Fortress Rabaul (50 page)

Over the next two months, the crews acquired twelve modified B-25 strafers and adapted to the new techniques. Accustomed to conventional
bombing profiles, they learned to attack at mast height without a bombardier. The old SS
Pruth
served them well, absorbing hundreds of inert bomb strikes and thousands of rounds of machine-gun fire.

Larner and his pilots developed an effective attack profile wherein the B-25s approached the target ship in pairs. At three miles from the target they descended to one thousand feet; then, to throw off enemy antiaircraft gunners, they separated while performing violent evasive maneuvers at full throttle, simultaneously dropping to five hundred feet. While one aircraft strafed the ship from end to end with its ten machine guns, the other made a combination strafing and bombing attack from abeam the vessel.

By the end of February, other squadrons were also participating in coordinated rehearsals against the old wreck. The A-20s and B-25s of the 3rd Attack Group worked on their unique low-level tactics, and the newly equipped RAAF 30 Squadron practiced strafing with its brutish, twin-engine Bristol Beaufighters. Sleekness and beauty were not attributes of the big two-place fighter. With its fat radial engines jutting slightly ahead of the cockpit, the “Beau” was the fighter community’s equivalent of a hulking boxer, complete with a flattened nose. Appropriately, the Beaufighter packed a mighty punch. Four 20mm automatic cannons were mounted in the lower fuselage and six .303-caliber machine guns in the wings, enabling the aircraft to pulverize almost any target, from tanks to aircraft to lightly armored warships.

The A-20s and Beaufighters had their advocates, but Kenney placed all his chips on the modified B-25s. Referring to them as “commerce destroyers,” he was anxious for an opportunity to send them against an enemy convoy. He did not have long to wait.

IN LATE FEBRUARY, only two weeks after the Guadalcanal campaign was declared officially over, Lieutenant General Imamura and Vice Admiral Kusaka initiated plans for a major operation to reinforce Lae with thousands of troops. The movement would require one or more large convoys, but the Japanese had several reasons to be confident. The convoy known as 18 Operation had successfully delivered four thousand troops to Lae in early January, despite the loss of two ships. A month later, the Imperial Navy had snatched almost eleven thousand soldiers from Guadalcanal with night runs by fast warships. Later still, a convoy got through to Wewak without interference. Emboldened by these successes,
Imamura and Kusaka decided to send Lieutenant General Adachi and six thousand troops of the Eighteenth Army to Lae in early March.

But the commanders at Rabaul, as well as their superiors at Imperial General Headquarters and the Combined Fleet, remained ignorant of the Allies’ ability to decipher their radio traffic. At the end of the third week of February, several messages pertaining to the forthcoming operation were intercepted and partially decoded, providing the Allies with significant details of the plans. General Kenney learned of the operation on February 25. He later characterized the intelligence as “rather sketchy,” an inaccurate assessment given the fact that one message from Kusaka’s headquarters to the Combined Fleet gave the arrival of the Imperial Army’s 51st Division at Lae on March 6 and another contained an estimate of the number of transports required. Flying up to Port Moresby on February 26, Kenney personally took charge of planning an all-out effort to smash the convoy.

The one important variable that Kenney and his staff had to deduce was the enemy’s route. “Whitehead and I went over all of the information at hand,” he wrote, “and tried to guess how we would run the convoy if we were Japs.” Plotting all of the known convoy movements between Rabaul and Lae over the past four months, Kenney and Whitehead discovered that the Japanese used two basic routes. The shortest skirted the south coast of New Britain before crossing the Solomon Sea to the Huon Gulf; the other wandered along New Britain’s north coast, then turned south though the Vitiaz Strait, and finally curved around the Huon Peninsula at Finschhafen. The latter route not only took longer but was disadvantaged by natural chokepoints that forced the convoys to steam within confined areas. Simple logic suggested that the Japanese would prefer the shorter route south of New Britain. However, when Kenney and Whitehead consulted their meteorologists, they learned that the weather over the Solomon Sea was forecast to be clear during the period in question, whereas the forecast for the Bismarck Sea was “very bad.” That sealed it for Kenney. He believed the Japanese would follow the longer northern route, despite its drawbacks, in order to hide the convoy beneath the stormy weather.

On the last day of February, Kenney gave Whitehead detailed orders regarding timetables and instructions for conducting dress rehearsals. He also recommended that the P-38s and modified B-25s be flown to the new forward base at Dobodura, near Buna on the northeast coast of New Guinea.
(Occupied in November and still undergoing expansion, Dobodura was destined to become a large and important base for the Allies. Its location provided a huge advantage over Port Moresby by eliminating the need to cross the Owen Stanley Mountains.)

Before flying back to Brisbane that afternoon, Kenney spent some time watching Major Larner’s squadron practice against the SS
Pruth
. When the dress rehearsal ended, Larner boasted that his squadron wouldn’t miss. Kenney admired the major’s cockiness but felt compelled to warn Larner that his crews had better take their mission seriously.

OPERATION 81, as the Japanese called the new convoy, assembled in the anchorage at Rabaul on February 28. Six transports, packed to the limit with approximately six thousand soldiers and many tons of weapons and supplies, rode low in the water. They were joined by an old navy supply ship carrying six hundred SNLF troops, and by a small “sea truck” loaded with 1,650 drums of aviation fuel for the airdrome at Lae. The merchant ships would be escorted by eight veteran destroyers, all of which had fought valiantly in the waters around Guadalcanal.

Admiral Yamamoto, who in February had shifted his flag to the new super-battleship
Musashi
in Truk Lagoon, had misgivings about committing so many first-rate warships to the convoy. “The Commander of the Combined Fleet kindly spared eight of the latest type destroyers,” wrote Lt. Gen. Kane Yoshihara, the Eighteenth Army chief of staff, “though the thought of dispatching them made his heart bleed.”

Soon after midnight on March 1, Rear Adm. Masatomi Kimura led the convoy from Rabaul. Just as Kenney had predicted, the ships steered northwest around Crater Peninsula and entered the Bismarck Sea. Steaming parallel to the northern coast of New Britain, the convoy was limited by the speed of the slowest ship, in this case a leisurely seven knots.

The pace must have been agonizing for the men aboard the jam-packed transports as they pitched and rolled in the storm-tossed Bismarck Sea.
Kyokusei Maru
, a merchant ship originally built in Canada in 1920, was by no means large, yet an estimated 1,200 soldiers were crammed aboard. The 5,943-ton vessel, which had been used at least once to transport POWs from Sumatra to Burma, had been modified to carry humans by fitting the box-shaped cargo holds with multiple levels of wooden decks, each containing row upon row of narrow sleeping platforms.

The other transports in Operation 81 were no different. As early as 1905, the Japanese had adapted a method called the
tsubo
system for calculating the minimum amount of space an individual needed aboard a transport ship. By 1941, the original meager allowance had been cut by a third. Packed into the troopships like sardines, soldiers were expected to withstand days or even weeks of excessive heat and unsanitary conditions without complaining. They called it
chomansai
, “extreme overload,” and shrugged it off as part of military life. Under the circumstances, the soldiers of Operation 81 were no doubt praying for a fast voyage.

ON THE AFTERNOON of March 1, a B-24 of the 321st Bomb Squadron/90th Bomb Group weaved between thunderheads while flying over the rugged mountains of New Britain. Lieutenant Walt Higgins, piloting
Miss Deed
on a methodical reconnaissance of the island, had found nothing of interest off the south coast. He encountered strong storms towering as high as forty thousand feet while crossing the island to examine the north coast, and more by accident than design he stumbled across the convoy at approximately 1500 hours. In the nose of the Liberator, the excited bombardier counted fourteen vessels. Higgins, shot down the last time he’d attempted a solo attack on a convoy, was content to orbit overhead and report the ships’ position.

For the past two days, General Ennis Whitehead had scheduled only essential missions to conserve his air units, and had an impressive number of planes available for the coming battle: 75 light and medium bombers, 39 heavy bombers, and about 130 fighters. At Jackson airdrome, 7 B-17s were airborne within forty minutes of Higgins’s initial sighting report, but they failed to find the convoy in the rapidly settling darkness.

Early the next morning, while short-range bombers and fighters attacked Lae to suppress enemy air support, Major Scott led eight Fortresses of the 63rd Bomb Squadron aloft from Jackson at 0630. Finding the convoy three hours later, they commenced a conventional attack at 6,500 feet. Scott and his two wingmen targeted a large transport, and for once the bombardiers achieved remarkable accuracy. Of the twelve 1,000-pounders dropped, at least four and possibly six were direct hits, and several of the remainder scored as damaging near misses. The exploding bombs tore the guts out of
Kyokusei Maru
, which carried tons of munitions in addition to 1,200 troops. It burned for two hours, then broke in two and sank with heavy
loss of life. The destroyers
Yukikaze
and
Asagumo
picked up survivors and dashed ahead to Lae, delivering about 850 troops. None were in fighting form, having lost virtually all of their weapons and equipment.

Later that day an even larger attack was conducted by eighteen Fortresses of the 64th and 65th Bomb Squadrons, but the results were embarrassing. Out of sixty-nine heavy bombs dropped, only two direct hits and four near misses were claimed. Despite the dismal percentage of hits, one or two of the near misses caused hull damage to the 6,800-ton
Teiyo Maru
, killing or wounding upwards of fifty men.

The twenty-four sorties by the 43rd Bomb Group accounted for one transport sunk and another damaged on March 2, yet the day’s action represented little more than preliminary jabs; a couple of telling blows that drew blood. The next day would be different. For once, the Allies had the equipment and the manpower for a major brawl.

DURING THE NIGHT of March 2-3, surveillance of the convoy was maintained by a flying boat of 11 Squadron piloted by Flt. Lt. Terry Duigan, who had made the first air-sea rescue with a Catalina eleven months earlier. Arriving over the convoy just before midnight, the radar-equipped flying boat shadowed the enemy for several hours before handing the duties off to a B-17 flown by Lt. William B. Trigg, 63rd Bomb Squadron. Trigg and his crew endured repeated attacks by fighters throughout the early morning hours but remained over the convoy by ducking in and out of rain clouds.

Well before dawn, seven Beauforts of RAAF 100 Squadron took off from Milne Bay to attack the convoy with torpedoes. The British-built attack aircraft, the same basic design from which the Beaufighter was derived, encountered heavy weather en route. Only two located the enemy ships, and one was unable to release its torpedo due to a malfunction. The other dropped its single “fish” but the crew observed no indication of a hit.

The next effort by the Allies was far more successful. More than one hundred aircraft took off from Port Moresby, Milne Bay, and Dobodura, and then assembled over Cape Ward Hunt before heading toward the coordinates provided by Lieutenant Trigg. Upon sighting the convoy, the crews followed the procedures rehearsed a few days earlier. First, at 0955 (0755 Japan Standard Time), thirteen Beaufighters of 30 Squadron
swept in from the southwest at five hundred feet. When they got within range of the ships’ antiaircraft guns, they descended almost to the waves and formed a line abreast while accelerating to 250 miles per hour. The destroyer captains, thinking another torpedo attack was underway, reflexively turned toward the Aussie fighters. This was normally a good defense against torpedoes, but it played right into the Beaufighters’ strength, allowing them to rake the ships from bow to stern with their heavy armament. Exploding cannon shells and ribbons of machine-gun fire scythed across the decks, wiping out numerous Japanese gun crews and forcing the survivors to dive for cover.

Moments later, while the remaining Japanese gunners concentrated on the Beaufighters, thirteen B-17s of the 64th, 65th and 403rd Bomb Squadrons roared overhead at seven thousand to nine thousand feet and unleashed their bombs. Directly on their heels came thirteen B-25 Mitchells of the 38th Bomb Group, which also bombed from medium altitude. The results of the level bombing were mixed—a few hits, many misses—but the convoy was forced to break apart as individual ships maneuvered wildly to dodge the falling bombs.

With perfect timing, the modified B-25s of Ed Larner’s 90th Bomb Squadron reached the scene. Larner peeled off and lined up on a destroyer, then noticed that three other B-25s were following him. “
Dammit
,” he growled on the radio, “get the hell off my wing and get your own boat.”

Racing in at full throttle, the B-25 gunships maneuvered to set up beam runs on the scattered transports and destroyers. At a distance of a thousand yards, in some cases less, the pilots squeezed the triggers rigged to their control yokes. The switch activated the electric firing mechanisms of eight Browning M2 machine guns, each with a cyclic rate of eight hundred rounds per minute. Spitting more than one hundred slugs from the combined guns every second, each of the B-25s shook to its rivets.