Lucky 666

by Bob Drury

  That morning, as Benn, Kenney, and the general’s entourage observed from the beach, McCullar’s Black Jack made 10 runs against the scuttled British merchant ship at 200 feet above the water, dropping a single 100-pound dummy on each approach. Six times the ordnance skipped across the waves and smashed dead-on into the old vessel’s hull.

  Afterward, Benn explained to Kenney that despite the demonstration, the B-17’s enormous size and wingspan rendered daylight skip bombing practically suicidal. The big bombers were just too easy to spot from a distance. But, he added, he and his men had perfected night runs by following the reflective slick of moonshine across the water to their target when the moon was 20 degrees or less above the horizon. In an inside joke, Benn referred to this as his gekko experiments—using the Japanese honorific term for moonlight. Kenney flew back to Brisbane impressed.

  Not so his top aide, Gen. Kenneth Walker. Walker was, in fact, dead set against employing the young major’s novel tactics.

  * * *

  I The actual number varied widely from theater to theater. When America entered the European war, for instance, the requirement was first set at 25 missions before the USAAF raised it to 30, then 35, and finally 50 missions for heavy bombers. In the more chaotic Southwest Pacific Theater with its lack of adequate replacement crews, however, 25 missions may have been the standard early in the war, but Airmen, particularly veteran pilots and bombardiers, routinely surpassed that number.

  II By the time the old aviator retired at the war’s end as a colonel, he had added the Legion of Merit, the Air Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, and nine Purple Hearts to his Distinguished Flying Cross and Silver Star. Gunn remained in the Southwest Pacific after the war, restarting his freight-hauling company, and was killed in 1957 when his plane crashed in the Philippines during a storm.

  14

  A PLACE WHERE TROUBLE STARTED

  BRIGADIER GEN. KENNETH NEWTON WALKER was a bit of a wild card, a rawboned and laconic Gary Cooper to Kenney’s frantic Yankee Doodle Dandy. A sophisticated ladies’ man and something of a prima donna in Kenney’s eyes, Walker at 44 was one of the Army’s youngest generals. The scion of New Mexican ranchers, he found the Brisbane social scene a bit sedate for a man who was known to enjoy a cocktail. There were in fact more than a few eyebrows raised around the bluenosedI at MacArthur’s headquarters when Kenney appointed the two-time divorcé to be his head bomber commander. But Kenney liked and admired Walker’s rapport with the enlisted men, and his deployment to Port Moresby meshed perfectly with Kenney’s leadership to send morale soaring.

  Walker was not afraid to get his hands dirty in the maintenance shed before heading to the chow tent to wait in line just like any other grease monkey—his tie draped over his shoulder, his wire-rim spectacles askew. On one such occasion, while Walker stood at the back of a line so long it curled like a cobra, a newly arrived second lieutenant entered the mess tent and elbowed his way to the front. “General Walker stepped up from the end of the line,” wrote one observer, “took the upstart by the arm, and led him to the rear of the line to wait his turn, demonstrating to the offender that it sometimes takes more than an act of Congress to make a gentleman.”

  And if Walker’s penchant for hitching rides on dangerous bombing runs annoyed Kenney no end, it endeared him to the lower ranks. As one of the 43rd’s flight officers told a reporter, “The general figures he can’t tell the boys to go out and get shot at unless he’s willing to get shot at too.”

  As for his opposition to skip bombing, it no doubt irritated Walker that Maj. Benn, technically one of his own subordinates, had such a direct line to Kenney’s ear. More important, Walker had long been a vocal proponent of high-altitude daylight bombing. This was due in large part to the fact that he had been integral in developing the tactic, which had subsequently been widely adopted by the USAAF. Walker was known as the “high priest” of the Air Force’s strategic “Bomber Mafia,” and to him there was a no more beautiful sight than a close-run bomber formation approaching a target from the west, hidden by the fading night and using the sun’s first light to silhouette a ship’s outline far below. Accordingly, he argued that skip bombing and even parafrag bombing were a waste of the Army’s time and resources.

  There was, however, a flaw in Walker’s premise. He had developed his bombing theories for use against the stationary industrial complexes of the European Theater—munitions factories, steel mills, airplane assembly plants. Such targets did not exist in the Southwest Pacific. As Kenney explained to a reporter, “Shipping and planes are our two chief targets and our own planes should be designed with that in mind. If the same weapon can be used against both, you’re sitting pretty. The weapon is a question of skip bombing and lots of .50 caliber gunfire.”

  Ten months of war against the Japanese had demonstrated that the high and tight formations Walker favored, with bombers unleashing their payloads from 25,000 feet, did not work against shipping. Saturating a target area with bombs, usually in a rectangular pattern, was out of the question, as Kenney had neither the aircraft nor the manpower to engage in what would come to be known as carpet bombing. Moreover, as opposed to carpet bombing, conventional precision-bombing tactics held that a high-altitude formation would have to include at least nine aircraft to hit a vessel zigzagging in evasive maneuvers. That figure was based on statistics compiled by analysts studying planes employing the Norden bombsight under perfect training conditions. Yet the efficacy of the Norden was fast becoming academic, and rare was the day, Kenney soon learned, when he could even put that many bombers in the air at one time.

  In the end, neither Walker’s popularity with the troops nor his reputation as an aviation combat theorist put him in a position to argue with his superior officer when, one night late in October, Kenney sent Benn’s skip bombers aloft on their first combat mission, a run over Rabaul.

  BILL BENN’S FORMATION OF SIX flying fortresses reached Simpson Harbour just before sunrise on October 23. One by one the pilots cut back their engines, descended to mast level, and let loose their 1,000-pounders. The lead bomber took out a merchant ship (which he mistook for a troop transport), as did the second plane in the formation.

  Ken McCullar, flying through the staccato flashes of anti-aircraft fire at 200 feet off the deck, buzzed what he took to be a Japanese destroyer. He estimated that Black Jack was 300 yards from the vessel when his bombardier released his payload. Seconds later fires and explosions threw smoke and debris high into the air. The ship sank within moments, and the 63rd’s trailing aircraft also claimed numerous hits.II

  Back at Port Moresby the entire base awaited the results. When word began to spread of what came to be known as Benn’s and McCullar’s “jackpot night,” one pilot in particular on the 43rd’s intelligence staff was intrigued and enthusiastic. Jay Zeamer pored over the skip bomber’s After-Action report the next morning and, as Benn and McCullar took on more and more missions, over the many mornings to come.

  McCullar’s combat diaries in particular read like rough drafts of the action-adventure novels Jay had devoured as a child. This, for example, was recorded in the aftermath of a night run on a speedy flotilla resupplying Lae during which Black Jack, perforated by anti-aircraft fire, still scored hits on both a torpedo boat and a destroyer: “We spotted the convoy and climbed to about 3500 feet, cut our throttles and RPM back, and made the first skip-bomb run at 200 feet with a speed of 255 miles per hour. The bombs hit just off the end of the boat and anti-aircraft shrapnel hit in the tail gunner’s ammunition can, exploding about 70 [machine-gun] shells and starting a fire. On the next skip-bombing run our #1 engine was hit. However our bombs hit directly, starting a fire on the starboard bow; on run three, also skip-bombing, #1 engine was hit again and all the controls shot away.

  “The engine could not be feathered as the switch did not work. We climbed to 1500 feet and made a run from 1200 feet, this time the bombs hitting close and we were hit again. We climbed to 4000 feet as #1 engine was now go
ne. Another run was made dropping our last bomb and #3 engine cut out, having received a hit in some part of the fuel system. We feathered this engine but found that we could not keep altitude with only two engines. We flew for a while and tried to bring #3 engine in again. In the meantime we sent in our position, condition and course.

  “Number 1 engine got red hot from the windmilling of the prop and it looked like any minute the whole thing would catch fire and blow up. We placed the navigator and bombardier in the back compartment of the plane in case the prop flew off. Then something broke in the prop gear and the engine soon cooled off. Still losing altitude, work was kept up to try and bring #3 engine back. Finally the engine worked to the extent where it would pull 25 inches [of manifold pressure]. All excess weight was thrown overboard, including all our ammunition.”

  McCullar’s next obstacle was the Owen Stanley Range, a dicey climb even with three working engines. With only two, McCullar knew that his Fortress would never gain the lift to clear the peaks. Luckily, as they neared the range’s foothills his number 3 engine suddenly sputtered back to life. McCullar spent the next two hours looking for a gap between the highest mountains. In a pithy if nonchalant coda that encapsulated life and death in the Southwest Pacific Theater of War, McCullar reported, “We found a pass to sneak through, landed o.k. and forgot about it.”

  Reading this After-Action report, Jay had one thought: this was how the war was intended to be fought. He began frequenting the 63rd Squadron’s Operations Hut, hoping someone would be grounded so he could fill in. It was during this period that he became friendly with McCullar, who, like Jay, was acquiring a reputation as a place where trouble started.

  McCullar was no stranger to a good fistfight, and back in Australia stories were legion of his brawls with locals who took exception to their women succumbing to his charms. But one night at Port Moresby his hot temper nearly got the best of him. The incident occurred at the shabby officers club outside Kila Kila when McCullar and some friends from the 43rd overheard an army doctor, a full bird colonel attached to the infantry, loudly and profanely berating the Army Air Force. When the medical officer denigrated Gen. Kenney by name, McCullar challenged him. The infantry officer not only outranked McCullar, but topped him in height, weight, and reach. But when his antagonist stood up, McCullar launched him through the club’s front window and left him sprawled in the mud.

  When word of McCullar’s hooley reached Kenney, accompanied by reports that the battered colonel was seeking to press charges, he reacted immediately. In order to head off the more serious possibility of a court-martial, Kenney ordered his chief of staff to issue a prompt, formal reprimand. With his pilot shielded from harsher discipline, and with the straightest face he could muster, he also personally ordered McCullar “to lay off the colonels from now on.” The punishment was a slap on the wrist compared with what could have been, no doubt because the dashing McCullar had always been one of the general’s pet fliers. As Kenney was to put it, “Hitler might have had a secret weapon as he claimed, but I’d bet it wasn’t as good as Ken McCullar.”

  McCullar was precisely the type of pilot to sense in Jay a kindred free spirit, and he offered to take Jay up with him whenever he had a crew opening. In October they flew three missions together, with Jay serving twice as copilot and once as flight engineer. On their first run, Black Jack was one of nine Fortresses patrolling the Solomons in search of a Japanese convoy that coastwatchers had reported running for Guadalcanal. After hours of patrolling, Maj. Benn in the lead plane was the first to spot the phosphorescent wakes from the line of vessels snaking down The Slot.

  As per Benn’s operational instructions, the first six Fortresses attacked the ships with standard, high-altitude bombing procedures to distract the anti-aircraft gunners. They dropped nearly 50 500-pounders. There were no recorded hits. Meanwhile the planes in Benn’s formation, with McCullar on his wing, glided down in silence through the “moonlit darkness” and released their skipping payload from below 250 feet.

  “Violent explosions and flying debris were observed, with the result that the experiment was considered a success,” Benn wrote in his After-Action report. The squadron claimed a cruiser, a destroyer, and two cargo vessels while two more cargo ships and a troop transport were badly damaged. Jay was ecstatic.

  To Jay, the competence and grace exhibited by pilots like McCullar in the face of great peril were seemingly contagious. On their last flight together, a daylight raid over Japanese holdings on New Guinea’s north coast, McCullar was torqing Black Jack across the sky to avoid the mushrooming black puffs of anti-aircraft fire when they were jumped by five Zeros. Jay, in the copilot’s seat and still more accustomed to flying the B-26, was amazed at the B-17’s maneuverability. Unable to outrun the bogeys, McCullar threw the plane into a swiveling dive and successfully avoided presenting it as a target as he “hedgehopped” from cloud to cloud. His dazzling evasive action left an indelible impression on Jay. With the right man in the pilot’s seat, he realized, a Flying Fortress could move like a fighter plane.

  That final run with McCullar constituted what Jay later called his “graduation ceremony.” He was, he wrote, confident that he had acquired both the flying skills and the leadership qualities to skipper his own Fortress.

  * * *

  I William Manchester reports in American Caesar that MacArthur took but a single alcoholic drink for the entire duration of the war—a glass of brandy, which he did not finish.

  II A U.S. Navy postwar analysis posited that McCullar’s target was more likely a WWI-vintage cruiser.

  15

  “CLEAR AS A BELL”

  IN EARLY NOVEMBER, JAY LEARNED of Gen. Kenney’s desperate need to photograph Rabaul. October had been a particularly brutal month for the Marines battling the Japanese on Guadalcanal, and reports from Naval Intelligence indicated that something big was happening in Simpson Harbour. Over the previous two months, B-17s had flown 180 sorties against Rabaul, and recent missions appeared to confirm a buildup of ships in the thumb-shaped harbor. The weather had been so consistently lousy, however, that no firm estimates could be made.

  MacArthur, Kenney, and the Allied intelligence reports guessed that a large convoy was being assembled to move massive shipments either down The Slot or across the Huon Gulf to reinforce the Imperial Army’s toehold on Buna. Japan’s defeat at Midway, combined with the setbacks on the Coral Sea and the Kokoda Track, had lethally interrupted the enemy’s great Southern Strategy. The planned invasions of Fiji, Samoa, and New Caledonia would have to be postponed, which meant that any hope of taking Hawaii in the near future was on hold as Imperial General Headquarters delineated a strategy for the recovery of Guadalcanal and perhaps even a third ground assault on Port Moresby.

  In either case, the Americans needed to know precisely how large a force was being mustered in Simpson Harbour. And they wanted more than eyeball estimates. They needed hard photographic evidence.

  The United States had horribly neglected to innovate and upgrade its reconnaissance aircraft between the wars, and as a result nearly all its spy planes were jerry-rigged combat planes. The only dedicated photo unit available to Kenney was a ragtag outfit, the 8th Reconnaissance Squadron, whose three primitive flight units consisted of specially modified Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter planes modeled on the British Spitfire. The Lightning fighters were reclassified as F-4s; their cannons and machine guns were removed and replaced with camera equipment and additional fuel tanks. As fighter planes, the F-4s were faster and flew higher than anything the Japanese could send up into the skies, yet for most of 1942 the only such aircraft available to Kenney were the five F-4s of the 8th Reconnaissance Squadron’s “A” flight unit, four of which were consistently grounded for lack of spare parts.

  During this period the recon squadron’s commander, 33-year-old Maj. Karl “Pop” Polifka, did yeoman’s work with the one plane the outfit could usually get into the air. Polifka, a former Oregon lumberjack, nearly single-handedly ph
oto-mapped the coasts and interior of Papua New Guinea and the surrounding islands at great personal peril. The main drawback of the F-4 was its limited range, and the 5th Air Force was less than enthusiastic about lending out its long-range bombers for reconnaissance flights. Yet when time and necessity allowed, Polifka and his pilots were always on the lookout for a B-17 and its crew that they could “borrow” for longer-distance forays.

  On three separate occasions that November, lone Fortresses from the 43rd, carrying cameramen from the 8th Reconnaissance Squadron, were sent up to get the photos of Simpson Harbour that Kenney required. Each time they returned empty-handed—the cloud cover over Rabaul was too heavy for their cameras to penetrate. On the eve of the fourth attempt the pilot scheduled to skipper the photo flight turned up in sick bay, and Jay volunteered for the mission. Following unofficial protocol, the first thing he did was meet with the bomber’s regular flight crew to request permission to lead them. Each man nodded his assent. None of them was aware that Jay had never been officially checked out for the left-hand seat. But, as Jay wryly put it, “they didn’t ask either.”

  During the flight briefing Jay was ordered not to descend below 25,000 feet, and the next morning at just past dawn his Fortress approached Rabaul from the southwest at 28,000 feet. The harbor was socked in by a thick cloud cover, but Jay noticed that a corridor of clear air stretched northwest perhaps 150 miles to the Japanese base at Kavieng on New Ireland. There was something odd about that. Pacific storms, he knew, usually covered hundreds, if not thousands, of miles.