Fortress Rabaul (21 page)

In addition to the poor living conditions and enemy air attacks, the airfield environment itself was tiresome. Sometimes the runway was hard-packed and dusty, other times slick with mud. And it was almost always under construction as workmen attempted to lengthen it toward Bootless Bay. Heavy rains turned the taxiways into muddy bogs, and aircraft frequently became mired while attempting to maneuver around bomb craters or other obstacles. On several occasions, nervous pilots got stuck while taxiing at high speed to avoid an incoming raid. The airdrome lacked adequate hardstands and revetments, which meant that all of the planes were vulnerable. Those that ran off the taxiways were usually torched by strafing Zeros.

Despite the detrimental conditions and frequent attacks, the garrison and ground crews soldiered on. Their primary motivation came from the knowledge that Port Moresby was the last outpost between the Japanese and Australia. The government was already talking about conceding the northern half of the continent if New Guinea fell, a threshold that became known as the “Brisbane Line.” Australians were deeply concerned,
not realizing that the Imperial Army lacked enough divisions for such a monumental invasion.

Perhaps the most discouraging situation at Port Moresby was the lack of fighter defense. For weeks the garrison had been promised a squadron of Kittyhawks, the Commonwealth’s name for the American-built Curtiss P-40E Warhawk, but delay after delay ensued, and no fighters materialized. In frustration, the troops began to joke sarcastically about “
Neverhawks
” and “Tomorrowhawks.” Finally, an announcement came that the squadron would arrive on March 20.

At the designated time, four fighters approached Seven Mile. A large welcoming committee rushed to the runway, cheering wildly, throwing hats in the air, and waving towels over their heads. But elation turned abruptly to panic as the fighters zoomed down and opened fire. Men scrambled in all directions as yet another strafing attack by enemy Zeros began. Although the raid caused little damage, the uncanny timing of the 4th Air Group was a cruel joke.

THE PROMISED FIGHTERS really did exist. Formed in early March at Townsville, 75 Squadron received an allotment of P-40Es set aside by the U.S. Army. Ground personnel and a few pilots were drawn from 24 Squadron, which had been operating Wirraways from Garbutt Field and Horn Island since evacuating from Rabaul, but most fliers were transferred from other squadrons across Australia. Six pilots were combat veterans, including five with experience against the Germans in the North African desert. The soon-to-be commanding officer, Sqn. Ldr. John F. Jackson, was officially credited with downing six Axis aircraft while flying Hurricanes and Tomahawks. Squadron Leader Peter Jeffrey had scored five victories with the same outfit, 3 Squadron. Even more impressive, both in name and combat record, was Flt. Lt. Peter St. George Bruce Turnbull, with nine Axis planes to his credit. But only one pilot in the new squadron had ever faced the Japanese. Bruce Anderson, a veteran of 24 Squadron, had unsuccessfully attempted to intercept Kawanishi flying boats over Rabaul in January. Later that month, during the heavy carrier attack that preceded the Japanese invasion, he had crashed on takeoff, injuring both legs. After convalescing in an Australian hospital, he rejoined the squadron at Townsville.

Trained in great haste, 75 Squadron encountered trouble almost from the beginning. The first fifteen Kittyhawks were scheduled to reach
Townsville on March 7, but during a transit flight from New South Wales, ten of the fighters encountered terrible weather that resulted in the loss of three aircraft and two pilots. Over the next two weeks, training mishaps wiped out three more fighters, leaving only eighteen available for operations in New Guinea.

On the morning of March 21, after an overnight stop at Horn Island, the Kittyhawks were prepped for the long flight to Port Moresby. Peter Jeffrey led four fighters up a few hours ahead of the rest, reaching the New Guinea coast at approximately1400 hours. After orbiting south of the harbor while their identity was positively established, the Kittyhawks proceeded toward Seven Mile. But not everyone got the word that friend-lies were approaching, and a machine-gunner opened fire at the fighters during their final approach. Other trigger-happy defenders joined in, their accuracy alarmingly good. All four Kittyhawks were damaged, two of them severely, and a bullet missed Jeffrey’s head by less than an inch.

But the near-disaster was quickly forgotten. Soon after the Aussies landed, a lone Japanese reconnaissance bomber appeared over Seven Mile. The crew of the Type 1
rikko
, piloted by CPO Heihatchi Kawai of the 4th Air Group, may have anticipated a routine mission when they left Rabaul that morning, but they were in for a surprise.

John Steinbinder, still stranded at the airdrome, was one of the few Americans to observe the ensuing action, which he later described in his diary: “Just after the P-40s landed, a Japanese reconnaissance ship came over and proceeded dropping bombs. 2 P-40s took off and cut off its retreat and then began a dogfight the likes of which I’ll perhaps never again see.”

Steinbinder’s view from the ground was limited, but what he recorded was accurate. Flight lieutenants Wilbur L. Wackett and Barry M. Cox jumped into the two airworthy Kittyhawks and took off to bushwhack the reconnaissance plane, which snooped around Port Moresby almost every afternoon at about the same time. While they were scrambling, a quick-thinking RAAF communications officer ordered the radioman on duty to hold down his transmitter key—a simple but effective method of “jamming” the frequency—which prevented Kawai’s crew from reporting the presence of the Australian fighters. The outcome was witnessed by hundreds of men including Steinbinder, who evidently thought the fighters were American: “Our P-40s made 5 passes at this bomber,” he wrote, “before the darn thing finally blew up in mid-air.”

The twin-engine Mitsubishi not only burst into flames in view of practically everyone on the ground, its meteoric plunge to the ocean was regarded as a miracle. The garrison, having taken the enemy’s aerial punches on the chin for two months without fighting back, went into a frenzied celebration. One exuberant witness was Osmar White: “We onlookers fell on one another’s necks, howling hysterically with joy,” he wrote. “For miles around, men found they had business at the airfield. They came roaring up the road on lorries, cheering and laughing. They stopped, poured out of the vehicles, and stood staring with a mixture of awe and disbelief at the fighters on the ground.”

The cheers and backslapping continued when the remaining fourteen Kittyhawks arrived. Almost immediately, John Jackson began to plan an attack against the nearest Japanese base, Lae airdrome. Reconnaissance photos taken earlier that day showed numerous planes lined up along the strip, and Jackson was eager to go on the offensive.

Ten Kittyhawks were available the next morning for the mission. If Jackson had any personal worries prior to his first combat against the Japanese, one may have been the fact that his own younger brother was scheduled to participate. Flight Lieutenant Leslie D. Jackson, nine years younger, was untested in combat but eager to match his brother’s score.

As the Kittyhawks began taking off, Plt. Off. John LeGay Brereton swerved to avoid a parked Hudson and ran off the runway at high speed. His fighter caught fire and was eventually destroyed, but not before Brereton was freed from the cockpit.

Now down to nine fighters, Jackson led the attackers in a thrilling climb over the sharp peaks of the Owen Stanley Mountains. As the Kittyhawks weaved among the clouds, backlit by the early morning sun, at least one Aussie pilot was profoundly touched by the splendor of his surroundings. The cumulonimbus clouds resembled “glorious silver mountains” to Flg. Off. John W. W. Piper, who was awed by the vista and yet keenly aware that he would soon be attempting to kill people. To the twenty-four-year-old from Armadale, Victoria, the conflicting emotions were nearly overwhelming.

After crossing the mountains, the Kittyhawks separated into two groups and dived toward Lae. Peter Turnbull held four fighters overhead to provide top cover while John Jackson led the rest down to strafe the airdrome. His plan worked to perfection, catching the Japanese off guard.
The Kittyhawks executed a wide, sweeping turn over the Huon Gulf and attacked from seaward, out of the rising sun. Racing in at low altitude, Jackson and Piper targeted a row of Zeros parked neatly in the middle of the runway. Off to one side, Bruce Anderson, Barry Cox, and Flg. Off. John A. Woods aimed at another row of aircraft.

Each of the Kittyhawks had six Browning M2 .50-caliber machine guns in the wings. When the pilots pressed the trigger on their control stick, the collective firepower of thirty heavy machine guns cut a wide swath down the long rows of parked planes, igniting several blazes.

After the first pass, Jackson boldly swung his fighters around to strafe the airdrome from the opposite direction. The pilots maneuvered without mishap and roared back down the strip. Blinded momentarily by thick columns of black smoke, they fired into the parked planes a second time, Piper dipping so low that the wing of his Kittyhawk struck the propeller of a Zero. The impact ripped one of the machine guns from its mount and damaged a main structural spar, but the sturdy fighter held together.

But that second strafing run gave Japanese antiaircraft gunners time to man the batteries, and a pair of Zeros suddenly appeared. Flight Petty Officer 3rd Class Seiji Ishikawa and his wingman of the same rank, Yutaka Kimura, had departed from Lae an hour and twenty minutes earlier on routine patrol. Spotting the slender Kittyhawks, which they mistook for British Spitfires, the two Japanese dived toward the top cover element led by Turnbull. A third Zero, flown by FPO 3rd Class Keiji Kikuchi, managed to get airborne just before the airstrip was turned into a shambles by the strafers.

Seeing the aggressive Zeros, the Aussies flying top cover shed their belly tanks and engaged the enemy. Turnbull and Flt. Lt. John H. S. Pettit each fired at different planes, yet their bullets seemed to have no effect. Wilbur Wackett discovered that only one of his six guns was working, but he gave chase to a diving Zero without hesitation.

The son of Sir Lawrence J. Wackett, a pioneer of the Australian aviation industry, young Wilbur may have been feeling invincible after helping to shoot down the reconnaissance plane over Port Moresby the previous day. As he dived after the Zero, now some two thousand feet below him, he all but ignored a second enemy fighter that came into view. This was probably Kimura, who lined up on Wackett even as he maneuvered his Kittyhawk into a firing position behind the leader. A few heartbeats later,
Kimura pumped numerous rounds into the fuselage, engine, and cockpit of Wackett’s fighter.

The Kittyhawk belched smoke, its Allison liquid-cooled engine mortally damaged. Wackett evaded further harm by diving into a cloud, but the engine quit soon after, leaving him to glide blindly downward. He came out the bottom of the cloud to find himself only a thousand feet above the Huon Gulf—too low to bail out—so he rode the silent Kittyhawk all the way down. Several miles out to sea, midway between Lae and Salamaua, Wackett executed a dead-stick splashdown. Shaken by the watery crash, not to mention the sight of a nearby shark, he inflated his yellow life preserver and swam clear of the aircraft.

Overhead, Bruce Anderson was also in trouble. Sometime during the second strafing run he was hit by light antiaircraft fire or bounced by a Zero. When last seen, Anderson was behind and below John Woods, who was himself no higher than three hundred feet. For a moment Woods thought he was being chased by an enemy fighter but then realized that Anderson was behind him, his Kittyhawk streaming smoke. Suddenly the mottled-green fighter rolled on its side and plunged toward a hill. Woods did not actually see it impact the jungle, but he knew beyond a doubt that Anderson was dead.
*

No sooner had the remaining Kittyhawks turned for home than two Hudsons from 32 Squadron attempted a bombing run on Lae airdrome. Neither succeeded—the payload from one hit the water short of the runway while the shackles in the other failed to release—and both aircraft were hit by enemy gunfire. Petty Officer Kikuchi damaged one Hudson, piloted by Flt. Lt. Patrick R. McDonnell. Two crewmen were wounded, but the gunners, in turn, evidently shot Kikuchi’s fighter out of the sky. His death in action was later recorded by the 4th Air Group.

Back at Seven Mile, the men of 75 Squadron were thrilled by the success of their first mission. Against the loss of Anderson and Wackett, the strafers reported the destruction of nine planes on the ground. The estimate was
actually low, for once, and the raid earned a tribute from the Japanese in a postwar history: “Virtually the entire contingent of planes (nine Zeros and one land-based attack plane) were strafed on the ground and caught fire, and two Zeros were lost in the air. This was the first Allied raid against a Japanese base in which both fighters and bombers participated.”

Despite the mission’s success, the day concluded badly for 75 Squadron as two more Kittyhawks were destroyed during the afternoon in separate operational accidents. Both pilots were rescued; but with Brereton’s crash on takeoff that morning plus the downing of Anderson and Wackett in combat, the squadron’s accumulated losses came to five Kittyhawks.

The only good news came later with the recovery of Wilbur Wackett, who had staggered ashore barefoot nearly nine hours after ditching his Kittyhawk in the gulf. Friendly natives guided him on a four-day journey through the mountains to the village of Bulwa, where a detachment of New Guinea Volunteer Rifles was camped. Weeks later, sick with malaria, Wackett returned to Port Moresby after crossing the Papuan Peninsula almost entirely on foot. Curiously, Wackett reported that he had witnessed two Japanese fighters falling in flames on the morning of March 22. As a result, Peter Turnbull and John Pettit were each awarded an aerial victory, though Kikuchi’s Zero was actually knocked down by the gunners of a Hudson.

THE DAY AFTER Jackson’s surprise raid, in what was undoubtedly a measure of retaliation, nineteen Type 1 bombers from Rabaul attacked Seven Mile airdrome. The
rikko
arrived overhead at about 1330 on March 23 and dropped their bombs just as several Kittyhawks scrambled. Two fighters got stuck in the mud, and the rest took off barely ahead of the exploding bombs. Fifty minutes later, four Zeros swooped down and strafed the runway, destroying both of the mired Kittyhawks and damaging a third.