Target: Rabaul (12 page)

The modifications were completed in late April 1943, giving Kozono only a week for evaluation before Air Group 251 departed for Rabaul. To expedite testing, two planes were delivered directly to the group, temporarily based southwest of Yokosuka. Numerous tests were conducted to maximize the guns’ effectiveness, including practice intercepts on a captured B-17E (one of two seized in Java more than a year earlier). The testing was unorthodox, but Kozono managed to circumvent the navy’s rigid evaluation procedures. With operational testing completed in just two days, the modified planes joined Air Group 251’s lengthy island-hopping journey to the combat zone—though one plane was temporarily put out of service due to a crash-landing at Tinian.

The lone operational example, which arrived at Lakunai airdrome on May 10 with most of the 5th Air Attack Force, was used immediately for training. Two crews (pilot and observer) flew after dark to practice intercepts and coordinate with searchlight batteries. They also worked on detection techniques and acclimated themselves with the nighttime geography of northern New Britain.

Ten days after arriving at Rabaul, the modified J1N1 was deemed ready to attempt intercepting the American bombers. With an enlisted pilot at the controls and a junior officer observing (a common practice in the JNAF), the first combat patrol commenced in the early morning of May 21. Superior Flight Petty Officer Shigetoshi Kudo, an experienced reconnaissance pilot, took off from Lakunai airdrome at 0258 and climbed to 6,500 feet, slightly below the altitude typically flown by the enemy bombers. Aided by a full moon, Kudo and his observer, Lt. j.g. Akira Sugawara, could see for miles. They scanned the skies, looking for shadows of relative movement or the glint of moonlight off a bomber’s Plexiglas nose or windscreen. The payoff came in less than twenty minutes. Spying a large bomber in the distance, Kudo advanced the throttles of his twin Sakae radial engines and turned to give chase.

IN THE WEEKS following the death of Ken McCullar, the two heavy bomb groups in V Bomber Command had struggled with combat fatigue and diminishing morale. No massed raids were attempted against Rabaul through the first ten days of May; instead, the heavies conducted solo reconnaissance flights or attacked targets along the coast of New Guinea and southern New Britain. Despite avoiding Rabaul, the 43rd Bomb Group continued losing aircraft. In a weekly status report to Kenney on May 12, Whitehead wrote: “The older personnel of the 43rd Bomb Group have begun to crack up. Last week the 63rd Squadron, commanded by Major Scott, lost two long range recco planes in two days of operation. McCullar’s crash some weeks ago had a bad effect on the group. Yesterday I told Colonel Ramey to clean the group out.”

The first of these back-to-back losses happened on May 7. With an oversize crew of eleven aboard a B-17F named
Reckless Mountain Boys
, Capt. Byron L. “Dutch” Heichel of the 63rd Bomb Squadron departed from Jackson Field at 0650 for a daylight reconnaissance mission over northern New Guinea, the Vitiaz Strait, and New Ireland. At the outer edge of the recon, half a dozen Zeros of Air Group 253 out of Kavieng intercepted the B-17, causing heavy damage on the first pass. With one engine in flames, the ball turret out of action, and the gunner badly wounded, Heichel descended to the wave tops to prevent further attacks from below. But the Zeros continued their heavy gunfire, killing three crewmen and wounding another. After a second engine was shot out, Heichel ditched
Reckless Mountain Boys
in the shallows off New Ireland’s coast, approximately 125 miles southeast of Kavieng. The eight survivors, two badly wounded, got ashore but were captured within twenty-four hours. Initially separated, the officers and enlisted men were later imprisoned together in the compound of the 81st Naval Garrison Unit at Rabaul.

The next day, the same squadron lost another B-17 with ten men aboard.
Fighting Swede
, piloted by Maj. Robert N. Keatts, took off from Jackson Field at 0640 to reconnoiter New Guinea’s north coast. About two and a half hours later, the crew reported enemy shipping north of Madang.
Fighting Swede
was subsequently attacked by a trio of JAAF Oscars out of Wewak, one of which collided with (or deliberately rammed) the bomber during a head-on pass. Both planes fell in flames, with no survivors.

To revitalize the tired 43rd, Colonel Ramey followed Whitehead’s orders to “clean the group out.” He sent home several crews that had been in combat the longest, and because no newly trained crews were available—the B-17s in the Pacific theater were being replaced with B-24s—Whitehead transferred several newly arrived Liberator crews into the 43rd temporarily for “indoctrination and training.”

With the 43rd Bomb Group rejuvenated, V Bomber Command resumed night raids against Rabaul. Attacking individually rather than in formation, a few B-17s and B-24s hit Lakunai and Vunakanau airdromes on May 11 with demolition
bombs, incendiaries, and daisy cutters. The latter was a standard bomb, typically a hundred-, two-hundred-, or three-hundred-pounder, wrapped with steel cable. This was accomplished by ordnance personnel, who wrapped the bombs manually using truck winches. They also attached a length of pipe to the nose, the tip of which held a contact fuse that exploded the bomb slightly above the ground, sending shards of casing and cable in all directions. It was a nasty weapon, particularly effective against soft targets such as airplanes, vehicles, and personnel. On the receiving end, daisy cutters were terrifying because the fragments made a shrieking noise as they whirled through the air.

Bomber command kept up the pressure on Rabaul, conducting raids on seven of the next ten nights. As with previous nocturnal attacks, the heavies faced only antiaircraft fire. The threat of “ack-ack,” as most of the fliers called antiaircraft fire, was minimal unless a bomber was caught in the searchlights; even then, pilots could usually break away from the probing beams. One of the biggest raids of the renewed campaign occurred in the predawn hours of May 20, when a dozen heavy bombers made passes over Vunakanau airdrome from 0300 until 0430. Although the material damage was minor—the expansive base had numerous earthen revetments to protect the aircraft, plus bomb shelters and slit trenches for personnel—the Japanese admitted that the “psychological effects of such raids could not be ignored.” Considering the overall disruption, with seven raids in ten nights, the Japanese were undoubtedly debilitated by stress and fatigue. But on the eleventh night, the situation changed dramatically.

The next scheduled raid began as the others had. Six B-17s, five belonging to the 64th Bomb Squadron/43rd Bomb Group, took off from Port Moresby and hopped over the Owen Stanley Mountains to Dobodura. From there, “bombed up” with a mix of daisy cutters and incendiaries, the Fortresses took off at approximately 0100 on May 21 for another routine mission against the airdromes at Rabaul.

One of the first to reach the target was a B-17E named
Honi Kuu Okole
, Hawaiian for “Kiss My Ass.” Flown by Maj. Paul I. Williams, the bomber had an oversize crew with a newly transferred B-24 pilot aboard for training.

Up in the Plexiglas nose, the bombardier, Master Sgt. Gordon R. Manuel, had an impressive view of New Britain’s dark jungles nine thousand feet below. Hunched over his Norden bombsight, Manuel easily picked out the initial point (I.P.), the Warangoi River. Williams turned toward Rabaul, and on Manuel’s verbal mark, flipped a switch on the instrument panel, slaving the autopilot to the bombsight. During the run-in to the target, Manuel would “fly” the B-17 to the bomb release point. Other than slight course corrections, the aircraft would maintain a constant heading, airspeed, and altitude for the next fifteen miles.

This made it easy for Petty Officer Kudo, who had been closing in on the B-17 from its six o’clock low. The position of the moon was in his favor: none of the bomber’s gunners could see twin-engine aircraft approaching from behind, five hundred feet below. Conversely, the B-17 appeared as a gigantic black silhouette
above Kudo, blotting out the stars and moonlit clouds as he crept into position. At 0347, after adjusting the throttles to match the bomber’s speed, Kudo lined up his upper gun sight and squeezed the trigger. Dozens of three-inch-long projectiles shot from the barrels of the oblique-mounted 20mm cannons protruding from the spine of the modified J1N1. Some were tracer rounds, but most contained an explosive charge tipped with a contact fuse.

Aboard
Honi Kuu Okole
, the unsuspecting crewmembers silently went about their duties. They anticipated the usual ground fire, but were miles from the outer ring of searchlights and antiaircraft guns. They were wholly unprepared for the loud hammer blows that suddenly pounded the fuselage and right wing of the B-17. Within seconds, the staccato explosions set both engines and the wing ablaze. Neither Williams nor his copilot, Lt. John S. Rippy, had time to react before another burst of automatic fire tore into the bomber, igniting the incendiary bombs and both left-side engines. In the blink of an eye, the B-17 had become a flaming carcass. While it was still marginally controllable, Williams turned hard to the right, pointed the nose toward Saint George’s Channel, and ordered the crew to bail out. But
Honi Kuu Okole
lost altitude so quickly that few jumped. Rippy went out through the open bomb bay and Manuel leaped through the nose access hatch; one of the waist gunners, Sgt. Robert A. Curry, escaped as well. Seconds later, the blazing aircraft struck the surface of the sea and exploded.

High above, Kudo shouted euphorically. In his early twenties, a farmer before the war, he had been flying for three years—but had never witnessed anything so dramatic as a huge bomber bursting into flames right above his head. After he and Sugawara settled down, they resumed the hunt. Thanks to the moonlight, only a few minutes passed before they sighted another B-17. Kudo could not set up an adequate firing solution, however, and the target slipped away, possibly because it did not maintain a constant heading.

Less than fifteen minutes later, at 0420, a third Boeing bomber was spotted soon after it attacked Rapopo airdrome. The unnamed B-17F, flown by Capt. Joseph W. Geddes of the 64th Bomb Squadron, also carried an extra crewmember. The occupants had likely relaxed after successfully completing their bomb run. They still faced a several-hour flight to Port Moresby, but many would be tempted to remove their uncomfortable parachutes. Thinking they were out of danger, Geddes’s crew was undoubtedly stunned by the drumbeat of exploding shells ripping into their aircraft at 0428. Within seconds, the flaming bomber began to fall. Less than half the crew—only five men—managed to bail out before the bomber crashed near a plantation at the mouth of the Warangoi River.

Overhead, Kudo and Sugawara remained on patrol and were rewarded at 0457 with the sighting of a fourth B-17. Unlike the others, searchlights momentarily illuminated this one—yet it somehow eluded the twin-engine interceptor. With dawn approaching, the two Japanese airmen concluded their successful patrol, touching down at Lakunai airdrome at 0535. They had downed two bombers, the
first victories for the modified J1N1, and both had fallen dramatically like flaming meteors. Word that two large “Boeings” had been destroyed spread quickly. When Kudo and Sugawara climbed from their plane, a throng of cheering pilots and ground crews surrounded them. Later, when the aircraft was serviced, it was found that Kudo had expended only 178 rounds.

Twenty miles to the south, several Americans struggled for their lives. Manuel and Rippy had parachuted into Saint George’s Channel and reached shore that morning after swimming for hours. They landed about three-quarters of a mile apart, enough of a separation that Rippy, spotted in the channel by an enemy patrol, was captured almost immediately. Manuel evaded the enemy for many months. Also taken prisoner were the five crewmen who parachuted from Geddes’s B-17. One unidentified individual, having evidently jumped at very low altitude (both legs were broken), was summarily shot. The other four survivors—Lt. Leslie W. Neuman, Staff Sgt. Ernest W. Burnside, Cpl. John J. Mulligan, and Pvt. Robert E. George—were transported to Rabaul and held by the 81st Naval Garrison Unit.

Back at Port Moresby, the 64th Bomb Squadron absorbed the fact that two of their B-17s were long overdue. Twenty-two cots in the squadron’s tent city were now empty. Among the four returning crews, no one had seen anything unusual. Some speculated that the two missing bombers had collided. An official summary of the raid stated: “From 0359 to 0450 four B-17s bombed Vunakanau and Rapopo airfields. Bombs fell in dispersal areas at both airfields. Fires were observed at Vunakanau. Six B-17s took off on this mission. Two did not reach their target and are overdue.”

The specter of an enemy night fighter never entered anyone’s mind.

FROM ELEVENTH AIR Fleet Headquarters in Rabaul, a glowing report of Kudo’s accomplishment went immediately to the headquarters of the Yokosuka Naval District, where Commander Kozono’s initial proposal for the night fighter had been ridiculed. Vindication was sweet. The staff officers who had criticized Kozono read the message with surprise and embarrassment. Faced with the facts, they conceded that the oblique-mounted armament worked, and replied promptly with a promise to airlift the necessary weapons and equipment to convert the remaining J1N1s at Rabaul. Best of all, the whole air group was proud to receive a follow-up message from headquarters, which stated that the Type 2 reconnaissance plane had been awarded an official name. It would be known henceforth as
Gekko
, Japanese for “moonlight,” a meaningful and honorable label.

IN BRISBANE, KENNEY instructed Whitehead “to keep after the Rabaul airdromes.” Bomber command responded with a relatively big effort on the morning of May 24, attacking several hours earlier than previous raids. Five B-17s and six B-24s dropped more than seventeen tons of bombs on Lakunai, Rapopo, and Vunakanau airdromes between 0030 and 0145, reportedly starting numerous
fires. No enemy fighters opposed them. The mission was still deadly, however. A B-24D of the 90th Bomb Group/321st Bomb Squadron crashed at Port Moresby at 0530 in bad weather. With the ceiling at a mere four hundred feet, Lt. Edward R. Goff was attempting a low approach turn when his left wingtip clipped a tree atop a hill. The Liberator slammed into the ground and exploded, killing all on board.