Target: Rabaul (34 page)

The intertropic front settled in, giving the Japanese a reprieve from bombing attacks. During the four-day hiatus, reports from the Solomons of an American invasion fleet sighted off the Treasury Islands caused concern at Eleventh Air Fleet headquarters. This was a preliminary element of Halsey’s planned assault on Bougainville, known as Operation Cherryblossom, the Allied code name for the
island. On the morning of October 27, troops of the New Zealand 8th Brigade landed in the Treasuries and quickly grabbed the two main islands, Mono and tiny Stirling.

About halfway between Vella Lavella and Empress Augusta Bay, the islands were only fifty miles from Buin and even closer to Ballale. The threat of an aerial counterattack from those bases no longer existed: the Japanese had withdrawn their few remaining planes a week earlier. Seabees of the 87th Construction Battalion began building a new airstrip on Stirling as soon as the island was secured.

On the day of the landings, Kusaka advised Combined Fleet headquarters at Truk that only ten dive-bombers and about seventy Zero fighters were available for daylight attacks against the enemy invasion fleet. Thirty-six
rikko
were also available, but after the terrible losses during the Central Solomons campaign, Kusaka was no longer willing to risk them on long-range daylight attacks. He requested immediate reinforcements: four divisions of fighters and three divisions of dive-bombers. Meanwhile, Kusaka sent all ten dive-bombers and an escort of thirty-nine Zeros to attack the invaders. The Japanese fought past the CAP and claimed the sinking of “1 transport, 2 cruisers, and 1 small transport,” at the cost of four dive-bombers and a fighter. No ships actually sank, but the Fletcher-class destroyer
Cony
was badly damaged.

AT PORT MORESBY, Whitehead waited impatiently for the weather to improve. When the forecast for October 29 finally showed promise, he promptly scheduled another Rabaul strike. Instead of sending the strafers to attack the heavily defended harbor, however, he ordered another high-altitude attack, this time with the 43rd Group leading. According to the group’s history, the B-24s and their P-38 escorts arrived over Rabaul with little difficulty:

The Nips’ big Vunakanau drome was our target. For the first time, our entire group was loaded with 6-pound fragmentation bombs. We carried about 4,000 of those little hell raisers, and the 90th Group followed us with 500-pounders.

The target was left a mass of smoke and flames—mostly from Nip airplanes which will pester us no more. The raid cost us one man, 2nd Lieutenant Earl R. Rich, bombardier of the 64th Squadron, who was fatally wounded when hit by a piece of ack-ack shrapnel over the target. He was toggling out his bombs when hit—only two bombs were left in his bomb bay. Our group shot down six Jap fighters who intercepted us over the target. As usual, the Nips were timid about coming in and slugging it out with us and our P-38 cover.”

Despite the alleged Japanese reluctance, the skies over Rabaul were thick with Zeros. Seventy-five had scrambled, of which approximately fifty tangled with the bombers and fighter escort.

Dick Bong, leading a division of the 9th Fighter Squadron, atoned for the loss of his wingman earlier. Flying at twenty thousand feet with the bombers, he observed eight enemy fighters diving almost vertically through the formation. After signaling his division to drop their belly tanks, he rolled over and dived to give chase. On the way down he fired at two Zekes, but found two more on his own tail. Plunging all the way to three thousand feet, Bong used his Lightning’s superior weight and speed to lose the Zekes behind him, then leveled off and attacked another Zeke head-on. He fired a long burst; the fighter flipped out of control and crashed. Next he ran down two more Zekes that fled toward Open Bay, flaming one and damaging the other before he was forced to break off “for lack of ammunition.”

The damage caused by the B-24s on October 29 included at least seven aircraft destroyed at Vunakanau. For the Japanese the impact of the October raids was becoming serious. Although the aircraft destroyed were far less than the Allies claimed, such attrition could not be sustained. In a postwar summary of naval air operations, the Japanese admitted that the Allied offensive was having a cumulative effect, beginning with the raid on October 12.

As this was the first large-scale enemy raid on Rabaul, our fighters were unable to intercept the raiding planes satisfactorily, and heavy damage was sustained by our planes and surface craft in the area. Following this, Rabaul was raided by about 100 planes on 18 [October] and by 100 to 150 planes on 23, 24, and 25 October respectively. At each attack, our fighters intercepted the enemy and shot down a considerable number of planes, but our losses on the ground were also quite heavy; and, at the same, time, enemy air raids became a great obstacle to the execution of operations.

Even considering the effects of attrition, the October offensive did not devastate Rabaul. The initial raid surprised the defenders—it is sometimes called “the Japanese Pearl Harbor”—but there are few actual similarities. Simpson Harbor is several times larger than Pearl Harbor, giving warships ample room to maneuver in an air attack. Also, the Southeast Area Fleet had no need to berth its warships in tight clusters like those of the Pacific Fleet, which were moored side-by-side in crowded anchorages. And at the airdromes surrounding Rabaul, planes were parked in protected revetments, not lined up wingtip-to-wingtip as they had been at Hickam and Wheeler and Barbers Point on December 7, 1941. Furthermore, the harbor, town, and airdromes at Rabaul were spread out over an area of more than a hundred square miles. The bombing technology of the day was imprecise, such that many bombs landed in unused space; therefore, even after six raids between October 12 and 29, the level of destruction at Rabaul was relatively mild.

What the Japanese—and the American POWs—feared most was an attack on Rabaul’s business district. Thus far the downtown area had been spared, although
the proximity of Lakunai airdrome to Chinatown gave the prisoners plenty to worry about. Despite the promise of shelter, the POWs remained in their cells while the guards hid in the bunkers. The only benefit for the POWs was the temporary freedom to stand and watch the raids through small, barred windows. The result was an odd juxtaposition of pride in the American attackers and fear of becoming an accidental victim, remembered Joe Holguin:

The air raids against Rabaul continued to increase with tremendous force … This was one of the most frightening experiences for the prisoners because Lakunai aerodrome was only a mile or two from the camp. Therefore, we could hear the roar of the engines, the firing of aerial machine guns and of antiaircraft batteries. But the most frightening sound was the swishing noise of the falling bombs increasing in noise and terror as they approached the ground. We were sure this would be our last day on earth. Once the bombs hit the ground and we were still alive to feel the impacts, we knew we would live a little longer—at least until the next air raid.

The raids came almost without letup, interrupted only by adverse weather. Whitehead, encouraged by the results of the bombing offensive and the low number of American casualties, decided to strike again at the shipping in Simpson Harbor. After several false starts because of unfavorable forecasts, he eventually got his wish—but the next raid on Rabaul would be far more expensive.

RAY WILKINS RETURNED from leave a happy man. Phyllis had invited him up to Rockhampton, where Ray asked her father for permission to marry her. They had set a date to tie the knot soon after Christmas. When he returned to Dobodura on October 31, Wilkins shared the good news with his friend and the 8th Squadron’s operations officer, Lt. William H. Webster.

During Wilkins’s absence, Webster had attended the initial briefing for the low-level attack on Rabaul and had good news of his own: the first attempt had been scrubbed by foul weather. Wilkins was glad he hadn’t missed it. Now that he was back, he would lead his unit on the next attempt. The 8th Squadron had been given a vital role in the mission—and Webster had all the dope.

The detailed plans called for two P-38 squadrons to sweep the airdromes and suppress enemy fighters. Next, four gunship squadrons from the 345th Bomb Group, carrying a mixed load of parafrags and Kenney’s Cocktails (iron bombs filled with white phosphorus) would neutralize the antiaircraft batteries ringing the caldera. On the heels of the 345th, two squadrons of the 38th Bomb Group and three from the 3rd Group would swoop in over Crater Peninsula from the northeast to attack ships in Simpson Harbor with thousand-pound bombs.

The approach for the anti-shipping strike offered two distinct benefits: the volcanoes on Crater Peninsula would temporarily shield the B-25s from antiaircraft
fire, and the prevailing tides would cause the anchored ships to swing broadside to the direction of attack.

Wilkins was enthusiastic about the plan, especially since “Jock” Henebry, recently promoted to operations officer of the 3rd Group, would be the mission commander. “It sounded like everybody in the Fifth Air Force was paving the way for the 3rd Group,” Webster recalled, “and that the 8th Squadron should really score well in our role as clean-up batters.”

The two friends attended another briefing that night, during which the plan was confirmed. Henebry would lead the anti-shipping portion of the strike with the 90th Squadron in the van, followed by Maj. Arthur Small and the 13th Squadron a minute behind them, then by Wilkins and the 8th Squadron. The B-25s would drop down to mast height after zooming between The Mother and The North Daughter on Crater Peninsula. They would come off their targets on a southeasterly heading, letting them race directly out of the harbor and turn for home.

The mission had the potential for a knockout punch, a real haymaker. ADVON believed the Japanese aerial forces had been reduced to only fifty serviceable fighters and perhaps thirty bombers at Rabaul and the satellite bases. These estimates were based on photographs taken after the midday raid on October 29—but that information was now three days old. Additional photo runs had been prevented by consecutive days of bad weather, including a frontal system on November 1 that extended “from zero to infinity” over New Britain.

As fate would have it, strong reinforcements had arrived at Rabaul during the blackout. Shocked by the severity of the Allied attacks on Rabaul and Bougainville in mid-October, Admiral Koga had finally ordered two heavy cruisers and a squadron of destroyers to Rabaul from Truk. The warships arrived on October 21, according to Capt. Tameichi Hara.

Additionally, after Kusaka reported the enemy invasion fleet off the Treasuries on October 27, and signaled his low aircraft readiness, Koga decided to follow the example set by Yamamoto with
I-Go Sakusen
. Anticipating an amphibious assault at Buin or the Shortlands, he ordered Admiral Ozawa to shift the planes of the 1st Carrier Division temporarily to Rabaul. By doing so, he provided Kusaka with enough land-based aircraft to defend the stronghold and strike at the enemy invaders. Days later, on November 1, approximately 150 aircraft from three veteran carriers—
Shokaku
,
Zuikaku
, and
Zuiho
—arrived at Rabaul for the new offensive. Koga called it “Ro Operation.”

In the opinion of Hara, commander of Destroyer Division 2, the reinforcements were inadequate. Disappointed with the Imperial Navy leadership in late 1943, the outspoken Hara wrote years later that Koga “had done practically nothing” as commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet, and that Ozawa had achieved “no great victories” as a carrier commander. Along with many of his fellow officers in the Eighth Fleet, Hara resented that Koga had kept the “big ships”—battleships and aircraft carriers—in the relatively safe waters of Truk Lagoon and the Home
Islands. The warships of the Eighth Fleet, meanwhile, especially the destroyers, were constantly risked on “unglamorous transport missions” and bore the brunt of the battles in the Solomons.

One night in early October, when the
sake
flowed at a gala party, Kusaka mentioned that the average life expectancy of a Rabaul-based destroyer was “something under two months.” This fueled resentment among the destroyer captains. Hara was therefore unimpressed by the small fleet dispatched from Truk by Admiral Koga. “This followed the familiar Yamamoto pattern of piecemeal reinforcement,” he later wrote. “It was a move which Koga would have cause to regret.”

IN WIDELY SCATTERED revetments around the Dobodura complex, nearly eighty strafer crews sat in their B-25s on the morning of November 1 and waited for the signal to start engines. After two tension-filled hours, they were told to return to their camps. Uncooperative weather all the way across the Solomon Sea had scrubbed the mission. The next morning the crews repeated the routine, arising at 0400 to eat a light breakfast of rehydrated food, canned juice, and strong coffee. The atmosphere inside the mess hall turned hazy as most of the flyboys lit unfiltered Lucky Strikes.

The air inside the briefing tent was similar, but with more tension. After pulling back the screen to show Rabaul, the intelligence officers referred to photographs obtained the previous afternoon by an F-5 Lightning. More than three hundred enemy planes had been counted among the airdromes. “The morning briefing conducted prior to takeoff was a very somber affair,” recalled Lt. Richard L. Walker, a pilot in the 13th Squadron/3rd Bomb Group. “Hearing the latest word on the extent of the Japanese defenses was pretty much a prediction that all of us would not be coming home. The twelve crews that were assigned to fly the mission sat grey faced and quiet during the briefing.”

The news presented that morning was incomplete. The briefing officers were unaware that a powerful fleet of ten warships had departed Simpson Harbor on the afternoon of November 1—but they would be back by the time the air strike commenced.

Two hundred and fifty miles southeast of Rabaul, the invasion of Bougainville had commenced as planned on the morning of November 1 and caught the Japanese by surprise. Koga had anticipated a frontal assault against the southern tip of the island, but Halsey’s amphibious fleet began landing the 3rd Marine Division and 2nd Raider Regiment at Torokina Point in Empress Augusta Bay, on the isolated west coast.