Target: Rabaul (37 page)

Hungerpillar did not make it out of Simpson Harbor. Flak hit the left engine and his B-25 burst into flames. As reported by his squadron mates, Hungerpillar attempted “a final effort to drop his last bomb and make it count” by attacking a heavy cruiser. The bomb fell short, however, and the flaming B-25 passed directly over the warship before plunging into the harbor.

Other planes in the squadron fared better, though none scored anything closer than one near miss on a “Fox Tare Charlie,” the recognition code for a standard Type C merchantman with the superstructure amidships. A few planes hugged the eastern shoreline, strafing the floatplane base at Sulphur Creek. One crew did not bomb shipping at all. Perhaps because of mechanical trouble, the bombs were not released until the aircraft was over Raluana Point, seven miles outside Rabaul.

It took less than sixty seconds to traverse Simpson Harbor, but for the men inside the bombers, it seemed an eternity. As the squadron’s history noted: “During this time, the entire area was a mass of devastation and murder. One B-25 was seen to go down in flames; many enemy fighters were seen to leave a trail of flame behind them, then splashed with a sickening thud into the water; a parachute with a charred but limp body of a flier was seen to float past one plane as he was making his run.”

Such vivid images were not unique to the 71st Squadron. The eight B-25s of the 405th were next in line, but had fallen farther back after the squadron became separated in a heavy rainsquall. The situation further unraveled when several Zekes intercepted the first flight of four, led by Capt. Anthony T. Deptula, from the northwest. Turning into the attack, Deptula’s flight overflew Blanche Bay, far from the approach path, and three of the crews dropped their bombs harmlessly in the sea.

The second flight continued around Crater Peninsula, following the same line as the 71st Squadron around The North Daughter volcano, and attacked from north to south across Simpson Harbor. With only four planes in the run, each B-25 received plenty of attention from enemy gunners. One bomber, piloted by Lt. Roger K. Fox, was shot down in flames and crashed in the harbor. The other three, jinking wildly, claimed near misses on two large merchantmen and a direct
hit that sank a coastwise vessel of three hundred tons. A cargo ship of about 2,500 tons was reported burning amidships after a strafing attack, as were a flying boat and a single-engine floatplane. By the time the B-25s cleared the harbor, all three had received moderate damage with one crewman wounded.

HENEBRY’S 3RD GROUP made the final run at enemy shipping in Simpson Harbor. Flying his beloved
Notre Dame de Victoire
, he led the 90th Squadron through the gap between the two volcanoes. Henebry followed the downslope to the shoreline and sped straight across the heart of the anchorage without collecting any noticeable damage. Leveling off at perhaps fifty feet, he found himself lined up almost perfectly on three ships. It so happened that he had talked his ground crew into stuffing an extra five-hundred-pound bomb in the airplane; so with a third bomb available, Henebry attempted to attack all three.

First in line was a merchantman of about four thousand tons, later identified as
Hokuyo Maru
. Holding his finger on the trigger, Henebry followed the path of his tracer rounds as they struck the ship broadside, then pulled up at the last second, barely clearing the aft derrick, and released a thousand-pounder. It slammed into the stern, sending debris hundreds of feet into the air. Henebry shoved the nose over and was still lined up on the second ship, a former cargo-passenger liner of more than ten thousand tons named
Hakusan Maru
. Anchored near the western rim of the caldera, the ship served as a troop transport. It rode broadside to Henebry’s flight path, making it relatively easy for him to plant his second thousand-pounder dead amidships on the port side. He had strafed it during the run, setting fire to the main superstructure, and the detonation of his bomb sent up a column of thick black smoke.

Henebry wanted to attack the cruiser next. It was still in line, but already trying to escape from Simpson Harbor. Unfortunately for Henebry, the gap separating
Hakusan Maru
and the cruiser was too narrow, affording no time to push the nose over and initiate a bomb run. Moreover, his attempt to bomb three ships consecutively had put
Notre Dame de Victoire
in a pickle:

I had bellied up to the target and was fair game. The ship was firing at us, fire we couldn’t return. I couldn’t even drop my third bomb.

I looked down and saw her gunners training their pom-pom guns to follow our flight path. They did hit us. And hard. But, because either they had underestimated our speed, now about 250 to 260 miles per hour, or their aim wasn’t sharp, they only struck the tail assembly.

The hit caused rudder control problems. I strained to push full right rudder but couldn’t push hard enough. Probably some of the control cables were damaged. My copilot, Don Frye, also jumped on his right rudder, and fast. The double effort did the job. The plane was again under control.

The next two elements of the 90th Squadron, led by captains Richard H. Ellis and Charles W. Howe, got through the hailstorm of gunfire over Simpson Harbor. But virtually every B-25, like
Notre Dame de Victoire
, had sustained damage. Collectively the squadron claimed no ships destroyed, although the crews did record hits on a cruiser, two destroyers, and nine transports.

Unfortunately, after Henebry led the 90th Squadron through the gap between the mountains, the carefully arranged plans began to unravel. The next squadron did not follow the prescribed route.

EARLY THAT MORNING, the 13th Squadron’s mission leader fell ill. His replacement, Capt. Walter J. Hearn, had not attended the group-level briefings. Described as “a less experienced flight leader,” he was not thoroughly familiar with the plans. When the 90th went through the gap, the enemy gunners had responded with an intense barrage. Captain Webster, leading the second element of Wilkins’ tail-end squadron, saw the fireworks. “If the Japanese shore batteries had been momentarily surprised by the 345th and 38th groups, they were fully recovered by the time the 90th Squadron came through the slot,” he recalled. “Those batteries set up a tremendous stream of flak and machine-gun tracers across the slot, anticipating correctly that the next squadrons would also take the same path.”

Seeing that curtain of antiaircraft fire, Hearn followed the path taken earlier by the 38th Group, turning away from the gap to circle around The North Daughter.

Behind the 13th Squadron, Wilkins waited for the planned left turn to a heading of 225 degrees that would take his gunships through the gap. His eight aircraft were in a loose echelon to the right, ready to make the turn, but it never came. Then he saw the gap sliding past his side window, and realized what was happening. Furious about the deviation in plans, Wilkins took his eight B-25s the long way around the volcano, following approximately a mile behind the 13th Squadron.

Leading the 13th around The North Daughter, Hearn did not turn due south as the previous group had done, but extended his turn almost to the west side of the caldera. One of his elements did cut to the south out of necessity. Lieutenant Walker, who had been troubled by the warnings at the briefing, led his three-plane element over the harbor:

Wheeling a line of eleven airplanes into a wide turn while flying line abreast puts a lot of pressure on the inside man. Carrying a heavy bomb load and making a tight turn without stalling out or getting ahead of the rest of the line is tricky, so just before we reached our designated turning point, together with my wingman … I initiated a turn.

When I completed my turn and started my bomb run, I looked for the rest of my squadron and the only thing I saw was my wingman going down. Our squadron commander, for some reason, never turned in to attack. Instead
he circled the city and dropped his bombs somewhere other than against the shipping. The rest of the squadron followed him and none of them hit the target.

By that time I was out in the harbor alone. Prior to this, my heart was in my mouth. To say I was scared would be an understatement; but for some reason, at this point I was now more calm. Maybe it was because I was resigned to my fate or because I was fully occupied concentrating on my bomb run. I don’t know, but I quickly reasoned that my best chance to survive was to stay low, where I was a difficult target, while flying between ships rather than above them.

Walker’s two wingmen had started the bomb run with him, but Lt. Joseph F. Meyers veered away, and the plane flown by Lt. John Cunningham was mortally damaged. He slid out of formation, leaving Walker to weave by himself among the anchored ships. Picking out a merchantman with a superstructure that seemed to rise “like the Empire State Building,” Walker claimed a direct hit—possibly on the transport
Hakusan Maru
. He and Meyers cleared the harbor and headed for home independently, but Cunningham’s B-25 crashed near Kokopo with no survivors.

While Hearn led the rest of the 13th Squadron on a wide turn around the rim of the caldera, Wilkins and his eight planes cut to the inside, heading southeast over Rabaul—and through the thick clouds of smoke. When he emerged and saw that he was near the eastern shore, Wilkins initiated a sudden, hard turn to the right that caught many of his pilots by surprise. The extreme maneuvering, recalled Bill Webster, came at a price:

First thing I knew, he had racked his plane into a vertical right bank to get lined up on a destroyer. I don’t know how his wingman avoided hitting him.
^*
Each pilot had to do a similar vertical right turn to miss the plane on his left—and hoped the pilot on his right was alert enough to do likewise. By the time we recovered our balance and went to max power (36 inches of manifold pressure), we were doing about 240 miles per hour thundering out over the harbor on a heading roughly southwest (the prescribed course). By now, at least five minutes had elapsed since the 90th’s attack and the surprise element was totally gone. The defenders definitely were waiting for us. Wilkins was over the approximate center line of the harbor and the rest of us were more or less in an echelon formation to his right, with possibly 50 yards between each plane.

Heading south by southwest across Simpson Harbor, Wilkins on the extreme left and the rest of the formation stepped back to the right, the strafers found a warship directly in their path. Described as a “destroyer,” it may have been
W-26
,
damaged earlier. Wilkins dropped his first bomb on this vessel and reportedly scored a direct hit, but antiaircraft fire damaged the right wing of his B-25,
Fifi
.

Continuing southward at wave-top altitude, the bombers drew renewed fury from the Japanese gunners. As the 3rd Group’s postwar history put it, “Antiaircraft gunners on the vessels stood ready, and Simpson Harbor was ringed with living steel through which the Mitchells flew.”

According to the original attack plan, which Wilkins had fully endorsed, the 8th squadron was to egress from Simpson Harbor near Vulcan crater, just as Henebry’s squadron had done. But now the squadron was committed to head south across the harbor before escaping via Blanche Bay. A high-speed turn to the west would have dangerously crowded the planes farther back in the formation, potentially putting those on the extreme right in jeopardy of hitting the water. Thus, from a formation leader’s standpoint, continuing straight ahead was the right thing to do.

Unfortunately for Wilkins, the flight path took him close to at least two destroyers anchored off Lakunai airdrome and the heavy cruiser
Haguro
, picking up speed on her way out of the harbor. Somewhere nearby, her exact position unknown, the light cruiser
Agano
was also running for safety. Wilkins’ next target was a large merchant vessel, which he strafed and bombed, though his wingman was unable to confirm it as a definite hit.

Webster, leading the second element in the number four position, was concentrating all his attention on acquiring a target when he suddenly felt emptiness. “About half way across the harbor,” he recalled, “I became aware that there were no B-25s to my left, where there had been three just a few moments earlier.”

The entire lead element—Wilkins, with Flight Officer Woody H. Keyes on his right wing and Lt. William C. Mackey in the number three position—had flown straight at
Haguro
. But there were just too many guns. As Wilkins and Mackey began strafing the cruiser, a burst of fire damaged Wilkins’ left vertical stabilizer. Still he did not deviate. He bored ahead, firing his eight machine guns at the massively armed warship. Perhaps, as the only pilot from the original 8th Squadron to have survived so much aerial combat, Wilkins believed he was invincible.

But as he closed on
Haguro
, he got no mercy from its gun crews. Bright muzzle blasts sparkled from dozens of weapons, and a torrent of shells converged on the B-25, blowing off its left stabilizer.

Instead of swerving to the right, which might have caused a chain reaction among his own planes, Wilkins “threw his plane into a turn to the left in order to avoid cutting us off or forcing us to make a violent turn right over the cruiser,” remarked Keyes. “This caused his belly and full wing surfaces to be exposed to the direct fire of the cruiser and, as a result, antiaircraft fire caught his left wing, causing one third of it to fold up. The plane then rolled over on its back and split-Sed into the water.”

All that remained was a frothy white ring at the entrance to Simpson Harbor. Moments later, just to the south, Mackey’s B-25 also slammed into the water.

Keyes’s aircraft was staggered by gunfire but remained aloft, the only plane in the lead element to get through. Keyes managed to fly all the way back to New Guinea. When he landed at Dobodura, emergency personnel pulled one dead crewman from the plane and treated another for wounds.