Fortress Rabaul (16 page)

Just as with Nakagawa’s attempt earlier, Ito’s plane approached the carrier from astern at low level. And just as before, the rapid-fire weapons cut loose when the suicidal bomber came within range. But this time the mangled aircraft made no effort to match the ship’s maneuvers. Perhaps it was all the crew could do to hold the plane straight and level; perhaps the
Lexington’s
withering gunfire killed them at the controls. Whatever
the case, the bomber flew beyond the carrier and then plunged into the sea less than a mile off the port bow, leaving a slick of burning fuel that remained on the surface for several minutes.

With the skies finally clear of attackers, the Wildcats returned to
Lexington
and bounced down one by one on their narrow landing gear. Hundreds of the ship’s crew converged on the flight deck, cheering wildly as the sweat-soaked pilots climbed from their cockpits. O’Hare was mobbed. Almost everyone topside in Task Force 11 had witnessed his marksmanship as he singlehandedly saved the
Lexington
from severe damage—or worse.

A FEW HOURS LATER, at approximately 1945, two battled-scarred
rikko
landed at Vunakanau. A total of four bombers from the 1st
Chutai
had escaped the immediate area of the task force, but only petty officers Kogiku and Maeda made it back to Rabaul in their damaged aircraft.

Although no other bombers returned to the airdrome, one got close. Petty Officer Mori and the survivors of his shot-up bomber struggled homeward without the benefit of maps or charts, all of which had been destroyed by a burst of antiaircraft fire. Using a navigation method known as “dead reckoning,” Mori headed toward New Britain while worrying about the fuel state. The left wing tank had been punctured by Butch O’Hare’s bullets, and it was obvious the remaining fuel would not last long.

Soon after night fell, the Mitsubishi ran out of gas. Mori made a wheels-up water landing in the darkness, hitting the surface with “a strong impact,” and then swam clear with a few other crewmen. The wreckage sank with the bodies of the dead still inside, leaving the survivors afloat in the darkness, uncertain of their whereabouts. Seeing a distant light, they shouted wildly but got no answer. They fired a signal flare, and the light drew nearer, causing moments of apprehension. The crew agreed among themselves that if they were in enemy territory, they would commit suicide. To their great relief they heard “voices speaking in the Nippon language” and were soon rescued. Their
rikko
had come down in Simpson Harbor, only a few miles short of their destination. Considering the circumstances, it was an extraordinary feat of airmanship and navigation.

The other bomber, piloted by Petty Officer Ono, limped away from the task force with its right engine shot out, several crewmen dead, and gasoline leaking from the left wing tank. The plane was still two hundred miles from Rabaul when the left engine quit from fuel starvation, but at
that very moment, “like a blessing from heaven,” an island appeared. Ono had stumbled across the Nuguria Islands, a tiny atoll east of New Ireland, and he quickly ditched the bomber alongside a beach. Ono and two other crewmen survived the crash-landing and staggered ashore, where islanders offered them coconuts and food in exchange for cigarettes. After the ordeal they’d just experienced, however, the aviators were “in no mood” to eat.

The next morning they awoke to the sound of a low-flying navy plane from Rabaul. As it flew over, a parcel was tossed out. The package landed in the sea and was lost, but the castaways were relieved by the knowledge that they had been spotted. Later that day another plane flew over, dropping food along with a message indicating that a rescue party was on its way. Ono and the other two survivors spent the rest of the day cremating the bodies of the dead crew and were picked up the next day by boat.

PERHAPS TO OFFSET their catastrophic losses, the few surviving members of the 4th Air Group submitted grossly exaggerated reports. Toshio Miyake, a naval correspondent at Rabaul, spun their accounts into a major victory. Within days, newspapers across Japan announced that an enemy carrier had been blasted off “New Guinea.” The accompanying story claimed that ten American planes had been shot down in a “spectacular air dual,” during which “some of the Nippon planes resorted to fierce body-crashing tactics, severely damaging the aircraft carrier and causing it to burst into flames.” A cruiser was also claimed as sunk, while actual Japanese losses were halved with the admission that nine planes “had failed to return.”

Over the next few weeks, at least five more articles about the air battle appeared in Japanese newspapers, each filled with dramatic details glorifying the airmen who had allegedly crashed their planes into the American carrier. Ito, Mitani, Nakagawa, and Seto had all met “an honorable death” and were venerated as warrior gods. Never mind that only two crews had actually
attempted
suicide attacks, neither of which succeeded. To the Japanese, it was far more important to idolize the death of the airmen as a noble sacrifice.

The
Johokyoku
(Information Bureau), which had direct control over all news published or broadcast in Japan, made certain the people never knew the truth about the battle, which had been an absolute disaster for the 24th Air Flotilla. In the span of a few hours, Rear Admiral Goto’s air groups had lost thirteen Type 1 bombers and two Type 97 flying boats in combat, and
two additional bombers were forced to ditch with dead crewmen aboard. Later it was learned that the third flying boat on the morning patrol had failed to return. Although its disappearance was evidently not combat-related, the names of ten more crewmen were added to the long list of the dead. In what was by far the worst day yet for the Imperial Navy’s air arm, more than 120 highly trained aviators lost their lives on February 20, including a group commander and two division leaders.

DESPITE THE FACT that the planned raid on Rabaul had been canceled, the
Lexington’s
air group had plenty to celebrate as the task force withdrew to safer waters. Fourteen pilots and at least one rear gunner were officially credited with shooting down sixteen bombers and two flying boats. In exchange, Fighting Squadron 3 had lost only two Wildcats and one pilot.

Recognition for the victory came quickly. The Navy’s highest medal for combat valor, the Navy Cross, was awarded to no less than seven pilots, including Thach and Gayler. Eight others received the next highest award, a Distinguished Flying Cross. The achievements were certainly important, even spectacular, but for the most part the deeds were blown out of proportion. Had the events occurred later in the war, when the guidelines for combat medals were much more rigid, most of the pilots would have received lesser awards.

And then there was Butch O’Hare, whose amazing exploits purged a family scandal. Less than three years earlier, while Butch underwent flight training at Pensacola, his father had been murdered in a gangland hit ordered by the most notorious criminal in American history, Al Capone. The assassination was not unexpected. Edgar O’Hare, known to the Chicago underworld as “Eddie,” had made a fortune from the dog tracks he operated during the late 1920s and early 1930s. He was well entrenched in Capone’s gang as an attorney and business partner, but he decided to cooperate with the federal government in bringing the mobster to justice. Capone was convicted of income tax evasion and served most of his sentence on “the Rock,” the infamous Alcatraz Island federal penitentiary. Later, while finishing out a separate sentence at Terminal Island for a misdemeanor conviction, he ordered the hit on Eddie O’Hare. The stigma for Butch, aside from his father’s association with Capone, was a persistent rumor that his appointment to Annapolis had been part of an arranged deal with the government in exchange for his father’s testimony.

Wherever the truth lay, O’Hare’s brilliant gunnery erased all doubts about his reputation. With just three firing passes he had knocked six bombers out of formation. At first he claimed all six as victories. He was initially supported by Thach, who reported seeing three bombers falling simultaneously, but then people began to recall that three bombers had attacked the
Lexington
while a fourth attempted to bomb the
Minneapolis
. Therefore, because everyone assumed the formation had consisted of nine planes to begin with, O’Hare was officially credited with shooting down five, making him the first American “ace-in-a-day.”

Assessing the accuracy of his claims is fairly simple. The combat log of the 4th Air Group shows that the 1st
Chutai
consisted of eight bombers, not nine. O’Hare fired into six, of which only two crashed as a direct result. The other four were damaged, some severely, but Ito’s bomber was finished off by
Lexington’s
antiaircraft batteries; Kojiku and Maeda landed intact at Rabaul; and Mori ditched his aircraft in Simpson Harbor. As a result, O’Hare should have earned only partial credit for the aircraft flown by Ito and Mori.

In O’Hare’s defense, he had no time to confirm whether his victims fell to the sea or stayed in the air. “
I figured there wasn’t much to do
except shoot at them,” he later told correspondents. “I would go for one, let him have it, then pull out quick so that the exploding, burning plane would not fall on top of me. Then I’d go for the next one like the first.”

More importantly, only three bombers attacked
Lexington
, unsuccessfully at that, because of O’Hare’s aggressive attacks. Everyone was eager to proclaim him the ship’s savior, and the American public desperately needed good news along with a live hero. In O’Hare, they got both. Initially he was recommended for a Navy Cross, but Admiral King upgraded the award to a Medal of Honor, and it was approved by Congress on April 16, 1942.

O’Hare, the first pilot of World War II to receive the nation’s highest military award for valor, was not destined to survive the conflict. He was killed in late 1943 during night combat operations in the Central Pacific, ironically while intercepting a raid by the same type of bombers.

After the war, the city of Chicago honored him by changing the name of a local airfield from Orchard Depot to O’Hare International. In the decades since, millions of travelers have passed through the airport, one of the world’s busiest, unaware of the historic links to Fortress Rabaul and the ill-fated “land attackers” of the 4th Air Group.

CHAPTER 10

Carmichael’s Raid

B
Y THE MIDDLE OF
February 1942, Japanese forces had captured vast amounts of territory. Guam, Wake, the Bismarcks, and Malaya had already fallen like so many ten-pins; and Burma, the Philippines, and the Netherlands East Indies were about to follow. Imperial General Headquarters, pleased that the Southern Offensive was “
making better progress
than expected,” ordered Vice Admiral Inoue to capture “various important points in British New Guinea and in the Solomon Islands … as quickly as possible.”

There was no reason to doubt that Inoue would succeed. All of his previous operations had achieved the required goals with little opposition. When the Rising Sun flag flew over New Guinea and the Solomons, the lines of supply and communication between Australia and the United States would be severed, forcing the Australians to sue for peace. With the Commonwealth out of the war, the Americans would no longer have a viable base in the theater for opposing the Southern Offensive.

Inoue’s grand plan for the conquest of New Guinea was to begin with the simultaneous invasions of Lae and Salamaua, originally scheduled for March 3. However, the disastrous losses suffered by the 24th Air Flotilla on February 20 forced Inoue to delay the landings while Rear Admiral Goto rebuilt his air strength. As soon as enough aircraft and flight crews were available, Inoue intended to “inflict strong pressure
on Australia by means of air power,” a euphemism for pounding Port Moresby into submission.

As part of Inoue’s strategy, the first attack on the Australian continent had been conducted on February 19. Once again the Japanese employed overwhelming force, sending 190 carrier planes from Nagumo’s First Air Fleet, supplemented by fifty-four bombers from the Celebes, to attack the port city of Darwin. Damage was severe: eight Allied vessels sunk, thirteen others beached or damaged, and approximately two dozen aircraft destroyed, including nine USAAF P-40s shot down. The death toll exceeded 250 civilians and military personnel.

That same morning, the B-17s of Major Carmichael’s 14th Reconnaissance Squadron arrived at Townsville, Queensland. At a time when Australians were sick of constant bad news, the sight of a dozen Flying Fortresses must have thrilled the local populace. Each of the four-engine bombers seemed enormous and bristled with machine guns: two .50-caliber weapons in a dorsal power turret, another pair in a remote-controlled belly turret, two more in the tail, plus individual guns at the waist positions on both sides of the fuselage. A ninth gun could be extended from a hatch above the radio compartment, and two .30-caliber guns protruded from panels in the Plexiglas nose.