War at the End of the World

by James P. Duffy

  Within days, the regiment was joined by thirty-three Australian soldiers from the 2/4th Field Artillery of the 7th Division, who brought along two twenty-five-pounder short field artillery pieces that they had dismantled and prepared for the drop into Nadzab. None of the Australians had ever jumped previously and were in fact unaware they were going to until they joined the American paratroopers. With the attack quickly approaching, the artillerymen received instructions on how to jump, land, and roll once on the ground. They participated in one practice jump in the Port Moresby area, during which three men were injured.7

  While the American paratroopers and the Australian artillerymen, soon to be dubbed “paragunners,” prepared for their mission, the Australian 9th Division began embarking into Admiral Barbey’s ships and landing craft at Milne Bay on September 1. The next day, with the landing firmly scheduled for September 4, Barbey and General Wootten went aboard the U.S. destroyer Conyngham, which was to serve as the fleet’s flagship, and headed up the coast toward Buna, were they would stop for fuel and to pick up additional members of the 9th Division. Trailing behind the makeshift flagship was one of the strangest fleets the world had ever seen: seven destroyers, four destroyer-transports, thirteen LSTs, twenty LCIs, fourteen LCTs, and an assortment of tugs, oilers, tenders, and other small vessels. Partway up the coast they were joined by fifty Higgins boats from the 2nd Engineers Special Brigade carrying supplies and ammunition. Once at the beachhead, the engineers would come under General Wootten’s command, and were to act as the shore party, quickly moving supplies inland and constructing passable roads for follow-on troops and vehicles. All told, Barbey reported that this “hodgepodge”8 of “156 miscellaneous ships and craft” carried “about 17,000 troops and 12,000 tons of supplies.”9

  Conditions aboard the vessels varied, depending on the craft. Crowded and uncomfortable, and with no means to provide hot meals, the landing craft—the LCIs and LCTs—made a stopover at Buna so that the men aboard could go ashore, get exercise, and enjoy a hot meal before continuing the journey. Soldiers on board the destroyer-transports and the LSTs found the voyage more comfortable, and the larger ships had the luxury of cooking facilities and cooks. They remained aboard during the Buna stop.

  When cooks aboard the destroyer-transport Gilmer caught sight of the unappetizing bully beef rations issued to Australian soldiers, American sailors told them to “dump the whole damn lot over side” and distributed roast beef and other delicacies to their allies, as well as American cigarettes. One recipient wrote, “A more generous, friendly, goddam crew it would be hard to find.”10

  To keep the enemy’s response to the fleet heading their way to a minimum, General Kenney ordered bombing runs against the airfields at Wewak, or what was left of them after the massive attacks of mid-August. Sixteen B-25s swept down on Wewak during the morning of September 2, but found few targets at the airfields. The Japanese had moved their surviving aircraft farther up the coast, out of range of American bombers. The Americans did find a number of newly arrived cargo ships and smaller vessels loaded with supplies for the Wewak garrison. Each anchored ship had one or two barrage balloons aloft at between five hundred and a thousand feet for protection. In the ensuing attack, at least one ship sank and several others were set afire. Twenty to thirty Imperial Navy Zero fighters, evidently serving as air cover for the supply ships, attacked the bombers, but were driven off by the twenty-eight P-38s escorting the bombers. The American pilots claimed ten enemy fighters downed at a cost of three B-25s and one P-38.11

  On September 3, as Admiral Barbey’s jumbled fleet approached its destination off the Huon Peninsula, General Kenney’s fighters and bombers gave the enemy at Lae a final blow with eighty-four tons of bombs directed primarily at the Japanese defensive gun positions. Thirty-five thousand rounds of machine-gun fire followed from strafers attempting to kill anything remaining alive at the base.12

  Ever fearful of the several hundred warplanes stationed at Rabaul and the additional airfields in New Britain, the U.S. destroyer Reid had installed up-to-date radar equipment and taken on a fighter-director team. Because of the limitations of Allied radar at the time, she positioned herself fifty miles off the New Guinea coast as an early-warning system against Japanese aircraft approaching from Rabaul. By extending their radar reach, Allied commanders could be notified much sooner of planes approaching from the east and north. “It was not,” as Admiral Barbey described it, “a very pleasant assignment for the Reid, all alone and in the path of any Japanese bombers. But there was always the possibility she would not be bothered, as one destroyer might not be considered worthy of a concentrated plane attack when there was bigger game ahead.”13

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  Before sunrise on D-Day, September 4, the fleet’s flagship, the Conyngham, with Barbey and Wootten aboard, sped ahead of the convoy to identify the two beaches on which the Australians were to land. Designated Red Beach and Yellow Beach, they were a few miles apart, about sixteen miles east of Lae. The flagship served as the reference point so that the various vessels of the fleet could find their appropriate location for the landings. Consisting of firm black sand, each beach was about four hundred yards long and twenty yards wide. Behind each were mangrove swamps. A small number of trails led from the beaches inland through the swamps.

  At eighteen minutes after six, just as the sun was making its appearance out over the Huon Gulf, the five destroyers of Captain Carter’s squadron stationed themselves two and a half miles out in the gulf and opened fire. The preinvasion bombardment lasted ten minutes, targeting the tree line behind the beaches in an attempt to destroy any enemy defensive positions that might be there, and to knock Japanese lookouts and snipers from their perches at the tops of coconut trees (the Allies had learned this was a favorite tactic of their enemy).14

  When the guns fell silent, motorized rubber boats from the destroyer-transports sped toward the shore, packed with Australian soldiers who strained their eyes looking into the dark jungle ahead, seeking enemy troops. Eight boats rushed at Red Beach, while eight went to Yellow Beach. Red Beach was the goal of troops from the 20th Australian Infantry Brigade, and Yellow Beach was the goal of troops from the 26th Australian Infantry Brigade.

  Within fifteen minutes, the big, ungainly LCIs pushed their bows onto the black sand beaches and dropped the ramps on each side. Troops rushed down and ran toward the tree line. No opposition was encountered on Red Beach; the few lookouts who had tied themselves to the tops of coconut trees had been felled by the destroyer bombardment, and the infantry finished off any survivors. On Yellow Beach a small group of Japanese soldiers manning a machine-gun position evidently realized the size of the invading force and were seen fleeing into the swamp.15

  Opposition to the landing finally made its appearance a few minutes after seven, when six Zero fighters approached the beaches from the direction of the still-functioning airfield at Lae. They raced across the landing zones at low altitude, each firing their two 7.7mm light machine guns and two 20mm wing cannons to great effect. A number of Australian soldiers were wounded or killed as they scattered into the tree line for cover. Three Betty bombers followed, dropping loads from about twelve hundred feet. One LCI received a direct hit through her main deck, and near misses that badly damaged her hull and bracketed another. Both vessels managed through the skill and courage of their commanders to put their troops ashore before they had to be abandoned. The attack killed two dozen Australians and Americans, and wounded twenty-eight others.16

  Meanwhile, the landing craft continued to put Australian soldiers on the beaches. Slightly over a thousand members of the 532nd U.S. Engineer Special Brigade soon joined them, quickly taking control of the beach and directing infantry. The engineers brought along a variety of tractors, road graders, power-driven saws to cut down trees, and wire mesh to lay down temporary roads into the interior. Joined by Australian engineers, they pushed through the jungle with their mesh and log roads.

/>   The arrival at Red Beach of six LSTs, the largest landing vessels in the fleet, drew everyone’s attention. The 328-foot-long ships each carried four hundred soldiers, thirty-five vehicles, and eighty tons of bulk stores. The historian of the 2nd ESB described the scene: “As these ponderous hulks drove to the beach even the longshoremen working frantically in their unloading of the smaller craft stopped to view these monsters as they magically opened their bows and dropped immense ramps slowly to the edge of the surf. Ton after ton of equipment was unloaded and, interspersed with the vehicles and matériel, companies of infantry filed out while artillerymen rode guns drawn by tractors.”17

  By ten thirty a.m., over eight thousand Australian and one thousand American soldiers were ashore, as were fifteen hundred tons of supplies. General Wootten established his headquarters in a coconut grove about one mile inland. So excited was he about the successful landing, and brimming with confidence in his troops, he told Barbey that his men would be in Lae in less than two weeks.18

  At about two p.m., patrols from each beachhead met inland at an unnamed river designated Suez by the planners. Soon, almost the entire Australian force was pushing its way through mangrove swamps and jungle undergrowth westward toward Lae, some sixteen miles away. Enemy opposition was sporadic. The most dangerous came from hidden pillboxes and machine-gun emplacements on opposite riverbanks. Swiftly moving rivers were bridged where possible. In other instances boats manned by the ESB ferried troops across, often under enemy fire. The move west was relentless as the now-outnumbered and outgunned enemy slowly withdrew before the massive invasion force. More landing craft arrived at the beaches. Their cargoes were quickly unloaded and sent along the newly created roads to keep the infantry and artillerymen supplied and fed.19

  The following day, the men of the 503rd PIR awoke at three a.m at their Port Moresby bivouac. After a hastily eaten breakfast of pancakes soaked in syrup and gallons of coffee, they loaded into eighty-two trucks, each bearing a number that corresponded to a number on a C-47 transport plane. Driven to two nearby airfields, each truck was pulled alongside the aircraft with the corresponding number and twenty-two paratroopers and supply bundles were loaded into each C-47.20

  As the troopers made their way from the trucks to the planes, many were surprised to see their commander in chief arrive, accompanied by General Kenney. MacArthur spoke briefly to Colonel Kinsler about his mission, and as Kenney described, “walked along the line of airplanes greeting the troops and stopping occasionally to chat with some of them and wish them luck. They all seemed glad to see him and somehow had found out that he would be watching the ‘jump.’”21

  At 8:25 a.m., the transports began moving out onto the runways. Within fifteen minutes all eighty-two C-47s were airborne, soon joined by three B-17s. The first one carried MacArthur, the second Kenney, and the third General Vasey, commander of the Australian 7th Division. Several days before, when MacArthur learned Kenney intended to observe the drop over Nadzab, he attempted to talk Kenney out of it. As Kenney later explained, he told MacArthur he had always obeyed his order to stay out of combat, but this was too important for him to miss. He closed his argument with “they were my kids and I was going to see them do their stuff.”

  “The General listened to my tirade,” Kenney recalled, “and finally said, ‘You’re right, George, we’ll both go. They’re my kids too.’”

  Kenney protested that it did not make sense to risk the life of the commanding general of the entire theater by “having some five-dollar-a-month Jap aviator shoot a hole through you.”

  MacArthur responded that he was “not worried about getting shot. Honestly, the only thing that disturbs me is the possibility that when we hit rough air over the mountains my stomach might get upset. I’d hate to get sick and disgrace myself in front of the kids.”

  MacArthur’s mind was made up, so Kenney arranged for what he called a “brass hat” flight of the three B-17s to fly above the C-47s and observe the parachute troops drop into Nadzab.22

  The plan of attack was straightforward. The 1st Battalion of the PIR, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel John W. Britten, was to drop directly onto the landing strip, capture it from any surviving Japanese, and prepare it for Allied planes to land. The 2nd Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel George M. Jones, was to drop close to a village called Gabsonkek, across a trail leading from the northwest. Its assignment was to prevent enemy troops from entering the airfield area from that direction. Lieutenant Colonel John J. Tolson’s 3rd Battalion was to drop east of the airfield, take control of the village of Gabmatzung, and guard against enemy infiltrators from that direction.

  Once the paratroopers of the 503rd were airborne and heading toward the mountains, five more transports left Port Moresby and headed for Tsili-Tsili. On board were the Australian paragunners, with their dismantled and bundled guns. One hour after arriving at Tsili-Tsili, they reboarded the aircraft and took off for the ten-minute flight to Nadzab.

  Across the Owen Stanley Range, fighters and bombers from eight different airfields in New Guinea and Australia joined the C-47s. By the time the armada reached the target zone, it consisted of more than three hundred aircraft. The first to the scene were six squadrons of Mitchell B-25s flying at one thousand feet, strafing the entire area around the field with their .50-caliber machine guns and then dropping sixty fragmentation bombs equipped with parachutes from each plane. Immediately after them came six Douglas A-20 Havoc light bombers that laid smoke over the area to hide the men who would be hanging virtually helpless as they descended to the ground.

  Then came the C-47s, flying in three columns, one for each battalion. Fighter cover was at a thousand feet above the transports on each side of the columns, as well as a group at seven thousand feet and yet another at between fifteen and twenty thousand feet. Pulling up the rear were twenty-four B-24s and five B-17s. As the armada approached Nadzab, these B-24s and B-17s left the flight and headed toward a place called Heath’s Plantation for a bombing mission. Halfway between Nadzab and Lae, Heath’s housed a large force of enemy troops.23

  As the armada made its way to Nadzab, it flew directly over an Allied force of Australians and Papuans commanded by Lieutenant Colonel J. T. Lang heading to the same target along jungle trails. Its assignment was to meet with the American paratroopers once they had control of the airfield and help them clear the landing strip for the arrival of transports carrying the 7th Division.

  Thirty minutes from the target, the crew chiefs on each C-47 opened the jump doors. The door on one plane jammed in the wind and blocked the exit, forcing it to return to Port Moresby, the paratroopers greatly disappointed that they had missed the first American combat jump in the Pacific war.24

  As they approached the airfield, the C-47s dropped to a level of four hundred feet. At 10:22, the green light inside each plane lit and the paratroopers began jumping out. Above them, General MacArthur was thrilled as he watched more than fifteen hundred parachutes carrying “my boys” and their supplies smoothly descend. “One plane after another poured out its stream of dropping men over the target field,” MacArthur described. “Everything went like clockwork.”25 Four and a half minutes after the first man jumped, the entire regiment, less the twenty-two men aboard the plane with the defective door, was on the ground.

  The drop was not without its costs. Two men were killed when their chutes failed to open, and a third died when he landed in a tall tree and released his harness, only to fall to the ground. Thirty-three others suffered injuries ranging from broken bones to minor cuts and bruises. That evening when Colonel Lang’s column arrived, medical personnel with the field ambulance reset broken bones and patched up other injuries. There was no opposition, as the Japanese stationed at Nadzab had been ordered earlier to withdraw.

  The Americans had believed that kunai grass about four feet high covered the drop zone around the airstrip; it must have looked that way in photos taken from reconnaissance
planes. Yet the grass, with its razor-sharp edges, was actually closer to ten feet high. Luckily, the paratroopers had been issued machetes to cut their way through the tough grass. It took several hours of men shouting to each other and slashing away at the grass before many of the companies were assembled, by which time the men were completely exhausted by the effort in hundred-degree heat, weighed down with weapons and other equipment. One soldier described the base of the grass as “impossible to walk over . . . kind of like deep snow when you’re trying to walk on it in the winter.”26

  One hour after the Americans jumped, the planes with the Australian gunners and their two dismantled artillery pieces arrived. It was only the second drop for these courageous men who, as members of a field artillery unit, never expected to have to jump out of an airplane six hundred feet above the ground. All landed safely, but it took them several hours to locate the parts so that they could assemble one gun.

  That evening, Colonel Lang’s Australian and Papuan soldiers, who had arrived overland with engineering equipment, cleared the field of obstacles such as bushes and fallen trees while paratroopers stood guard around the entire perimeter. Early the next morning two C-47s landed. The men unloaded two bulldozers, twelve portable flamethrowers, and elements of the American 871st Airborne Engineer Battalion. The flamethrowers were employed to burn away grass. Unfortunately, the fire got out of control and consumed many of the parachutes the men had left where they landed, as well as some supplies, before it finally burned itself out.27

  When the B-17s of the “brass hat” flight returned to Port Moresby on September 5, MacArthur told all three crews gathered around him, “Gentlemen, that was as fine an example of discipline and training as I have ever witnessed.” Kenney learned from the officer who piloted MacArthur’s B-17 that one of its engines had failed during the first fifteen minutes of the flight. The pilot sent an officer to tell MacArthur about the engine and his recommendation that they return to the airfield. The commander in chief responded that he had been on a B-17 with General Kenney when one engine quit, and he knew the bomber could fly as well on three engines as four. There was no turning back.28