Target: Rabaul (30 page)

Captain Gerald R. Johnson, leading his P-38s of the 9th Fighter Squadron, was in a quandary. Having recently taken command of the squadron, he felt the lonely weight of responsibility as he considered his options. His P-38s were tasked with following the Liberators to Rabaul, but he also had an obligation to protect the lives of his pilots. Wrestling with the dilemma, Johnson continued to press ahead even after his squadron became separated in the icy whiteness of the storm. Eventually the decision was made for him. The heavies could not punch through the front and aborted the mission. Many turned back while others attacked alternate targets south of the front.

The situation became even more dangerous as dozens of aircraft tried to find their way out of the storm. Vertigo, a common outcome of multiple turns in low visibility, became downright perilous to pilots who trusted their sense of balance over flight instruments. Between vertigo and the risk of midair collision, the inside of a turbulent storm was as perilous as any combat mission. In this case, a B-24 and three P-38s were declared missing after the rest of the crews returned to their home fields.

All four aircraft had gone down trying to punch through the storm. Ten men were lost aboard the B-24, and the P-38 drivers, all senior lieutenants, were from Johnson’s 9th Fighter Squadron. He blamed himself for their deaths, but an entry in the 43rd Bomb Group’s history provided a possible explanation for two of the missing aircraft: “Capt. Hughie ‘Slim’ Bonner of Coffeeville, Mississippi, of the 403rd Squadron, and his crew failed to return from the mission and it is feared they collided with a P-38 in the soup. Capt. Bonner was one of the most popular and capable officers of our group.”

The only positive outcome came during the search for the missing planes. A PBY crew spotted a wrecked B-24 on a reef west of Kiriwina and subsequently rescued Lieutenant Wilson and his entire crew of the 403rd, missing since the previous day. So the squadron got one crew back. The smashed remains of Bonner’s aircraft were reportedly discovered on an islet in the Amphlett Group, fifty miles south of Kiriwina, but no trace of the three missing P-38s was ever found.

ADMIRAL KUSAKA, WHOSE Eleventh Air Fleet units struggled daily with aircraft availability, would have been dumbfounded to learn that the Allies were capable of launching almost 270 planes within twenty-four hours of the raid on October 12. Bad weather prevented him from learning this the hard way, but even though he could no longer match Kenney’s strength plane-for-plane, he kept jabbing. A few of the Japanese raids were large, but most were so undersized as to be suicide missions.

One dramatic example was an attack on October 15 against Oro Bay, just south of Dobodura. Fifteen Vals of Air Group 582, accompanied by thirty-nine Zeros, attempted to hit Allied shipping in the anchorage. The Japanese claimed five transports sunk or damaged, but as Kenney noted in his diary, the vessels sustained “little apparent damage.” The cost of the effort was enormous. Intercepted by fifty-four P-38s and eight P-40s, the attackers were torn apart. Fourteen Vals and five Zeros were splashed—this according to Japanese records. American claims were exaggerated, yet the intelligence officers approved official victories for twenty-six dive-bombers and eighteen enemy fighters. Gerald Johnson’s three victories—two Vals and a Zero—elevated his overall score to five and helped ease his remorse over the debacle in the storm two days earlier.

Despite the severe losses, the Japanese tried again two days later. No outdated, fixed-gear dive-bombers this time: Air Group 582 had only one upgraded Model
22 Val available after the disaster on the 15th. Instead, Kusaka sent a fighter sweep. At approximately 1000 on October 17, four squadrons of B-25s out of Port Moresby approached Dobodura, where they would stage overnight for another crack at Rabaul. Some were preparing to touch down when they were shooed away by a red alert: a large formation of enemy fighters had been detected to the southeast, coming in low over Oro Bay.

The fifty-six Zeros almost got to Dobodura unseen. The outcome might have been disastrous for the Allies, but instead the Japanese were intercepted from several directions by forty-three P-38s and three P-40s. The dogfight over Oro Bay was evenly matched, with a slight numerical advantage to the Japanese. The Americans, however, gave slightly better than they got: eight Zeros were shot down (actual Japanese losses) in exchange for four P-38s and a P-40.

One of the Lightnings bested that day was flown by Tommy McGuire, already an ace in the 475th Group. Wading into a flight of seven Zeros, he shot down three but was overwhelmed by the remaining four. One got on his tail and tore up the Lightning with cannon and machine-gun fire. Wounded by 20mm shrapnel in several places and a bullet in the wrist, McGuire jumped from his burning fighter. During his freefall, the detached oxygen mask flailed his face and eyes, temporarily blinding him.

Still, McGuire was lucky. A PT boat pulled him from Oro Bay. After his injuries healed in an Australian hospital, he returned to his squadron. Although he would not survive the war, McGuire became the second-highest-scoring ace in American history, only two victories shy of the record eventually set by Dick Bong.

IF KUSAKA WAS jabbing at the Allies, Kenney was counterpunching with uppercuts and roundhouses. And he occasionally landed a haymaker. After attacking Rabaul with over 300 aircraft on October 12, he launched approximately 270 the next day, though the attempt was thwarted by bad weather. After that, to keep the Japanese army units on their knees, Kenney sent a heavy raid against Wewak on October 16.

The next big attack on Rabaul was set for October 18, weather permitting. On October 17, Lt. William Southard took off from Schwimmer airdrome in an F-5 Lightning and photographed Rabaul—primarily Rapopo and Lakunai—escorted by two fully armed P-38s. On the return flight, V Bomber Command ordered Southard to land at Dobodura to expedite distribution of printed photos to medium bomb groups.

Enlargements of the photos were available the next morning. Flight crews often had little advance knowledge of their target until the briefing began, but in this case word got out when the B-25s of the 345th Group staged to Dobodura the day before the mission—and were almost caught up in the fighter sweep. Rumor had it that they would attack Rabaul the next morning, causing many crews a restless night. Lieutenant Victor W. Tatelman, a pilot from Terra Haute, Indiana, could not shake a sense of unease: “It was after 0300 and sleep was elusive. I had just fallen
asleep when the operations clerk nudged me awake through my mosquito netting. The thought of Rabaul brought on a cold sweat as we dressed in silence. [Captain Julian B.] Baird and I walked down to the mess tent; stomach too tight—no food, just coffee—and then on to the briefing.”

Though they knew about the target beforehand, the tension was palpable. A heavy cloth covering the map at the front of the operations tent would be pulled back with a flourish, adding to the drama. “When the intelligence officer removed the cloth,” recalled Tatelman, “and we saw that the target was Rabaul, everybody in the tent gasped. It was a rough feeling.”

Lieutenant James M. Mahaffey listened to the briefing with both fatalism and blind faith in the modified gunships’ firepower: “Rabaul was well defended, they said. And it was. The Japs had a lot of fighters there and a lot of antiaircraft. We were a little apprehensive about Rabaul, but we knew the enemy couldn’t stand up to our machine guns. And the only way they could get us was shooting straight up. I never did worry about the missions much. I just took it for granted I might get shot down.”

Lieutenant Colonel True would again lead the low-altitude portion of the mission, but the plan did not mirror the first big raid. This time the heavies would attack first in hopes of temporarily putting Lakunai, Tobera, and Vunakanau out of commission. In theory, the first wave would draw off the enemy fighter forces, after which the Zeros would have to land at the one intact airdrome—Rapopo—to refuel. At this opportune moment, the B-25 strafers would charge in over the treetops and smash Rapopo, hopefully catching the enemy planes on the ground.

As with the earlier raid, the maintenance and service crews in more than a dozen squadrons outdid themselves. Seventy-seven B-24s from three groups began taking off from Port Moresby shortly after 0700. Three hours later, they formed up and went around the Papuan peninsula to Kiriwina, where they rendezvoused with fifty-five P-38s. While the Liberators and Lightnings joined up, the B-25s began taking off from Dobodura at approximately 1000. Lieutenant Harlan H. Peterson of the 500th Squadron/345th Group had difficulty getting his aircraft started. No one would have faulted him for aborting, but he transferred his crew to a spare plane and took off thirty minutes late, joining his squadron as it orbited at the rendezvous point. By 1100, a total of fifty-four strafers had formed up with their top cover, consisting of three additional P-38 squadrons. They headed outbound, but within thirty minutes another plane from the 500th Squadron experienced a problem and turned back, escorted by the other two planes of the three-ship element.

The forecast presented at the briefing had called for marginal weather conditions, and for the first hour the skies were relatively clear. But north of Kiriwina, the formations encountered another towering stationary front. For thirty minutes the heavy bombers tried, without success, to find a way around or over the squall line. The recent loss of a Liberator and three Lightnings under similar
circumstances undoubtedly influenced a collective decision by the heavies and all the P-38s to abort the mission. The result, ironically, was even worse on this occasion. Twenty-one bombers headed for alternate targets while the remainder dumped their bombs and returned to Port Moresby.

Or at least most of them returned. Four B-24s were lost after aborting the mission, three of which belonged to the 43rd Bomb Group. All ran low on fuel, although the staff conveniently put the blame on “the damnable combination of weather and Owen Stanley Mountains.” Three of the four crews bailed out over New Guinea—except one pilot and copilot who made a successful belly landing—and miraculously, all survived. However, it took nearly a month for Lt. Warren H. Smeltzer and the crew of the
Mitsu Butcher
(400th Bomb Squadron/90th Group) to be rescued with the help of local natives. All the fatalities occurred in the ditching of a 64th Squadron/43rd Group Liberator, which got within ten miles of Jackson Field before splashing down in Bootless Bay. Seven of the eleven men aboard were drowned.

Over the Solomon Sea, meanwhile, True acted like he had not heard the radio calls scrubbing the mission. Flying at the head of the 498th Bomb Squadron/345th Group in a B-25D named
Red Wrath
, he continued through the squalls toward New Britain. None of the other squadrons—three more from the 345th and two from the 38th Group—broke ranks. Instead the three-ship elements closed up the formation to keep each other in sight while True picked his way through the storm. “The weather was pretty bad,” recalled Tatelman, a pilot in the 499th Squadron. “We were right on the water trying to get underneath it. A lot of us closed up the formation so that we didn’t lose the leader. We could see his airplane clearly because we were so close to it.”

The B-25s popped out not far from Wide Bay. Flying parallel to the coast, True led the strafers north until they passed the Warangoi River. At Kabanga Bay on New Britain’s Cape Gazelle, the formation turned left. In a matter of hours, controversy would erupt over whether True had missed the calls to abort the mission or chose to ignore them; either way, there was no turning back. As the formation flashed across the beach, the B-25s were mere miles from the target.

As briefed, the nineteen participating strafers of the 38th Group split off to hit Tobera. Achieving almost complete surprise, the B-25s strafed the airdrome thoroughly and dropped almost two hundred daisy cutters. Crews reported that at least sixteen parked aircraft either burned or blew up. Heavy antiaircraft fire failed to interfere with the attack, although a strafer in the 405th Squadron took several hits, including a shell that “blew off the entire right elevator.” After the B-25s crossed the rim of the caldera, they dropped close to the surface of Saint George’s Channel and turned south toward home. A few Zekes attacked the 71st Squadron, but none pressed closer than a thousand yards and no damage resulted.

True led three squadrons of the 345th Group over Rapopo with similar success. The 498th and 501st went in first, strafing and dropping hundred-pound
daisy cutters. Captain Orin N. Loverin, commanding officer of the 499th, led his squadron through a wide 360-degree turn south of Rapopo to gain some separation. The maneuver gave Loverin and his pilots more space, but it also felt like a false start. The tension that had gnawed at Tatelman and his fellow pilots the whole way across the Solomon Sea was extended while the squadron circled around.

But then, with the press of the trigger, the tension evaporated:

The airplane kind of jumped a bit. It was exciting and also kind of a shock the first time, with all that noise and clatter of the guns and the vibration. Oh gosh, it shook the plane. When we came back from a mission, the crew chief would know where to look for cracks and loose rivets.

On the mission to Rapopo on October 18, I was flying Baird’s right wing and we were in line abreast across the area. I was on the right edge of the runway. And the noise, and the dust, and the bomb smoke and the confusion and the guns going off and the bombs exploding … I was afraid that with just a little bit of movement to one side, Baird would be in my line of fire. So I really had to keep my head in what the hell I was doing.

When the first two squadrons crossed the northern threshold of Rapopo and roared out over Saint George’s Channel, a reported forty Zekes attacked them. A warning issued by an outpost on the coast of New Britain had prompted Air Group 201 to send up sixteen Zeros while Air Group 204 launched twenty-six. The combined force was milling about in anticipation of a clash with P-38s when the B-25s arrived.