Target: Rabaul (33 page)

The B-25 squadrons reported no aerial bursts, probably because of the numerous fights that broke out. During the run-in for the attack on Rapopo, Lt. Col. James A. Downs led the 8th Bomb Squadron around some low clouds
over Kabanga Plantation.
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Just then his formation was attacked aggressively, head-on. One Zero, fired upon and possibly disabled by Downs, flew directly into the bomber on Downs’ wing, piloted by 1st Lt. Robert E. Miller. The fighter and strafer collided at a closing speed over five hundred miles per hour, presenting no possibility of survival.

The 13th Squadron reached Tobera airdrome only to find little worth attacking. The crews counted only four parked fighters, two of which had already been disabled by previous raids. The other gunship squadrons had better success in their attacks, bombing and strafing Rapopo, where twenty-one aircraft were reportedly destroyed on the ground, and Vunakanau (twenty-seven planes destroyed).

Defending fighters also engaged the escorting P-38s. On the right flank of the 13th Bomb Squadron, Bong and his rookie wingman, 2nd Lt. Woodson Woodward, had just reached Tobera when they spotted three Zeros approaching from the north. The enemy fighters had a thousand-foot advantage. “We dropped our belly tanks and climbed to the attack,” wrote Bong. “I shot one burst at a Zeke at 2,000 feet, no results; shot one burst at a Zeke 10 o’clock high, no results; shot one burst at a Zeke 11 o’clock high, no results.” It was an off-day for Bong, who lost sight of Woodward while shooting at three different Zekes and missing all three. Bong joined up with the leader of the second section, Lt. Norman D. Hyland, who had gone after two different Zekes and claimed one as destroyed, but neither man saw Woodward again. Later, during the egress over Saint George’s Channel, Bong strafed three small boats before withdrawing.

Another P-38 squadron, the 80th, described similarly heavy action: “The ensuing combat was generally conceded to be the hottest battle yet encountered by any of our pilots. The Jap pilots appeared exceptionally eager and experienced, and one B-25 was seen to crash as a result of their attacks. Major Cragg was wounded slightly when enemy fire struck his canopy and shattered the glass, pieces of which struck him in the arm. Lieutenant J. Corallo, Jr. was also wounded when a bullet grazed his arm.”

All across the central Gazelle Peninsula and over Blanche Bay and Saint George’s Channel, big twin-boomed Lightnings and lightweight Zeros twisted and turned, some soaring two miles high among the billowing clouds, others down on the deck in deadly chases, streaking blindly through smoke and dust that rose above the bullet-torn airdromes. The outcome decidedly favored the P-38s. None were shot down outright, although a dozen suffered damage (including Major Cragg’s). Two later cracked up while landing at Kiriwina, and Woodward, last seen over the Solomon Sea at low altitude, never showed up.

The Japanese air groups, by comparison, suffered one of their worst defeats to date. One Zero of Air Group 253 at Tobera didn’t return. Two others were badly
damaged, evidently in crash-landings, with both pilots injured. Four additional Zeros suffered lesser damage. Among the fighter units based at Lakunai, four Zeros were destroyed in the air and three more did not return to base. Four of the dead or missing pilots were from Air Group 204, including Warrant Officer Shizuo Ishi-i, a two-year veteran. The eighth of nine children from a farming family, he had accumulated twenty-nine victories before his luck ran out over Rabaul.

The American toll included the crew of Miller’s B-25 and the disappearance of Woodward. One B-25 ditched in Collingwood Bay, just eighty miles southwest of Dobodura, but its crew was promptly rescued. Thus, at the cost of two B-25s and one P-38, the low-level attack had caused serious damage to the enemy. Japanese reports revealed that nearly every Betty bomber parked at Vunakanau was hit: two were destroyed outright, five others “almost destroyed,” and an additional twenty-seven affected by some degree of “other damage.”

The mission’s overall success did not prevent a strafer squadron from criticizing the raid. A Fifth Air Force summary later explained: “One complaint asserted that the Japanese had been expecting the attack, and that the time of the attack and route to the target should have been different from previous strikes. It was also argued that coconut groves surrounding Rapopo and Tobera concealed the airdrome so well from low-flying planes that that type of attack was impracticable. In any case, the 13th Squadron was convinced that the Tobera mission had been merely a waste of effort in view of the few planes based there.”

Whitehead’s renewed offensive continued for a third day on October 25, this time with a concerted effort to hit Lakunai. Throughout the first two weeks of the overall offensive, the main fighter base had not been touched. The 43rd and 90th Bomb Groups had tried twice, but the weather forced them to turn back or go after alternates. Whitehead therefore planned a heavy raid on Lakunai as the primary event, with a secondary goal to attack shipping in Simpson Harbor again.

Despite forecasts of bad weather, more than sixty Liberators were ready for the mission on October 25. The plan called for two P-38 squadrons to sweep Lakunai just ahead of the bombers, while four additional squadrons escorted the heavies. Colonel Harry J. Bullis, deputy commander of the 90th Bomb Group and overall mission leader, had his B-24 poised on the runway at precisely the designated minute.

Charles A. Rawlings, a correspondent with the
Saturday Evening Post
, observed as the event got underway. Later he penned a description of the first bomber’s takeoff:

Harry Bullis was posed at the runway end. Suddenly his four props beat into life. Slowly, the big, muddy-colored bomber started to squash its great tires ahead, started to whine as the props fought for air. Then she went past, a tremendous hurtling giant of a thing, and you could hear her voice, the great deep organ voice of 4800 horsepower, unleashed and free and crooning with joy. Bullis held her nose down until she had her 60,000 pounds covering the
ground at 120 miles an hour, and then let her fly. She went up steadily as if there were a perfect grade, basllasted, tied, and tracked up in the sky, and she was mounting it. Halfway up, she made her last clumsy gesture, a ludicrous spreading of her landing gear like a cow spraddling to empty her bladder, and then the legs and the wheels were gone up into their recesses in the wings and she was a creature of the air, supple, graceful, unafraid.

The mission began normally. Sixty-one Liberators took off from Port Moresby and proceeded to the usual join-up location over Kiriwina Island. There, they met eighty-one Lightnings and the formation headed northward. Leading an understrength element of the 432nd Fighter Squadron this day was Major MacDonald, 475th Group headquarters staff, who later described how the weather—and the plans—quickly deteriorated:

About 45 minutes out I heard the lead fighter squadron call that weather looked too bad and saw them turn around. The lead member must not have been on the right frequency for he never replied and kept going. The weather to the east of the target was bad. Rather than let the bombers go on alone, I took my seven men very high and covered the lead bomber squadron of the 90th Group, so that the Nips seeing us would be discouraged and perhaps figure there were lots more of us.

Just like True a week earlier, Bullis and the 43rd Group commander reportedly never heard the calls from the lead fighter squadron. Seventy-three P-38s turned back, as did eleven B-24s, leaving fifty bombers in the formation with an escort of just eight fighters. Taking his small unit up to 27,500 feet, Major MacDonald got above the weather and then weaved back and forth over the lead element of bombers. His intention of numerical deception may have worked: a report issued later by the 25th Air Flotilla stated: “At 1020 [Tokyo time] about 40 P-38s and 50 B-24s attacked Rabaul.”

What mattered most—to both attackers and defenders—was the fierce resistance over Rabaul. As the B-24s approached Lakunai, warships in Simpson Harbor fired a storm of shells that burst between twenty and twenty-five thousand feet, and dozens of shore batteries contributed to the barrage. Forty-four fighters and two Judy bombers (carrying aerial burst bombs) participated, too. A few aggressive Zekes got among the lead B-24s and MacDonald flamed one—a victory confirmed by other P-38 drivers and even B-24 crews—after which the enemy fighters were reluctant to mix it up with the P-38s.

“Ack-ack was heavy and accurate,” noted Capt. William M. Waldman, one of MacDonald’s pilots. “Heavy and medium caliber was shot at not only the bombers but at P-38s, too. I saw one B-24 hit in the left outboard engine and he trailed black smoke for a long ways, staying right in formation. The destroyers, and I believe
there were also cruisers, were firing everything they had at us. Four white bursts, as big as tents with white streamers trailing down, appeared off to our left.”

Waldman’s statement was accurate. Two Japanese heavy cruisers and six destroyers had arrived from Truk three days earlier, which explains the intense antiaircraft fire. Waldman also confirmed that the two D4Y1 Judys dropped several aerial burst bombs, though none damaged the formation. The antiaircraft fire was more accurate. The B-24 that Waldman mentioned was
Tear Ass (The Bull)
, flown by Lt. Charles B. Showalter and crew of the 400th Squadron/90th Group. A direct hit on the number one engine caused the fire and black smoke; then the number four engine was hit and stopped, too, though Showalter later got it started again. Then a prop blade on one of the two good engines was damaged, causing vibration, and Showalter was forced to reduce speed. Knowing he would soon be sucked out of the formation, he radioed Bullis to slow the whole formation. The group commander reduced the formation’s speed, thus protecting the crippled Liberator, and despite the heavy antiaircraft fire, the bombardiers performed well.

At long last, the heavy bombers pounded Lakunai with scores of large demolition bombs and hundreds of frag devices. According to the Japanese, more than twenty parked aircraft were burned or severely damaged, including five twin-engine Type 100 command reconnaissance planes (Mitsubishi Ki-46 “Dinahs”) of the JAAF 10th Flying Regiment. Five others sustained lesser damage. The navy’s assessment reported thirteen fighters and bombers burned on the ground and the airfield temporarily “out of use.” Eight ships anchored near Lakunai in Matupit Harbor were damaged. A postwar summary stated that “about 10 petrol or oil wagons, machine guns, ammunition dumps and the greater part of the airfield installations were destroyed.”

Following Bullis and the 90th Group, the participating crews of the 43rd Group proudly proclaimed, “We gave Lakunai drome at Rabaul a first-class plastering today in a daylight raid without fighter cover.” However, the rearmost 403rd Bomb Squadron faced persistent attacks from about thirty fighters. The B-24 piloted by Lt. John W. Carlson lost one engine, with another damaged. He couldn’t maintain formation, so two Liberators reduced speed to shepherd him home. All three B-24s came under heavy attack. After Carlson lost another engine, he could no longer keep up. The Zeros ganged up on the cripple.

A Fifth Air Force operational summary later described the dramatic conclusion:

For fifteen minutes enemy fighters literally waited in line for their turn to make passes. They riddled the B-24. Its bomb bay was awash with fuel and hydraulic fluid; only two engines were functioning; its top turret guns had jammed; ammunition was almost exhausted except for a few rounds in the nose turret. But one by one the Japanese planes gave up the fight until only six or seven remained. Unexpectedly these, too, turned back toward New Britain at a time when the quarry was theirs for the taking.

Only a few minutes after the last Japanese plane had disappeared, both remaining engines cut out, and the Liberator was brought down upon the water. The nose ducked under with a terrific impact. The top of the fuselage broke open at the bomb bay, and the five crew members on the half deck crawled out and tumbled into the ocean. The flight deck and cockpit were filled with water. The radio operator, navigator, and engineer were badly injured, but they succeeded in crawling out the escape hatch. The pilot and copilot were trapped in the crushed cockpit. In the meantime, a call for help had been sent from the crashed plane’s flight. Approximately one hour later, a Catalina floated down on the water and rescued the surviving members of the crew.

Carlson’s B-24 was the only American aircraft that failed to return from the mission—and Carlson and his copilot, Lt. Oscar M. Williams, were the only aviators lost that day. Even the badly damaged
Tear Ass (The Bull)
, only one engine still functioning normally, squeaked into Kiriwina for an emergency landing. If only Rawlins of the
Saturday Evening Post
had been there to watch the battered Liberator as it used up all but twenty feet of the runway before stopping, what an imaginative description he might have written.

SOMETHING WASN’T ADDING up. An intelligence summary published by GHQ reported that the October offensive had destroyed more than 350 enemy aircraft at Rabaul. Based on official credits, the three consecutive missions from October 23 to 25 had been incredibly productive. The bomber crews claimed forty-two enemy planes shot down, thirty-eight of them on October 25, while B-25 gunners were credited with shooting down eight. During the same span, Lightnings reportedly shot down fifty-three Japanese fighters, including thirty-eight kills on October 24 alone. Total credits over those three days amounted to 103 aircraft, whereas Japanese records show three fighters lost and three damaged on the 23rd, ten shot down or force-landed on the 24th, and two lost with six others damaged on the 24th. The bombing and strafing attacks caused much more damage, though the claims were still exaggerated.

Whitehead wanted to follow the high-altitude attack on Lakunai with another low-level raid against shipping, and scheduled it for October 26. The fourth raid in four days got underway with the launch of eighty-two B-25s, but a frontal system blanketed Kiriwina, preventing the P-38 escorts from taking off. This time, all the B-25s turned back.