Fortress Rabaul (28 page)

Observing from the rearmost element, Teats noted that the first and second pairs of B-17s failed to score any hits. Presently his own bombardier, 1st Lt. M. D. Stone, selected a target and announced that he was
ready to make his run. Teats turned to the specified heading and was about to switch the autopilot over to the bombardier’s control when heavy flak began exploding directly ahead, precisely at their altitude. Shoving the yoke forward, Teats dropped the big Fortress several thousand feet “to mess up the Jap gunners’ range,” but the enemy gun directors quickly adjusted their aim. The effect, recalled Teats, was alarming.

Neither before nor after have I seen such heavy and well placed antiaircraft fire as those cruisers and destroyers threw at us. We could see the orange flashes as the ships’ batteries fired. Things grew hotter and hotter. The side-gunner reported some [bursts] close behind us, and then my wing man peeled off and took some distance because one burst was so close, the side-gunner thought the plane had been hit.

The split-second the bombardier reported “bombs away,” I made a sharp diving turn away to the left and at that same instant, the tail-gunner began to chatter excitedly through the interphone. [In] the turn, I saw a line of shell bursts on the level course we had just left, and later the tail-gunner reported that one burst really had our name on it. If we had not turned when we did, someone else might be relating this story … but it wouldn’t be me. I knew that those Nip gunners were in the groove, and I also knew that they were getting close. The tail-gunner reported that the bursts started about a mile behind and each one came a little closer, directly on our level. By his report, we evaded by a split second either a direct hit, or one just as bad.

Teats credited the Japanese warships with “beautiful antiaircraft gunnery,” but remarkably no B-17s were hit. In turn, there is evidence that the bombers scored either a hit or a near miss on at least one transport. The diary kept by Private Hisaeda, embarked in
Matsue Maru
, refers to one of the transports requiring damage repair.

MUCH LIKE THE “Navy Wild Eagles” from
Shokaku
and
Zuikaku
, Lieutenant Kobayashi and the land-attackers of the 4th Air Group were frustrated. By midday on May 7 they had failed to locate the American carriers, though they had actually gotten within seventy-five miles of Task Force 17. Suddenly headquarters ordered Kobayashi to turn west and search a new location. Finding no ships, the strike leader sent his Zero
escorts back to Rabaul. Nearby, the bomb-carrying G3Ms of the Genzan Air Group also searched in vain for the American carriers.

By sheer coincidence, the Zeros headed for Rabaul stumbled upon Rear Admiral Crace’s cruiser support group. During the morning, search planes from Rabaul had shadowed the warships from time to time, but no other aircraft had been seen overhead until the Zeros approached from astern at 1447. The fighters, described by one Allied source as “
a formation of 10 or 12 single-engine monoplanes
with retractable landing gear,” flew past the ships on a parallel course a few miles to the west. Aboard the heavy cruiser
Australia
, eighteen-year-old Midn. Dacre H. D. Smyth counted eleven fighters (the correct number) and recalled that they turned away when some of the screening destroyers fired at them

The presence of the Japanese fighters greatly disturbed Crace, who was justifiably worried about the lack of air support for his warships. Only five months had passed since
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse
were overwhelmed off the Malay Peninsula, and his own formation was vulnerable to bombers and torpedo planes out of Rabaul. If fighters were in the area, the dreaded attack planes were not far off.

Oddly enough, the next aircraft to appear was a
Yorktown
dive-bomber, its crew lost. The pilot, a young ensign, radioed for directions to his carrier but was instead ordered to fly to Port Moresby. He was fortunate. Arriving as he did on the heels of enemy fighters, he might have been blown out of the sky by jumpy antiaircraft gunners.

No sooner had the Dauntless flown off than another formation of planes approached, this time from straight ahead—and this group was not friendly. The Zeros had reported the cruiser group’s location to Lieutenant Kobayashi, who alerted the Genzan flyers nearby and then ordered his torpedo-carrying G4Ms to attack. He evidently planned to use the same strategy that had sunk
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse
the previous December, coordinating both formations to strike simultaneously from different directions. While the Genzan Air Group maneuvered southward to attack the warships from astern, Kobayashi led his
rikko
straight toward the enemy.

Down below, the six warships gathered into a diamond-shaped defensive alignment known as Formation Victor. The flagship, the ten-thousand-ton
Australia
, was in the center of the diamond with the American destroyer
Perkins
in the lead and two more destroyers on the outer flanks. Bringing up the rear were the heavy cruiser USS
Chicago
,
outfitted with a new radar system, and the light cruiser HMAS
Hobart
. Plotters in the
Chicago’s
combat information center tracked the incoming planes while the formation plowed ahead, each ship taking ample separation from the others to allow for hard maneuvering.

Unfortunately for Kobayashi, the Type 1
rikko
approached the Allied formation several minutes ahead of the bomb-carrying G3Ms, rather than simultaneously. Mistaking
Australia
for a British
Warspite
-class battleship, the torpedo bombers commenced their attack at approximately 1430. Descending in a tight V, they leveled off just above the wave tops and bored in from dead ahead at 250 miles per hour. Midshipman Smyth recalled seeing them “
bunched together and flying very low
” a few degrees off the
Australia’s
port bow. What he couldn’t see were the huge Type 91 torpedoes, one inside the belly of each plane. Upon release, the eighteen-foot-long weapons would race beneath the surface at more than forty knots, making them difficult to evade.

In a coincidental case of mistaken identity, numerous sailors aboard the ships thought the Japanese attackers were Army Type 97 heavy bombers (Mitsubishi Ki-21s). The combat narrative published by the Office of Naval Intelligence observed that the features of the Type 97 “best fitted” the description of the attacking aircraft, and it was an understandable mistake. The two Mitsubishi designs were virtually indistinguishable when viewed from head-on, but the Ki-21 was not equipped to carry torpedoes.

The shipboard antiaircraft gunners cared little about the attackers’ identity. Beginning with
Perkins
, the destroyers of the outer screen opened fire with 5-inch guns when the low-flying planes drew within 6,500 yards. Due to extraordinary luck or superb marksmanship, two
rikko
were shot down in quick succession—and Kobayashi’s plane was the first to crash. Dividing into two elements, the remaining ten G4Ms roared past
Perkins
on both sides and headed toward the two biggest ships, the cruisers
Australia
and
Chicago
. Now inside the warships’ defensive ring, the twin-engine torpedo planes faced a hailstorm of fire from all sides. Twisting and turning, each ship fired every gun that could be brought to bear. With remarkable bravery the Japanese aircrews maintained their discipline, closing to within fifteen hundred yards to drop their “fish,” but due to the intensity and accuracy of the antiaircraft fire, only half managed to release their torpedoes.

On the bridge of
Australia
, Capt. Harold B. Farncomb gave instructions to the helmsman and with skillful maneuvering dodged two of the
torpedoes by the narrowest of margins. Inside the hull, having just reached his battle station, Midshipman Smyth could hear the high-pitched whine of the motors as the torpedoes passed by. Several hundred yards aft of
Australia
, Capt. Howard D. Bode was equally adroit at maneuvering
Chicago
between the three torpedoes aimed at his cruiser. None hit, but
Chicago
did not escape without damage. Gunners in the torpedo planes strafed the upper decks of the cruiser as they flew past, wounding seven sailors, two of them mortally.

The shipboard gunners continued to blast away at the retreating planes, and two more Mitsubishis tumbled into the sea. In the aftermath, numerous gun crews claimed a share in the scoring.
Chicago
reported five enemy aircraft shot down, while other ships estimated between four and six torpedo bombers fell during the attack. The 4th Air Group indeed suffered a severe blow that afternoon, losing four planes and their crews over the task force. A fifth
rikko
, its senior radio operator dead and the pilot badly wounded, ditched on Deboyne Reef and sustained heavy damage. Another shot-up G4M proceeded directly to Lae and suffered additional damage upon landing. Thus, only six out of the original twelve torpedo bombers returned to Vunakanau. The attack had also been extremely costly for the 4th Air Group in terms of casualties, with thirty-one crewmen killed and at least two wounded—and not a single torpedo had struck its target.

Four minutes after the torpedo attack concluded, the nineteen G3Ms of the Genzan Air Group approached the cruiser force. Radar operators aboard
Chicago
tracked the formation as it closed from astern at an estimated eighteen thousand feet, but the twin-engine bombers weren’t after the American cruiser. Instead they targeted
Australia
, releasing some twenty large bombs in a single salvo. Towering columns of spray tinged with black smoke erupted all around the cruiser, and for several agonizing moments the ship was totally obscured. Crewmen on nearby ships thought she had blown up, as did the Japanese. And then, almost like an apparition,
Australia
emerged from the spray and the smoke, her upper decks glistening with seawater. Unbelievably, not a single bomb had struck the 630-foot-long warship, though two exploded close enough to give her hull a good shaking.

In all, thirty-one aircraft from Rabaul had attacked Crace’s cruiser force without scoring a single hit. Back at Vunakanau, however, the
returning aircrews reported a completely different outcome to their superiors: “[O]ne
California
class battleship blown up; one
Warspite
class battleship received two torpedo hits, extensive damage; one
Augusta
class heavy cruiser sunk. Two torpedoes were fired against a
Canberra
class cruiser but results are unknown.”

Only one element of the report came close to the truth—the acknowledgment that a pair torpedoes had been launched at one of the ships. The rest was a combination of careless observation and pure invention.

The warships of Crace’s cruiser force had dodged every attack thus far, but they were not yet out of danger. Almost immediately after the G3Ms flew off, a new threat appeared from the north at high altitude. Three B-17s of the 40th Recon Squadron happened along just in time to see the G3Ms completing their bombing run. Mistaking the twin-engine planes for American medium bombers, the B-17s attacked
Australia
in the belief that it was a Japanese battleship. Fortunately for the cruiser, the bombardiers’ record against shipping did not improve. Crace reported that the pattern of bombs landed “seven cables” (about 1,400 yards) from
Australia
, though they splashed uncomfortably close to the destroyer
Farragut
.

AT APPROXIMATELY 1500 hours, a new sighting report from a Japanese reconnaissance floatplane convinced admirals Takagi and Hara that the American carriers had been located. The reported position was roughly 350 miles west of
Shokaku
and
Zuikaku
, and though the afternoon was growing late, Hara thought they could pull off a strike before sunset. It could not be completed before darkness fell, so only the most experienced airmen were picked. They would not have the support of fighters, for the Zeros lacked direction-finding equipment and could not find their way back to the carriers in the dark.

The Japanese were not aware that the hastily conceived strike was based on bad information. Once again, the reconnoitering aircrew had made a grievous mistake. They had actually found Crace’s cruiser support group again, not Task Force 17, which by coincidence lay cloaked beneath a thick overcast less than two hundred miles from the Japanese carriers.

For the handpicked crews of the Japanese dive-bombers and torpedo planes, the mission truly began to unravel when the
Lexington’s
radar detected the would-be attackers.
Lexington
and
Yorktown
launched additional Wildcats to join the existing combat air patrol, bringing the
total number of fighters in the air to thirty. Lieutenant “Red” Gill skillfully vectored several Wildcats to intercept the first radar contact: nine Nakajimas of the
Zuikaku
carrier attack unit.

Believing they were still many miles from the American task force, the Japanese airmen were taken completely by surprise. Within minutes, five torpedo planes plunged into the sea, carrying fifteen airmen to their deaths. Other formations received similar treatment. The Wildcats downed two more torpedo planes and one dive-bomber in the fading twilight, and another torpedo plane later ditched near its carrier. In sum, the fruitless effort cost the Japanese nine planes and eight veteran crews. Worse, it raised the day’s total losses to at least twenty aircraft and one flattop.

Monitoring events aboard his flagship anchored in the Inland Sea, Admiral Yamamoto was dismayed by the news. That night his chief of staff, Rear Admiral Ugaki, wrote in his personal diary: