Fortress Rabaul (34 page)

On July 6, Marshall offered two new candidates for MacArthur’s consideration: Brig. Gen. James H. Doolittle, the hero of the raid on Tokyo a few months earlier, and Maj. Gen. George C. Kenney, presently in command of the Fourth Air Force on the West Coast. MacArthur answered promptly:

I know intimately all commanders named
… and rate them all superior. I would much prefer Kenney to Doolittle not so much because of natural attainments and ability but because it would be difficult to convince the Australians of Doolittle’s acceptability. His long absence in civil life would react most unfavorably throughout the Australian Air Force. I therefore recommend Kenney and would be glad to have his order issued as soon as possible.

MacArthur’s arguments against Doolittle ring false. Doolittle was known worldwide for his many aeronautical achievements, so the Australians did not need to be convinced of his acceptability. Doolittle was about to receive a Medal of Honor for his role in the Tokyo raid, and the suggestion that the RAAF would disapprove of Doolittle’s “long absence” from the military was preposterous. MacArthur didn’t care what the Australians thought; he wanted an American-led effort in the SWPA and would do whatever was necessary to support his own ambitions.

The real reason MacArthur didn’t want Doolittle was because Doolittle was far too famous. He was a superstar, one of the world’s most renowned aviators. He had set numerous speed records, won the world’s three biggest air racing prizes (the Schneider, Bendix, and Thompson trophies), and personally developed much of the technology and methodology used in instrument flying. His impact on aviation was extraordinary. Doolittle
would have done the Allied cause a great service in Australia, which he proved later by leading the Eighth Air Force in Europe. But MacArthur didn’t want him in Australia because he might steal the spotlight.

Compared with Doolittle, few people outside the U.S. Army had heard of George Churchill Kenney. Even his citizenship was obscure. He considered himself an American but was born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. Both of his parents were Canadian citizens, not vacationers as he claimed, and Kenney spent his first ten or eleven years in Nova Scotia. On the other hand, his family could trace its heritage to some of the earliest settlers of New England. Moreover, the Kenneys moved to a suburb of Boston around the turn of the century. After high school Kenney studied engineering at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology but dropped out after three years because of financial concerns. He still found steady work in civil engineering and gained experience in all types of construction—from bridges to railroads to office buildings. He and a partner started a successful business, wherein Kenney discovered his knack for problem-solving.

When the United States entered World War I, Kenney wrote to the War Department and requested aviation training. By early June he was back at M.I.T. for ground school, after which he completed basic flight training at Mineola, New York. He then sailed to France and underwent additional training before receiving an assignment to the 91st Aero Squadron, a reconnaissance outfit that specialized in photographic missions during the last months of the war. Kenney was highly decorated after making several flights deep into enemy territory, earning both a Silver Star and a Distinguished Service Cross, the latter pinned on by Billy Mitchell. Kenney also scored two confirmed aerial victories, but he was much more concerned about the high mortality rate among his own squadron mates: only one in four of the 91st’s original cadre of pilots survived the war.

After the war Kenney enjoyed a steady rise through the ranks, displaying a talent for innovation gleaned from the lessons of combat and his previous experience as an engineer and businessman. He was the first to mount a machine gun inside the wing of an airplane (a pair of .30-caliber guns in a De Havilland in 1922) and is generally credited with the invention of the parachute bomb. He was also blessed with an abundance of energy as well as confidence, attributes that offset his small physical stature. According to biographer Thomas Griffith, Kenney stood “five feet, five and a half inches
tall,” but that half-inch lends an optimistic note to the measurement. In photographs, Kenney almost always appeared significantly shorter than the individuals around him. His face, highlighted by a fleshy lower lip and a prominent scar on his chin, enhanced the bulldog image.

Described by
Time
magazine as “
a cocky, enthusiastic little man
who can inspire his flyers with his own skill for improvisation,” Kenney was exactly the man MacArthur needed in the Southwest Pacific. While en route to Australia, he worked on new ideas with his aide, Maj. William G. Benn of Shamokin, Pennsylvania. Caught up in discussions over techniques for low-level bombing against ships, the two men decided to test a little-known method called “skip bombing,” first tried by the British. Borrowing a Marauder during a layover at Fiji, they loaded it with inert bombs and made repeated passes against coral outcroppings.

With his engineering background and years of aviation experience, Kenney was no stranger to hands-on testing. He later described his first skip-bombing trials with Benn:

It was quite evident that it was going to take quite a bit of experimental flying to determine the proper height for release of the bomb and how far from the [enemy] ship it should be released. From this first experiment it looked as though 100-feet altitude and a distance of about 400 yards would be somewhere near right. We bounced some bombs right over the targets, others sank without bouncing, but finally they began skipping along just like flat stones. Benn and I both agreed that we would have to get some more firepower up in the nose of the bomber to cover us coming in on the attack if the Jap vessels had very much gun protection on their decks, but it looked as though we had something. The lads at Fiji didn’t seem to think much of the idea but I decided that as soon as we got time … I would put Benn to work on it. He was really enthusiastic about it, particularly after we began to score some good “skips” against the coral knobs.

During the month of July, meanwhile, MacArthur had moved his headquarters from Melbourne to Brisbane, where he settled into an office building formerly occupied by the Australian Mutual Providence Society. When Kenney and his aide arrived in the city on July 28, they were first escorted to Lennon’s Hotel, said to be the finest in Brisbane.
After checking into Flat 13 (which he considered a lucky number), Kenney met with Richard Sutherland and heard his “tale of woe” about the state of the Allied air forces. Kenney knew Sutherland well—ten years earlier they had been classmates at the Army War College—and although he admired Sutherland’s intelligence, he was well aware that Sutherland antagonized almost everyone he worked with.

On his second day in Australia, Kenney visited briefly with his predecessor, George Brett, then went up to the eighth floor of the AMP Building to call on his new boss. Ushered straight into MacArthur’s office, Kenney noticed that the supreme commander “looked a little tired, drawn, and nervous.” There was good reason: MacArthur had just been informed that the Japanese army was landing at Buna, on the coast of New Guinea. Not only was this a fresh crisis, but an unfortunate coincidence. MacArthur had planned to establish a defensive perimeter around Port Moresby by building new airfields at Buna. An Australian garrison was already in position at Milne Bay, and the operation to land American engineers at Buna, code named Providence, had been scheduled for August 10. The Japanese simply beat him to it. Despite the serious situation, MacArthur devoted at least two hours to a personal meeting with Kenney, thus demonstrating his belief in the importance of air power. Not that he was pleased with the performance of the existing units. To the contrary, for the first half of the meeting MacArthur ranted nonstop, unloading a litany of complaints. Kenney listened attentively and later outlined MacArthur’s diatribe in his diary.

Listened to a lecture for approximately an hour on the shortcomings of the Air Force in general and the Allied Air Force in the Southwest Pacific in particular. [MacArthur] said, among other things, that he believed that the Air Force could do something; that so far he could not see where they had done anything at all; that the whole thing was so badly botched up that he believed his staff could run it better than the Air [Force] had done. He had no use for anyone in the organization, from Brett down to the grade of colonel. He claimed that Brett was disloyal to him, that Royce was a scatterbrain and that all the rest of the generals should never have [made field grade] in the first place. He said they were all made by the underhanded submitting of their names to Washington without his approval. He informed me that he expected me to be loyal to him.

As soon as I got a chance to say anything, I told him frankly that I had been sent out here to take over the air show and that I intended to run it; that as far as the question of loyalty was concerned, if for any reason I found that I could not work with him or be loyal to him I would tell him so and do everything in my power to get relieved. He grinned and put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I think we are going to get along all right.”

Instinctively knowing which buttons to push, Kenney had thawed MacArthur’s frosty shell of mistrust in a matter of minutes. Perhaps his small stature was a contributing factor, but it was probably Kenney’s infectious blend of intelligence and energy that won over the supreme commander. For another hour they chatted about the war. MacArthur did most of the talking, during which he outlined an important operation scheduled for early August. Although it would take place in the southern Solomons, outside his command area, he had pledged full support and needed Kenney’s recommendations. Kenney responded that he could not give any recommendations until he knew exactly what he had to work with and pledged to leave immediately for an inspection tour of the forward bases. He would then return to Brisbane and present a clear answer.

Before leaving the city, Kenney spent several hours with General Brett observing his directorate system. Brett offered Kenney the use of his personal aircraft, an early-model B-17D, which Kenney gladly accepted. The Flying Fortress, originally named
Ole Betsy
, was in tiptop shape. One of the first B-17s to see combat in the Philippines, it had received heavy damage during a mission over Borneo and was subsequently rebuilt in Melbourne, receiving a complete tail assembly cannibalized from another B-17. The unique repair inspired the next pilot to rename it
The Swoose
after a popular big-band tune, “Alexander the Swoose (Half Swan, Half Goose).” Permanently withdrawn from combat status, the B-17 was later sent back to Melbourne for a more thorough engine overhaul, at which point Capt. Frank Kurtz, Brett’s pilot, selected it as the general’s personal transport.

Kenney took off aboard
The Swoose
at 2300 on July 29 and landed four hours later at Townsville to pick up three important passengers. Waiting for him were Brig. Gen. Ennis C. Whitehead, USAAF, who had arrived from the States a month earlier; Maj. Gen. Ralph G. Royce, USAAF, commander of air operations in the Northeastern Sector at Townsville;
and William S. Robinson, an Aussie billionaire industrialist with important political connections. After refueling,
The Swoose
took off again for Port Moresby. It would be a night without sleep as the VIPs got acquainted while crossing the Coral Sea. They touched down at Seven Mile airdrome at 0700, whereupon Kenney got his first taste of the already warm and humid air of New Guinea.
The Swoose
roared aloft again, heading for Horn Island to stay out of harm’s way.

Visiting the front lines on just his second full day in the theater, Kenney impressed the men at Port Moresby. They had lost faith in Brett, who rarely visited and had no concept of how awful the conditions at Port Moresby had become. Kenney later wrote: “[Brett] didn’t get up there very often; I think he was up there maybe twice. They didn’t have much equipment and weren’t getting any more equipment; they weren’t getting spare parts when their airplanes began falling apart. Brett didn’t get up to [see] them, and he didn’t check and find out what they needed and see that they got it. Their food was terrible stuff, and he wouldn’t do anything about that. They were getting malaria pretty badly, and there was nothing done about that.”

Kenney was disgusted with just about everything he saw on the tour. Joined by Brig. Gen. Martin F. “Mike” Scanlon, the ranking American at Port Moresby, Kenney spent the day visiting the base with Royce and Whitehead. During the briefing for a bombing mission, Kenney was appalled by the lack of organization. The preliminaries were conducted by an Australian officer who simply declared that the objective was Rabaul, giving no specific targets. Kenney later wrote, “I found out afterward that nobody expects the airplanes to get that far anyhow, and if they do, the town itself is a good target.”

A meteorologist spoke next. His estimates of the weather conditions over Rabaul were based on historical data rather than real-time analysis. Kenney observed that no one was designated to lead the formation, mainly because the bombers were not expected to stay together en route to the target—and no one seemed to care. The only thing the crews fretted about was their bomb load. “The personnel are obsessed with the idea that a bullet will detonate the bombs and blow up the whole works,” Kenney noted. “If enemy airplanes are seen along the route, all auxiliary gas and bombs are immediately jettisoned and the mission abandoned.”

Thoroughly displeased with bomber operations, Kenney next inspected the fighter squadrons and found them no better. After
touring the fighter area for a few hours with Lt. Col. Richard A. Legg, commanding officer of the 35th Fighter Group, Kenney wrote, “His organization is lackadaisical, maintenance is at a low ebb, and while he is short of spares there is no excuse for only six P-39s out of forty being constantly available for combat.”