by John Prados
The last round would be fought over removal of the very barge station that Kusaka had placed at Horaniu, where there were now 600 men. On October 6, the Southeast Area Fleet sent Baron Ijuin with a strong destroyer group to escort a pair of transport units, one of tin cans, the other barges. An aerial scout spotted the Japanese en route, and Captain Frank R. Walker took six destroyers to meet them. This time Ijuin had “air” of his own. A floatplane saw the U.S. warships, and when Walker ducked into a squall to elude the enemy, his forces became separated. But any advantage the baron gained was canceled when the aerial scout reported U.S. strength at four cruisers and three destroyers. Ijuin maneuvered with caution in the belief that a greatly superior fleet aimed at him. Ijuin’s own force had been divided when he detached Captain Hara with two destroyers as a close escort for the convoy. The subsequent action was another nasty scrap that began in confusion and ended with indecision.
In the initial phase, Admiral Ijuin was diverted just before rejoining Captain Hara, leaving him four destroyers against Walker’s three. Ijuin sped to the southeast, closing, and in a position to cross the Americans’ T. Moving too fast and executing a complex maneuver, the Japanese ended on Captain Walker’s port side in torpedo water once the Americans launched on them. Ijuin turned, putting his own force in the trap he had hoped to spring on the enemy. Destroyer Yugumo, last in line, drew the American fire, quickly pounded by five hits. She failed to conform to Ijuin’s maneuvers, advancing on the Americans instead, shooting and launching torpedoes. Walker’s ships reduced Commander Osako Azuma’s vessel to a sinking wreck. Walker had the advantage then, three tin cans against Captain Hara’s ships Shigure and Samidare, while Ijuin was temporarily out of the picture. Then Imperial Navy torpedoes began to impact, and one took off the bow of destroyer Chevalier. The following ship, O’Bannon, collided with her, damaging her own bow. Returning to the action, Ijuin and Hara now had five destroyers against Walker’s Selfridge and the damaged O’Bannon. Then a torpedo hit Walker’s own ship, clipping off her bow, but the baron was headed away. Before Ijuin could turn back and resume the fight, Captain Harold O. Larson reached the scene with three fresh destroyers. Had the battle continued, the Americans would have been outnumbered, but with the advantage of radar-controlled artillery.
Because of the erroneous scout report, Ijuin thought there were cruisers out there he could not account for. He decided to break off. The Chevalier sank later that night, leaving the score one destroyer sunk on each side, plus two American vessels damaged. But by now Halsey’s command could absorb those losses without breaking stride, while the single ship Yugumo represented more than 15 percent of Eighth Fleet strength. A couple dozen Yugumo sailors managed to reach a Japanese island base. Another seventy-eight became American prisoners after rescue by PT boats, fresh subjects for intelligence interrogation. Admirals Kusaka and Samejima could not afford many victories like this Battle of Vella Lavella.
Kusaka marked the success by presenting a ceremonial sword to Captain Hara, plus daggers to each of his destroyer skippers. There were no citations for Baron Ijuin or anyone in his unit. The presentations occurred at a banquet in Hara’s honor at the Rabaul officers’ club. Several geisha added a touch of glamour. Kusaka and Samejima hosted the event with all the top brass, including the other barons, Tomioka and Ijuin, the latter chagrined. Kusaka made a little speech and offered a toast to Hara and his colleagues. But the occasion turned into a disaster. Hara drank too much, and tried to exchange his sword for drinks for his crews. Ijuin promised to buy the sake for the men and led Hara away. The true embarrassment came from a fleet staff officer who had lost many friends on the Yugumo. He piped up, referring to the admiral’s comments, “You have just noted the brief life expectancy of a destroyer. Must we put up with such a situation? Are we going to celebrate next October 26 as the anniversary of the last battle in history in which our carriers took part?”
The officer acknowledged the efforts of the Eleventh Air Fleet but complained of the prosaic Tokyo Express sorties, with all the danger borne by the destroyers—no wonder their life expectancy averaged less than two months—and came back to the big ships: “Why do destroyers have to shoulder the entire burden without the support of our carriers, battleships, and cruisers?” He lashed out, in effect, at Tomioka: “And what is Imperial Headquarters doing in Tokyo? Announcements blare every day that we are bleeding the enemy white in the Solomons. It is we who are being bled white.”
Before he left, Captain Hara witnessed the end of this scene, with Admiral Kusaka in silent misery. Baron Samejima managed a flat reply: “I understand that Commander in Chief Koga is preparing for a decisive naval action in which all our big ships will be deployed.”
The decision would come soon, and William F. Halsey and Chester W. Nimitz were setting the stage at that very moment. The South Pacific commander would invade Bougainville, on Rabaul’s very doorstep. His strength was now such that he could hurl a multidivision force, the I Marine Amphibious Corps, into the fray. Its landing would be planned by Major General Alexander A. Vandegrift, in a brief reappearance as a field commander. Nimitz was going to attack in the Central Pacific, at a place called Tarawa. The Central Pacific action would have an indirect effect on events in the South Pacific. The combination of their efforts created Japan’s last great crisis in the Solomons.
SOPAC’s maneuver began in a low key, with diversionary attacks. A New Zealand brigade landed in the Treasury Islands in the first autonomous action by troops from that nation. Meanwhile Americans—men of the 2nd Marine Parachute Battalion—would hit Choiseul, the Solomon island next down from Bougainville. This last operation illustrates the flexibility that Allied forces could now apply. In finalizing the Bougainville invasion plan, some attention to Choiseul seemed necessary. Admiral Wilkinson and General Vandegrift had an interest in a PT boat base there, and some idea an airfield could be built. But Bougainville remained the center ring. The brass ordered up scouts. A five-man patrol spent a week on Choiseul, including time with local coastwatchers Charles J. Waddell and C. W. Seton. The battle maps had changed so much that by now they were the only ones still behind Japanese lines. The scouts transferred from a PT to a native canoe to get ashore, and used canoes on their longer treks. In late September, two more patrols inserted from Navy seaplanes. The scouts found about a thousand Japanese, mostly at the northern end. The coastwatchers believed forces several times that size had abandoned the southern tip of Choiseul to regroup, apparently awaiting barge transport. Based on this information, on October 12 the brass ordered Marine paratroops to make a diversionary landing. With luck the Japanese would be fooled, distracted from the Bougainville target as well as the New Zealanders whose operation, though secondary, was intended to actually seize the Treasuries. If nothing happened, SOPAC might reinforce the initial incursion and actually develop a Choiseul base.
The 2nd Parachute Battalion, under Lieutenant Colonel Victor H. Krulak, got the Choiseul assignment. Code-named “Blissful,” the operation was anything but. Krulak was to make as much noise as possible. It was the battalion’s first assault landing—and the men were green troops too. But Krulak was first-rate, and he had the benefit of a personal meeting with coastwatcher Seton, who came to Vella Lavella with two native guides to brief the Marine commander. There were only a couple of weeks to prepare. Some 650 paramarines landed at Voza bay the night of October 27. The Marines drove the enemy out of a barge base, but Krulak and others were wounded. His deputy took a strong patrol toward the north end of the island. They got lost. The boss radioed for PT boats to rescue them. The Marines’ plea went to Navy Lieutenant Arthur H. Berndtson, whose torpedo boat detachment had moved forward to Lambu Lambu Cove on Vella Lavella. Berndtson had just two PT boats immediately available, and one of them, PT-59, was refueling at the time. Her skipper was John F. Kennedy.
After his ordeal, Kennedy had demanded another command. Superiors gave him the PT-59, among those rearmed as a gunboat. Lieutenant Kennedy, four of his ori
ginal crew still aboard, had shaken down the boat and took it into action. It was Kennedy’s PT-59 with another that saved the Marine patrol. PT-59 plus PT-236 sailed from Lambu Lambu Cove. With his fuel tank just one-third filled, Kennedy had the gas to get to Choiseul but not enough for the return trip. From the beginning the plan was for the other craft to take her in tow when the time came. The PTs charged into the bay on the afternoon of November 2, guns ablaze. They covered two landing craft that managed to extract the desperate paramarines. One craft smashed up on reefs, and PT-59 took aboard her passengers, whom they returned to Krulak’s camp. A Marine too badly wounded to move stayed in Kennedy’s bunk for the transit across The Slot. He died at sea, just before PT-59 ran out of gas. Kennedy was towed back to Lambu Lambu, where Lieutenant Berndtson now had orders to take all five of his boats to shield the evacuation of Krulak’s Marines. The entire force loaded into landing craft. Krulak’s diversion had run its course. A couple weeks later, following several more missions, Lieutenant Kennedy was examined by a doctor and ruled physically and mentally exhausted. He was invalided home. Kennedy would miss the curtain rising on the last act of the Solomons campaign. There could be no doubt who had the advantage, but even now the Imperial Navy refused to concede defeat.
VII.
FORTRESS RABAUL
In important ways the diminutive General Kenney, a bantam rooster with an aggressive, perhaps bombastic streak, complemented Douglas A. MacArthur. Kenney gave MacArthur his real education in the use of airpower, and the two forged strong links in the fires of New Guinea. MacArthur had always wanted Rabaul. More than a year had passed since Kenney promised to burn it to the ground. That never happened. Preoccupied with SOWESPAC’s New Guinea struggle, for two months during the high summer of 1943, the Fifth Air Force sent not a single bomber against the Japanese bastion. But as summer turned to fall and SOPAC girded to invade Bougainville, Rabaul’s outer redoubt, the moment for action fast approached. Both generals realized that for Halsey to operate so close to the fortress he was going to need the strong arm of Kenney’s bombers.
MacArthur wanted Bougainville too, because Allied aims in the South Pacific had changed again. Since June, Admiral Nimitz had been pressing for an offensive across the Central Pacific to match MacArthur’s thrust from the south. The Joint Chiefs accepted CINCPAC’s bid. Conducting a Central Pacific offensive, among other things, required drawing away Marines plus amphibious shipping from the South Pacific, as well as most newly arriving warships. The 2nd Marine Division, specifically slated for an invasion of Rabaul, went away. Reduced emphasis on the South Pacific meant changing the Cartwheel concept from capturing Rabaul to simply masking it by means of a ring of air bases. Strikes from them would suppress the enemy and make it impossible for the Japanese to supply the place. In August a meeting of the Combined Chiefs of Staff approved that strategy.
Bougainville, with its complex of bases around Buin plus facilities on the eastern and northern coasts, protected Rabaul and had to be smashed. At meetings between SOWESPAC and SOPAC staff, and in direct contacts with MacArthur, the general made it clear the capture of Bougainville was Halsey’s highest priority. The Japanese withdrawn from the Central Solomons had mostly been deposited on Bougainville. Though Halsey had not been able to stanch the pullout, SOPAC intelligence understood the new dispositions. Admiral Kusaka would react promptly and in force to any move against that island. His response would come from Rabaul. Hence the need for a serious effort to contain the Japanese fortress.
The fifty-four-year-old George Kenney knew when his boss was serious, and it was clear that MacArthur was serious about Bougainville. SOWESPAC had spent a year pushing up the northern New Guinea coast, but before MacArthur could go much farther, Rabaul had to be dealt with. Kenney might be bombastic, but he was also resourceful and imaginative. An MIT grad who had honed his skills at the air engineering school and led the Army Air Corps technology development command, Kenney had put his Fifth Air Force in a position to undertake a serious aerial assault. The general not only had backed skip bombing, but he introduced new weapons, like incendiaries and the latest innovation, the parachute-fragmentation (“parafrag”) munition, designed to enable bombers to hit from very low altitude without being blasted by their own ordnance. Kenney eagerly pressed for P-38 aircraft in his Fifth Air Force, and he prevailed on his airmen to accept the newer, even more powerful P-47 Thunderbolt, which SOWESPAC fliers initially resisted as inadequate. In April 1943 the Fifth Air Force had had 516 aircraft. Kenney planned for 1,330 before the end of the year, with a reserve of 25 percent on top of that. He sought a crew-to-aircraft ratio of two to one. General Kenney also obtained bases for the assault on Rabaul, championing the amphibious landings at Woodlark and Kiriwina islands, where other SOWESPAC staff viewed these as diversions from the war in New Guinea. Construction started within days of the June landings. Army engineers built the airfields at Kiriwina; Seabees, those on Woodlark. The first airplane alighted at the latter barely two weeks after the beginning of site clearance. Australian air force wings were based on the islands, and they served as recovery points for damaged aircraft or those low on gas.
Airmen had no illusions about Rabaul. The place was formidable. It was defended by 376 flak guns, both Navy and Army, including 118 of large caliber. The Japanese had nearly two dozen radars with ranges up to ninety miles. And there were fighters to repel the attacks. One B-25 pilot for the Fifth Air Force recalled, “Rabaul was the hardest target without a doubt.” Years later at a squadron reunion a friend remembered how the crews looked scared to death before their first sortie against the fortress. General Kenney himself, writing of one of these Rabaul strikes, recorded it as “the toughest, hardest-fought engagement of the war.” Though they flew for AIRSOLS, not Kenney’s outfit, Halsey’s aviators agreed. They began to hit Rabaul starting in November, when MacArthur, eager to return his focus to New Guinea, made the fortress an AIRSOLS concern. Edward Brisck recalled, “You would just grit your teeth and hold your position in the formation and concentrate on your job.” Or LeRoy Smith: “In the early days when we hit Rabaul, it was a real killer.” Or Charles Kittell: “You’d look around and you couldn’t see the other airplanes because the sky was so full of flak.” But the airmen went back again and again. They understood their purpose.
The men of the “Black Sheep Squadron,” Marine Fighter Squadron 214, are representative. Led by the effervescent Major Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, VMF-214 was a first-team unit that could fight anybody. They reached the Russells in August and went on their initial mission against Bougainville on September 16. The squadron flew from Munda and Vella Lavella. Pappy Boyington, himself shot down over Rabaul just after the New Year, spent the last part of the war in prison camps. Boyington’s intelligence officer, Frank E. Walton, later wrote, “Rabaul was the keystone to the entire Southwest Pacific. If we were able to neutralize it…the enemy would have to pull in their horns all the way back to the Philippines and the Marianas.”
Allied airmen began their siege of Rabaul on October 12, when Kenney sent everything he had that could fly and go that far. The general had told one of Halsey’s staffers that by the twentieth Rabaul would be “dead.” That did not happen, but the fortress would be sorely tried. Kenney’s strike force included 87 B-17 or B-24 heavy bombers, 114 B-25 mediums, 125 P-38 fighters, some 349 warplanes in all. Only fifty-six Japanese interceptors opposed them. Kenney thought there had been massive destruction to Japanese shipping, several of Rabaul’s airfields, and other targets. The field at Vunakanau, at least, was indeed hit hard. There the Japanese 751st Air Group suffered its worst ground losses of the campaign. Caught in the open servicing planes, more than twenty of its scarce maintenance men were killed and more than fifty wounded. Adding to Captain Sato Naohiro’s difficulties, a single squadron of his group lost a half dozen Bettys—and more 751st aircraft were undoubtedly among the thirty bombers smashed at Vunakanau that day.
Over the next week Port Moresby was socked in, precludin
g further attack, though the Japanese struck Oro Bay and mixed it up in dogfights over Wewak. Low cloud cover turned back most of the fighter escort on October 18, but fifty-four B-25s made it to Rabaul. From October 23 to 25, the Fifth Air Force raided the fortress every day. For the Japanese during the second of these raids, the ace Nishizawa Hiroyoshi led one of the intercepting formations. On the twenty-fifth the three P-38 squadrons of “Satan’s Angels,” the 475th Fighter Group, swept over Rabaul with the bombers and wreaked havoc. The JNAF opposition proved somewhat weaker than in the first big raid. Distances and aircraft range were such that escort fighters typically had to refuel at Kiriwina on their return leg before flying on to Dobodura. Another bombing took place on October 29. The weather zeroed out a Halloween attack. Though weather repeatedly interfered with planned raids, during October some 416 sorties by Kenney’s bombers dumped 683 tons of munitions on Rabaul. Kenney’s aerial offensive combined with Halsey’s invasion to confront Kusaka with his greatest challenge.
PRELUDE TO DISASTER
Baron Tomioka had known Admiral Kusaka Jinichi since before the war. Tomioka thought him a cool customer, great in a crisis, never flinching. Kusaka needed all his powers now. In the Solomons the Imperial Navy faced oblivion. The difficulty of conducting surface operations had mounted steadily. But the dangers to ships almost paled next to those confronting the Japanese Naval Air Force. In the summer, already beset by mounting losses, the Navy had committed its Carrier Division 2, flying from Buin. The carrier men shared the Bougainville bases with the fliers of Rear Admiral Kozaka’s 26th Air Flotilla. Half a dozen air strikes were carried out against the Allies on Vella Lavella and four against Rendova. As the planes flew off and did not return, the Navy finally merged the remnants of both flotillas and put Division 2 commander Rear Admiral Sakamaki Munetaka in charge of the combined unit, re-creating the carrier air groups in Singapore. With the merger, Commander Okumiya Masatake, Sakamaki’s air staff officer, who had been planning the night missions, now found all distinction between day and night gone. The men ran on fumes. Malnutrition added to exhaustion, with particular effect on pilots, whose peripheral vision, nerves, and alertness were affected. Okumiya mourned one officer, a well-known ace, flying since the China Incident, who simply crashed into an Allied plane. Okumiya suspected the pilot had never even seen the aircraft with which he collided.
