Target: Rabaul (38 page)

Thanks to Wilkins, the rest of the squadron made it out of the caldera. The pilots strafed and even tried to skip or toss their thousand-pounders, but the choice targets, as Webster later put it, “skittered like water bugs trying to get out of the confines of Simpson Harbor.”

Over the heads of the survivors from the 8th Squadron, dogfights still raged between the defending Zeros and attacking P-38s. Johnson’s 9th Fighter Squadron, with eleven Lightnings, found themselves tangled in an extended fight that added two confirmed victories to Johnson’s personal score. Other pilots added four more, but lost Lt. Francis S. Love, whose P-38 fell in flames and hit ground at high speed southeast of Tobera airdrome, leaving little distinguishable wreckage. Another member of the squadron, 1st Lt. Carl G. Planck Jr., straggled southward after colliding with a Zero. He ditched his badly damaged Lightning in virtually the same spot as Ed Czarnecki, swam ashore, and was rescued by local villagers.

To the amazement of the strafer crews, detritus from these dogfights rained down on the anchorage. The B-25s finally escaped from the caldera after dodging around strange-looking obelisk outcroppings, known as the Bee Hives, that rose from the middle of the harbor. Racing to the southwest, the bombers were harassed by several Zeros, but the Japanese made only halfhearted passes, undoubtedly keeping one eye out for the Lightnings.

All across the Gazelle Peninsula, down Saint George’s Channel, and even out in the Solomon Sea, individual battles occupied many pilots and crews, while others struggled with damaged engines, damaged flight controls, and wounded crewmembers. Second Lieutenant Owen Giertsen, 431st Fighter Squadron, ditched his shot-up P-38 near Wide Bay and got ashore safely. Two damaged Mitchells also ditched on the way home, including Henebry’s
Notre Dame De Victoire
, its left engine shot out by Zeros after he escaped from the harbor. All of Henebry’s crew got out, but two members of the other B-25 did not survive the crash-landing.

Throughout the afternoon, returning P-38s and B-25s landed at Kiriwina or Dobodura, nearly all having suffered some damage. Pilots and crewmembers were drained. The first returnees, mostly from the 345th Group, were justifiably proud. Others, such as Webster and the survivors of the 8th Squadron, flew back to base in a trance after their horrific experience over Simpson Harbor. “I was so stiff and wrung out emotionally that I could barely get out of the plane,” he remembered. Webster and the others submitted “unenthusiastic damage claims,” and for the next few days jumped every time the telephone in squadron headquarters rang. They hoped a PT boat or PBY had picked up Wilkins and Mackey, but eventually the cold realization settled in.

None of them were coming back.

*
Two Type 100 heavy bombers (Nakajima Ki-49 “Helens”) of the 7th Flying Regiment, attacked Port Moresby on September 20, 1943.

*
Downs, the 8th Squadron’s previous commanding officer, flew with the outfit while Ray Wilkins was on leave in Australia.

*
As the designated leader of the 345th Group on this mission, Fridge sat in the copilot seat of
Red Wrath
, piloted by Capt. Robert W. Judd, 498th Bomb Squadron.

*
Kirby initially claimed one Zeke destroyed and another probably destroyed, but he was ultimately credited with two victories, thus becoming an ace. They were his last two victories of the war.

*
Hara’s destroyers had sortied for transport assignments during at least one of the low-level attacks, hence his belief that previous raids had been made at high altitude.

*
Flight Officer Woody H. Keyes Jr.

CHAPTER 14

Redemption for the Pond Lily

K
ENNEY CONCLUDED EACH
day by noting the results of major missions in his diary. His entry on November 2 was cryptic, considering the importance of the day’s big raid on Rabaul: “Supporting Bougainville landing 75 B-25s escorted by 70 P-38s bombed Rabaul airdromes and harbor, destroying 12 planes on the ground, 68 in the air … and sinking 3 DDs, 8 merchant ships from 5-8000 tons. 9 B-25s and 9 P-38s lost and 3 P-38s crash landed.”

A later handwritten addendum addressed the fact that the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey acknowledged only two enemy vessels sunk by the attacking B-25s:
Shinko Maru
, a merchantman of 3,119 tons, and
Manko Maru
of 1,503 tons. But the collective damage was greater. A postwar map drawn by an Imperial Army intelligence officer noted numerous wreck sites and the date of each ship’s destruction. For November 2, Lt. Col. Masaru Shinohara sketched two additional sunken ships,
Man Maru
and
Zingu Maru
, near Simpson Harbor’s eastern shore. Additionally, most historians agree that the heavy cruisers
Haguro
and
Myoko
had been damaged by near-misses, along with
Shiratsuyu
, one of the destroyers in Captain Hara’s division. Well over two dozen cargo ships, transports, auxiliaries, and oilers suffered varying degrees of damage, some severe. Still, the number that sank was remarkably low.

Kenney probably knew that his initial claims were unrealistic. He was certainly aware of the cost on the American side. Nearly fifty pilots and crewmembers were dead or missing. Several more were wounded. The date of the mission became known as “Bloody Tuesday,” and Kenney even went so far as to call it the Fifth Air Force’s “toughest, hardest-fought engagement of the war.”

Nevertheless he and MacArthur turned Bloody Tuesday into a victory that rivaled the Battle of the Bismarck Sea. Communiqué number 572 described a “desperate battle” in which planes attacking at masthead height sank three destroyers, eight large merchantmen, and four coastwise vessels. It portrayed Simpson Harbor as “a scene of utter wreckage and destruction,” and claimed
ninety
enemy planes destroyed or probably destroyed. The exaggerations were unnecessary. The heroic death of Ray Wilkins, who received a posthumous Medal of Honor, made a greater impact on the public than inflated numbers of destroyed ships and planes.

To honor Wilkins and others who gave their lives—and to put the best possible spin on the mission—the Fifth Air Force produced a large-format book titled
Rabaul: 2 November 1943
. Featuring dozens of dramatic photos from the B-25s, it opened with a foreword that was pure Kenney: “In the space of twelve minutes a formidable Japanese sea and air armada, in the powerful, well-organized, well-defended stronghold of Rabaul, was attacked and decisively defeated. Never in the long history of warfare has so much destruction been wrought upon the forces of a belligerent nation so swiftly and at such little cost to the victor.”

At the conclusion of the bombing campaign, Kenney declared Rabaul finished. Mimicking his rhetoric, a U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey team credited the Fifth Air Force for achieving victory: “Heavy raids in October and a final strike 2 November by B-25s and P-38s completely surprised the enemy and resulted in such heavy destruction that it was obvious that Rabaul was no longer a satisfactory base for any kind of operations.”

However, the Japanese had quite easily shrugged off the November 2 attack. Moreover, according to Captain Hara, the aerial attack had actually improved the outlook of his destroyer crew:

Considering the size of his effort, the enemy achieved very poor results with that raid. It netted 18 Japanese planes destroyed, and only two small merchant ships and one subchaser sunk. For these minor spoils the Americans paid with eight B-25s and nine P-38s definitely shot down, and many more planes which limped back to base with wings and fuselage so badly riddled that they crashed on landing.

Gunfire from surface ships is usually of little effect on fast airplanes. But it was quite different that day. The enemy planes practically flew right into our gunfire. I saw at least five planes knocked down by
Shigure
.

When my destroyers returned to Rabaul shortly after noon, every man of the crews was justifiably proud and jubilant. The depressed mood of the morning was completely gone. Officers and men alike were able to joke and laugh again.

From concept to completion, the emphasis of the November 2 raid was on sinking ships. This varied from Kenney’s primary goal of taking out Japanese air power. He’d been thrilled with the success of the previous missions against the airdromes, but his understanding of their effect was skewed by overclaiming. Historical researcher Richard L. Dunn, who spent years compiling American claims and intercepts of Japanese message traffic, concluded that the Fifth Air
Force’s P-38s “had taken a drubbing” during the offensive against Rabaul. Such conclusions do not sit well with warbird enthusiasts, who consider their favorite aircraft untouchable. (As Dunn points out, the P-38 is regarded by many as the champion of the Pacific war.) But the statistics speak for themselves. Dunn counted outright combat losses and took into consideration planes that were damaged beyond repair and those grounded by the cumulative wear-and-tear of repeated missions. As he discovered, the readiness status of P-38 squadrons plummeted during the three-week campaign. Similar circumstances applied to the Japanese, of course, but they took advantage of an influx of aircraft from Truk. The Fifth Air Force’s P-38s, by comparison, would not return to their pre-offensive strength for another four months.

DESPITE BREAKTHROUGHS IN Allied intelligence in 1942 and ’43, especially in cryptanalysis of intercepted Japanese messages, there were many gaps in coverage. Deciphering of the JN-25 naval message code, for example, was still mostly guesswork: analysts could translate no more than about 15 percent of any message. And while photographic analysis had also improved, the F-5 flyovers were often diminished by bad weather. Even partial cloud cover was enough to prevent reconnaissance planes from capturing useable photographs. For those reasons, along with a coincidence of circumstances, the Japanese were handed another opportunity to crush the Allied invasion fleet at Bougainville.

The first effort had been squandered by Admiral Omori, soundly beaten on November 2 by the light cruisers and destroyers of Task Force 39 under Rear Admiral Merrill. Having failed to get anywhere near the Allied beachhead, Omori was relieved of his command. Frustrated, Admiral Koga at Combined Fleet headquarters decided to wield a much bigger stick to smash the invasion fleet. As soon as he learned of the initial setback, he ordered a powerful surface unit to get underway to reinforce the Eighth Fleet at Rabaul.

Responding quickly, Vice Adm. Takeo Kurita sortied all of Cruiser Division 4 plus two heavy cruisers from Truk on November 3. The surface force included seven heavy cruisers—
Atago, Chikuma, Chokai, Maya, Mogami, Suzuya
, and
Takao
—plus light cruiser
Noshiro
and four destroyers accompanied by “a suitable fleet train.” The latter consisted of several transports laden with troops, essentially counterinvasion forces, which would retake the beachhead at Torokina Point after the warships destroyed the Allied fleet.

Halsey and his staff were unaware of these developments. Halsey was distracted by the invasion of the Gilbert Islands, set to commence on November 20, which involved a substantial and undesirable commitment on his part. Although Halsey had just commenced the invasion of Bougainville, Nimitz had ordered him to support the assaults on Makin and Tarawa by transferring some of his ships to the Central Pacific. In fact, Merrill was already on his way with Task Force 39, which left no capital ships in the Solomons. The only warships with any hitting power
were a newly arrived light carrier and an aging flattop from the prewar fleet—one that hadn’t seen action in more than a year.

SHE WAS A grand old dame, built on a battle cruiser hull. When she slid into the Delaware River on April 27, 1925, she became the largest ship launched in North America—a record eclipsed a few months later when her slightly heavier sister ship was launched from the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts.
Lexington
and
Saratoga
had been conceived long before their launching. In summer 1916, before the United States entered World War I, congress had authorized their construction as part of a program to build six huge battle cruisers. Contracts were completed the following year, but the keels were not laid for more than three years due to other wartime priorities.

Construction of the third ship in the class, hull number CC-3, began with laying
Saratoga’
s keel on September 25, 1920. The class’s namesake,
Lexington
, started three and a half months later as CC-1. However, progress halted due to the Five-Power Treaty, which took effect in February 1922 after the Washington Naval Conference. Designed to prevent an international arms race with strict limitations on warship construction, the treaty permitted the U.S. Navy to convert two of the battle cruisers under construction into aircraft carriers, each limited to thirty-five thousand tons. In July 1922, congress approved the conversion of
Lexington
and
Saratoga
, which were farthest along. New hull numbers were issued, although CV-1, the first number for a U.S. ship operating fixed-wing aircraft, had already been given to USS
Langley
upon its conversion from a collier in 1920.
Lexington
and
Saratoga
thus became CV-2 and CV-3. (The other battle cruisers in the original contract,
Constellation, Constitution, Ranger
, and
United States
, were subsequently scrapped.)