Target: Rabaul (58 page)

Miraculously unhurt, Miller hopped nonchalantly out of the Corsair, which looked undamaged other than a broken propeller blade and the missing windscreen. However, the impact of the bomber’s huge wheel had popped hundreds of rivets, and the airframe had suffered irreparable damage.

At Kavieng, 150 miles northwest of Rabaul, the air groups from
Bunker Hill
and
Monterey
attacked shipping in the harbor on New Year’s Day. It was the second carrier raid on the satellite anchorage in a week, and although the damage was not particularly devastating, the attacks tied up enemy air units and cost the Eleventh Air Fleet at least seven planes. At the same time, some forty Japanese planes arrived at Rabaul to augment Kusaka’s air groups. Allied pilots who flew the first missions of the New Year noticed a marked improvement in the flying skill and aggression of the opposing Zero fliers.

On Bougainville, meanwhile, seabees toiled to build two new airstrips, both located a few miles inland from Torokina Point near the village of Piva. The north runway, Piva Uncle, could support fighter operations by late December. Piva Yoke, to the south, would accommodate navy and marine SBDs and TBFs upon its completion in the second week of January.

The navy’s historian, Admiral Morison, would later describe the fields’ importance: “ComAirSols well knew, from results of the V Army Air Force bombing in October, that Rabaul could not be killed by high-level bombing [alone]. He was using the Liberators merely as a stop-gap until Torokina was ready to base dive- and glide-bombers.”

Morison’s assessment was mostly opinion. A loud and frequent critic of Kenney, particularly his exaggerated claims (much of which Kenney deserved), Morison gave too little credit to the heavy bombers. Eventually, the B-24s of the
Solomons-based Thirteenth Air Force proved to be much more than the stopgap measure he described. They would, in fact, accomplish exactly what he stated they could not do.

BOYINGTON’S NEXT EFFORT to eclipse the victory record ended in frustration. Scheduled to lead a fighter sweep over Rabaul on January 2, 1944, he left Vella Lavella with one division shortly after 0700 hours. Starting off in an early model F4U-1, he questioned its soundness and radioed for a spare at Torokina. One of the junior Black Sheep promptly flew a newer Dash-1A model up to Bougainville. It was side number 883, a trustworthy Corsair that Boyington had scored his last victory in six days earlier.

Taking off from Torokina at 1020, Boyington led twenty Hellcats and twenty-eight Corsairs on his fifth fighter sweep—but his misfortunes continued. Near Rabaul, the eighteen-cylinder radial engine sprang an oil leak. Dark fluid misted onto the windscreen, blocking his view. Slowing to just above stall speed, Boyington slid back his canopy, unsnapped his parachute harness, and stood up in the cockpit. His three division pilots could scarcely believe what they were seeing. Four miles above Saint George’s Channel, their skipper tried to wipe away the oil in a hundred-mile-an-hour slipstream. The effort was futile, but the pilots gave him credit for trying.

Down below on Lakunai airdrome, Air Group 201 was scheduled to depart that day for Truk. Attrition had gradually depleted the roster, but when the Allied fighter sweep was detected, Air Group 201 managed to send nineteen Zeros aloft. They were joined by thirty-one from Air Group 204 and more from Air Group 253—eighty fighters in all. The sky was filled with planes—yet Boyington couldn’t see to shoot.

Disgusted, Boyington nursed his Corsair back to Vella Lavella, escorted by his wingman. Correspondents and photographers waited anxiously by his revetment, but Boyington simply said he’d had “a little tough luck up there.” His mood did not improve when the other two members of his division returned, claiming one victory, a probable, and two enemy planes damaged.

Later that afternoon, when the operations schedule for January 3 was posted, Boyington realized that no missions to Rabaul were planned. Desperate for one more attempt at the record, he campaigned for a fighter sweep—and succeeded in getting a late add-on to the schedule. He would lead the mission at dawn.

Perhaps knowing that he was grabbing more than his fair share of combat opportunities, Boyington changed the composition of his four-plane division. His wingman would be Capt. George M. Ashmun, experienced and well-liked, but without so much as a damaged enemy plane to his credit. Two others who had done little shooting, lieutenants James J. Hill and Alfred L. Johnson, would fly the second section.

Joined by Olander’s division, Boyington took off at 1730 and spent the night at Torokina. The next morning, twenty-eight Corsairs and sixteen Hellcats rose from
the steel runway beginning at 0630, but mechanical ailments began to chip away at the Black Sheep. Half of VMF-214’s Corsairs turned back with faulty oxygen, hydraulic, or electrical systems. The remaining four Black Sheep rearranged themselves into a single division, with Matheson and Lt. Rufus M. “Mack” Chatham forming the second section.

Approaching Rabaul at twenty thousand feet, Boyington led the formation in a wide, right-hand sweep over the celebrated enemy stronghold. At this early hour, with the sun still low in the overcast sky, the caldera appeared murky, and a layer of haze obscured Simpson Harbor.

The Japanese had plenty of advance warning. Thirty-three
Reisens
from Air Group 204 had taken off from Lakunai and climbed east to set up an intercept. Air Group 253 launched thirty-seven more from Tobera airdrome to meet the Corsairs and Hellcats. Boyington’s formation had completed only half its turn when he spotted Zekes at fifteen thousand feet. Pushing over, he sailed in behind the last Zeke with his trademark stern run.

The opportunity that Boyington yearned for apparently made him overanxious, and he squeezed the trigger while still a quarter of a mile behind the Zeke. His tracers should have alerted the Japanese pilot—normally they would split-S in an instant and disappear—but the fighter uncharacteristically held its course. Barreling downhill with a big speed advantage, Boyington’s F4U closed in. At three hundred feet, his heavy .50-caliber slugs chewed into the lightly built Zeke. Suddenly the pilot jumped clear, unwilling to “self-explode” for the sake of an unseen emperor. Seconds later, incendiary rounds punctured one of the Zeke’s unprotected fuel tanks, turning the fighter into a flaming torch.

Matheson and Chatham witnessed the kill, as did several pilots from VMF-223. Boyington had achieved his twenty-sixth victory and tied the Foss-Rickenbacker record.

Matheson went after a different Zeke, and Chatham found himself unarmed due to an electrical failure of his guns. Thus distracted, neither individual noticed that Boyington, with Ashmun sticking doggedly to his wing, descended over the hazy caldera. Not satisfied with merely tying the record, Boyington dropped another three thousand feet toward a formation of Zeros below him, unaware that it was a trap. Out of the sun, an even larger formation swooped down, roofing in the pair of faded blue Corsairs.

Although Boyington still had plenty of altitude, he failed to follow his own edict about using the Corsair’s superior weight and horsepower to its best advantage. Instead of diving away, he and Ashmun began weaving defensively. Perhaps they were simply boxed in. Twenty to thirty Zeros swarmed around the scissoring F4Us, and within a few turns Ashmun’s plane settled into what Boyington described as a “half-glide.” At first the Corsair trailed smoke, but as the Zeros kept banging away, it began to burn. Although Boyington called out to Ashmun several times on the radio, he neither saw nor heard any indication that
Ashmun was in control of the burning plane. Within a few seconds, it slammed into Saint George’s Channel.

Boyington had nowhere to run. All he could do was hunker down and hope the 150 pounds of armor plate behind and beneath his seat would protect him. Many pilots have described the sensation of hearing the staccato, metallic rattle of rifle-caliber slugs hitting the opposite side of the plate. Boyington could feel the shock waves, but the thick armor did its job. Up to a point, that is. A 20mm shell penetrated the belly of the Corsair and exploded in the cavernous void between the pilot’s foot rails, sending pieces of buzzing shrapnel upward. Fragments sliced into Boyington’s left calf and ankle. One large piece of casing came straight up through his left thigh from underneath, tearing a large exit hole with a spray of blood. Another sliver of metal stuck in the meat of his thigh near the first hole. Yet another piece passed cleanly between his legs, but slashed his right forearm. Lastly, fragments of bullets or perhaps the canopy frame peppered the left side of his head, piercing the skin of his lower jaw, ear, and scalp.

Dazed and bleeding, Boyington ran flat out for almost fifty miles down Saint George’s Channel toward Bougainville. The Zeros eventually crippled his Corsair, at which point his options became extremely limited. Recalling that each of the pre-mission briefings had mentioned the presence of a
luluai
named Boski on New Ireland, Boyington headed toward the coastline of the slender island.

High overhead, some of the pilots returning from the fighter sweep heard a garbled voice on the emergency channel. While debriefing them later that morning, Frank Walton noted that “someone was heard to call Dane Base reporting that he was going to have to make a water landing.” Presuming that Ashmun was shot down in flames, as Boyington asserted, the distress call could only have been made by Boyington. No other missions had been scheduled on January 3, and no other planes went down in the entire SOPAC region. Furthermore, the probability that Boyington ditched his Corsair is supported in a letter he wrote to author and historian Henry Sakaida in 1983. “I ended up in the water almost abreast of Cape Saint George, New Ireland,” he stated, “about five miles from shore. I knew we had a coastwatcher at this point, and had high hopes of having him rescue me.”

Boyington did everything he could to maximize his chances for a Dumbo rescue or coastwatcher assistance. But because his transmission was made at low altitude, on the opposite side of New Ireland, it never reached Dane Base. No one counted Boyington and Ashmun as missing for a couple of hours. Later two divisions of Black Sheep headed up to Torokina and topped off for a search mission, but heavy weather moved in, preventing all hope of a rescue that afternoon.

Any search would have been wasted. The crew of a Japanese submarine found Boyington first. Like many other events in the fascinating chronology of his life, the situation worked out in Boyington’s favor; indeed the Japanese may well have saved him from perishing at sea.

Late in the afternoon of January 3, about eight hours after Boyington ditched, he spotted the submarine on the surface. His fervent hope that an American boat had come to his rescue vanished when he saw the white and red flag of the Imperial Navy lashed to the conning tower. Boyington spent a few hours on the deck of the sub as it headed into Simpson Harbor. Much like the sailors who transported McMurria’s crew to Rabaul, the crew of I-181 provided tea, cookies, and cigarettes.

Delivered to the 81st Naval Garrison Unit compound, Boyington underwent moderate torture and rough interrogation by naval personnel. The Japanese were fond of the “good cop/bad cop” routine. Hawaiian-born Chikaki Honda often served as the good cop. At thirty-two, he was a year older than Boyington, but looked so youthful that the POWs regarded him as a “kid.” Arbuckle, the PBY pilot captured on New Ireland in late November, described Honda as “about six feet tall with only slightly Oriental features and a good athletic build.” Honda would usually present a friendly, sympathetic façade, getting prisoners to loosen up after a rough session with other interrogators.

Ultimately, Honda would save Boyington, John Arbuckle, and several other captives from the likelihood of execution. First, however, they had to endure six miserable weeks of imprisonment.

*
A combat veteran in Korea and Vietnam as well as World War II, Ed Harper was instrumental in bringing the AV-8B Harrier to Marine Corps aviation, serving as the general manager of the McDonnell Douglas Harrier II development program from 1969 to 1997.

CHAPTER 20

Feeding Frenzy

I
T HAD BEEN
a great run for the Black Sheep. Three days after Boyington failed to return from Rabaul, their combat tour came to an end. Despite his loss—or perhaps because of it—they had become legends. In eighty-four days of combat, the ad hoc squadron had scored ninety-four officially recognized victories, creating nine aces including Boyington. And now that he was missing, the recommendation for his Medal of Honor was fast-tracked through the chain of command and approved by congress. The pilots Boyington had picked were scattered to other squadrons to complete their combat tours. Henry Miller, one of the original “Swashbucklers” of VMF-214, was the only pilot who could go home.

Other units, including Morrell’s VMF-216 and Carl’s VMF-223, also rotated to the rear area for a rest when their tours ended. But this no longer caused a shortage of squadrons. Freshly trained or reconstituted units were arriving regularly from the States, providing ComAirSols with ample fighters. Over the next two months, eleven navy and marine fighter squadrons would participate in missions over Rabaul, along with five from the RNZAF and two army P-38 outfits.