Fortress Rabaul (42 page)

The first attack was made by Benn’s aircraft, piloted by Lt. Franklyn T. Green. Aiming for a light cruiser outside of Simpson Harbor, they dropped a heavy bomb and crossed over the warship’s superstructure mere feet above the radio mast. The passing shadow of the bomber apparently shocked the Japanese gunners into action, but the B-17 was already a hundred yards past them when their guns lit up the night sky. Next, Green attacked a five-
thousand-ton cargo ship, after which he climbed for a conventional attack on a fifteen-thousand-ton merchant ship inside Simpson Harbor. Direct hits were claimed against all three vessels, and both of the merchantmen allegedly sank. The cruiser was last observed in flames, sinking by the stern. Ken McCullar, already credited with sinking or damaging four ships with
Black Jack
, claimed two direct hits on a destroyer. Finally, the Fortress flown by Capt. Carl A. Hustad made a successful attack, hitting a ten-thousand-ton vessel that was subsequently reported on fire.

Altogether, the skip-bombers and the high element claimed four direct hits, nine “very close near misses,” and four near misses that allegedly sank a cruiser, a destroyer, and two large noncombatants while damaging a transport and a “small cargo vessel.” But as so often happened, the results of the first skip-bombing effort were not as effective as the crews presumed. Based on Japanese records and the postwar JANAC findings, only two ships were hit on October 23. Both were submarine chasers, 160 feet in length and displacing slightly more than four hundred tons each. They could easily account for the “cruiser” and “destroyer” claimed by the bomber crews, especially considering the vagaries of the moonlight and the adrenalin rush of combat, but neither ship sustained serious damage. As for the claims totaling more than thirty thousand tons of cargo shipping, there is no evidence that any noncombatants were hit, let alone damaged.

Of course, the JANAC report would not be revealed until after the war. In the absence of any other evidence, Kenney eagerly chalked up the claims as legitimate and summoned his former aide to Brisbane. Benn arrived that afternoon and was escorted straightaway to the eighth floor of the AMP Building, where General MacArthur personally pinned a Distinguished Service Cross on his uniform. Kenney beamed with pride. Benn was his protégé, and it was no secret that Kenney regarded the major’s squadron as “
the hottest outfit in the whole air force
.”

CHAPTER 22

New Identities

A
S READERS HAVE
undoubtedly discovered, the system used to identify Japanese aircraft at the beginning of World War II was unwieldy and confusing. A full identification combined two main components: A) the official military designation based on the plane’s primary role and the Imperial year it entered service and B) the alphanumeric project code applied by the manufacturer.
*
The result was a bewildering array of names that all sounded alike, such as the Navy Type 96 carrier fighter (Mitsubishi A5M), Navy Type 96 attack bomber (Mitsubishi G3M), Army Type 97 heavy bomber (Mitsubishi Ki-21), Navy Type 97 carrier attack bomber (Nakajima B5N), and Navy Type 97 flying boat (Kawanishi H6K). The method was challenging enough for intelligence personnel, but Allied airmen became even more tongue-tied when they tried to reconstruct events after snatching blurred glimpses of planes in combat.

By the middle of 1942, as both the number and variety of Japanese planes increased, a much simpler identification method became necessary. The answer was a system of short, unforgettable code names. These came into practice shortly after Capt. Frank T. McCoy Jr., an intelligence officer in the 38th Bomb Group, was placed in charge of the Air Technical Intelligence Unit in Australia. McCoy and his team of enlisted men—Tech. Sgt. Francis M. Williams and Cpl. Joseph Grattan—set out to create a list of names that was both simple and effective. One of their first important decisions was to create two categories, using male names for fighters and female names for just about everything else (though refinements were made to the latter category).

McCoy, from Tennessee, drew upon his Southern heritage for several of the early code names. Blessed with a good sense of humor, he applied hillbilly nicknames to variations of the most famous of all Japanese fighters, the Mitsubishi Zero. The prevalent model (A6M2) became “Zeke,” while “Rufe” was given to the Nakajima-built floatplane version (A6M2-N), encountered for the first time at Tulagi in the Solomons. When an upgraded variant of the Zero with nonfolding square wingtips entered combat in mid-1942, McCoy’s team thought it was an all-new fighter and named it “Hap” as a tribute to the top American airman, Gen. H. H. Arnold. Usage of the code name continued for approximately one year until it was learned that Arnold took exception to it, whereupon the nickname was revised to “Hamp.”

Ironically, some of the new code names were slow to catch on. “Zero” was already so iconic that airmen continued to use it to describe almost any fighter they faced in the Southwest Pacific. Even the obsolete, fixed-gear Mitsubishi A5M was often misidentified as a Zero, although by the time it received its own code name (“Claude,” after an Australian friend of McCoy’s), none were still serving on the front lines. Adding to the confusion, a new Imperial Army fighter that appeared at Rabaul in late 1942 looked remarkably like the Zero. The Nakajima Ki-43
Habayusa
(Peregrine Falcon) was nicknamed “Oscar” by McCoy’s team, but on numerous occasions the nimble fighters were misidentified as Zeros.

Japanese bombers were generally easier to identify. McCoy’s team took delight in choosing code names that were not only unique but had interesting connections to real people. The name selected for the Imperial Navy’s predominant land attack aircraft, the Mitsubishi G4M, was inspired
by a well-endowed acquaintance of Sergeant Williams. The pair of gun blisters that bulged from the aircraft’s fuselage reminded him of a big-breasted nurse he knew from Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, and so the bomber became known famously as “
Betty
.” The venerable Mitsubishi G3M was nicknamed “Nell” for the wife of an intelligence officer in Melbourne, and an Australian army sergeant inspired the code name of the Aichi D3A “Val” dive-bomber. “Kate” was chosen for the Nakajima B5N carrier bomber, the Kawanishi H6K flying boat became “Mavis,” and its successor, the massive H8K flying boat, was code-named “Emily.”

From its homespun beginnings, the use of the code names expanded rapidly, gaining such widespread acceptance that all of the American armed forces adopted the program by the end of 1942. McCoy and his team constantly updated the list, which eventually grew to 122 names including all of the known aircraft in the Imperial Army and Navy inventories, and even some that were merely suspected of being developed. To this day, the use of the code names remains almost universal.

WHILE MCCOY and his team developed their list of names in the fall of 1942, the EleventhAir Fleet at Rabaul tried desperately to dislodge the American invaders from Guadalcanal. The great distances involved—each round trip was the equivalent of 1,300 highway miles—gave the Japanese airmen no margin for error. This hard lesson was driven home on the very first day of the offensive, when fifty-three aircraft from Rabaul counterattacked the American fleet. Nine Aichi D3A “Val” dive-bombers took part despite the fact that their range barely exceeded 900 miles. Rear Admiral Yamada sent them anyway, instructing the pilots to attack the American troopships and then attempt water landings near Shortland Island, where a seaplane tender and a flying boat would serve as rescue pickets. Without fighter escort, the nine courageous crews attempted to fulfill their mission, but scored only a single hit on the destroyer
Mugford
with a 60-kilogram bomb. (Material damage to the destroyer was minor, but casualties proved relatively high with twenty-one crewmen killed.) In exchange, five of the
Vals
were shot out of the sky by U.S. Navy Wildcats. The remaining four ditched as planned near the Shortlands, but only three crews were rescued, bringing the 2nd Air Group’s losses to nine aircraft and six crews.

The experiences of the 4th Air Group, which sent twenty-seven Mitsubishi G4M Bettys to attack the transports and warships anchored
off Lunga Point, were similar. Each plane carried a payload of two 250-kilogram and four 60-kilogram bombs which were dropped in a massive salvo against the stationary ships; much to the disgust of the Japanese, however, none of the 156 bombs struck a vessel. The ultra-long mission was wasted. Even worse, four Bettys were shot down, a fifth bomber crash-landed on Buka Island, and yet another cracked up while landing at Vunakanau airdrome. In all, the group’s losses for the day totaled six aircraft and twenty-eight crewmembers.

The
Rei-sen
fared better. The pilots of the Tainan Air Group accounted well for themselves, downing nine Wildcats, but the unit’s popular torchbearer, Saburo Sakai, was critically wounded. Spying what he thought was a covey of Wildcats, Sakai stumbled into a formation of SBD Dauntlesses and was caught in a heavy crossfire. Machine-gun bullets shattered the canopy of his Zero, and a .30-caliber round struck the metal frame of his flight goggles just above his right eye. The slug creased his skull rather than entering his brain, but the eye was permanently blinded. Bleeding profusely, temporarily paralyzed on the left side of his body from the bullet’s impact, Sakai somehow held his fighter in the air for the 650-mile flight back to Rabaul. Fortunate to have survived, he remained out of action for almost two years.

Unlike Sakai, the great majority of Japanese airmen whose planes were damaged over Guadalcanal did not return—and the losses accrued rapidly. On the morning of August 8, Rear Admiral Yamada again tried to smash the American invasion fleet, this time with aerial torpedoes. Supported by nine
rikko
of the Misawa Air Group that had arrived the previous afternoon, Yamada was able to muster twenty-six Bettys and fifteen escorting Zeros. Three of the former turned back because of mechanical problems, but the remaining aircraft attacked the American ships at noon.

Within a matter of minutes, the entire
rikko
doctrine was turned on its ear. Intense, accurate antiaircraft fire from the warships of the screening force brought down no less than eight Bettys, and only one torpedo actually hit a vessel, resulting in moderate damage to the destroyer
Jarvis
. The worst harm was caused by Lt. j.g. Takafumi Sasaki, who deliberately “body-crashed” his flaming Betty into the transport
George F. Elliott
. The fires that ensued became uncontrollable, resulting in the demise of the ship the next day.

Of the fifteen remaining Bettys, four more were shot down by Wildcats, leaving eleven battle-damaged planes to face the daunting flight back to Rabaul. Less than half made it. Six went down en route, with only one crew recovered. Two escorting
Rei-sen
also failed to return. The shock to Yamada at losing eighteen Type 1s and two Zeros must have been great.

For the airmen at Vunakanau, the results of the two-day effort were especially devastating. Quite possibly, no other aviation unit in the Imperial Navy experienced a worse run of bad luck than the 4th Air Group. In February, when the
Lexington
task force approached Rabaul, the group lost fifteen planes and more than 100 airmen; next, during the Battle of the Coral Sea in early May, they lost six aircraft and 31 crewmen while attacking Rear Admiral Crace’s cruiser support group; and now, two consecutive long-distance missions to Guadalcanal had cost the land-attack unit another twenty-three Bettys and more than 150 elite aviators.

Two aspects of the 4th Air Group’s combat history were particularly troubling. The most astounding was the minimal damage caused to the enemy. Over the span of three major battles, while sacrificing forty-four aircraft and some three hundred crewmembers, the attackers had hit exactly one American ship with a torpedo, and gunners shot down a couple of navy Wildcats. The greatest single achievement belonged to Lieutenant Sasaki, but only because he made a suicidal dive into a transport.

The other disturbing element was the tendency of the Type 1 aircraft to burst into flames. The lack of protection for the fuel tanks was clearly to blame, and
rikko
crews began to refer to their planes derogatorily as the “Type 1 lighter” or “one-shot lighter.”

No one in the 4th Air Group suffered more acutely than Capt. Yoshiyotsu Moritama, who had commanded the unit since its inception in February. After the debacle over Guadalcanal on August 8, he composed a heartfelt “draft of his views” for his superiors. Moritama began:

At the battle of offshore New Britain on February 20, at Coral Sea on May 7, and the First Battle of the Solomons on August 7 and 8: three times we encountered major U.S./British task forces, their combined fleet, and a large convoy of transport vessels. Every time we pressed the enemy hard, expending all our might with the determination to kill or die, we achieved great results, showed our naval air group spirit and ability, fully demonstrated our traditions, and thus won honor. However, we also lost valuable lives each time, large numbers of experienced brave warriors who should otherwise have been successful in their future. Although this is a rule of war, this is truly a regrettable matter. As the direct leader of the unit, I am strongly aware that I am to blame for it, and humbly accept the responsibility.