Fortress Rabaul (19 page)

At this point, MacArthur and his party were still en route to Mindanao. The seventy-seven-foot Elco PT boats, normally capable of sustaining forty miles per hour, were in rough shape after three months of combat operations. The engines had gone more than a thousand hours beyond their recommended overhaul, carburetors and spark plugs were fouled, and the boats could attain barely half their rated speed. Their double-planked mahogany hulls, reinforced with plywood, creaked and groaned as the boats pounded against unusually heavy swells. Most of the passengers were acutely seasick, including MacArthur and his son, four-year-old Arthur IV, their agony prolonged by the boats’ slow progress. Ideally the 560-mile journey should have taken about twenty hours, but the exodus dragged on for thirty-five.

By the time MacArthur finally reached Mindanao on the morning of March 13, Lieutenant Pease and his B-17 were gone. Brigadier General William F. Sharp, the senior army officer on the island, had considered the bomber too unsafe for the likes of MacArthur and sent Pease back to Australia. The trip was not entirely wasted—Pease departed on March 12 carrying sixteen airmen who had been stranded in the Philippines—but when MacArthur learned that only one rickety B-17 had flown to Del Monte and then left without him, he went ballistic. (Later, stories began
to circulate that the youthful-looking Pease was still on the island when MacArthur arrived. Allegedly, the general took one look at the B-17 and refused to board such a “dangerously decrepit” aircraft. Other versions have MacArthur exclaiming, “My God, he’s only a boy,” upon seeing Pease for the first time. Neither story actually happened. Pease, considered one of the best pilots in the 19th Bomb Group, was long gone by the time MacArthur reached Mindanao; nevertheless several biographers and historians have erroneously placed the two men together.)

MacArthur
did
lose his temper. Outraged over the inept effort to pick him up, he sent blistering messages to Brett in Australia and Gen. George C. Marshall, the U.S. Army chief of staff in Washington, D.C., demanding the “three best planes in the United States or Hawaii.”

One immediate result was that Vice Admiral Leary lost operational control of the B-17s brought over by Major Carmichael. Redesignated the 40th Reconnaissance Squadron, the unit was transferred into the 19th Bomb Group, which was being reformed at Townsville, on March 14. Two days later, four B-17Es from the newly redesignated squadron flew to Batchelor Field and picked up more supplies. From there, two bombers continued north to Mindanao for another rescue attempt. Piloted by Lt. Frank P. Bostrom and Capt. Bill Lewis, the two aircraft collected MacArthur’s party at Del Monte and returned to Batchelor Field by mid-morning on March 17. Richard Carmichael also got involved, flying MacArthur and his family farther south to Alice Springs. Most of the passengers were violently airsick, but somehow MacArthur’s wife Jean was singled out for refusing to fly any farther. As a result, MacArthur decided to complete the trip by rail. He would come to regret it. Only one train was available, pulled by a relic of a steam locomotive, and the journey to Melbourne across the blazing hot outback lasted three miserable days.

MacArthur’s arrival in Australia was accompanied by immediate changes in the command structure. First, the Australian War Cabinet approved a nomination from Prime Minister Curtin naming MacArthur “Supreme Commander of Allied Forces” in the region. Canberra agreed to include all Australian combat forces in the new command, called the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA). Subsequently, per Australia’s endorsement, the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington agreed to give MacArthur command of the designated area, simultaneously naming Adm. Chester W. Nimitz “Supreme Commander of the Pacific Ocean Area” (POA). Nimitz’s
area of responsibility, much larger in terms of square miles, consisted almost entirely of water except for a few strategic island groups. In contrast, the Southwest Pacific Area included Australia, New Guinea, Borneo, and the Philippines—roughly 90 percent of the Pacific’s aggregate landmass.

MacArthur accepted his new appointment on March 18 while still aboard the train. It was the reprieve of a lifetime. Instead of being sanctioned for the disaster in the Philippines, he had been handed the resources that would allow him to eventually drive the enemy out of his beloved islands. Eager to get started, he made a vainglorious pledge to a gathering of reporters: “
I came through
and I shall return.”

He had no idea his promise would take three years to fulfill.

A WEEK BEFORE MacArthur’s rescue from Australia, the aviation component of the American army was officially renamed the United States Army Air Forces. At first glance, the strength of the air units in Australia seemed impressive: forty B-17 Flying Fortresses, seven LB-30 Liberators (the export version of the B-24 heavy bomber), twenty-seven A-24 Dauntless dive-bombers, and more than five hundred fighters of various types. But the numbers were deceptive. Of the heavy bombers, perhaps a dozen or so B-17s in the newly reconstituted 19th Bomb Group were operational. The rest were long overdue for major repairs or overhaul. The A-24 light bombers, the army’s version of the highly successful Douglas SBD employed by the U.S. Navy, would prove inadequate as land-based bombers due to limitations in speed, range, and armament.

The fighter situation was hardly any better. Some 337 Curtiss P-40E Warhawks, 90 Bell P-39 Airacobras, and more than 100 Bell P-400s (the export model of the P-39) had reached Australia. However, 125 fighters had already been shot down or destroyed on the ground, another 175 were awaiting assembly or repairs, and 75 of the P-40s had been diverted to the RAAF. Consequently, only 92 P-40s, 33 P-39s, and 52 P-400s were in commission. More importantly, the American fighters were inferior to the Zeros that currently ruled the skies over the Southwest Pacific. All three models were powered by a liquid-cooled Allison inline engine, which performed well at low altitudes but turned anemic above sixteen thousand feet.

The worst reputation belonged to the P-400. Hundreds had been shipped to the Royal Air Force through the Lend-Lease program, but the
British accepted only 80 planes. The Soviet Union gladly received most of what remained, but somehow 179 fighters ended up back in American hands. They were sent to the Southwest Pacific, where Army pilots joked that P-400 stood for “
a P-40 with a Zero on its tail
.”

And there was more bad news. MacArthur was shocked to learn that of the 25,000 American troops in Australia, most were assigned to air units. On February 25, the transports
Ancon
and
Hugh L. Scott
had docked at Brisbane with the ground echelons of the 3rd Bombardment Group (Light) and 22nd Bombardment Group (Medium) respectively. Two weeks later, the old liner
Maui
arrived at Brisbane and offloaded another 2,500 army personnel, all of whom belonged either to an air base company, a communications outfit, ordnance companies, or the 8th Pursuit Group. MacArthur had almost no infantry, no tanks, and no navy. Advised of the stark realities during his train ride to Melbourne, he is said to have exclaimed, “
God have mercy on us!
”

WHILE MACARTHUR’S FORCES in Australia were significantly weaker than the numbers indicated, the enemy’s control of the region was growing stronger by the day. During the first week of March, Vice Admiral Inoue initiated the simultaneous invasions of Lae and Salamaua, code-named “SR” Operation. POWs from Lark Force were among the dockside laborers who helped load the transport ships gathered in Simpson Harbor. On March 3, elements of Major General Horii’s South Seas Force boarded
Yokohama Maru
and
China Maru
while the Maizaru 2nd Special Naval Landing Force went aboard
Kongo Maru, Tenyo Maru
, and
Kokai Maru
. The Invasion Force, commanded by Rear Admiral Sadamichi Kajioka, included eleven warships protected in turn by another six cruisers of the Distant Screening Unit, which sortied from Truk.

The Invasion Force departed Rabaul on March 5 and was detected two days later by an RAAF Hudson. By that time, however, the convoy was already within fifty-five miles of the New Guinea coast, leaving the Allies powerless to stop it. At dawn on March 8, Kajioka’s warships began shelling both Lae and Salamaua. No one ashore was hurt, and military damage was limited, but the local detachments of the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles melted into the jungle without putting up a fight. Unopposed, the Japanese landing forces quickly established antiaircraft and ground defenses and set up a local administration. Engineers repaired the airstrips, which had
been badly damaged by Nagumo’s carrier planes in January, and within thirty-six hours Lae was ready to receive fighters of the 4th Air Group from Rabaul.

Allied counterattacks came swiftly. At midday on March 8, five Hudsons from Horn Island randomly attacked the ships in the Huon Gulf. Squadron Leader Deryck Kingwell, newly appointed as the commanding officer of 32 Squadron, enthusiastically claimed a hit on a transport, but his bombs caused only minor damage to
Yokohama Maru
. A handful of B-17s, also staging out of Horn Island, bombed the airstrip at Salamaua from thirty thousand feet and demolished two hangars, then continued north to Lae and dropped the rest of their bombs in the harbor area.

Thus far, the initial occupation of New Guinea had cost the Japanese virtually nothing. That changed in dramatic fashion on the morning of March 10 when American carrier planes caught Kajioka’s fleet by surprise. Credit for the attack goes to Vice Admiral Brown, who sorely wanted another crack at Rabaul. In the days since his first attempt, Task Force 11 had been refueled and replenished off New Caledonia while Brown pressed his superiors for another opportunity. He requested two carrier groups and received
Yorktown
, supported by Task Force 17, under the command of Rear Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher.

Brown had planned to hit Rabaul on March 10, but when word came that Lae and Salamaua had been invaded, the scheduled strike was scrapped in favor of a surprise attack on the Japanese invasion force. Once again, Brown’s hopes of hitting Rabaul evaporated.

The new strike plan was hastily crafted while the combined carrier groups steamed across the Coral Sea. Because the Japanese heavily patrolled the sea lanes between New Britain and New Guinea, the probability of pulling off a surprise attack from that direction seemed unlikely. By steaming around New Guinea to Port Moresby, however, Brown’s carriers could deliver their planes to within 125 miles of the enemy fleet with little chance of detection.

The biggest challenge would be getting the heavily loaded planes over the Owen Stanley Mountains. Captain Ted Sherman,
Lexington’s
commanding officer, later wrote: “We had little information as to the height of the mountains, and it was doubtful that our sea-level torpedo planes could clear them. Our intelligence data was extremely meager. Our charts showed the coastline but no details of the interior. Furthermore, our chart
of the Gulf of Papua was marked ‘Surveyed in 1894’ and ‘Area contains many coral heads which grow from year to year and whose position is unknown.’ It was not a very pleasant prospect for a navigator.”

The day prior to the attack, Sherman sent
Lexington’s
air group commander to Port Moresby and another pilot to Townsville to get “the dope” on the region. Their most important finding was the location of a pass through the Owen Stanleys at 7,500 feet, roughly in line with the attack route. For a few hours each morning the weather atop the pass was usually clear, but the rest of the day it was cloaked in clouds.

Early on the morning of March 10,
Lexington
and
Yorktown
began launching their planes for the first-ever joint attack by U.S. Navy carrier groups. The combined strike force, consisting of sixty-one SBD Dauntlesses, twenty-five TBD Devastators, and eighteen F4F Wildcats, crossed the beach in scattered formations and started the long climb over the mountains. By early afternoon, the American flyers were back aboard the carriers, jubilantly describing how they had caught the Japanese napping. They attacked the enemy ships with a vengeance, claiming two heavy cruisers, five transports, a light cruiser, and a destroyer sunk; a minelayer “probably sunk”; two destroyers and a gunboat “seriously damaged and possibly sunk”; and two additional vessels damaged. The successful raid was later hailed by President Roosevelt as “the best day’s work we’ve had.” Medals were doled out like candy, with no less than fifteen Navy Crosses and nine Distinguished Flying Crosses issued to various participants.

As might be expected, the damage actually incurred by the Japanese was significantly less than claimed. The transports got the worst of it, with three out of five sunk and another beached. No warships were lost, but the light cruiser
Yubari
limped back to Rabaul with nine dead and fifty wounded aboard, and later underwent a complete refit. A seaplane tender and two destroyers received direct hits, and a minelayer suffered hull damage from near misses. The cost in personnel, on the other hand, had been steep. Among the transports alone the death toll was almost 350 men, with many additional casualties aboard the damaged warships.

The Japanese did not suspend SR Operation—another contingent of the South Seas Force strengthened Japan’s foothold on New Guinea by capturing Finschhafen the next day—but the surprise attack by
Lexington
and
Yorktown
sent shock waves through the Imperial Navy. Inoue, stunned
to discover that American carriers were in the area, henceforth insisted on carrier support whenever amphibious landings were made.

And in Japan, Admiral Yamamoto renewed his vow to lure the Pacific Fleet carriers into a decisive battle and crush them.

AT CLONCURRY, Major Carmichael scheduled the 40th Reconnaissance Squadron to hit Rabaul again. Their most recent attempt, on March 13, had been a dismal failure: only one bomber out of five participants had reached the target area. Carmichael decided to lead the next mission personally. To improve his chances for success, he brought in Master Sgt. Durwood Fesmire, widely considered the best bombardier in the 19th Bomb Group.