Fortress Rabaul (18 page)

Yanks Down Under

O
N CHRISTMAS EVE
1941, almost two months before Carmichael’s first raid on Rabaul, President Roosevelt met with Prime Minister Churchill and the combined service chiefs in Washington, D.C., to discuss strategy for prosecuting what had become a two-ocean war. The attendees of the conference, code-named Arcadia, examined the various priorities of the Allied forces in both the European and Pacific theaters, and concluded that Hitler was the most dangerous enemy—this despite the shock that still lingered from the launching of Japan’s Southern Offensive less than three weeks earlier. Although the smoke had barely cleared over Pearl Harbor, the United States and Great Britain agreed to prosecute the war against Germany first.

Naturally, this decision did not sit well with the Allied commanders in Hawaii and Australia. Because of Arcadia, only a trickle of war materiel and personnel would be sent to the Pacific combat zone, at least until such time as the factories and training programs could catch up with the enormous demands.

To compound the problem, Allied air strength in the Southwest Pacific was being steadily whittled away. Combat losses accounted for a relatively small percentage of the total depletion, with mishaps and mechanical failures having the greatest impact on aircraft availability. The flight crews had to perform necessary repairs themselves, and it was not uncommon for
them to toil eighteen hours a day under deplorable conditions. Although they often created ingenious solutions to get planes ready for missions, the repairs were stopgap measures at best. Gradually and inevitably, the rate of mechanical breakdowns increased.

Only a handful of American air units existed in Australia during the early months of 1942, and none had a full complement of maintenance or ground support personnel. Some squadrons, barely organized, were all that remained of the once-proud Far East Air Force, formerly based in the Philippines. Smashed by the Southern Offensive in the first days of the war, the survivors put up only minor resistance before withdrawing to Java. The remnants that escaped the Japanese onslaught were eventually pulled all the way across Australia to Melbourne, and the few remaining planes were in deplorable shape. The crewmembers loafed for days on end, suffering from low morale.

Another problem affecting American air operations was the complicated command structure. On January 5, 1942, Lt. Gen. George H. Brett was named commander of all U.S. forces in Australia. One of his first actions was to create seven military zones, which he called “base sections,” with centers at Darwin, Townsville, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, and Sydney. The arrangement proved awkward, mainly because the RAAF had already established five different zones, each commanded by an officer who had ultimate control over all aircraft in his sector, whether American or Australian. Not surprisingly, coordination of operations between the zones and different nationalities was an administrative nightmare.

The situation in Australia was tied directly to events in the far-off Philippines, where General Douglas MacArthur had made some poor decisions. When the Southern Offensive commenced on December 8, 1941, he was so stunned that he was virtually incapacitated for the first critical hours, unavailable to his subordinates except for his chief of staff, Col. Richard K. Sutherland. MacArthur’s difficulties only intensified as detachments of the Japanese Fourteenth Army landed on Luzon on December 10. Twelve days later the main invasion force went ashore near Baguio, north of Manila, and within forty-eight hours MacArthur’s vaunted army folded. Tens of thousands of American and Filipino troops were forced to fight a delaying action as they retreated southward toward the Bataan Peninsula.

In the wake of the debacle at Pearl Harbor, Rear Adm. Husband Kimmel and Maj. Gen. Walter Short had been swiftly sacked, but there was not even a formal investigation into MacArthur’s actions in the Philippines. To the contrary, he received a Medal of Honor, an award clearly intended to boost American morale during those grim days. MacArthur did spend several weeks under siege in a bunker at Corregidor, during which he visited the front-line troops exactly once. For that, he earned their eternal disdain and a new nickname: “
Dugout Doug
.”

Major General Lewis H. Brereton, commander of the Far East Air Force and the man whom MacArthur blamed for its swift demise, was banished to Australia. He remained officially in charge of the air units until January 5, 1942, when General Brett took over as commander of American forces in Australia. Soon thereafter MacArthur transferred Brereton to India, thereby getting him out of the region altogether. In Australia, meanwhile, all of the Army Air Corps units were lumped into Brett’s command with the exception of the 14th Reconnaissance Squadron, which remained for the time being under the control of Vice Admiral Leary.

With so many overlapping commands, it was all but impossible to keep the egos and ambitions of the top players from influencing operations. Brett, for example, cultivated a close relationship with Australia’s newly elected prime minister, John Curtin. But the ousted Country Party also wooed Brett, promising him “the high command position” if they were restored to power in the next election. Brett would later deny that he pursued the offer, but he deliberately integrated his staff with numerous Australians. He also created a directorate system by which certain subordinates, including Australian officers, were authorized to issue orders in his name. Finally, he made a policy of mixing RAAF personnel among the crews of American bombers.

At Australian airdromes, American airmen were considered guests of the RAAF. They followed Aussie procedures and protocol, and although the combat missions were generally conducted with a spirit of cooperation, the Americans gradually became resentful of taking orders. Frustrations simmered. Cultural differences that at first seemed charming became exasperating. American mechanics, working side by side with their hosts to repair damaged planes and assemble new ones, were especially aggravated by the Aussies’ habit of blithely stopping all work every morning and afternoon for a cup of tea and a “smoke-o.”

THE 24TH AIR FLOTILLA resumed its bombing campaign against Port Moresby on February 24, the day after Carmichael hit Rabaul. Nine Type 1
rikko
of the 4th Air Group, escorted by an equal number of Zeros, attacked Seven Mile airdrome from an altitude of sixteen thousand feet. Their accurate bombing destroyed a Hudson and a civilian aircraft on the ground, obliterated virtually all of the structures (along with some vitally important vehicles), and killed a member of 32 Squadron.

The Australians, lacking legitimate fighters at Port Moresby, did not attempt to intercept the attack. The only planes available were some battle-weary Hudsons and a few Wirraways. Antiaircraft defenses consisted of four 3.7-inch and six 3-inch guns, plus some Lewis machine guns manned by the militia garrison.

Wing Commander John Lerew, now in command of 32 Squadron at Seven Mile, was justifiably worried about the vulnerability of his Hudsons. Due to conditions he described as “treacherously boggy,” the aircraft were parked in exposed positions along both sides of the runway. Remembering all too well what had happened at Rabaul, Lerew pushed his men hard to get dispersal areas built. He also sent sharply worded messages to Townsville requesting heavy construction equipment, but his signals went unanswered. Instead, Northeast Area Headquarters ordered him to move his planes to Horn Island, 340 miles southwest of Port Moresby in the Torres Straits. This created a logistical nightmare for Lerew, whose reconnaissance planes still had to stage through Port Moresby to conduct their patrols. As a concession, headquarters promised to provide advance notice of each mission, enabling the assigned crews to move up to Port Moresby ahead of time, but the Aussie airmen had a much bigger concern than mere logistics. Until some fighters were brought up to Port Moresby, the Japanese were guaranteed to have total air superiority over New Guinea.

As if to underscore the point, the 4th Air Group attacked again on February 28, this time with seventeen Type 1 bombers escorted by six Zeros. Concentrating on the seaplane base, the Japanese destroyed three Catalinas at their moorings and damaged another. The RAAF headquarters building received a direct hit that destroyed numerous flight records and other important documents.

The cost to the Japanese was a single Zero, piloted by FPO 1st Class Katsuaki Nagatomo. Purportedly hit by a lucky shot from an antiaircraft
gun, he suffered burns but managed to parachute from his flaming Zero and drift down into Bootless Bay. Nagatomo was taken prisoner—a fate worse than death to a Japanese airman—and the disgrace of his capture was not revealed by the 4th Air Group. Instead he was listed officially as dead, but in the end it didn’t matter. Sent to Australia, Nagatomo was one of more than 230 Japanese who died during a large-scale breakout attempt from a POW camp outside Cowra, New South Wales, in August 1944.

Meanwhile, the raid by the 4th Air Group left the Australians with only two Catalinas and a Hudson immediately available for duty at Port Moresby. Keeping up the pressure, the Japanese continued to attack almost daily, creating a desperate situation for the Australian garrison. Patrol missions were greatly curtailed, and the night raids by Catalinas had to be temporarily discontinued. This was exactly the result Vice Admiral Inoue had hoped for: fewer Allied reconnaissance planes meant greater freedom of movement and less risk of detection for his own units.

IN THE PHILIPPINES, key events unfolded that would soon alter the Southwest Pacific battlefront. On February 22, General MacArthur received orders to evacuate Corregidor and make his way to Australia. The directive, signed by President Roosevelt along with the U.S. Army chief of staff and the secretary of war, authorized a brief delay on Mindanao so that MacArthur could judge the feasibility of its defense; afterward he was to proceed directly to Melbourne.

An executive order from the president was essentially the only way to get MacArthur to leave the Philippines. He loathed the notion of leaving his men under a cloud of humiliation and defeat, but he had no choice: he’d been selected to assume command of all American forces in Australia, superseding George Brett. More importantly, Roosevelt and Churchill wanted him in Melbourne, the Australians wanted him in Melbourne, and the American people wanted him rescued from the Philippines. MacArthur grudgingly acquiesced but delayed his departure until the situation was stable enough, in his judgment, to avoid an adverse “psychological” affect on his men.

Because all of the airfields on Luzon were in Japanese hands, arrangements were made to transfer MacArthur, his household (wife, son, and Chinese amah), and staff members to the north coast of Mindanao in U.S. Navy PT boats. Long-range army planes would then meet the evacuees at
Del Monte Field and bring them to Australia. For that purpose, MacArthur radioed Brett on March 1 and requested three Flying Fortresses for transportation from Mindanao.

Unfortunately, the few surviving B-17s of the Far East Air Force were a sorry lot. Located in Melbourne, the 7th and 19th Bomb Groups (Heavy) had been pulled back from the combat zone after months of hardship in the Philippines and Java. Both groups suffered from low morale, and their B-17s were in dire need of overhaul. Brett therefore approached Vice Admiral Leary and requested four B-17Es, the newest in Australia, from Carmichael’s 14th Reconnaissance Squadron.

Leary refused. “I’d like to help you, Brett,” he said, “but it’s quite impossible. We need those planes here and can’t spare them for a ferry job, no matter how important it is.”

Leary had good reason to hoard his assets. The Imperial Navy roamed the seas with impunity and just days earlier had soundly defeated a joint American-British-Dutch-Australian (ABDA) naval force in the Java Sea. But Leary was being less than honest when he said the B-17s could not be spared. In fact they were underutilized, thanks to the outbreak of dengue fever at Cloncurry. Whatever his real motives were, Leary remained uncooperative. Brett therefore ordered the war-weary units down in Melbourne to conduct a “special mission to the north.”

On March 11, the same day that MacArthur and his party left Corregidor aboard four PT boats, a flight of four B-17s with minimal crews proceeded from Melbourne to Daly Waters, a remote airfield deep in the Northern Territory. After refueling, the bombers flew to Batchelor Field south of Darwin, where the airmen learned for the first time about their special task: they were to deliver much-needed supplies to Mindanao, then pick up General MacArthur and his party and bring them back to Australia. Extra fuel tanks were installed in the bomb bays for the three-thousand-mile round trip, scheduled to begin the next day at noon. If all went according to plan, the B-17s would arrive at Del Monte Field well after dark to minimize the possibility of interception by enemy fighters.

But the mission began badly on March 12 and went downhill from there. In the words of Capt. Henry C. Godwin, all four of the B-17s “were really in terrible shape.” He did not exaggerate. One bomber failed to get off the ground due to engine trouble, another turned back for the same reason after just fifty miles, and the remaining two were plagued with
additional problems as they chugged up to Del Monte. The Fortress flown by 1st Lt. Harl Pease Jr. had a partial hydraulic failure that affected several systems, including the engine superchargers and wheel brakes. Forced to fly the entire route at low level, Pease reached Del Monte at 2300 hours and landed successfully but had to bring his bomber to a stop by ground-looping it at the end of the runway.

Godwin, flying the other B-17, didn’t even make it that far. While attempting to transfer fuel from the auxilliary tank into the wing tanks, the flight engineer inadvertently dumped hundreds of gallons overboard. Godwin and the copilot, distracted by the dangerously low fuel situation, neglected to update the altimeter as they descended to land at Del Monte in the darkness. The instrument gave false information, and still indicated 1,200 feet when they struck the surface of Iligan Bay a mile short of the runway. The Fortress bounced high and then plunged into the water, killing two of the crew in the rear of the plane. The five surviving crewmen, one with a badly injured back, reached shore after a harrowing four-hour swim.