Fortress Rabaul (47 page)

Ten minutes behind the B-24s, Walker’s six B-17s separated before bombing individual targets. The crews claimed four or five direct hits against shipping but had little time to observe their handiwork before the fighters were on them. Fred Wesche, who had been concerned that the daylight strike would be a suicide mission, later gave the following account:

[W]e went over the target
and all of us got attacked. [My plane] was shot up. Nobody was injured, fortunately, but the airplane was kind of banged up a little bit. We had to break formation over the target to bomb individually and then we were supposed to form up immediately after crossing the target; but no sooner had we dropped our bombs than my tail gunner says, “Hey, there’s somebody in trouble behind us.” So we made a turn and looked back and here was an airplane, one of our airplanes, going down, smoking and … headed for a cloud bank with the whole cloud of fighters on top of him. There must have been about fifteen or twenty fighters. Of course, they gang up on a cripple, you know, polish that one off with no trouble.

The stricken aircraft was
San Antonio Rose
. As the rest of the B-17s withdrew southward over New Britain, the damaged Fortress lost altitude, its left outboard engine trailing smoke. Japanese fighters continued to attack relentlessly, causing it to fall even farther behind. When last seen,
San Antonio Rose
was heading into a cloud with four or five fighters still in pursuit.

The remaining crews returned to Port Moresby and submitted their reports. Altogether, ten vessels were allegedly hit by bombs, and various gunners received official credit for the destruction of seven enemy fighters. In light of the collective claims, the participating squadrons portrayed the mission as highly successful. However, the effort sought by General Kenney—the destruction of the Lae convoy—had been a total bust.

The Japanese had hardly been fazed. Updated intelligence estimates placed as many as eighty-seven ships at Rabaul on January 5, yet only ten of those vessels—five destroyers and five transports—made up the important convoy. Thus, it would have been virtually impossible for the bombardiers to know which ships to target.

An even greater irony was uncovered decades later by researcher Richard Dunn. His astounding collection of Japanese documents and diary excerpts provides ample evidence that the convoy departed from Rabaul at noon Japan Standard Time, which correlates to 1000 hours in the time zone utilized by the Allies. Consequently, the convoy wasn’t even in the harbor when Walker’s aircraft attacked at 1200: the ships had departed some two hours earlier.

The bombers did succeed in sinking
Keifuku Maru
, a small Imperial Army ship of less than six thousand tons that was unloading cargo just off Kokopo. Two other merchant ships were damaged, as was the destroyer
Tachikaze
, hit by a bomb for the second time in as many weeks. Aircraft losses amounted to three Ki-43s shot down, with at least one pilot rescued.

The American crews recounted what they knew of the missing B-17, which wasn’t much. When
San Antonio Rose
failed to return by late afternoon, it became obvious that the crew was down somewhere. Word spread quickly that General Walker’s plane was missing in action.

George Kenney reacted angrily when he learned that his bomber commander had defied him—and not just once, but twice. “
Walker off late
,” he wrote in his daybook. “Disobeyed orders by going along as well as not starting his mission when I told him.” Later, when he heard that Walker’s plane had failed to return, Kenney ordered all available reconnaissance planes to search the islands along the route to Rabaul. The order was superfluous. Walker was held in high esteem by many airmen among the bomber groups, and no one needed to be told to search for the general or the other missing crewmen.

That evening, Kenney was informed that Walker’s plane had been located on a coral reef in the Trobriand Islands. Still perturbed, he told General MacArthur that he intended to punish Walker with an official reprimand and send him to Australia “for a couple of weeks.”

MacArthur agreed in principle but then suggested, “
If he doesn’t come back
, I’ll put him in for a Medal of Honor.”

The next day, the Fates had a surprise in store for both Kenney and MacArthur. The downed airmen were plucked from a small island fifty miles south of the Trobriands but turned out to be Jean Jack and his crew. There was some embarrassment for Jack, who later admitted that while his rescuers were pleased at finding him, they were “
quite disappointed
when they found out his crew wasn’t General Walker’s.”

The search for Walker and the men of
San Antonio Rose
continued. On January 6, a B-24 flown by Lt. George M. Rose took off from Port Moresby on a dedicated search and failed to return. The mystery of the plane’s disappearance has never been definitively solved, but the combat log of Air Group 582 indicates that Hamps of the 2nd
Chutai
intercepted and shot down a lone B-24 over Wide Bay on the morning of January 6. The area would have been a logical place for Lieutenant Rose and his crew to search for the missing B-17.

In the meantime, other reconnaissance aircraft had discovered the enemy convoy bound for Lae. Among the bombers that shadowed the vessels on January 6 was a Liberator piloted by Lt. Walter E. Higgins, who decided to make a solo bomb run. But his B-24 was damaged by shipboard antiaircraft fire and then attacked by a whole
chutai
of Zeros, which forced Higgins to ditch near a small island south of New Britain.

B-24s were prone to breaking apart during ditching attempts, and in Higgins’s case the bomb bays caved in when the Liberator contacted the water, causing the death of two crewmen. The 90th Bomb Group’s history of bad luck was extended by the loss of two Liberators and twelve crewmen that day.

The hunt for Walker’s aircraft and crew was now broadened to include the two additional bombers that went missing on January 6. This soon led to another odd twist. While conducting a search on January 7, Lt. James A. McMurria of the 90th Bomb Group, 319th Bomb Squadron discovered several crewmen stranded on a small island. Hoping to identify the crew, he dropped supplies along with a note that gave simple instructions. If part
of Walker’s crew, the men were to proceed to the north end of the island; if part of Higgins’s, they were to head south. The men headed north, but when the rescue team arrived the next day, they found Higgins and his crew rather than Walker. Again there was some embarrassment, but Higgins maintained that his deception was not intentionally sinister; he simply concluded that assistance would be dispatched more quickly for a general and took his men to the north end of the islet to expedite their rescue.

Despite days and weeks of searching, no trace was found of Walker or
San Antonio Rose
. Kenney and MacArthur returned to Brisbane on January 9, having seen the Buna campaign to its successful conclusion, and MacArthur officially announced on the 11th that Walker was missing in action. A wizard at putting a positive spin on bad news, MacArthur issued a statement that pushed the limits of credibility. Walker, he said, “led a bombardment group which successfully attacked enemy shipping in Rabaul harbor. In this attack from nine to eleven enemy ships were destroyed.” In MacArthur’s world, it never would have done to state the truth: that Walker had led exactly twelve bombers over Rabaul and sank one ship.

Later that month Kenney wrote a letter to Walker’s sons, Douglas and Kenneth Jr. His words of were full of encouragement, suggesting that the general might still be found, but Kenney had no doubt about the outcome. He was convinced that Walker would never be found, and his hunch proved correct. Over the past six and a half decades, no scrap of wreckage or the remains of any crewmembers have been located.

Nevertheless, intriguing questions still linger. Sketchy reports that two or more crewmen parachuted from the plane and were subsequently captured by the Japanese have circulated for years. One source was Bishop Leo Scharmach, the vicar of Vunapope. A witness to the sinking of the
Keifuku Maru
, he later shared what he knew of the raid in his memoirs.

The attacking planes
had their casualties also. At least one of them was shot down. Some of the surviving airmen were co-prisoners with some of our missionaries in Rabaul. To these the pilots related the story behind the daylight raid. An American general, who was leading the flotilla, had insisted on this venture against much contrary advice. When over Rabaul, his plane was hit, but did not crash in the vicinity. Possibly it came down in the jungle.

Five months after Walker was declared missing, a B-17 of the 43rd Bomb Group was shot down near Rabaul by an Imperial Navy night fighter. The crew’s sole survivor, captured by the Japanese, was shown documents naming Major Bleasdale as an alleged POW. The few details that Lt. Jose L. Holguin was given made it sound as though General Walker had been killed or mortally wounded aboard the aircraft and thus had no chance of bailing out. Circumstantially, a comment by Scharmach supports Holguin’s story. “
We do not know
if [the general] survived,” wrote the bishop, “but we are sure the Japanese never heard about him … otherwise they would have triumphantly boasted about it.”

The name of another crewmember, Capt. Benton H. Daniel, copilot of
San Antonio Rose
, was supposedly seen by a Catholic missionary, but nothing to substantiate the claim, or any of the other aforementioned details, has ever been uncovered. All of the stories were based on hearsay, and it’s even possible that the information given to Holguin was a deceptive ploy on the part of the Japanese, provided in the hopes of eliciting information from him.

Whatever happened that day, the one definitive summation is that Ken Walker did not return. Had he been rescued, he would have faced sanctions for two counts of disobeying orders. Instead he died in battle, and General MacArthur made good on his promise to recommend him for a Medal of Honor.

The paperwork moved rapidly through channels until a review board questioned whether Walker’s actions were considered “above and beyond the call of duty.” It was an interesting dilemma. The Silver Star awarded to Walker in August had used the same words, citing his “disregard for personal safety, above and beyond the call of duty,” which means the phrase was not exclusive to the Medal of Honor. However, Maj. Gen. George E. Stratemeyer, chief of air staff under General Arnold, responded to the query by writing: “
It is the considered opinion of Headquarters
, Army Air Forces that the conspicuous leadership exemplified by Brig. Gen. Kenneth N. Walker on the specific mission as cited by General MacArthur does constitute action above and beyond the call of duty.”

The words that set Walker apart from the other men lost aboard
San Antonio Rose
were “conspicuous leadership.” The mission had accomplished very little—and Walker had defied Kenney’s orders by participating—but his decision to lead the small force of unescorted bombers
over Japan’s mightiest bastion was indeed gallant. He intended to set an example. As he hoisted himself through the belly hatch of
San Antonio Rose
that tropical morning, a Medal of Honor would have been the farthest thing from his mind.

CHAPTER 25

Blood in the Water

T
HE PARADOX OF THE
January 5 attack on Rabaul was not that it failed to affect the Japanese convoy, or that Walker received a Medal of Honor. The greatest irony was the insignificance of the American effort: twelve bombers, no fighter escort.

Only two days later, the Japanese launched more than
eight times
as many aircraft from Rabaul to attack Port Moresby. Considering the high costs of the recent battles for Guadalcanal and Buna, it was an astonishing show of force. The Eleventh Air Fleet put up sixty fighters and forty-four medium bombers in an attempt to knock out the Allied airdromes.

But there was more irony to come. Halfway to Port Moresby, the armada was stymied by an impassable storm. The remarkable effort went for naught. Had the weather been favorable, a well-coordinated attack by 104 aircraft might have overwhelmed the defenses at Port Moresby, causing severe setbacks for Kenney and his air forces. As it was, the foul weather favored the Allies, and the Japanese returned to Rabaul in frustration.

That same day, Allied bombers attacked the enemy convoy bound for Lae. During the clash, off the south coase of New Britain, dozens of fighters battled fiercely over the convoy. While Oscars and Zekes dueled with Warhawks and Lightnings, the bombers sank 5,400-ton
Nichiryu Maru
off Gasmata on January 7 and set fire to
Myoko Maru
the following day in the Huon Gulf. Despite the loss of the two ships, an estimated four
thousand troops of the Okabe Detachment, 51st Infantry Division were successfully put ashore at Lae.