Fortress Rabaul: The Battle for the Southwest Pacific, January 1942-April 1943

by Bruce Gamble

  AT 0730 JAPAN STANDARD TIME, Yamamoto’s flight was just beginning its descent over the jungles of Bougainville. Vice Admiral Ugaki, seated directly behind the pilot of the second bomber, was handed a note: the bombers would land at Ballale in fifteen minutes, exactly on schedule. Ugaki barely had time to digest the reassurance before the plane abruptly pitched downward. It took him a moment to realize that the pilot, Petty Officer Hayashi, was taking evasive action.

  The bomber leveled off at 150 feet, and the flight crew jumped into action, opening gun blisters and the dorsal port. “It got noisy for a while with the handling of machine guns and the wind blowing in,” recalled Ugaki. Only later did he learn that the escorting Zeros had spotted enemy fighters and dived to intercept them. This alerted the bomber pilots, but there was nowhere to run. Within seconds, both of the Bettys were under attack.

  AFTER FLYING FOR two hours on five different compass headings using only a simple compass and dead reckoning, John Mitchell’s P-38s intercepted the Yamamoto flight within a minute of the estimated time. Jack Jacobson, like everyone else on the flight, considered Mitchell a magician. Undetected because of their olive drab paint, the Lightnings held their course and altitude until they were almost underneath the Japanese formation. Then Mitchell swung his fighters to a parallel course and hauled back on the controls in a thirty-degree climb. The other pilots followed with smooth coordination, sending their P-38s skyward like a volley of surface-to-air missiles.

  “Skin ’em off,” Mitchell said over the radio, and the pilots flipped the switches that released their external fuel tanks.

  The four shooters tightened their formation. Flying on Lanphier’s wing was 1st Lt. Rex T. Barber, followed by the two alternates, Holmes and Hine. But a problem arose when Holmes could not get his drop tanks to release. If they failed to disconnect, he would be out of the fight. He’d used up the tanks’ combined three hundred gallons of gasoline getting to Bougainville, which meant they now contained raw vapor—far more explosive than the fuel in its liquid state. He finally shrugged the tanks loose, but only after putting his P-38 into a power dive and then yanking back on the wheel while simultaneously kicking full left rudder. The sudden high-g maneuver literally ripped the tanks from beneath the wings. By this time, however, Holmes and his wingman (who had faithfully stuck with his leader) were out of position to attack the Bettys.

  That left only Lanphier and Barber to charge after the bombers, which crossed their path from left to right while descending through three thousand feet. As the two fighters positioned themselves for an attack run, the three Zeros on the right side of the Japanese formation raced forward to intervene. Seeing their approach, Lanphier abandoned his gunnery run and pulled up to face the Zeros head-on.

  John Mitchell, leading the top-cover Lightnings in a climb to their assigned altitude, could scarcely believe his eyes. The P-38 drivers had been instructed by Rear Admiral Mitscher to get Yamamoto “at any cost,” which meant ramming his bomber if need be. Tom Lanphier, the most talented young pilot in the killer group, was mere moments away from shooting down the most important target of the Pacific war—yet he deliberately turned away because of a few inconsequential Zeros. Flying on Mitchell’s wing, Jack Jacobson had a similar reaction. “I cannot understand why Lanphier would give up a hero’s chance of a lifetime by relinquishing his lead shot to his wingman,” Jacobson later wrote. “He was a very aggressive combat fighter pilot; an ‘A’ type personality [with] political ambitions. Did he chicken out?”

  Only one P-38 remained in position to attack the bombers, which were now down to about one thousand feet. Rex Barber rolled his big fighter to the right and simultaneously lowered the nose, not realizing that the second bomber was beneath his belly. Petty Officer Hiyashi was forced to take hard evasive action, diving to the left to avoid colliding with Barber. At the same time, the lead Betty dived out to the right, and the two rikko became widely separated.

  Rolling wings-level, Barber found himself behind and slightly left of the lead bomber—and closing fast. He wondered briefly why the potent 20mm tail cannon didn’t blast him, not learning until much later that the gunner’s position was vacated to make room for the luggage brought by Yamamoto and his staff. Boring in to almost point-blank range, Barber thumbed the trigger buttons on the P-38’s control wheel. Four tightly concentrated streams of .50-caliber slugs blazed from the nose of the fighter, joined by the rapid thumping of the 20mm cannon. The heavy rounds angled across the fuselage and impacted the right engine, so Barber tapped the left rudder pedal and sent the next rounds through the vertical stabilizer. Firing another burst into the right engine, he dragged his gunfire across the Betty’s fuselage and into the opposite engine. Black smoke erupted from the bomber, which suddenly slowed, then rolled to the left so rapidly that the P-38 almost struck the bomber’s right wingtip.

  In the second bomber, Vice Admiral Ugaki had the presence of mind to check on the condition of Yamamoto’s plane. He was not prepared for the shock of what he saw.

  The first plane was staggering southward, just brushing the jungle top with reduced speed, emitting black smoke and flame. It was about four thousand meters away from us. I just said to myself, “My God!” I could think of nothing else. I grabbed the shoulder of Air Staff Officer Muroi, pointed to the first aircraft, and said, “Look at the commander in chief’s plane!” This became my parting with him forever. All this happened in only about twenty seconds.

  In the meantime, my plane turned again sharply to evade another enemy attack, and we lost sight of the commander in chief’s aircraft. I waited impatiently for the plane to get back to the level while full of anxiety, though the result seemed apparent. The next glance revealed that the plane was no more to be seen, only a pall of black smoke rising to the sky from the jungle. Oh! Everything was over now!

  The sudden and erratic movements of Yamamoto’s bomber, which crashed into thick jungle on Bougainville, gave Barber the impression that he may have hit the pilot. This may have been true. Admiral Yamamoto, sitting to the left of Chief Petty Officer Kotani, was almost certainly dead. In fact, he had probably died instantly when Barber’s gunfire raked across the bomber from the right engine to the left. Among the bullets that penetrated the fuselage, two struck the commander in chief from behind as he sat in the left front seat. One, evidently half-spent, entered his left shoulder but did not exit; the other struck his lower left jaw and exited from his right temple, near the eye. No one could have survived such a wound from a .50 caliber slug.

  The second Type 1 bomber, carrying Chief of Staff Ugaki, eluded the P-38s for only a few minutes longer. All of the available evidence suggests that Frank Holmes, after shedding his wing tanks and allegedly shooting down two of the defending Zeros, caught up with the bomber as it tried to escape seaward at wave-top altitude. The scene aboard the bomber was one of bedlam, according to Ugaki. “The enemy P-38 rapidly closed in, taking advantage of his superior speed. His gunfire caught us splendidly, and oncoming bullets were seen on both sides of our plane. I felt them hitting our aircraft from time to time. Now we were hopeless, and I thought my end was very near behind.”

  One of the staff officers was sprawled over a worktable, probably dead, when Petty Officer Hayashi began losing control of the bomber. Smoke trailed from at least one engine. Hayashi retarded the throttles, but the aircraft suddenly shed its right wing, rolled more than ninety degrees to the left, and slammed into the sea. By some miracle, three men were ejected from the aircraft on impact and survived. Vice Admiral Ugaki sustained serious injuries, including a broken wrist and numerous lacerations, while Petty Officer Hayashi only had a few bumps and scratches. The other survivor was the fleet paymaster, Rear Adm. Gen Kitamura, who was partially blinded and could not speak due to “a big hole in his throat.”

  Rex Barber had also fired upon the second bomber just before it crashed. In fact, pieces of the exploding plane damaged the belly and wing of his P-38. Thus both of the Betty bombers were successfully shot do
wn thanks to the split-second perfection of John Mitchell’s plan. The Lightnings promptly headed back toward Guadalcanal, every man for himself, before the Zeros at Buin and Ballale could intercept them. Barber’s plane was badly shot up by some of the six defending Zeros, but it got him home; Frank Holmes, low on fuel, landed at the Russells; Ray Hine never did show up. He may have been the victim of an avenging Zero, but the cause of his demise has never been positively determined.

  THE “YAMAMOTO MISSION” as it came to be known, was embroiled in controversy from the moment the victorious pilots landed back at Fighter 2. Indeed the debate still rages, extending well beyond the deaths of the principal players. When the airmen returned to Guadalcanal on April 18, Tom Lanphier proclaimed, “I got Yamamoto! I got Yamamoto!” He immediately began to promote his alleged accomplishment in every way possible, from the post-mission debriefings to the writing of the official report. Donald Davis, author of Lightning Strike: The Secret Mission to Kill Yamamoto and Avenge Pearl Harbor, provides a convincing argument that Lanphier, who had earned a degree in journalism from Stanford and worked as a reporter for the San Francisco News, composed and typed the report himself.

  As a result of the initial debriefings and questionable report, credit was initially awarded to Lanphier, Barber, and Holmes for one bomber each. After reviewing the case and discerning that only two bombers were present, the air force amended the victories to show one-half credit each for Barber and Lanphier against the lead bomber and one-half credit each to Barber and Holmes for the second bomber. Barber was content with the arrangement, unlike the politically ambitious Lanphier. For decades Lanphier campaigned to obtain sole credit for killing Yamamoto.

  Curiously, no one actually saw Lanphier shoot at either of the bombers, and there is credible evidence, albeit circumstantial, that he never did. Possibly the most damning evidence, revealed by the 1991 publication of Admiral Ugaki’s annotated diary in English, was the chronology of the attack on the lead bomber. Ugaki stated that Yamamoto’s aircraft was on fire within twenty seconds of the first attack (conducted by Barber), at which point Ugaki temporarily lost sight of the lead bomber while his own underwent violent maneuvers. When he next looked, Yamamoto’s plane had already crashed. As described independently by both Ugaki and Barber, everything happened quickly.

  Tom Lanphier had a different story. He asserted that after he turned toward the three attacking Zeros, he downed one and fought his way past the other two. Then, zooming up to six thousand feet, he looped over on his back and spotted a Japanese bomber far below, just above the jungle. He chopped the throttles, extended his flaps to retard the Lightning’s speed, and dropped down on the bomber while firing a long burst at full deflection—the most difficult angle for shooting. Furthermore, he claimed that the rear gunner in the bomber was firing back at him.

  Doug Canning, the last surviving member of the Yamamoto mission, believes that Lanphier’s version is bogus: “According to the Japanese, they had a lot of luggage in the back of the bomber and there was no place for the tail gunner to fit,” he said. “This indicates to me that Tom was not telling the truth. He wanted to be president of the United States. That was his goal. He thought that being famous would help him.”

  The biggest flaw in Lanphier’s account involves time. All of the dog-fighting and maneuvering that he described would have taken at least a couple of minutes—and possibly longer. Canning is convinced that Lanphier could not possibly have accomplished all that he claimed and still manage to attack Yamamoto’s bomber before it crashed into the jungle.

  Over the years, Lanphier altered his story several times and wrote an autobiography to back his claims, but it was never published. Ultimately his credibility disintegrated, in part because of the inconsistencies in his ever-evolving story and partly through his acrimonious insistence that he alone deserved credit. Today, historians have come to the near-unanimous conclusion that Rex Barber, who died in 2001, deserves full credit for shooting down Yamamoto. At least one organization is pushing for a Medal of Honor in Barber’s behalf.

  Lesser controversies also surfaced after the Yamamoto mission. All four pilots in the “killer” flight were credited with shooting down at least one Zero during the opening moments of the interception, but the combat log of Air Group 204, together with the testimony of the only escort pilot who survived the war, proves that none of the six Zeros was destroyed. In some cases, credit for victories was later rescinded by the U.S. Air Force. Tom Lanphier lost credit for the Zero he claimed that morning and subsequently dropped from the ranks of World War II aces because he had less than five total victories.

  The Japanese also contributed to the controversies surrounding Yamamoto’s death. Soon after the action, most of the escorting Rei-sen landed at Buin, where army and navy staffs waited in full dress uniform to greet Yamamoto. They were stunned by the reports that the commander in chief’s plane had been shot down. The last of the escorts to land was FPO Kenji Yanagiya. He was distraught, like the other Zero pilots, and could not bring himself to admit that he had failed his assignment.

  Years later, Yanagiya’s recollections of that disturbing moment were incorporated into a small paperback published by the Naval Air Group 204 Association:

  The disappointing and shocking report by the crews caused a great deal of restlessness at the base. Yanagiya, who chased the enemy to the outside of the Shortlands, came back last. He got down from the plane with tottering steps and a blank expression, just like a sleepwalker’s. As if the officers could not believe the report given by the previously arrived members, they called Yanagiya and asked, “Was Admiral Yamamoto really killed?”

  The faces of the commanders were pale. Yanagiya could not say that the Admiral had died. He was hesitant to give further blows to the dismayed officers and push them too far. On top of that, he did not have the face to say, “Yes. He is dead,” while the six escort planes had no real damage.

  Yanagiya answered in a roundabout way, “Because the Admiral made an emergency landing in such a fierce fire, he may not have survived. However, I cannot be assertive because I myself did not see him.”

  Search teams were sent out in the vain hope of finding someone alive at the crash site, which was easily visible from the air. All around the point of impact, the trees were blackened by fire. Locating the site on foot in the midst of the thick, primeval jungle was another matter. Not until the evening of April 19 did a party of soldiers stumble across the wreckage, having searched for the better part of two days. The plane was not completely destroyed—its wings and engines had broken off, yet were mostly intact—but the crumpled forward half of the fuselage was “a burned-out hulk.”

  The condition of the bomber is consistent with what typically happens when a large aircraft plunges in flames into a forested area. However, the accounts of what the searchers discovered outside the plane do not make sense. Yamamoto’s body was allegedly found among some trees to the left of the fuselage, still strapped in his seat, his uniform barely singed. His appearance was peaceful, as though asleep, and his left hand gripped his sword. In virtually every account, the description of Yamamoto’s condition is the same. The Japanese would have us believe that his bomber crashed in flames into dense jungle, creating secondary fires that blackened the surrounding trees, yet somehow Yamamoto was neither burned nor disfigured when his body was ejected, seat and all, from the aircraft. The depiction is patently contrived and smacks of a carefully controlled cover-up.

  The army search party also found evidence of the two bullet wounds in Yamamoto’s body. A navy medical officer supposedly confirmed the wounds while conducting a preliminary examination on April 20 but reported the wounds as small. This also bends logic far beyond the boundaries of common sense. If a .50-caliber bullet pierced Yamamoto’s left jaw and exited near his right eye, it is highly probable that much of his skull was blown away. In that case, the Japanese went to considerable lengths to prevent any mention of this ghastly disfigurement. The other possibility is
that a much smaller fragment—a piece of a bullet or shrapnel from a 20mm shell—struck Yamamoto. Either way, the doctor who examined Yamamoto’s head wound declared, “This alone would have killed him outright.” It is also well worth noting that a quarter of a century later, Japanese biographer Hiroyuki Agawa stated that the medical report was “tampered with, on orders from above, in order to make things look better.” Ultimately, so many details regarding Yamamoto’s condition were whitewashed that it is difficult to accept any of them at face value.

  IN KEEPING WITH Shinto tradition, the bodies of Yamamoto and the other crash victims were placed in coffins and cremated at Buin on April 21. Some of the corpses were already burned beyond recognition, to the point of being carbonized. Yamamoto’s cremation was conducted in a separate pit, after which his ashes were placed in a small wooden box.

  Out of concern that the news of Yamamoto’s death would cause a general panic across the empire, the story was kept secret for more than four weeks while the government and Imperial General Headquarters decided what to do. Finally, on May 21, the Johokyoku issued a carefully prepared statement, and the following day the press released the story of Yamamoto’s “heroic end.” The front pages featured a large photograph of the admiral in his dress whites, taken at Rabaul during the recent offensive. For the next several days, articles exhorting the Japanese people to “exemplify the spirit of Yamamoto” were published across the nation.

  In death, Yamamoto received royal treatment. His Shinto funeral rites were spread over a period of four days. There were special ceremonies to mark the return of his ashes to Japan; others to purify the graveyard where the ashes would be interred (alongside those of Fleet Admiral Togo, the hero of the Russo-Japanese War); and, in a particularly rare honor, an imperial address “to the departed spirit” was granted on June 4 by His Majesty the Emperor.