they awoke to the sound of a low-flying navy plane from Rabaul. As it flew over, a parcel was tossed out. The package landed in the sea and was lost, but the castaways were relieved by the knowledge that they had been spotted. Later that day another plane flew over, dropping food along with a message indicating that a rescue party was on its way. Ono and the other two survivors spent the rest of the day cremating the bodies of the dead crew and were picked up the next day by boat.

  PERHAPS TO OFFSET their catastrophic losses, the few surviving members of the 4th Air Group submitted grossly exaggerated reports. Toshio Miyake, a naval correspondent at Rabaul, spun their accounts into a major victory. Within days, newspapers across Japan announced that an enemy carrier had been blasted off “New Guinea.” The accompanying story claimed that ten American planes had been shot down in a “spectacular air dual,” during which “some of the Nippon planes resorted to fierce body-crashing tactics, severely damaging the aircraft carrier and causing it to burst into flames.” A cruiser was also claimed as sunk, while actual Japanese losses were halved with the admission that nine planes “had failed to return.”