A man of perseverance, driven to push himself to his limits and beyond, McGowen volunteered for the Alamo Scouts despite his lack of swimming prowess. The amount of swimming required by the Scouts proved a monumental challenge, but “grit and determination like no one else,” his wife Christine later recalled, led him to succeed.
McGowen had a daring, never-say-lose attitude that Bradshaw liked. During training, to keep their reflexes sharp, Scout candidates were encouraged to launch surprise attacks on each other, officers included, at any time of the day or night. McGowen chose to attack Lt. Carl Moyer, the group's rough, tough self-defense instructor, diving at Moyer's feet and taking him down. McGowen's action won everyone's admiration, including Moyer's.
The other team joining Bradshaw at Finschhafen was led by Lt. William Barnes, a twenty-six-year-old graduate of the University of Tennessee who, in 1938-39, had been a member of the school's number-two-ranked football team. Barnes had come to the Scouts from the 32nd Division, where he had been on special assignment to train intelligence and reconnaissance platoons for the 127th Regiment.
The mission Bradshaw had been handed was actually the second one to come the Scouts' way. The first, a four-day reconnaissance of the Marakum area fifteen miles east of Bogadjim on New Guinea's northern coast, had been assigned to McGowen, but then was scrubbed.
This one would not be. The Scouts were to perform a reconnaissance mission on Los Negros Island, a prelude to MacArthur's planned retaking of the Bismarck Archipelago and final isolation of the huge Japanese naval base at Rabaul on New Britain, 390 air miles to the southeast.
Part of MacArthur's plan for seizing and neutralizing both the Bismarck Archipelago and the northern coast of Dutch New Guinea as far west as the Sepik River called for Krueger's 6th Army to capture the Admiralty Islands, off the northwest coast of New Guinea.
Earlier in 1944, MacArthur's forces had taken key areas along New Guinea's northern coast from troops of Gen. Hatazo Adachi's 18th Army, sealing off the Vitiaz Strait between New Guinea and New Britain, and blocking Japanese access to the Bismarck Sea.
Farther to the east Adm. William F. Halsey's naval forces, moving up from the Solomons, sailed to within 125 miles of Rabaul. There, Grumman Hellcats and Dauntless dive-bombers from his powerful carrier strike force plastered the Japanese with a series of relentless air attacks.
Orders for MacArthur's planned leap at the Admiralties, code-named Brewer, were cut on November 23, 1943, with D-day tentatively set for April 1.
Initially Dutch, the Admiralty Islands were discovered in 1615 by Capt. William Schouten, but became part of German New Guinea in 1848 when the Netherlands, Germany, and Australia divided up control of New Guinea. In 1918, as Germany was being stripped of her overseas holdings under the Treaty of Versailles following the First World War, the islands passed to Australian control, which was how things stood until the Japanese arrived in early 1942.
The Admiralties consist of 160 islands, with the two principal ones being Manus to the west and Los Negros to the east. The two are separated by a narrow, shallow strait that is navigable only by native canoes and small boats.
The northern coastlines of Manus and Los Negros, combined with the curving shores of the lesser islands, form a U shape. In the middle of this U is Seeadler Harbor, which, at twenty miles long, six miles wide, and 120 feet deepâaccessible through a channel that cuts between the islands of Ndrilo and Huaweiâis one of the finest anchorages in the Pacific.
Manus, the largest island at forty-nine miles long and sixteen wide, is cut by a rugged mountain range running its length to a height of 2,355 feet. The soil of Manus and Los Negros is a reddish clay, traversed by many fordable streams that are prone to flash flooding. Coastal plains are bounded by mangrove swamps, while the interior of the islands are thick jungle. The entire area sweats under a climate that is hot and humid, and frequent heavy rains turn the clay into a sticky substance the natives call gumbo. In 1944, about thirteen thousand natives, mostly Melanesian with Micronesian blood, inhabited the islands.
* * *
The first mission selected for the Alamo Scouts was to be a one-week reconnaissance of the western portion of Manus, with a team of Scouts rowing ashore from a submarine. This plan was soon cut back to a four-day patrol of New Guinea's Marakum area, with insertion to be by PT boat. In approving this revision on February 21, Krueger's chief of staff wrote, “This should be a good test for Scouts and should prove of value to them.”
Plans changed again three days later, just before the mission was to commence. MacArthur moved Operation Brewer's D-day up five weeks to February 29.
Prompting the change were reports from reconnaissance pilots flying low over Los Negros, who said they spotted no signs of the enemy. Up until this point, debate had raged over how many Japanese inhabited the island. MacArthur's staff guessed 4,050. The 1st Cavalry Division, whose nearly one thousand men were to comprise the initial strike force in the invasion, set to go ashore in the Hyane Harbor area, estimated 4,900, while 5th Air Force intelligence insisted the number was less than 300. Now, however, there was speculation that perhaps the enemy had abandoned Los Negros entirely.
Krueger, always bowing to caution, refused to believe that the Japanese would abandon Los Negros. Nor was he convinced by the fact that U.S. Mitchell bombers, trying to distract enemy attention away from photo reconnaissance planes, drew no hostile fire as they roared over the island at treetop level.
“It doesn't take a genius to fool aerial reconnaissance,” Krueger told his G2 intelligence chief, Col. Horton V. White. “I want to know what's there before I send the First Cav in. Let's put a team of Scouts onshore and find out. Get Bradshaw up here.”
* * *
Bradshaw, orders in hand, now struggled over which team to send. As he prepared for the briefing at Finschhafen, he turned to Williams for his thoughts.
“So who goes? Barnes or McGowen? Both are capable.”
“Flip a coin,” Williams suggested. “If it's heads, McGowen goes. If it's tails, Barnes gets the job. The loser will serve as the contact.”
Finding the solution agreeable, Bradshaw fished a coin from his pocket and flipped it. It came up heads.
Within thirty minutes, McGowen and Barnes entered the briefing hut, standing with their commander around a table, which held a map of what both officers recognized as the Admiralties.
“I flipped a coin to see who got this mission,” Bradshaw said. “John, you lost, so you're going in.” Everyone chuckled. “Bill, you're the contact team.”
He turned to Colonel White, who took over the briefing.
“The mission is Los Negros,” White began, tapping the map with a finger. “The air force is telling MacArthur that the Japs are abandoning the place, but General Krueger doesn't agree. This is a two-day mission. You'll fly in tomorrow night by PBY, landing as close to shore as the pilot can get you. You'll go the rest of the way by rubber boat, landing on the beach here, at Chapatut Point.
“There are two airfields on the island, a thirty-three-hundred-foot strip just northwest of Lorengau village and a four-thousand-foot airfield at Momote Point. To keep the Nips' heads down, B-25s will attack those fields while you are landing. Once ashore, recon the area to the northeast noting troop strengths and defenses, if any. First Cav, which will go in near Hyane Harbor on the twenty-ninth, needs that info. Then get back to the pickup point by the next morning. During the extraction, the bombers will again hit their airfields. If, for any reason, the Catalina can't get in to pick you up on schedule, it will return again twenty-four hours later, and again twenty-four hours after that, for three days.
“You will carry a walkie-talkie so you and Barnes can coordinate the pickup. As always, avoid contact with the enemy if possible. If there are no questions, get some rest. You leave at oh three thirty.”
After the briefing broke up, Krueger called the team members into his tent, shook each man's hand, and wished him luck.
“This is our first mission,” Krueger told McGowen. “Our first time at bat. You know how important that is.”
“Don't worry, General,” McGowen replied. “We'll hit a home run.”
* * *
Emotions ran high that night as the men prepared for their first assignment, and sleep proved elusive. At three thirty a.m., dressed in their jungle fatigues, faces blackened, they gathered up their gear, which they had checked and rechecked.
McGowen watched his men get ready. He had carefully handpicked these men prior to the ASTC graduation in anticipation of the talent he might need for future missions.
McGowen's number-two man, Tech Sgt. Caesar J. Ramirez, was an able veteran and strong leader whom McGowen felt could take over in case something happened to him in the field. The other team members, all combat tested, were Sgt. Walter A. McDonald, Sgt. John A. Roberts, Pfc. John P. Lagoud, who, at twenty-nine, was the oldest member, and Pvt. Paul V. Gomez.
Besides their personal weapons, each man carried two hand grenades and two days' worth of K rations. One man also had the walkie-talkie, with its range of about twenty-five miles, slung over his shoulder.
The Catalina was waiting onshore and the Scouts climbed aboard. Taking seats on the floor of the PBY, the men sat back and relaxed as the graceful seaplane taxied out into Langemak Bay. Its two twelve-hundred-horsepower Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp engines roared as the plane bounced across the dark water, building up enough speed to lift its twenty-one-thousand-pound bulk into the sky.
The Scouts sat in the dark for two hours, feeling the vibration of the plane's fuselage and listening to its engines hum. Some men chatted quietly, while others were silent, resting or lost in thought. Here and there, the pinpoint orange light of a cigarette glowed.
As they approached Los Negros, the plane flew into a heavy tropical thunderstorm. The pilot circled the area in an attempt to land, but the seas were too rough. The wind buffeted the plane, which creaked and groaned in response.
“Jesus Christ,” said Sgt. Robert W. Teeples, one of the contact team members, looking out at the storm through the PBY's right blister window. “I think the goddamn wings are flapping.”
Moments later, something flashed in the sky above the PBY. Teeples did not think it was lightning.
“Did you see that?” asked the sailor at the blister window across from Teeples.
“I thought I imagined it,” Teeples said. “What do you make of it?”
“If I didn't know better, I'd say it's the exhaust flash from a Jap plane,” the crewman said.
“And you'd be right,” the Catalina's radar man said from forward in the plane. “I picked him up about five miles out. Probably a scout plane caught on patrol in the storm and barrel-assing back to base. He was above us, so I doubt he saw us in all this shitty weather. At least I hope not.”
It wouldn't have mattered if the Japanese flier had seen them because the PBY pilot decided he could not safely set the big plane down. Banking the Catalina, he returned to Langemak Bay. There the Scouts, disappointed over the delay and waste of good emotions, spent the day aboard the seaplane tender USS
Half Moon
.
There was no storm over the landing area the next day, nor was there much darkness, as a delay in taking off meant the PBY did not arrive over the bay until dawn.
Things went downhill from there.
The Catalina touched down, gliding effortlessly across the water. The pilot throttled back, slowing the plane. Standing by the open hatch, McGowen waited for the aircraft to stop, but it did not.
“We're a half mile from shore and still moving,” he said. “Goddamn it.”
He turned to Barnes. “Bill, go up to the cockpit and see what that idiot is doing.”
Barnes did and was right back.
“He said he doesn't want to get closer to shore or stop the plane,” Barnes reported. “He said it'll make him a sitting duck.”
“But it doesn't matter if we drown or get chopped up by his fucking propellers,” McGowen cursed. Then he said to Sergeant Ramirez, “Get that rubber boat into the water.”
“We're going to get out of a moving plane?” Ramirez gasped.
“What choice do we have? That fool isn't going to stop.”
Loading was precarious, but it was accomplished without anyone or anything falling over the side. As the rubber boat cast off, the PBY pilot pushed open his throttles and the seaplane roared off across the surface of the water and lifted into the sky, its prop wash rocking the Scouts' boat.
“How much does one of them planes cost?” Gomez mused as he watched the Catalina lift off, water cascading from its boatlike underbelly.
“About ninety thousand bucks,” McGowen replied. “Why?”
“Just wondered. The way that pilot treats it, you'd think he had to pay for it himself if it got scratched.”
As the team began rowing to shore, one of the men noticed another glitch in the plan.
“Hey,” McDonald observed. “It's awful quiet onshore. Where the hell are the bombers?”
He was right. There was no distant, heavy
karrrumpp
of bombs falling on the airfields, or the deep, beelike humming of airplane engines. The sky was ominously silent.
“Goddamn flyboys,” Lagoud said. “I'll bet someone forgot to wake 'em up.”
“Keep rowing,” said McGowen, who was not prone to idle chitchat.
It took McGowen's team about thirty minutes to reach the island. Gomez jumped out first, and helped drag the rubber boat across the beach. (Gomez was later angered to learn that MacArthur had awarded the Distinguished Service Cross to a young lieutenant for being the “first man ashore” on Los Negros during the invasion, three days after his own foot had touched the sand.)