Target: Rabaul (14 page)

The crash had occurred on the slopes of the Baining Mountains, so Holguin began working his way downhill. If he could find a river, he reasoned, it would lead him to the sea. Following a stream that emptied into a river, he spent many days progressing slowly downward. Bent almost double due to his injured back, he
foraged what he could—but soon began to starve. Sometime in mid-July, just as he was about to give up hope, Holguin was discovered by islanders. Unable to care for his injuries, they handed him over to the Kempeitai, who transported him to the POW compound at Rabaul.

LOSING TWO MORE B-17s on June 26 changed nothing. According to 43rd Bomb Group documents, “Lt. MacEachran was believed shot down over Rabaul by ack-ack,” while Sarsfield’s crew “was lost as a result of enemy action over Rabaul.” Incredibly, neither loss was attributed to night fighters.

Raids therefore continued with the same tactics and scheduling. Unsurprisingly, the deadly month concluded with another bomber shot down by Kudo. On the last day of June, he destroyed a B-17F named
Pluto
, the second Flying Fortress named for the Walt Disney character to be lost in the SWPA. The bomber crashed in New Britain’s mountains with no survivors. Kudo, who had become Japan’s first night fighter ace on June 26, recorded his sixth kill.

Again, Allied intelligence failed to attribute the loss to a night fighter. Perhaps no one was willing admit that the Japanese were standing conventional wisdom on its ear. Ironically, V Bomber Command had stopped attacking Rabaul during daylight hours after losing General Walker; however, over the past five weeks, the stealthy Irvings had made it just as costly, if not more so, to attack Rabaul at night.

An even bigger irony was that the B-17 had proved its ruggedness against conventional daytime fighters. In action over the Pacific and Europe, the B-17 repeatedly lived up to its name as a Flying Fortress, fending off attacks by multiple daytime interceptors—even those equipped with 20mm cannons such as Messerschmidt Bf-109s, Focke Wulf Fw-190s, and Mitsubishi A6Ms. During daylight hours, virtually every type of enemy interceptor had to make high-speed passes to avoid the B-17’s defensive guns, resulting in a relatively low percentage of hits.

And then along came Commander Kozono’s unique combination of weapons, fixed oblique mounting, and innovative tactics. The
Gekko
simply crept up beneath or above the target and remained stationary, as though flying in formation, before blasting it with two heavy automatic weapons. No bomber could withstand the impact of sixty or seventy explosive projectiles, all striking within a matter seconds.

As slow as the Allies were to recognize the new Japanese night fighter, the Japanese were even slower to take advantage of the
Gekko’s
capabilities. Rarely were more than two in combat-ready condition at Rabaul. Later, when Air Group 251 reformed as a dedicated night fighter unit, only nine aircraft were assigned—not enough to make a difference against the rapidly expanding Allied air forces.

And so, mainly because the Japanese failed to capitalize on the
Gekko
’s unique capabilities, the night raids by the heavy bombers continued.

*
Subsequently, the 21st Air Flotilla transferred to Saipan to serve as a training and replacement unit.

*
Located in Tokyo, the shrine honors the souls of those who have given their lives for the Emperor. Established in 1869, the shrine how lists the names of over 2,466,000 individuals.

*
In a huge ceremony, Kenney decorated well over a hundred crewmen of the 43rd Bomb Group on June 8, 1943, including seventy-five from the 63rd Bomb Squadron alone.

CHAPTER 6

Zeamer and Sarnoski

B
Y THE SUMMER
of 1943, the Elkton Plan had evolved from a rough outline into a feasible program. The revised blueprint, often referred to erroneously as Operation Cartwheel, was not a singular event. Rather, Cartwheel was the code word for a mega-offensive that included thirteen operations. Some would occur simultaneously, based on the original two-axis strategy; a few would later be dropped; but ten of the original thirteen were eventually completed. The objective of Cartwheel remained the same—the capture or neutralization of Rabaul.

The Elkton II plan, approved at the Pacific Military Conference in late March, led to a planning session between General MacArthur and Admiral Halsey two weeks later. A directive from the Joint Chiefs of Staff outlined each leader’s responsibilities, and Halsey requested the meeting to coordinate his moves with MacArthur’s. It was not something Halsey looked forward to. Halsey had never met MacArthur, but had formed a private opinion of the general as a “self-advertising son of a bitch.” MacArthur, who had no basis for a reciprocal opinion, sent Halsey an amicable offer to join him in Brisbane.

Accompanied by select staff members, Halsey made the trip in his four-engine PB2Y Coronado flying boat on April 15. The following day, MacArthur hosted the conference at his headquarters in the elegant brownstone office building formerly occupied by the Australian Mutual Providence Society. Both men commanded vast geographical regions and possessed egos commensurate with their responsibilities, so the potential for posturing and one-upmanship was great. But their inaugural meeting was cordial. MacArthur charmed Halsey, just as he had wowed Kenney several months earlier. “Five minutes after I reported, I felt as if we were lifelong friends,” Halsey would later write. “I have seldom seen a man who makes a quicker, stronger, more favorable impression.”

MacArthur was likewise complimentary of Halsey, but as always, he demanded absolute loyalty. Fortunately, Halsey was willing to play the part of faithful subordinate. Without much difficulty, therefore, they synchronized MacArthur’s next
advance, the occupation of Woodlark and Kiriwina islands, with Halsey’s planned invasion of New Georgia. The revised plan, Elkton III, called for the dual operations in mid-May. However, the schedule was subsequently delayed because Halsey’s requirements were much greater than MacArthur’s. Woodlark and Kiriwina were not occupied by the Japanese, whereas New Georgia would require a full-scale amphibious invasion. D-day for the twin operations was set for June 30.

General Kenney did not attend the conference, having traveled to New Guinea to run ADVON while General Whitehead took some well-earned leave. But when Kenney returned in late April, he quickly got up to speed. His diary reveals some insight about his relationship with MacArthur—and the latter’s true opinion of Halsey.

Saw General MacArthur in the evening at his flat. He was full of praise about what the air forces were doing and was as glad to see me as I was to see him. A few days ago Admiral Halsey was over for his first meeting with General MacArthur. The general says the “Bull” is a real fighting admiral. He has some faults, likes a headline, thinks a lot of himself, not dumb but neither is he brilliant, and sometimes might be erratic. Has color and is a showman. However, he is a fighter, and as a general thing people like him. Lots of them will follow him blindly. I met him in San Francisco when he came back from a raid on the Gilbert Islands, and I sized him up about the same way. He and MacArthur get along fine, principally because the general knows how to handle him.

MacArthur’s opinion of Halsey, presuming Kenney’s summary is accurate, was hypocritical but predictable. No one liked a headline more than MacArthur, and few had an ego like his. Whatever MacArthur said about his subordinates, it was always calculated. He went to great lengths to make sure that no one in his inner circle became more famous than him.

Kenney was equally insincere in his characterization of Halsey. No stranger to big headlines, Kenney constantly sought ovations for the Fifth Air Force, either by surrounding himself with top-performing individuals, or by publicly proclaiming their accomplishments.

But unlike MacArthur, Kenney didn’t care if his subordinates received greater accolades. For example, his replacement for Howard Ramey, the missing ADVON chief of staff, was more famous than any of them. A decorated World War I pilot, then a volunteer in the Polish Air Force (and twice a POW), Col. Merian C. Cooper was a bona fide Renaissance man. He also cowrote, codirected, coproduced, and acted in
King Kong
(1933). It was the signature film of Cooper’s stint as the head of production at RKO Pictures.

Personal opinions aside, the meeting between MacArthur and Halsey had a direct impact on Kenney. The day prior to his return from New Guinea, GHQ issued a set of preliminary “warning orders” for the various Allied commanders
who would take part in the forthcoming operation. “The general scheme of maneuver is to advance our bomber line towards Rabaul,” the document stated, “first by improvement of presently occupied forward bases; secondly, by the occupation and implementation of air bases which can be secured without committing large forces; and then, by the seizure and implementation of successive hostile airdromes.”

One of Kenney’s key tasks would be to keep pressure on enemy air forces from Bougainville to Wewak. Heretofore, Rabaul represented the outer limit of the combat radius for Kenney’s heavy bomber, but the development of airstrips at Dobodura and advance airfields on Woodlark and Kiriwina islands would soon allow medium bombers and even fighters to conduct missions deep into enemy territory. Although Buka Island was a new target, the big island of Bougainville had been visited periodically by long-range reconnaissance aircraft and occasional bombing raids. Many missions that originated from New Guinea covered southern Bougainville, including the big enemy airbase at Buin, and the seaplane base at Faisi in the Shortland Islands.

Until recently, the Thirteenth Air Force, headquartered on Guadalcanal, had provided surveillance of Buka, which lay across a narrow passage from the northern tip of Bougainville. Before Kenney’s heavy bomb groups could add Buka to their target list, Fifth Air Force units would have to thoroughly reconnoiter the island. Buka posed a real threat. It was home to a sizeable Imperial Navy airdrome, which meant that reconnaissance aircraft faced a good chance of interception by land-based fighters. Presuming the bomber fought its way clear, it still faced five hundred miles of unbroken ocean while crossing the Solomon Sea to reach the nearest base, Dobodura.

Recognizing this, Whitehead wrote to Kenney on May 24: “We are going to try to cover Buka with F-5s. Buka is a hotspot and, like Rabaul, Kavieng, and Wewak, would be very expensive if reconnoitered by heavy bombers in daylight. I will bet that SOPAC was glad to turn that one over to us.”

Whitehead was referring to the photo-reconnaissance version of the twin-engine P-38 Lightning. The only unit so equipped in the Southwest Pacific was the 8th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron, which flew the F-4 and F-5 variants of the modified Lightning. In place of the gun package in the fighter version (four .50-caliber machine guns and a 20mm cannon), the newer F-5s carried a pair of factory-installed vertical cameras in the center section and two oblique cameras on each side of the nose. The aircraft were defenseless but relatively light, so pilots took advantage of their great speed—upwards of 430 miles per hour at thirty thousand feet—to get out of trouble.

Photo Lightnings as well as heavy bombers continued to be used extensively for reconnaissance. And both types experienced significant losses. The “Eightballers” of the 8th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron lost five aircraft and their pilots in the first year of combat operations, the most recent occurring on May 21, just three
days before Whitehead wrote to Kenney. A sixth loss was narrowly averted on June 1, when an F-5A received contaminated fuel at Dobodura. Its right engine lost power while Lt. Frederic G. “Hargy” Hargesheimer accelerated down the runway, and he almost crashed into the control tower. Dedicated to the mission, Hargesheimer returned to Schwimmer airdrome, got the issue corrected, and then completed his assignment to photograph Rabaul.

Not that the bomber crews had it any easier. That same morning, a B-17E of the 64th Squadron took off from Port Moresby for an armed reconnaissance over New Britain. Piloted by 1st Lt. Ernest A. Naumann,
Texas #6
was heading southward near Wide Bay when a dozen Zeros attacked. The crew fought back, but enemy gunfire hit the fuel tank near the left inboard engine, starting an uncontrollable fire. Approximately ninety seconds later, near Waterfall Bay, the B-17 exploded, ejecting five crewmembers from the aircraft. Naumann and the radio operator, Staff Sgt. Paul J. Cascio Jr., were wearing their parachutes and pulled the ripcords, thus landing safely in the jungle. Two other crewmen, Tech. Sgt. Thomas H. Fox and Pfc. Charles H. Green Jr., miraculously survived the crash as well—Fox with severe burns, Green with minor knee injuries. All four survivors were located by islanders and spent a week in their care, during which Green’s wound became gangrenous. The fliers were subsequently turned over to troops of the 81st Naval Garrison Unit, which had a detachment at Gasmata. Fox and Green, allegedly taken to a medical facility at the airdrome, were never seen again. Naumann and Cascio were moved to Rabaul and confined in the navy prison.