THE AIR WAR Number 133

FOR RABAUL
3 3

9 770306 154080

£3.95
NUMBER 133
© Copyright After the Battle 2006
Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. Ramsey
Editor: Karel Margry
Published by
Battle of Britain International Ltd.,
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Telephone: 020 7836 5376. Fax: 020 7497 2539 Rabaul town lies at the north-east tip of the large island of New Britain in the Bis-
United Kingdom Newsagent Distribution: marck Archipelago in the South Pacific (see the map on page 15). Built on a reclaimed
Lakeside Publishing Services Ltd, Unit 2, mangrove swamp, within the caldera of a large volcano, its name means ‘mangrove’
Rich Industrial Estate, Devon Street, London SE15 1JR in the local Tolia language. The town was set up in the beginning of the 20th century
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by the German Empire to become the new capital of what was then the German
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Fax: 1-203-965-0047 the British Empire and Rabaul became the capital of the Territory of New Guinea,
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Vanwell Publishing Ltd., PO Box 2131, ther developed the town, its natural harbour making it an ideal port. This is Mango
1 Northrup Crescent, Avenue, Rabaul’s main street, as it looked before the war. (AWM)
St. Catharines, Ontario L2R 7S2.
Telephone: (905) 937 3100 Fax: (905) 937 1760 When the Pacific War broke out, about date from the League of Nations. Because of
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Australian Subscriptions and Back Issues: lived in Rabaul, located at the eastern end of made to move the capital to Lae on the
Technical Book and Magazine Company, Pty, Ltd., New Britain Island in the South Pacific Bis- Huon Gulf of New Guinea, but the war inter-
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the town and environs brought the popula- located in the government houses in the
New Zealand Distribution: tion up to around 8,000. The town itself was north-eastern section of town.
Dal McGuirk’s “MILITARY ARCHIVE”, P.O. Box 24486, mainly located on the northern and eastern Given its location and harbour, Rabaul
Royal Oak, Auckland 1030 New Zealand. shores of Simpson Harbor since the Mala- was also a commercial centre with the two
Telephone: 021 627 870 Fax: 9-6252817 guna ridges left little room for establish- big South Pacific trading companies, Burns
E-mail: milrchiv@mist.co.nz
Italian Distribution: ments on the western shore. Rabaul served Philp and W. R. Carpenter, dominating the
Tuttostoria, PO Box 395, 1-43100 Parma. as the capital of New Guinea — the former town’s commercial life. But the Chinese,
Telephone: ++390521 29 27 33, Fax: ++390521 29 03 87 German colony made up of north-east New located in Chinatown in the north-eastern
E-mail: tuttostoria@libero.it Guinea, the Admiralty Islands, the Bismarck section of town, were also active in com-
Dutch Language Edition:
SI Publicaties/Quo Vadis, Postbus 282, 6800 AG Arnhem. Islands and Bougainville — which the Aus- merce and in fact owned the two largest
Telephone: 026-4462834 tralians had captured at the beginning of buildings in town, the Cosmopolitan and
E-mail: si@sipublicaties.nl World War I and administered under man- Pacific Hotels.

CONTENTS
THE AIR WAR FOR RABAUL 2
WRECK RECOVERY
Aichi D3A ‘Val’ Recovery 34
WAR FILM
They Were Not Divided 38
IT HAPPENED HERE
Rückmarsch 46
Front Cover: A Japanese Type 96 25mm twin-
mount light anti-aircraft gun surviving in the
bush at Tavui Point, north of Rabaul town, on
New Britain in the south Pacific. (Steve
Saunders)
Centre Pages: The wreck of a Japanese Aichi
D3A ‘Val’ bomber enduring in the waters off
Cape Markus in New Britain. Lost in December
1943, it was not discovered until 2001 and still
holds the skeletal remains of its two-man crew.
(Blair Nixon)
Back Cover: The Australian Memorial at Rabaul fea-
tures a cairn in remembrance of the Montevideo
Maru, a Japanese cargo ship which sailed from
Rabaul in June 1942 carrying 845 Allied prisoners
of war and 208 civilian internees. The ship was tor-
pedoed off the Philippines on July 1 and sank with Ringed as it is by active volcanoes, Rabaul has always been and still is vulnerable to
the loss of all on board. (Steve Saunders) eruptions. Back in 1878 an eruption had caused the formation of a new cone, Vulcan,
Acknowledgements: The Editor would like to on the south-west side of the harbour. In 1937 two of the volcanoes, Tavurvur and
express his special thanks to Steve Saunders of
the Rabaul Volcanic Observatory who, together Vulcan, erupted killing 507 people and causing enormous damage. The air raids of
with Neville Howcroft, Zanchie Roberto and Toea the war years caused further damage but the town was rebuilt after the war. Then on
Chan, took the aerial comparison photos for the September 19, 1994, particularly heavy eruptions of Tavurvur and Vulcan destroyed
Rabaul story. He also thanks Steve for taking sev- Lakunai airport and covered most of the township with heavy ashfall. The majority of
eral additional photos on the ground. Further- the buildings in the eastern half of town collapsed due to the weight of the ash on
more, the Editor is very grateful to Phillip Bradley their roofs. The ruins of the wrecked town were mostly bulldozed flat and the area is
and Gail Parker for providing other Rabaul pho-
tographs from their own collections. now reverting back to bush. Only a handful of undamaged and a few interesting
Photo Credits: AWM – Australian War Memorial; derelict buildings remain today. This last eruption incidentally also prompted the
BA – Bundesarchiv; USNA – US National Archives; relocation of the provincial capital to Kokopo, located on the coast some ten miles to
USNHF – US Naval Historical Foundation. the south-east, at a safer distance from the volcanoes. (Day)

2
Captured by the Japanese in January 1942, Rabaul was turned
into a strong naval and air force base, soon establishing itself
as the keystone of Japanese presence in the south-west
Pacific. By 1943 some 110,000 troops were based there. This
picture, taken in September 1945 after the Japanese surrender,
shows the town, part of Simpson Harbor and three of the five
volcanoes that encircle the town (L-R): Mother (local name
Kombiu), South Daughter (Turangunan) and Tavurvur
(Matupit). In the foreground of Tavurvur lies Lakunai airfield.
(AWM)

THE AIR WAR FOR RABAUL

Mango Avenue and Casuarina (Yara)
Street were the main north-south thorough-
fares on the eastern side, Mango Avenue
Immediately behind this wretched runway a
ghastly volcano loomed over 700 feet into
the air. Every few minutes the ground trem-
By Ronnie Day
eventually turning into Sulphur Creek Road bled and the volcano groaned deeply, then war with Japan appeared imminent, the
that continued on south to Lakunai Airport hurled out stones and thick, choking smoke.’ Americans and Australians proposed to turn
and Matupit Island. Malaguna Road consti- Both Rabaul’s strategic location and poten- Rabaul into a fleet base with airfields to serve
tuted the main east-west avenue running just tial military assets were known in Washington as a link in the aircraft ferry route from
behind the waterfront buildings and forking and Tokyo for years before the war broke out. Hawaii to the Philippines and officials of both
at the western edge of town. Tunnel Road, In the 1930s, American planners working on countries inspected the area. But as the mili-
named for the tunnel the Germans had dri- various revisions of the plan to advance across tary commander in Port Moresby, Australian
ven through the ridge, veered west across the the Central Pacific and engage the Japanese Major-General Basil Morris, noted in his
narrow neck of land to the sea. Kokopo in a Mahan-type decisive battle— War Plan diary ‘we did the reconnaissance alright as will
Road ran south, skirted the harbour and Orange — briefly considered using Rabaul for be seen but the Nips did not give us time to
Karavia Bay and continued along the shore a southern approach. In the fall of 1941 when bring the plans to fruition.’
to Kokopo (called Herbertshöhe when New
Guinea was a German colony) and
Vunapopo, a Catholic mission centre.
Rabaul was — and is — both picturesque
and dangerous. It sits on the rim of the
caldera of an ancient volcano. The harbour,
one of the finest in the South Pacific, was
formed when part of the southern rim had
collapsed. Extinct volcanoes ring the town,
Mother (2,257 feet) and the lesser North
Daughter and South Daughter forming the
skyline that is so distinctive from the air. The
danger comes from Tavurvur, just across
Matupit Harbor from Lakunai, and Vulcan
on the western shore of the harbour that had
first appeared as an island. Both exploded in
1937, Vulcan cone attaching itself to the
shore. In 1941, Tavurvur erupted once again
and when the Japanese landed, was still
pouring smoke and ash into the sky. Flight
Petty Officer 1st Class (PO1c) Saburo Sakai
who arrived from Bali in April 1942 with the
Tainan Naval Air Group (Kokutai) wrote
that ‘if Bali had been paradise, then Rabaul
was plucked from the very depths of hell
itself. There was a narrow and dusty airstrip The same view today, photographed by Gail Parker from the car park of the present-
which was to serve our group. It was the day Rabaul Volcano Observatory on the flanks of North Daughter (Tovanumbatir).
worst airfield I had ever seen anywhere. The ruined eastern half of the town is partly obscured by the palm trees on the left.

3
Map of the Rabaul area showing the ring of volcanoes and the airfields used by the Japanese during the war.

The Japanese on the other hand, once the Kavieng on the north-western tip of New Ire- The task of taking Rabaul fell to Vice-
Southern Advance into the East Indies and land and Lae on New Guinea’s Huon Gulf, Admiral Shigeyoshi Inouye and his Fourth
South-East Asia had been decided upon, had and on the 22nd returned to Rabaul. There Fleet. Shortly after midnight on the morning
Rabaul as one of their major objectives to be were no targets for the Japanese pilots on the of January 23, Major-General Tomitaro
taken along with the Philippines, South-East second raid since the three remaining Aus- Horii’s South Seas Detachment of 5,000 men
Asia and the Dutch East Indies during the tralian aircraft had flown out the day before built around the 144th Infantry Regiment
First Phase Operations. A base there could and the Japanese, anxious to avoid damaging landed, using the glow from Tavurvur as a
guard the southern flank of Truk 800 miles to the town, amused themselves by performing navigational marker. Heavy and light cruis-
the north, prevent an Allied advance to the aerobatics. Watching from his command air- ers of the Fourth Fleet covered the trans-
Philippines by way of New Guinea, and, if craft, Commander Matsuo Fuchida, who six ports. By dawn the Japanese were in control
the Imperial Navy could convince the Imper- weeks earlier had led the Pearl Harbor of Rabaul and by noon organised resistance
ial Army, provide the springboard for a fur- attack force, wrote after the war that ‘if ever had ended. Some of the Australian troops
ther advance into the South Pacific. a sledgehammer had been used to crack an escaped to the south, others were captured
The Australian government could do little egg, this was the time.’ and some executed.
to defend Rabaul. Its armed forces were
fighting with the British and were strewn
from the Western Desert to Singapore. On
the other hand, voluntary withdrawal was
ruled out on the grounds that if the United
States was forced to withdraw from the
Philippines, the Americans might use it as a
fleet base. The negative effect it might have
on Dutch morale was also a consideration.
So, as was the case on a number of other
islands, the forces already in place were left
to do the best they could. These forces were
meagre indeed. On the ground, the Aus-
tralians had one battalion, the 2/22nd, some
support units and the local militia — the New
Guinea Volunteer Rifles — in position from
Vulcan to Vunakanau. At the primitive
airstrip at Vunakanau, No. 24 Squadron of
ten Wirraway fighter/trainers and four Hud-
son bombers provided the sole air defence.
The Japanese, while fully aware of
Rabaul’s weak defences, nevertheless struck
with overwhelming force. Perhaps their
experience at Wake Island a month before
had been a lesson (see After the Battle No.
42). Naval land-attack medium bombers and
flying boats from Truk began hitting the air-
fields, wharves, and the few vessels in Simp-
son Harbor on January 4, 1942. On the 20th
Vice-Admiral Chuichi Nagumo with four
carriers — Akagi, Kaga, Shokaku and A relic from the ill-fated 1942 Australian defence of Rabaul: a 2-pdr anti-tank gun left
Zuikaku — struck Rabaul, next day hit by the 17th Anti-Tank Battery near Malmaluan look-out. (Bradley)

4
Although the Japanese had at first been slow to improve the Simpson Harbor and separated from Tavurvur by the water of
facilities and defences of Rabaul, by the autumn of 1943 they Matupit (Greet) Harbor. Built by the Australians before the war,
had four airfields defending the town and harbour. The first it had an all-weather surface of sand and volcanic ash and was
was Lakunai, Rabaul’s original airport, on the east side of of international standard.

Even as fighting moved south, the Japan-

ese began work to convert Rabaul into what
was to become their major base in the South
Pacific. By western standards, progress was
slow. In somewhat of an understatement, the
Japanese official naval historians wrote in
the Senshi Sosho (War History Series) ‘thus,
the base of Rabaul was gradually arranged.’
The first priority, of course, was the wharves
and the airfields. Vice-Admiral Masao
Kanazawa’s 8th Special Naval Base Force
(the Japanese unit equipped to operate for-
ward bases) had responsibility for the first,
the 7th Naval Construction Unit was to
attend to the latter. The Japanese had care-
fully avoided damaging the port facilities or
the town and so the work of the 8th Base
Force went forward on schedule. But the
damage to the airfields, none of which were
in good shape to begin with, was consider-
able. The 7th Construction Unit immediately
began work on Lakunai that, although
paved, was in such poor condition that on an
inspection trip back in November 1941,
Major-General Morris’s aircraft had broken
through the surface on landing. Reinforced
by half of another construction unit that had
been scheduled to repair the strip at
Kavieng, New Ireland, as well as by the Japanese maintenance men at Lakunai at work on a Type 0 A6M Zero fighter, with
ground personnel of the aviation units that Tavurvur looming across the water. Evidently the photograph was taken later in the
were on hand, the 7th had Lakunai ready to war than the picture at top since no buildings are left standing at the east end of the
receive a limited number of fighters by the airfield. (via T. Harada)
end of the month, when 15 obsolete Mit-
subishi Type 96 A5M4 (‘Claude’) fighters
arrived.
More aircraft arrived in February as work
continued on the field and Australian Con-
solidated PBY Catalinas of Nos. 11 and 20
Squadrons began almost nightly harassing
attacks. On the night of February 27/28 a
No. 10 Squadron PBY crew reported that
they had bombed Toboi Wharf on the north-
western side of the harbour leaving behind a
fire that could be seen from 30 miles. They
had actually hit the 7th Construction Unit’s
area on the south-eastern side at Lakunai,
killing 34 men. In all likelihood this raid was
the first lethal Allied air attack on the Japan-
ese at Rabaul.
Right: Lakunai remained in service as an
airfield after the war, although most of
the dispersal areas and taxiways built by
the Japanese were turned back to plan-
tation. When Tavurvur erupted in 1994
the airport was buried under several
metres of ash and mud flows, and conse-
quently abandoned. This is how the site
appears today. (Day)

5
 The problems at Lakunai delayed work on
the Australian military airfield at Vuna-
kanau about ten miles south of Rabaul. The
Japanese engineers had decided that of the
two Rabaul airfields only Vunakanau was
suitable for basing land-attack aircraft, the
older Mitsubishi Type 96 G3M2 (‘Nell’) and
the new Mitsubishi Type 1 G4M1 (‘Betty’)
medium bombers. But if Lakunai was in poor
shape, Vunakanau was worse. The runway
was unpaved, the only building had been
destroyed in the bombings, and the single
road that connected it with Rabaul was unfit
for heavy traffic. The Japanese official his-
tory, Senshi Sosho, provides few details of
the repair and construction at Vunakanau
but the first Type 1 aircraft flew in between
February 14-17. A year later, on April 6,
1943, Lieutenant Commander Masatake
Okumiya, staff officer of the 2nd Carrier
Division’s Air Group, travelled by automo-
bile from Rabaul to Vunakanau in a party
that included the Commander-in-Chief of
the Combined Fleet, Admiral Isoroku
Yamamoto. It was ‘a jolting, mud-splattered
journey’, he wrote later and noted that the The second airfield was Vunakanau, Also built by the Australians before the war, it
fighters on the unpaved taxiways preparing still had an unpaved runway when the Japanese captured it. By late 1943, it covered
to take off for the Ballale Island airfield for a massive area, with concrete-surfaced runways, dispersal bays, revetments, etc. and
the ‘I’ Operation had to rock their landing was home to many Japanese naval air units, including the 702nd and 751st Kokutai
gear ‘to clear them from the sucking mire.’ (Naval Air Groups) equipped with G4M Betty medium bombers.
With the easy capture of Rabaul, Imperial
General Headquarters (IGHQ) in Tokyo Lieutenant Masayoshi Nakagawa found the restored and fighters flown in, two American
took up the matter of ensuring its security. carrier first and at 1635 radioed that it was carriers struck the assembled shipping on the
The Imperial Navy was in favour of an all- about to attack. Nothing more was ever 10th, sinking two large transports, two
out push in the South Pacific with the objec- heard — all nine planes of the 2nd Division smaller vessels and inflicting heavy damage
tive of neutralising Australia as an Allied were shot down by the Grumman F4F-3 on several others. As a result, Inouye post-
offensive base; the Imperial Army, its focus Wildcats of VF-3. Shortly afterward, Ito’s poned the Port Moresby invasion until Vice-
on the Asian continent, was more cautious. division found the carrier and attacked. Lieu- Admiral Nagumo returned from the Indian
On January 29, the debate ended with an tenant Edward ‘Butch’ O’Hare shot down Ocean with the carriers and then launched
agreement to commence offensive action in three of these and damaged two more. One his amphibious operation in early May.
New Guinea and the Solomon Islands with more fell to another F4F-3. The four remain- Again the American carriers were waiting
the immediate objective of taking Lae and ing Type 1s, all badly damaged, struggled and in the Battle of the Coral Sea, the first
Salamaua on the Huon Gulf. Inouye’s home, two making Vunakanau, but the other carrier battle in the history of naval warfare,
Fourth Fleet was assigned the operation and two crash-landing short of the airfield, one turned back the invasion force.
the date was set for March 3. off the Nurguria Islands, the other in Simp- Yamamoto’s Midway campaign now
On February 10, Inouye advanced the son Harbor. The battle cost the Japanese 15 forced the Japanese to mark time in the
headquarters of the 24th Air Flotilla (Koku- aircraft and 88 aircrew, including one group South Pacific. When they returned to the
sentai) under Vice-Admiral Eiji Goto to leader and two division leaders. The Lexing- offensive against Port Moresby in July 1942,
Rabaul. Goto had the newly formed 4th Air ton came through untouched. the Australians, in some of the most savage
Group organised from units drawn from the The virtual annihilation of the 4th Air fighting of the war, fought Horii to a stand-
Chitose, Takao and 1st Air Groups that were Group’s bombers gave no pause to the still on the Kokoda Trail in the heart of the
equipped with a mixture of obsolete and Japanese other than to cause a postpone- New Guinea jungle. Meanwhile, in early
front-line aircraft — G3Ms and G4Ms, A5Ms ment of the Lae operation for a few days August, the US 1st Marine Division (rein-
and the first-rate Mitsubishi Type 0 A6M2 while replacement aircraft flew in. Horii’s forced) landed at Guadalcanal, taking the
Model 21s (‘Zero’ or ‘Zeke’). In addition, he South Seas Detachment landed at Lae on Japanese by surprise and forcing them to
had the eight Kawanishi Type 97 H6K4 fly- March 7, but before the airfield could be meet the new threat and depriving Horii of
ing boats (‘Mavis’) of the Yokohama Air
Group based in Simpson Harbor.
American intelligence, however, was
aware of Japanese intentions and sent a car-
rier task force (Task Force 11 comprising the
carrier Lexington with four heavy cruisers
and nine destroyers under Vice-Admiral
Wilson Brown) to the South Pacific. Brown
decided to attack Rabaul on February 21,
approaching from the north-east with the
objective of achieving surprise. But one of
two patrolling Yokohama Air Group Type
97s spotted the Lexington group on the
morning of the 20th when it was still almost
500 miles from Rabaul. Lexington’s fighters
shot down the flying boat, but with surprise
gone, Brown called off the attack, decided to
keep on steaming toward Rabaul until sun-
down to throw off the Japanese and then
reverse course.
Vice-Admiral Goto was determined to hit
the carrier force before it closed to within
fighter range of Rabaul and sent off 17 of his
18 Type 1 bombers. They were without
fighter escort since the A5Ms were fit only
for local defence and drop tanks had not yet
arrived for the A6Ms. To make matters
worse, aerial torpedoes had also not arrived The Vunakanau airstrip was kept after the war as an emergency runway in case of
and so the bombers were armed only with eruption. However, during the 1983-85 seismic-deformational crisis the strip was
bombs. Lieutenant Commander Takuzo Ito, deemed too close to Vulcan for comfort and it was finally abandoned when work on
the group commander (hikotaicho), person- the modern Tokua airport commenced in the late 1980s. The site of the old airfield
ally led the formation, riding as observer was taken over by Tolia gardens and is still generally clear. The Volcano Observatory
with Lieutenant Yogoro Seto, 1st Division used to utilise the strip to calibrate its EDM (electric distance meter), as it was the
(Chutai) leader. The 2nd Division under only long clear area, outside the caldera, in the province. (Howcroft)

6
In addition to improving the two existing aerodromes, the located close to the shore some 14 miles south-east of Rabaul,
Japanese built two new airfields in the near area, allowing was completed by December 1942. It had concrete runways,
them to increase their fighter and bomber strength. Rapopo, barracks and repair and supply facilities. (USNHF)
any reinforcements (see After the Battle No. allowed but no new airfields were con- reduced its range (the clipped-wing version,
108). The Japanese suddenly found them- structed until 1943 when Rapopo on the A6M3 Model 32, was at first mistaken by the
selves fighting a two-front war in what they coast south of Kokopo was completed in Allies as a new fighter) forced the hand of
called the South-Eastern Area and which the April and Tobera several miles inland from the Japanese. Later in the year, when the
Americans had divided into the South-West Kokopo in July. A fifth field at Keravat on tide of battle had turned decisively against
Pacific Area (SWPA) under General Dou- the west coast was completed by September the Japanese and the Guadalcanal air force
glas MacArthur and the South Pacific Area but never of any use except as a crash strip had begun to extend its dominion over New
(SOPAC) under Vice-Admiral William F. because of drainage problems. Failure to Georgia, the Japanese began an airfield at
Halsey. build advance bases proved fatal. Munda. But the attempt to base aircraft
As the Japanese were sucked into a six In the Solomon Archipelago where the air there ended in disaster when in Christmas
months’ battle of attrition on Guadalcanal war was fought day by day, month by month week Lieutenant Motonari Suho lost 21 of
that ended in the defeat of both the Japanese without any let-up whatsoever, the Japanese his 24 A6M3s to American attacks. After the
Army and the Japanese Navy, Port Moresby only began work on the Buka strip taken war, Suho made a statement to the effect that
was relegated to the sideline. Above all, from the Australians in the summer of 1942. Munda was a perfect example of the ‘poor
Guadalcanal was a disaster for the Imperial Not until late August — a week after the ability of the Japanese to build an airfield.’
Naval Air Force. ‘If we can get reinforce- American squadrons flew into Henderson The Japanese did complete and were able to
ments’, Rear-Admiral John McCain, Com- Field on Guadalcanal — did the Japanese use an airfield on Ballale Island near Short-
mander Aircraft South Pacific (COMAIR- begin work on Kahili airfield near Buin in land Island off the southern Bougainville
SOPAC), wrote in the desperate days of southern Bougainville. The arrival of a new coast, but the second airfield completed in
September when the Americans were fight- model Zero, the A6M3, that had been the Buin area at Kara came on line in 1943,
ing to keep Guadalcanal from becoming equipped with a more-powerful engine that too late to be of any use.
another Bataan, Guadalcanal ‘can be a sink-
hole for enemy air power and can be consoli-
dated, expanded and exploited to the
enemy’s mortal hurt.’
Events proved McCain correct. Aircraft
losses will probably never be exact, but by
the best count available for the Guadalcanal
campaign, August 1942 to February 1943, the
Japanese lost 682 planes of all types and the
Americans 615. While the losses are rela-
tively even, the Japanese could not hope to
match the Americans in production. When
aircrews are factored into the equation, the
Japanese losses increase dramatically rela-
tive to the American and spelled disaster to
the Japanese Naval Air Force. The Ameri-
cans by their official count lost 420 men, the
Japanese (and this is approximate and con-
servative) lost 1,088. How many more were RAPOPO RESORT
lost or rendered ineffective by disease can
only be guessed at.
During the six months’ struggle 565 miles
to the south-east — the very limits of the
A6Ms’ operational range — Rabaul served
as the main Japanese base of operations. Air
group after air group flew into Rabaul only
to be decimated in the air war, and then
either sent back to a rear area to rebuild or
simply disbanded. The Japanese failure to
advance airfields south-east has long been
recognised by both sides as one of the major
factors in their defeat in the air. At Rabaul Rapopo airfield has now completely disappeared under new growth. This is the site as
itself, Lakunai and Vunakanau were it appears today, looking towards the south, photographed by Steve Saunders. We
improved as far as Japanese capabilities have added the outline of the runway. Rapopo resort is a post-war development.

7
Right: Tobera, located about halfway
between Vunakanau and Rapopo airfields
and some five miles inland, was not com-
pleted until August 1943. It too was sur-
faced with concrete. Altogether the four
airfields had revetments for 166 bombers
and 265 fighters, plus extensive unpro-
tected dispersal parking areas. (USNA)

By western standards, Japanese engineer-

ing and construction was still in the horse
and buggy age. The Japanese depended on
manual labour — construction personnel,
troops, native workers and POWs. The 7th
Naval Construction Unit that landed with
the South Seas Detachment had a comple-
ment of just over 1,300 men under the com-
mand of a naval engineer named Tokunaga
and was equipped with hand tools, trucks
and small rollers. In contrast, the American
47th Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees)
that built the fighter strip at Segi, New Geor-
gia, in just over two weeks had four power
shovels, 20 bulldozers, two cranes, 59 trucks
and a host of other equipment and experi-
enced personnel in every trade related to
construction. Japanese Army historians in
the Senshi Sosho admitted that before the
war broke out in the Pacific no thought had
been given to the use of machinery in the
building of airfields. As a result of the experi-
ence in the Solomons, the Army formed the
first mechanised construction unit at
Kashiwa airfield in late 1942 and in early
1943 set up a training centre in Toyohashi.
But by then it was too late. American intelli-
gence officers must have listened with fasci-
nation to a captured Japanese pilot describ-
ing the building of Rapopo south of Rabaul
where tanks were used to push over the plan-
tation palms after workers had dug a deep
trench around the base.
Right: The area that used to be the
Tobera airstrip is now usually referred to
as Gelagela and is a resettlement area
for several villages affected by the 1994
eruption. Most of the former airfield is
now a coconut plantation, but the
airstrip’s old perimeter still forms land
boundaries. Our comparison, taken by
Steve Saunders in March 2006 looking to
the east-north-east, shows the old run-
way, part of which has recently been
cleared to be used as a cocoa seedling
nursery.

Japanese airfield construction was primitive and slow, relying heavily on manpower Remains of Japanese steel planking sur-
equipped with little more than hand tools. Here native labourers work on one of the viving at Tobera, today the Vunatung
Rabaul airstrips, unidentified, but most likely either Rapopo or Tobera. (Kusaka) Coconut Plantation. (Day)

8
Right: To protect the harbour facilities
and the airfields, the Japanese built up a
large concentration of anti-aircraft guns
around Rabaul. The organisational set-up
was a combined army and navy establish-
ment, well co-ordinated and integrated.
Of the 367 AA weapons, 192 were army
operated and 175 navy operated. The
army units were deployed around
Rapopo airfield and around army installa-
tions and participated jointly in the
defences lining Simpson Harbor. The
naval units guarded the harbour and its
shipping and the airfields of Tobera, Laku-
nai and Vunakanau. The heaviest weapon
the Japanese possessed was the Type 89
127mm twin-mount, dual-purpose gun,
which could open fire at a range of 9,000
metres. This still taken from a 1943
Japanese newsreel shows a 127mm at
Rabaul in action during a daylight raid.

With the escalation of the fighting for the

airfield on Guadalcanal into a major con-
frontation between the Japanese and the
Americans, Rabaul expanded accordingly. In
July and August 1942, headquarters of the
newly created Eighth Fleet, the Eleventh
Naval Air Fleet, and the Seventeenth Army
all moved to Rabaul. In a further reorganisa-
tion in November of the same year the 8th
Area Army (General Hitoshi Imamura) was
created with headquarters at Rabaul and Sev-
enteenth (Lieutenant-General Haruyoshi
Hyakutake) and Eighteenth (Lieutenant-
General Hatazo Adachi) Armies put under its
command. A month later, the Navy followed
with the creation of the South-Eastern Area
Fleet (Vice-Admiral Jinichi Kusaka) with the
Eighth Fleet (Vice-Admiral Tomoshige
Samejima) and Eleventh Air Fleet (Vice-
Admiral Takaji Joshima) under its control.
From the beginning, the Japanese divided
responsibility for Rabaul as they did all other
aspects of the war. The Navy took the east-
ern side, using the New Guinea Club and
other buildings for headquarters and the
Army took the western side, 8th Area Army
putting its headquarters at the Four Corners.
Likewise the defence was divided. The har-
bour and Crater Peninsula was the Navy’s
responsibility; the Army had the rest, the
defensive line running from the Warangoi
river on the east coast to the Keravat river to
the west and then around the coast to Tavui
Point. Coastal guns guarded the sea
approaches and Simpson Harbor and the air-
fields were ringed with anti-aircraft guns. By
the time the Japanese defensive peaked in
late 1943, the US Strategic Bombing Survey
(USSBS) put the number of coastal guns at This specimen of the 127mm gun was pictured by a New Zealand Army photographer
43, anti-aircraft guns of all types at 367, and near Lakunai airfield in September 1945. (AWM)
searchlights at 20. A glance at the map (see
overleaf) will show that the configuration of
the harbour and the bays at Rabaul was such
that the anti-aircraft guns literally put up a
circle of fire. Beginning in February and
March 1943, radar with a range of 150 km
arrived and stations were set up in the Short-
lands, at Buka, and at Cape St George.
Depending on the route flown by the Allied
formations, these stations gave the Japanese
30 minutes’ to an hour’s warning.
Restricted by distance and above all
resources, the Allies struck Rabaul as best
they could. Allied air Forces under
MacArthur’s command kept up a continual
harassment. These raids, flown at night and
often in extreme weather, came at a high
cost to the aircrews. On the night of Novem-
ber 16/17, 1942, for example, 12 Consoli-
dated B-24 Liberators of the 90th Bomb
Group (H) of the US Fifth Air Force were
scheduled to raid Rabaul from their base at
Right: A nice comparison taken at Sul-
phur Creek. Today, only one of the
127mm guns in this area remains. Of the
others only the concrete platforms sur-
vive in the undergrowth. (Day)

9
Left: The most numerous type of anti-aircraft weapon was the one being pictured near the harbour in 1945. (AWM) Right:
Type 96 25mm twin-mount light gun, which had a range of There are several Type 96s surviving in the bush around
3,000 metres and was very effective against low-flying aircraft. Rabaul. This one stands at Tavui Point, north of the city, which
The Japanese had about 90 of them at Rabaul, this particular was the Japanese submarine base. (Saunders)

Iron Range in the northern York Peninsula,
a distance of 850 miles. Taking off in the
dark, nine managed to get airborne and then
the next in line on the runway clipped
another plane, crashed and exploded, killing
11 men and damaging a number of aircraft.
Of the nine that flew on individually to the
target, one had its bomb bay doors jam, one
went down so low to avoid cloud cover that
it suffered damage from 7.7mm fire, one
failed to find Rabaul altogether, and
another, carrying the group commander and
the squadron commander, failed to return to
base.
While these raids in no way threatened
Rabaul’s usefulness as a base, they were
more than a gnat’s bite on an elephant’s hide.
Rear-Admiral Matome Ugaki, Chief-of-Staff
of the Combined Fleet, suffered through two
on the night of September 16/17, 1942, dur-
ing his visit to Rabaul. ‘The noise of gunfire
and small arms was terrible’, he wrote in his
diary. ‘Anyway, it was a night of little sleep.
Now I can see the effectiveness of night
raids.’ He also thought the anti-aircraft fire
ineffective, terming it ‘outrageously uncon-
trolled and unskilled’ and at his suggestion,
officers and men from the battleships Yam-
ato and Mutsu were sent to teach the Rabaul
gunners. (The instructors must have been
good, for the aircrews who had to fly through
it later on daylight missions described it as
horrible.)

a
c
VULCAN
a

a
MATUPIT
b

MALAGUNA

a
b

a
b a
e
d

SULPHUR
CREEK

A US air force intelligence sketch from November 1943 high-
lighting the AA defences in Rabaul and on Lakunai airfield. Indi-
cated are three types of gun — heavy [a], light [b] and multi-
barrelled [c] — plus searchlight positions [d] and aircraft
revetments [e]. Concentrations of heavy guns can be discerned
in Malaguna and on the ridge above, the left group of which
would have a commanding view of Talia Bay as well, with a
couple of other guns on the Beehives Islets (Dawapia Rocks) in
the middle of Simpson Harbor and on the hill behind Vulcan
crater, at Sulphur Creek and on Matupit Island, and possibly
one on the prow of the wreck wharf (see page 14). Light guns
are at the eastern end of Lakunai’s runway and on Matupit, and
a group of three multi-barrelled guns is to the right of Vulcan
crater covering the gap there. (Saunders)

10
 On occasion in these early attacks, how-
ever, significant damage was inflicted. In late
December 1942 during the Japanese build-
up at Rabaul for what began as another
attempt on Guadalcanal but ended with the
evacuation of the troops there, the worried
theatre commanders, MacArthur and
Halsey, struck with what they had. On
Christmas night, the transport ships Nankai
Maru (8,000 tons) and Kagu Maru (7,000
tons) left Simpson Harbor carrying the 17th
Construction Unit and building materials for
an airfield on Kolombangara. The submarine
Seadragon torpedoed the Nankai Maru near
Cape St George and while she did not sink,
the forward holds were flooded. To worsen
matters, her escort, the destroyer Uzuki, col-
lided with the damaged transport and herself
had to be taken under tow. And the night
was just beginning. Boeing B-17s of the 11th
Bomb Group (H) flying from Guadalcanal
appeared over the scene and, with extraordi-
nary good luck, damaged the Kagu Maru as
well as the destroyers Ariake and Tachikaze Above: On the night of June 25/26, 1943, during one of the early raids on Rabaul, B-17
that were attempting to tow the disabled 41-2430 Naughty but Nice of the 65th Squadron, 43rd Bomb Group (H), was shot
ships back to Simpson Harbor. Aboard the down by a J1N1 Gekko night fighter flown by Superior Flight Petty Officer Shigetoshi
Yamato, a disgusted Ugaki confided to this Kudo, and crashed in the jungle. There was only one survivor, 1st Lieutenant Jose L.
diary: ‘That should be called a case of going Holguin, the navigator, who parachuted out and became a POW. In 1949, the US
to the forest to cut wood and coming home Army Graves Registration Service visited the crash site and recovered remains of the
shorn.’ crew, who were buried as unknowns in a group burial in Hawaii’s Punchbowl Ceme-
The Fifth Air Force renewed the attacks tery. In 1981, Jose Holguin, determined to find the wreck and his lost comrades, went
next night and before the New Year dawned back to Rabaul and, during a second trip in 1982, re-discovered the crash site. The US
sank 13,000 tons of shipping. But on January Army’s Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii (CILHI) — today the Joint POW/MIA
5 when it tried a daylight mission with six Accounting Command (JPAC) — investigated the site twice but no further human
B-17s of the 43rd Bomb Group and 12 B-24s remains were found. However, as a result of the search, the unknowns in Hawaii
of the 90th disaster struck. Two B-17s went were disinterred and re-examined and five of them could be positively identified.
down over Rabaul, one of them carrying the
commander of the Fifth Air Force’s Bomber
Command, Brigadier General Kenneth
Walker. After that, the Fifth Air Force
returned to night attacks.
Like their American counterparts at
Guadalcanal, the Japanese attempted to use
A6Ms to shoot down the heavy bombers
caught in searchlights. They enjoyed even
less success than did the Americans. But in
November 1942, Commander Yasuna
Kozono, then Executive Officer of the 251st
Air Group (formerly the Tainan Air Group)
came up with the idea of installing obliquely
upward and downward firing 20mm machine
guns in the twin-engine Nakajima J1N1. The
J1N1 had started life as a long-range escort
fighter but, when this role did not work out,
was used as a reconnaissance plane. The
Allies nonetheless typed it as a fighter and
gave it the code-name ‘Irving’. Back in Japan
while the 251st was being rebuilt, Konozo
finally got a reluctant Navy bureaucracy to
modify three aircraft and two returned to
Rabaul with the 251st in May 1943.
On the night of May 21/22, Superior Flight Recovered parts of Naughty but Nice — including the cockpit section with nose art
Petty Officer Shigetoshi Kudo shot down (above) and the controls (below) — are today on display at the East New Britain
two of five B-17s of the 64th Squadron, 43rd Historical & Cultural Centre at Kokopo, the provincial capital ten miles south-east of
Bomb Group (H), and the bureaucrats in Rabaul. (Bradley)
Tokyo had a sudden change of heart. For
their part, the Americans thought the B-17s
had collided. On June 10, a crewman on a
B-17 was badly wounded in an attack and the
crews reported seeing Japanese night fight-
ers. No attention was paid to the report and
on June 13, when another B-17 went down to
an Irving, its loss was attributed to anti-air-
craft fire. On the night of June 26/27, Kudo
shot down two B-17s of the 65th and 403rd
Squadrons over Vunakanau airfield and
another on the last day of the month earning
him the sobriquet ‘King of the Night’.
Thereafter, however, night fighter inter-
ception over Rabaul virtually ceased. The
Japanese had indeed developed a night
fighter that was effective against B-17s and
B-24s and put it into production as the Type
2 J1N1-S Gekko (‘Moonlight’). But not
enough reached Rabaul and those of the
251st Air Group were transferred to the field
at Ballale Island to meet the all-out assault
on the central and northern Solomons by
Halsey’s South Pacific Command forces that
began on June 30.

11
THE ALLIED ADVANCE ON RABAUL
Forced to retreat from Guadalcanal and
Papua in February 1943, the Japanese fell
back on New Georgia and Lae to establish a
defence line. According to the Army-Navy
Agreement of early January 1943, the Navy
had responsibility for the Solomons and was
to stand on the defence while the Army had
responsibility for New Guinea where the
Japanese still entertained hopes of launching
another offensive. The Navy was to give full
support to the New Guinea operation.
Japanese plans came to naught in early
March, however, when MacArthur’s air
forces annihilated a large convoy bound for
Lae in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea.
In the aftermath of the disaster and perhaps
stung by the Army’s accusations that it had
not done its part, Combined Fleet staff began
planning a major air offensive, named ‘I-GO’,
against both Papua and Guadalcanal. Com-
mander-in-Chief Yamamoto himself went to
Rabaul where he assembled 419 aircraft
drawn from the land-based flotillas and both Rabaul housed many Japanese headquarters, chief among them being that of Gen-
carrier divisions. Beginning on April 7 and eral Hitoshi Imamura’s 8th Area Army and Vice-Admiral Jinichi Kusaka’s South-East-
concluding on the 14th, the Japanese attacked ern Area Fleet. The navy had its headquarters in the New Guinea Club in north-east
Guadalcanal once and the Port Moresby and Rabaul until late 1943 when it was forced to move underground by the Allied air
Milne Bay bases in Papua four times. Some attacks.

Left: The bombs wrecked the clubhouse building and this is following the 1994 eruptions. It stands as a landmark to the
how the Australians found it in 1945. (AWM) Right: The New tenacity and determination of the people of Rabaul to let nei-
Guinea Club was rebuilt after the war, and then rebuilt again ther war nor nature drive them away. (Saunders)

damage was done, but it did nothing to ham- The Eleventh Air Fleet duly opened the was light in proportion to the effort and the
per the Allied build-up. And the price was June offensive (code-named ‘Operation price exacted even higher — 17 per cent of
high. The Japanese lost 12 per cent of the 603’) with a fighter sweep over the Russells the 228 A6Ms that participated and 54 per
A6Ms, 26 per cent of the Type 99 Aichi D3A on the 7th followed by a second on the 12th cent of the 24 D3As were lost. Allied aircraft
carrier dive-bombers (‘Val’), and 18 per cent and concluding on the 16th with a strike of losses (New Zealand No. 15 Squadron fought
of the Type 1 medium bombers. The historian D3As escorted by A6Ms against shipping at in these actions) totalled 13 aircraft and six
of the Type 1, Osamu Tagaya, has written that Guadalcanal. As in April, damage inflicted pilots.
Guadalcanal became the ‘funeral pyre of the
rikko [medium bomber].’ He could have
added that it became the funeral pyre of
Admiral Yamamoto as well since he was shot
down and killed while riding in a rikko to
Bougainville to congratulate his pilots for
what was believed to have been a successful
operation (see After the Battle No. 8).
As the build-up at Guadalcanal continued,
Vice-Admiral Kusaka of the South-Eastern
Area Fleet and Vice-Admiral Joshima of the
Eleventh Air Fleet, unaware that the ‘suc-
cess’ of April was illusory and built on wildly
exaggerated pilots’ claims, advocated a sec-
ond combined operation. But Admiral Mine-
ichi Koga, Yamamoto’s successor at Com-
bined Fleet, refused. Concerned about the
American offensive underway in the Aleu-
tians in the North Pacific (see After the Battle
No. 62), his main striking force, the 1st Car-
rier Division comprised of the Shokaku,
Zuikaku and Zuiho, was in Tokyo Bay. Left
with only the 2nd Carrier Division made up
of the light carriers Junyo, Hiyo and Ryuho,
and worried about a possible thrust into the Since October 2005 the rebuilt New Guinea Club houses a small museum on all aspects
Marshalls, he ordered Kusaka and Joshima of Rabaul’s history — colonial, cultural and geological. One room is dedicated to the
to carry out the offensive on their own. war years, the display including relics recovered from the jungle around Rabaul. (Day)

12
The concrete shelter near the New Guinea Club is commonly
called Yamamoto’s bunker, but the commander-in-chief of the
The Japanese offensives, therefore, made
scarcely a dent in Allied air power and
Operation ‘Cartwheel’ (the code-name for
the Allied offensive against Rabaul) opened
on schedule. Because of the Germany First
strategy that the Allies had adopted and
which the Casablanca Conference of Janu-
ary 1943 had reaffirmed, the effort against
Rabaul was to be a limited one. MacArthur,
who would be in overall command, was to
seize eastern New Guinea and Cape
Gloucester on western New Britain and
Halsey the Solomons up to and including
southern Bougainville. In the South-West
Pacific, MacArthur’s air commander, Lieu-
tenant General George C. Kenney, who
commanded Allied Air Forces as well as the
US Fifth Air Force, had 689 Australian,
British and Dutch aircraft in the former and
772 in the latter. These included heavy bomb
groups of B-17s and B-24s, attack groups of
North American B-25s Mitchells modified
for strafing, Douglas A-20 Havocs, Aus-
tralian Beaufighters and fighter groups
made up predominantly of Lockheed P-38
Lightnings and Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawks,
although some Spitfires were operating in
the North-Western Area (Darwin) and
Republic P-47 Thunderbolts began arriving
later in the year. Most of these aircraft were
for use in New Guinea although one Ameri-
can heavy bomber group, several Australian
squadrons, one British and one Dutch
squadron were kept in the Darwin area to
counter the Japanese Navy’s 23rd Air
Flotilla at Kendari in the Celebes and units
The bunker has a (mirrored) map of the Rabaul area on its ceiling and another, normal map on the wall. (Parker/Bradley)
Imperial Navy never stayed there. In actual fact it was the con-
trol centre for Rabaul’s AA batteries and searchlights. (Day)
of the 7th Army Air Force Division at
Ambon to keep the Japanese guessing as to
Allied intentions.
In the Solomons, Halsey had 455 opera-
tional combat aircraft out of 533 assigned
when the campaign opened in June. These
flew under the operational direction of Com-
mand Air Solomons (COMAIRSOLS)
whose commander rotated every three
months among the services involved; during
the campaign, Rear-Admiral Marc A.
Mitscher (US Navy) served until late July,
Major General Nathan F. Twining (USAAF)
until late November, Major General Ralph
L. Mitchell (USMC) until mid-March 1944
and Major General Hubert R. Harmon
(Army) until late April, and Brigadier Gen-
eral Field Harris (USMC) to the end. Major
Victor Dykes, a staff officer who wrote a
brief history of the command from its cre-
ation to near its end in April 1944, recorded:
‘Our private war in the Solomons was a two-
bit penny arcade compared to the big show
going on in Europe. However, for sheer
colour, fighting spirit, and a unique little
show, there was probably nothing like it on
the earth while it lasted.’
Many would agree. Where else would one
find Army Air Force B-24s and Navy Libera-
tors (PB4Ys) with a heavy escort of US
Army, Navy, Marine and New Zealand fight-
ers carrying out a strike on a Japanese base
as part of the same command. Or, as we will
see, Navy, Marine and New Zealand fighters
making up the first fighter sweep over
Rabaul. COMAIRSOLS was made up of five
units: Search and Patrol Command; Bomber
Command; Strike Command; Fighter Com-
mand; and Photographic Command. A PBY,
for example, belonged to Search and Patrol;
dive-bombers and torpedo bombers, for
another, to Strike. Aircraft if anything were
even more varied than in the South-West
Pacific Area. By the end of the campaign, the
B-24 had supplanted the B-17 in the two
heavy groups, the 5th and the 307th, while
the single medium group, the 42nd, flew
B-25s. For the most part, the Army fighter
squadrons were equipped with P-38s and
P-40s, but one squadron flew the outdated
P-39 Bell Airacobra against Rabaul.
Throughout much of the campaign, the New
Zealand squadrons flew P-40s. The Marine
and Navy squadrons, however, were transi-
tioning to the next generation of fighters at
the beginning and by the end were equipped
with either Chance Vought F4U Corsairs or
Grumman F6F Hellcats. The unglamorous
Douglas SBD Dauntless dive-bomber that
had saved the day at Midway and had dealt
death and destruction to Japanese surface
forces ever since along with the Grumman
Avenger torpedo bombers (TBFs) now used
as bombers made up the entirety of the strike
force. In addition, at the beginning of the
campaign, Halsey’s Third Fleet had the carri-
ers Saratoga and the Royal Navy’s Victorious
along with three escort carriers based at
Noumea, New Caledonia; by early fall, the
light carrier Princeton had replaced the Vic-
torious and the escort carriers had all
departed the theatre.
13
 Against this the Japanese could muster a
considerable force but one heavily weighted in
favour of fighters. When the campaign began,
the Eleventh Naval Air Fleet had about 200
aircraft in the 25th and 26th Flotillas, each of
the latter usually consisting of two fighter
groups and a medium bomber group. The 25th
Flotilla had its headquarters at Rabaul and the
26th at Kahili, but the air groups were shifted
back and forth among the bases at Buin, Buka,
Kavieng and Rabaul. A few days after the bat-
tle for New Georgia opened, the 2nd Carrier
Division’s roughly 90 aircraft were also sent in
to reinforce the Eleventh Air Fleet and most
of these went to Kahili. In addition, the Imper-
ial Army had begun committing air force units
to the South-Eastern Area as early as Decem-
ber 1942 when the 1st and 11th Air Groups
(Hiko Sentai) were sent to help in the Guadal-
canal evacuation. In June 1943, the Fourth Air
Army, made up of the 6th Air Division at Above: The first Japanese ship to be sunk at Rabaul was the Komaki Maru, an aircraft
Rabaul and the 7th Air Division that was in transport of 9,156 tons, which was hit by bombs dropped by USAAF B-26s at its
the East Indies, was officially activated at mooring along Rabaul’s western shoreline on April 18, 1942. The bombs caused part
Rabaul under the command of Lieutenant- of her cargo of torpedoes to go up, the explosion tearing off the back half of the ves-
General Kumai Teramoto. In line with the sel and causing damage and mayhem throughout the town. The ship’s remaining half
Army-Navy Agreement dividing responsibility was later filled with concrete to make it into a wharf, which is still in use by small
for defence, the 6th Division air groups by vessels today, and seen on the right in this picture taken by Toea Chan.
mid-summer had shifted to the Wewak air-
fields — Wewak, Boram, Dagua and But —
where they were joined by those of the 7th
Division (part of the 7th remained in the East
Indies).
The Imperial Army Air Force units
brought a new variety of aircraft to the South
Pacific. The Nakajima Type 1 Ki-43 (‘Oscar’)
was the predominant fighter equipping units
such as the 6th Division’s 1st and 11th Air
Groups and the 7th Division’s 24th and 59th
Air Groups. The 68th and the 78th Air
Groups of the 14th Hikodan (corresponds
roughly to an RAF wing), however, arrived
with Kawasaki Type 3 Ki-61s (‘Tony’), the
only Japanese aircraft with a liquid-cooled
engine. The 13th Air Group was equipped The wreck wharf, as seen from the ground. (Bradley)

Left: As part of their development of the port facilities, the the southern part of Rabaul’s harbour. The picture was taken in
Japanese navy brought a floating crane from Singapore to October 1945, after the Japanese capitulation. Right: The
Rabaul. It was bombed and sunk almost immediately after its wrecked barge crane still survives, slowly rusting away on the
arrival in Karavia Bay and was never put to use. Karavia Bay is shore of Karavia Bay. (Parker)

14
 RABAUL

Rather than capturing Rabaul by a direct and no doubt costly
assault, the Allies decided to neutralise the enemy stronghold
by launching a dual drive past it, thus bypassing and isolating
the position. At the same time the threat posed by the
fortress was to be reduced by strong and sustained air
attacks on the port facilities, airfields and shipping in the
harbour. Starting in February 1943, the Americans began
leapfrogging forward, Halsey’s Third Fleet on the right, and
MacArthur’s Seventh Fleet on the left. The bombing and
island-hopping campaign effectively took Rabaul out of the
war. By the spring of 1944, their supply lines cut off and under
constant air attack, the starving Japanese garrison was
forced to go underground, impotent to do anything else but
to await the inevitable end.

with a twin-engine, two-seater fighter, the
Kawasaki Type 2 Ki-45 that like the Navy’s
Nakajima Gekko was modified into an effec-
tive night fighter. The main Army bombers
were the Mitsubishi Type 97 Ki-21 (‘Sally’)
and the Nakajima Type 100 Ki-49 (‘Helen’).
The Japanese classified both as heavy
bombers but with a bomb load of around
2,000lbs maximum each was almost the exact
equivalent of the Navy’s G4M. By compari-
son, the B-25 carried a bomb load of 4,000lbs.
The Fourth Air Army also had the Kawasaki
Type 99 Ki-48 (‘Lilly’) light bomber whose
performance was poor. Including the recon-
naissance squadrons equipped with the Mit-
subishi Type 100 Ki-46 (‘Dinah’) photo-
graphic aircraft, the number of Fourth Air
Army aircraft is usually put at 500, but this is
paper strength and no doubt far higher than
the actual number. The 14th Air Group, for
example, arrived at Rabaul with 34 Ki-21s,
but six of these were lost in the Solomons
before the group even moved to Wewak. The
68th Group, for another example, left Truk
for Rabaul with 27 of the new Ki-61s, but dur-
ing the long over-water flight to which the
Army pilots were unaccustomed, one group
of 13 became separated from the rest. Of
these, two turned back, eight crash-landed,
two went missing and only one finally made it
to Rabaul. American intelligence calculated
the number of Fourth Air Army aircraft on
the Wewak fields at 225 just prior to the Fifth
Air Force’s August raids. (It should be
remarked that figures in the Japanese sources
are themselves in conflict.)
The Allied offensive was scheduled to
open on June 30, but due to a Japanese
threat to the coast-watcher at Segi where
COMAIRSOPAC had already found a suit-
able site for an airfield, the occupation of
New Georgia actually began on June 23 (see
After the Battle No. 98). On the 30th, the
main force landed at Rendova and, across
the Solomon Sea, MacArthur’s forces seized
Kiriwina and Woodlark Islands for airfield
sites that reduced the range to Rabaul to 310
and 345 miles respectively and landed
another force just south of Salamaua to fix
the Japanese at Lae.
South-West and South Pacific air forces
co-ordinated their efforts as much as possible
given the weather and other conditions. Both
air forces tended to achieve the best results
when they used their various types of aircraft
to deliver a combination punch. In August,
Kenney’s Fifth Air Force struck heavy blows
against the Fourth Air Army at Wewak. A
surprise attack on August 17 caught the
Japanese parked wing tip to wing tip on the
sub-standard fields. The heavy bombers led
the attack in the early morning darkness fol-
lowed at daylight by the B-25s at tree-top
level accompanied by a swarm of P-38s.
Japanese sources put the losses at 100 air-
craft out of 225 on the fields, the air force his-
torians writing in the Senshi Sosho official
history attributing 15 to the B-24s and 70-80
to the B-25s. The 14th Air Group had just
one bomber operational after the first attack
and the 68th had only six fighters. The Fifth
Air Force followed up on the first day’s suc-
cess with a series of raids.
COMAIRSOLS, on the other hand, had a
tougher adversary in the Japanese base in
southern Bougainville, which next to Rabaul
itself was the strongest in the south Pacific.
The American advance on the ground in
New Georgia had been slower than
expected, but in early September, with both
Segi and Munda fields operational on New
Georgia and timed to keep the Japanese
occupied as MacArthur’s forces assaulted
Lae, COMAIRSOLS began the all-out sup-
pression of Kahili, Kara and Ballale. The
combination punch thrown by COMAIR-
SOLS was even more varied than the Fifth
Air Force’s, on occasion amounting to four
or five strikes daily — fighter sweeps, fol-
lowed by the heavy bombers, themselves fol-
lowed 15 or 20 minutes later by SBDs and
TBFs, and with a heavy fighter escort for all
bomber formations.
The Imperial Navy pilots fought with skill
and determination as evidenced by the losses
of the US Thirteenth Air Force. From Pearl
Harbor to the end of 1943, the units making
up the Thirteenth had lost a total of 653 casu-
alties to all causes of which 39 per cent were
killed, 40 per cent missing in action, and 21
per cent wounded. Kahili accounted for 100
of the total since Pearl Harbor. Nonetheless,
the daily pounding killed pilots and
destroyed planes and wore out the men and
machines that survived. Lieutenant Com-
mander Okumiya, who was there, wrote that
finally he had to give up even the luxury of
taking a bath because ‘frantic movements to
extricate oneself from the tub because of
flaming tracers soon made us forego even
this last moment of relaxation!’
By October 21, not a single Japanese
fighter rose to intercept; 26th Flotilla head-
quarters had retreated to Rabaul on October
11 and the remaining aircraft followed, some
to Rabaul, some to Buka. Thereafter
COMAIRSOLS planes roamed at will over
the deserted bases that were still rendered
dangerous by the heavy anti-aircraft concen-
trations, especially at Kahili.

15
THE BOUGAINVILLE BATTLES The Allied air offensive against Rabaul began in earnest in October 1943, the series
A month before the last air battles over of attacks being opened by the US Fifth Air Force (of MacArthur’s South-West
Kahili, both the Japanese and the Allies were Pacific Command) from bases in New Guinea. On October 12, in what was the
preparing for Bougainville which was sure to largest Allied air attack in the Pacific to date, 107 B-25 Mitchell mediums bombed
come next. The stakes were big — no less and strafed Rapopo and Vunakanau airfields, a squadron of New Zealand Beau-
than Rabaul itself. At the Anglo-American fighters hit Tobera airstrip, and some 80 B-24 Liberator heavy bombers attacked
conference in Quebec in August 1943 (see shipping in the harbour. Vunakanau was the target of all four squadrons of the
After the Battle No. 96), the decision was 345th Bomb Group (M) and two squadrons of the 38th Group (M) — 67 Mitchells in
made to neutralise Rabaul from the air and all. Here, in one of the best-known photographs of the air war in the South Pacific,
bypass it so as to allow the Navy to begin its a string of ‘parafrags’ (small fragmentation bombs on parachutes, used to prevent
cherished Central Pacific drive. To placate the low-flying bombers from being hit by the blasts of their own bombs) descends
MacArthur, who was always seeking a larger on Type 1 G4M Betty bombers in their revetments along the western edge of
role for himself in the Pacific war, and to tie Vunakanau. This picture was taken from Saturday Nite, the B-25 flown by 1st Lieu-
down Japanese forces, he would swing west tenant Charles W. Howard of the 500th Squadron, the last squadron in line of the
along the northern New Guinea coast and 345th Group. The Betty on the left, No. 350, belonged to the 5th Chutai (Division) of
secure the approaches to the Philippines. the 702nd Kokutai (Naval Air Group). Note the wrecked A6M Zero fighter nosed in
Halsey’s air forces would have the job of the ditch at lower left. (USNA)
neutralising Rabaul and to do this it was nec-
essary to advance the single-engine aircraft
to within range. For this reason, MacArthur
vetoed Halsey’s initial plan to land in south-
ern Bougainville into the teeth of Japanese
strength and ordered it by-passed with a
landing farther up the coast. After some
investigation, Halsey selected Empress
Augusta Bay on the west coast which was
lightly defended and where the airfield sites
if not good, were acceptable.
D-Day was set for November 1 and on
October 20 COMAIRSOLS Headquarters
moved from Guadalcanal to Munda on New
Georgia. General Twining, who had taken
over from Mitscher, had a total of 728 aircraft
available of all types. While the 97 transports,
reconnaissance and photographic planes
remained at Guadalcanal, or in the case of the
PBYs, Tulagi, the combat aircraft were dis-
tributed among 11 airfields from Guadalcanal
to New Georgia. The heavy bombers, 79
Army Air Force B-24s and Navy PB4Ys,
remained at Guadalcanal along with 45 fight-
ers for defence. Of the medium bombers, 15
New Zealand PV1 Venturas remained at
Guadalcanal but the 48 B-25s of the 42nd Close-up of a burning Betty. In all, the strafer attack on the three airfields destroyed
Bomb Group and the 27 Navy PVs advanced some 100 Japanese aircraft, with another 26 shot down in the air. (USNA)

16
Another belly-camera shot taken during the same strike. Three foreground revetment. The hill beyond the ridge to the top
parachute bombs are about to explode near the Betty in the right is Mount Varzin, another extinct volcano. (USNA)

to the two Russell Island airfields with 27 everything he had, Allied Air Forces hit niqué that wildly exaggerated Japanese
fighters constituting the defence. The remain- Rabaul with over 300 planes on Columbus losses at 177 planes destroyed, 51 damaged
der of the combat aircraft advanced to the Day, October 12. Between October 1 and 11 and shipping losses at three destroyers, three
recently built (or as in the case with Munda, photographic intelligence showed a marked large transports, 43 smaller vessels and 70
rebuilt and expanded) New Georgia airfields: increase in aircraft from about 200 to about harbour craft sunk and three large transports
48 fighters at Segi; 31 fighters, 100 SBDs and 300 (some were replacements, some came damaged. The actual shipping losses have
48 TBFs at Munda; 103 fighters at Ondonga; from the southern Bougainville fields, and been established as one large transport, five
and 60 fighters at Barakoma on Vella Lavella. some could have been dummies). Kenney’s others of 500 tons or less, and minor damage
For their part, the Japanese had by mid- planners, therefore, devised a Wewak-style to three destroyers, three submarines and
September realised that their present defen- mission with over 100 B-25s and Beaufight- two smaller vessels. As for aircraft, the most
sive line was cracking and after much dis- ers and over 100 P38s going in low to achieve reliable count puts the losses at 15 medium
cussion Imperial General Headquarters surprise with about 80 B-24s following up bombers destroyed and 11 damaged.
redrew the line to run from the Banda Sea higher. The Japanese were caught by sur- Nonetheless, in his Reminiscences,
through the Carolines to the Marianas. prise and for the cost of four B-24s, one B-25 MacArthur relates that one day after the raid
South-East Area — Rabaul, Bougainville and one Beaufighter, considerable damage he met Kenney and said, ‘George, you broke
and eastern New Guinea — was now out- was done. Exactly how much is difficult to Rabaul’s back yesterday’. To which Kenney
side what the Japanese called the Absolute pin down. Immediately after the raid, responded, ‘The attack marks the turning
Defence Line, but IGHQ hoped that the MacArthur as was his habit issued a commu- point in the war in the South-West Pacific.’
forces there could delay the Allied advance
to buy time to build up the Absolute
Defence Line. Some of the Japanese calcu-
lations were correct, others were badly off.
The Japanese rightly assessed Allied air
power as around 600 planes for Halsey and
700 for MacArthur. They correctly con-
cluded that MacArthur would assault
Rabaul head-on, but did not know that the
American Joint Chiefs would veto a ground
campaign. But on the fundamental question
of when the Americans could launch their
offensive, the Japanese erred badly in think-
ing that mid-summer 1944 would be the ear-
liest date. It was not the first or the last time
that the Japanese seemingly could not come
to grips with the speed with which the Allies
could move or the force with which they
would strike.
As agreed between MacArthur and
Halsey, Kenney began the all-out air assault
against Rabaul. By his own account sending

Right: Our comparison taken by Steve

Saunders in March 2006. The row of
mature trees running obliquely across
left of centre seems to be the one in the
wartime shot.

17
 For a week, weather prevented further The next big attack, and one which produced some very spectacular images, took place
missions although on the 18th over 50 B-25s on November 2, 1943. Following photo-reconnaissance reports of seven Japanese
went on after the fighters had turned back, destroyers, one tender and 20 merchant vessels in Simpson Harbor and a total of 237
their commander claiming he did not hear aircraft on the airfields, and relying on reports of good weather over the target, the Fifth
the order, and bombed and strafed Tobera. Air Force hastily organised a new low-level mission, despatching 76 B-25 Mitchells and
To finish out the month, Kenney’s forces car- some 80 P-38 fighters to Rabaul. First to strike were the four squadrons of the 345th
ried out four large-scale attacks on Rabaul. Bomb Group whose task it was to screen the main attack by blanketing the Japanese
The attack of October 25 by two groups of anti-aircraft batteries and bombing the shore installations, first with parafrags and then
B-24s that went in without any escort with white phosphorous bombs. Coming in from the east, over the saddle between
because of a communications failure proba- Mother and North Daughter volcanoes, the 39 Mitchell strafers of the 345th met both
bly was the most damaging of all of the Fifth intense anti-aircraft fire and eager intercepting fighters. Leading the attack, the eight
Air Force’s missions. The heavies destroyed B-25s the 498th Squadron swooped in to drop parafrags on the wharves and ware-
facilities at Lakunai, put the runway out of houses along Simpson Harbor’s northern and western shoreline, followed shortly by the
operation for two days, and blew up much of nine B-25s of the 500th Squadron with phosphorous bombs. This picture was taken
the supply of 25mm ammunition. Kenney got from the tail of one of the 498th left-flank bombers and shows parachute bombs
in one more mission on the 29th and then his descending on ships along the western docks. Note that one of the vessels is tied up to
aircraft were grounded by weather for the the Komaki Maru, the sunken Japanese transport ship turned into a wharf. (USNA)
next few days.
Across the Solomon Sea meanwhile, the
decisive battles for Rabaul had begun.
Alarmed by the American/New Zealand
invasion of the Treasury Islands on October
27, Admiral Koga hesitated no longer and on
the 28th ordered the air groups of 1st Carrier
Division to Rabaul in what was called the
‘RO’ Operation. But at dawn on November
1, the Japanese carriers were still steaming to
their launching point 200 miles north of
Rabaul when Halsey’s 3rd Marine Division
began landing at Torokina. Vice-Admiral
Kusaka sent down 104 fighters and 16
bombers but they were intercepted by the
Allied fighters flying cover over the landing
area and lost 17 fighters and five bombers.
The American transports unloaded without
difficulty and were on their way south in the
early morning of the 2nd when the flares and
gun-fire illuminating the dark and overcast
sky to the west caused them to turn east to
avoid the naval battle that the US Navy
called the Battle of Empress Augusta Bay. To take the aerial comparisons for this story we asked Steve Saunders, a British geol-
On the night of the landing, the Japanese had ogist who has worked at the Rabaul Volcano Observatory since 1996, to arrange a
sent down all available warships, two heavy photo flight. On Sunday, March 12, 2006, Steve, together with his friends Neville How-
cruisers, two light cruisers and six destroyers croft, Zanchie Roberto and Toea Chan, all suitably equipped with cameras, went up in
under Rear-Admiral Sentaro Omori to an Islander aircraft and successfully matched all the wartime pictures. The saddle of
destroy the American landing force. Namanula Hill can be seen on the right skyline in both this and the wartime picture.

18
Above: At the same time, the 501st Squadron, followed by the
499th, turned straight south and dropped their parafrags and
phosphorous bombs along the east shore of the harbour, concen-
trating on the numerous AA batteries along Sulphur Creek and
Lakunai airfield. Here a phosphorous bomb from one of the 499th
aircraft explodes directly above one of the 127mm heavy twin
anti-aircraft gun positions — seen closer up in the enlargement
(right). Immediately to the right of the phosphorous blast is the
Japanese Volcano Observatory (which they moved to Sulphur
Creek in 1942). The smoke seen in the left background is from the
phosphorous bombs dropped by the 500th Squadron on Rabaul
town. The saddle between the volcano peaks, through which the
bombers came in, is at upper right. (AWM) Below right: Another
perfect comparison taken by Steve Saunders in March 2006. This
area was actually the central part of Rabaul before the eruption of
1994. The old main street (Mango Avenue) can still be seen com-
ing down to the up-market Sulphur Creek and curving off to
Malay Town, the post-war Chinatown.

But Omori had no combat experience,

mishandled his force badly, and was defeated
by a light cruiser force under Rear-Admiral
Aaron S. Merrill. Merrill had plenty of warn-
ing that Omori was coming. Two radar-
equipped SB-24s of the 5th Bomb Group (H)
picked up the Japanese as they left St
Georges Channel and one of the Liberators
was able to damage a heavy cruiser slightly in
a bombing run that produced no hits but
some near-misses.
The one bright spot in the litany of disasters
that attended the ‘RO’ Operation occurred
next morning, November 2, in Rabaul’s Simp-
son Harbor. A daring raid by 76 B-25s and 57
P-38s of the Fifth Air Force — one group
coming around North Daughter and the other
coming in between North Daughter and
Mother — swept into the harbour at mast-
head level and ran headlong into the anti-air-
craft fire of Omori’s warships back from their
rout at Empress Augusta Bay. Nine B-25s and
nine P-38s went down; a number of others
crash-landed at their bases or were so badly
shot up that they had to be written off. There-
after, the Fifth Air Force remembered
November 2, 1943 as ‘Bloody Tuesday’.

19
Above: Carrying on, the 501st and 499th
Squadrons dropped further bombs on
Lakunai airfield. This picture was taken
by the rear-looking camera aboard
Devil’s Enema, flown by Captain Norman
Hyder of the 499th. One of his bombs has
just exploded above the end of the run-
way, scattering particles of burning phos-
phorus over a G4M Betty bomber and
A6M3 Model 22 Zero fighter. In all, 16 air-
craft were destroyed on Lakunai during
the attack. Simpson Harbor can be seen
behind the trees in the background.
(USNA) Right: Little now remains of
Lakunai, the airfield having been buried
by the 1994 eruption. Our comparison
was taken from higher altitude to show
that most of the area has been turned
back to plantation. (Howcroft)

Captain Tameichi Hara, better known to the

English-speaking world as the commander
of the destroyer that had smashed John F.
Kennedy’s PT 109 during the New Georgia
campaign (see After the Battle No. 9), had
looked at the bright sky that morning and as
an old Rabaul hand, knew what it por-
tended. He had his destroyer division under
way immediately and it was his guns that
inflicted much of the damage. After the war
he wrote that the battle ‘was the most spec-
tacular action of my life’. MacArthur
claimed almost 100,000 tons of shipping
sunk or badly damaged and at least 100 air-
craft destroyed; all that can be confirmed is a
minesweeper and two cargo vessels sunk
and several others suffering minor damage
and/or casualties. The November 2 attack
did, however, practically wipe out the Impe-
rial Army’s shipping headquarters and engi-
neering works.

Right: Relics of the air war surviving at

former Lakunai: the wreck of a Sally
bomber, pictured by Phil Bradley.

20
Above: Next, two squadrons from the 3rd Bomb Group and
three from the 38th Bomb Group arrived to hit shipping in the
harbour. The effective neutralisation of the AA guns by the pre-
ceding 345th Group enabled these waves to come in from the
east over Crater Peninsula, circle north of North Daughter vol-
cano, pass over Rabaul town, and then make their runs over
Simpson Harbor — a route normally impossible due to the con-
centration of heavy AA guns. Here a B-25 of the ‘Grim Reapers’
(3rd Bomb Group) sweeps over one of the Japanese ships at
mast-top level. Spouts from its 1,000lbs bombs spring up from
the water. (AWM) Below: Steve’s comparison with Rabaul
town on the left and North Daughter on the right.
21
A cargo ship, damaged and with its stern half sunk, caught by
the tail camera of one of the bombers. In the background,
smoke billows up from Rabaul’s blazing waterfront. (USNA)
Above: The 3rd and 38th Groups left a trail of damaged and
burning ships in Simpson Harbor. The vessel seen burning in
the background is the cargo ship Hokuyo Maru. The one in the
centre, with smoke billowing up from a direct hit, was identi-
fied as the 10,000-ton Hakusan Maru. In the foreground is the
22
Smoke billows up from another merchant ship after a direct
hit. The damaged vessel seen in the previous picture can be
made out at upper right. (USNA)
heavy cruiser Haguro. It had entered the harbour only a short
time before the attack and suffered only minor damage.
(USNA) Below: Nothing to fear for the ships in Simpson Harbor
as Steve makes a low-level pass over the water to match up
the wartime shot.
‘Hugging the tree-tops, we escaped’. A Mitchell, winging over
the caked lava and bushed slopes of Vulcan volcano, speeds out
of Simpson Harbor, escaping to the south-east. This picture was
taken from the tail of one of the lead 8th Squadron bombers,
before the attack by the other four squadrons, so it does not
show the full damage wrought in the harbour. Despite attacks
by intercepting fighters, smoke over the target, and heavy fire
from the warships in the harbour, the raid was remarkably accu-
rate, hits and near-misses being scored by almost all aircraft. In
all, 41 ships were attacked, of which 24 were bombed and 17
The shape of Vulcan today is not the same as that seen in 1943,
the 1994 eruption having greatly enlarged the cone. Several vil-
lages are buried 10-15 metres deep along the course of the new
road that today runs along the slope. The same thing had hap-
pened during the 1937 eruption of Vulcan when 500 people
strafed. However, exact damage assessment proved difficult.
The initial communiqué claimed three destroyers, eight large
merchant ships and four coastal vessels sunk — a total of about
50,000 tons — and two heavy cruisers, two destroyers, two
tankers and seven merchantmen badly damaged. This was later
amended to just 13,000 tons sunk and 22 other vessels dam-
aged. Japanese records confirm the loss of just two cargo ships
— the 1,500-ton Manku Maru and the 3,100-ton Shino Maru —
and the 500-ton minesweeper W-26, and minor damage to a
10,000-ton oil tanker and several other vessels. (USNA)
were buried in this area. Vulcan, when first formed in 1878, had
been an island but the 1937 eruption connected it to the main-
land. The 1994 eruption added at least 25 meters to its height.
The ash column that year blasted to 18 kilometres high and,
once in the jet stream, circled the globe. (Bradley)
23
After the Fifth Air Force’s onslaught, it was the turn of the US
Navy to add its share to the further neutralisation of Rabaul and
protection of the American landings on Bougainville. On
November 5, the aircraft carriers Saratoga and Princeton
launched their TBF torpedo bombers and SBD dive-bombers
and F6F fighters — nearly 100 aircraft in all — to attack a force
of some 40 Japanese warships in the harbour, which intelli-
gence had reported had just arrived from Truk on their way to
Bougainville. Pouring down through a hole in the clouds over
Simpson Harbor, the bombers damaged five of the six heavy
cruisers, two light cruisers and two destroyers. This picture of
the Japanese warships under attack was taken from the aircraft
of the commander of Air Group 12, Commander Henry H. Cald-
well. Moments after this photo was taken, Japanese fighters
attacked, killing the photographer and wounding the pilot, but
the badly damaged plane made it back to the Saratoga. (USNA)

Another recipient of exaggerated claims
was Admiral Koga at Truk. Assured that the
American forces had suffered grave losses in
the Battle of Empress Augusta Bay on the
night of November 1/2 and with 1st Divi-
sion’s air groups at Rabaul, he saw his chance
according to his Chief-of-Staff, Vice-Admiral
Shigeru Fukudome, to trap and destroy the
American forces at Torokina. Despite
Kusaka’s warning that in light of the air
attacks, heavy surface units should not be
sent to Rabaul, Koga ordered seven heavy
cruisers, one light cruiser and their escorting
destroyers south under Vice-Admiral Takeo
Kurita, commander of the Japanese Second
Fleet. Kurita sailed on November 3 and trou-
ble developed quickly. COMAIRSOLS long-
range Navy and Army B-24s were on the
prowl off Kavieng where two Navy PB4Ys so
badly damaged the two large tankers sailing
in a separate group that Kurita had to detach
Chokai to tow them back to Truk. On the
same day, Army B-24s attacked and dam-
aged the transports bringing in the Japanese
17th Infantry Division from Shanghi and
later the convoy ran into a minefield that the
Australian PBYs had laid off Kavieng and
suffered greater damage. Kurita, now facing
a fuel problem, pressed on unaware that it
was he who was sailing into a trap. ‘Ultra’
decrypts had already warned Halsey that the
Japanese Combined Fleet had committed
heavy units and coming up from the south at
high speed were aircraft carriers of US Task
Force 38, Saratoga and Princeton, so as to be
in position to strike Kurita’s force when it
arrived on the morning of November 5.
The weather at Rabaul was clear that
morning and visibility unlimited when
Kurita’s cruisers arrived. Hara wrote that he
‘gaped as flagship Atago nonchalantly
dropped anchor in the narrow harbour now
jammed with seven cruisers and some 40
auxiliary ships’. To the south some 220 miles
rain squalls surrounded the American carri-
ers which began launching all available air-
craft at 0857 hours — almost 100 planes
including all 52 fighters. COMAIRSOLS
land-based fighters were already in the air to
fly combat air patrol over the carriers while
the F6Fs were escorting the 55 SBDs and
TBFs to the target.
At Rabaul the Japanese received about 30
minutes’ warning and got up 70 fighters to
intercept. But the cruisers were still weighing
anchor when the SBDs and TBFs swept in
maintaining their formation, the Hellcats as
ordered sticking close, and only at the last
moment in the face of withering anti-aircraft
fire did the bombers break into smaller ele-
ments for the attack. Private First Class
Soichi Morii who was landing from the light
cruiser Yubari, which had been sent to pick
up the troops of the 17th Division from the
convoy that had been attacked off Kavieng,
describes in his memoirs what happened
after he heard ‘air attack!’ shouted. ‘In the
sky on my left, there were bombers that
looked like sesame seeds. I saw that our
cruisers were using anti-aircraft guns and pri-
mary guns. After the airplanes dived, black
smoke spread. Blue sky had changed to a
black lead colour. A spray of water raised in
front of us.’ Morii made it safely ashore for
the bombers were after bigger game. Three
of the heavy cruisers — Maya, Atago and
Mogami — were badly damaged, Maya and
Mogami, as Morii put it, ‘in roaring flames’;
Takao took a bomb hit on the upper deck
and Chikuma suffered minor damage from
near misses. Only Suzuya escaped
unscathed. As the American bombers turned
away from the target, the A6Ms attacked.
The F6Fs picked them up. In the air battle
that followed four fighters went down on
each side and the carrier group also lost one
SBD and two TBFs.
Rabaul was in an uproar following the
attack. The normally mild-mannered Kusaka
was furious and described by Captain Hara
as ‘bellowing deprecations at everyone’.
Planes were out frantically looking for the
carriers. At noon to add to the confusion, the
Fifth Air Force bombed the town and
wharves in the harbour. Finally late in the
afternoon, Japanese spotters sighted what
they reported as the carrier task force and at
1515 hours 18 Nakajima Type 97 B5N2
(‘Kate’) torpedo bombers of the 1st Division
were dispatched with a fighter escort. The
American ‘task force’ turned out to be two
landing craft and a PT boat and while the
Japanese heavily damaged one of the landing
craft, they lost four aircraft as a result.
If Halsey had been able to launch another
carrier attack quickly after November 5 he
might have been able to catch some of the
damaged cruisers as they left for Truk under
their own power. He had originally requested
two carrier groups. However, the bulk of the
American fleet was concentrating for the
invasion of the Gilbert Islands planned for
November 20. Consequently, Admiral
Chester Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief of the
Pacific Fleet, at first refused, then relented
and sent down another carrier group, Task
Force 50.3 — comprising Essex, Bunker Hill
and Monterey — which arrived at Espiritu
Santo in the New Hebrides on November 5.
Now, Halsey had another problem, the lack

24

Six days later, on November 11, the carrier aircraft struck again, those from Saratoga
and Princeton having been reinforced by aircraft from the carriers Essex, Bunker Hill
and Monterey, with additional striking power coming from Thirteenth Air Force
B-24s. Although clouds over the harbour obscured the targets, the torpedo bombers
managed to sink one destroyer, Suzunami, and damage the light cruisers Yubari and
Agano and the destroyers Naganami, Urakaze and Wakatsuki. Here SBDs are being
recovered on the Saratoga after the strike. Note the damage to No. 10. (USNA)
of enough cruisers and destroyers to provide
escort for both the carrier groups and the con-
voys making their way to the Torokina beach-
head. The carrier strike had to wait until the
convoy taking in the 148th Infantry of the
37th Division had completed its mission.
When the convoy arrived off Torokina on
November 8, the Japanese launched one of
the heaviest attacks of the campaign against it.
The first strike made by 20 torpedo
bombers of the 1st Carrier Division and
about 40 fighters was intercepted at noon,
before the Japanese reached the transports,
by 28 COMAIRSOLS fighters on combat
patrol. In the 30-minute air battle that fol-
lowed the Americans lost seven fighters and
claimed 26 shot down. A few Japanese
planes made it through to attack the trans-
ports that were at anchor unloading but man-
aged to damage only one destroyer.
The second Japanese formation began tak-
ing off from Rabaul around 1500 hours and
was made up of carrier torpedo bombers, a
dozen medium land-attack planes and a
number of dive-bombers from the Eleventh
Naval Air Fleet, and a fighter escort. But
heavy rainstorms prevented the Japanese
from sighting the transports and instead near
dark they stumbled on the cruiser covering
force that was steaming in anti-aircraft for-
mation. The light cruiser Birmingham bore
the brunt of the attack, taking two bomb hits
and a torpedo from a G4M that did serious
damage. The Japanese losses from anti-air-
craft fire were two fighters, two torpedo
planes and five of the Type 1 G4Ms. A third
group of four G4Ms and seven torpedo
planes left Rabaul around 1900 but failed to
locate either the transports or the cruisers.
For the Japanese, the attrition rate was
unsustainable — and the air war was about
to move back north with a fury. His escorts
rounded up, Halsey planned to hit Rabaul on
November 11, Armistice Day, and so the
night of the 10th was a busy one in the
Solomons. The two carrier groups were mak-
ing their high-speed runs to the launching
points, Task Force 38 north from just east of
Buka, Task Force 50.3 south from just west
of southern Bougainville. At the New Geor-
gia fighter fields, tail hooks were being re-
installed on the Navy F4Us and F6Fs of the
land-based squadrons so that the fighters fly-
ing cover could land on the carriers and
refuel. At Munda, the crews of 47 bombed-
up B-24s of Bomber Command that had
flown in from Guadalcanal late that after-
noon were being briefed for the morning’s
mission. For the ground crews at the airfields
there was no break; as usual they worked
through the night.
The Armistice Day strike went in as
planned (with the exception that Kenney’s
scheduled Fifth Air Force mission was can-
celled because of weather). Task Force 38
launched first, followed by Task Force 50.3.
At the same time, Colonel Marion D. Unruh
of the 5th Bomb Group led his B-24s into the
air. Over Rabaul, the Japanese had 107 fight-
ers waiting to intercept and worse, for the
American formations, Simpson Harbor was
completely overcast and a thunder storm was
over the harbour’s entrance which made
accurate bombing impossible. But the
Avenger torpedo bombers coming in low
caught the Japanese warships as they made
their run for the open water of Blanche Bay.
The TBFs put a torpedo into the destroyer
Suzunami that sank her, another into the
Naganami that left her dead in the water, and
another into the light cruiser Agano that
sheared off part of her stern. Unruh’s B-24s
dropped on the warships but scored no hits
A Japanese destroyer under attack by an American dive-bomber during the Armistice
Day strike. (USNA)
as they broke into the clear. Two dozen P-38s
picked up the bombers over St Georges
Channel as they headed home.
At Rabaul, considerable confusion
attended the retaliatory strike against Task
Force 50.3 which had been spotted. The origi-
nal take-off time was set back an hour
because Kavieng reported an air raid alarm
that prevented the aircraft there from depart-
ing. But the telephone between Lakunai and
Vunakanau was down and the Lakunai
planes, not knowing of the delay, took off and
when they did, those from Vunakanau fol-
lowed. Instead of a planned strike of 106 air-
craft only 71 set out for Task Force 50.3.
When the Japanese arrived, the American
carriers had launched all of their fighters and
some TBFs for a second strike and in addi-
tion had VF-17 from Ondonga — the only
Navy squadron in the South Pacific flying
F4Us — flying cover. Lieutenant Comman-
der Tom Blackburn’s ‘Jolly Rogers’, as VF-17
was known, ripped into the Japanese forma-
tions followed by the carriers’ own F6Fs. A
few Japanese torpedo planes and dive-
bombers got through but not a ship was hit.
When the losses for Armistice Day were tal-
lied, Task Force 50.3 had lost 14 planes, Task
Force 38 two, and Bomber Command one
Liberator. The Japanese admitted to losing
11 fighters and 35 bombers of all types,
including all six of the reconnaissance model
of the newest dive-bomber, the Yokosuka
Type 2 D4Y2 that the Japanese called Suisei
(Comet) and the Allies code-named ‘Judy’.
The next day, the Japanese called off the
‘RO’ Operation, in effect temporarily con-
ceding Bougainville to Halsey (in early
March 1944, Seventeenth Army coming up
from the south made an attack on the
Torokina perimeter that was shattered by
American artillery and air strikes). In the air
alone, Japanese losses had been staggering.
Of the 173 aircraft that the 1st Carrier Divi-
sion had advanced on November 1, 121 (or
70 per cent) had been lost. In terms of pilots
and aircrew, 89 (47 per cent) had been lost
and these included four group commanders
and six division leaders.
Six days after the shattered 1st Division’s
groups rejoined their carriers, the Americans
invaded the Gilberts and for three days
fought one of the most savage battles of the
war at Tarawa (see After the Battle No. 15).
The Japanese Combined Fleet remained at
Truk because Admiral Koga was powerless
to intervene. Exact loss figures for the
Eleventh Naval Air Fleet are unknown but
the Senshi Sosho official history says that out
of 175 fighters available on November 1 only
50 of the 201st, 204th, and 253th Air Groups
were left when the carrier groups left on
November 14. Loss figures for the medium
bombers are also unknown, but the 702nd
Group (G4M1s) was disbanded December 1,
leaving only the 751st at Rabaul.
25
By December 1943, Halsey’s South Pacific forces had advanced
so far as to finally bring land-based fighters within range of
Rabaul. On December 17, a combined force of Navy, Marine
and New Zealand fighters — led by marine fighter ace Major
THE AIR BATTLE OF RABAUL
For a month after the Armistice Day bat-
tle, it was relatively quiet over Rabaul. Ken-
ney’s Fifth Air Force turned its attention
closer to home with MacArthur’s Cape
Gloucester invasion set for December 26 and
only the Australian Beauforts of No. 9
Group disturbed the peace at night. In the
interim, the Japanese flew in 53 aircraft from
the 24th Air Flotilla that included 16 A6Ms
from the 281st Air Group. Most of the 24th
Flotilla, however, had to be sent to the Mar-
shall Islands to replace the 22nd Air Flotilla
that had suffered heavy losses during the
fighting in the Gilberts. Factoring in the nor-
mal monthly replacement aircraft, the best
approximation from various sources includ-
ing Allied photo reconnaissance, is that by
December 17 — the day on which the battle
was re-opened — the Japanese had about
200 aircraft at Rabaul, with half being A6Ms
and the rest bombers, reconnaissance planes
and transports.
During the lull, COMAIRSOLS struck
Bougainville targets daily and once, on
November 21, the heavy bombers hit the
Japanese airfield on Nauru Island in support
of the Tarawa invasion. But the key to the
final assault on Rabaul lay with the Seabee
battalions and one Army Air Force aviation
engineer battalion that were working around
the clock to build the airfields necessary for
COMAIRSOLS to advance. Halsey’s air
force was at its deadliest when it could
deliver its combination of punches — the
heavy bombers wrecking the runways and
destroying buildings and supply dumps, the
medium bombers attacking the aircraft on
the field as well as shipping, and the dive-
bombers and torpedo planes taking out the
anti-aircraft guns and shipping. In order to
do this, COMAIRSOPAC’s airfield develop-
ment plans called for building four new air-
fields and expanding two already in use.
Army P-38s of the 347th and the 18th Fighter
Groups along with the B-25s of the 42nd
Bomb Group (M) would move to a 5,800-
foot field on Sterling in the Treasury Islands.
The Marine and Navy single-engine bombers
would move from Munda to three fields in
the Bougainville perimeter, a 4,200-foot field
at Torokina and two fields — one 4,000 feet
and the other 6,000 feet at Piva — allowing
Munda to be extended to 8,000 feet and
serve as the heavy bomber base. The other
expansion was at Ondonga where a second
4,000-foot strip was to be added. With the
exception of the Bougainville sites, all others
were coral strips that made for the best air-
fields in the South Pacific. When the 5th
26
Gregory ‘Pappy’ Boyington — took off from newly finished
Torokina airstrip on Bougainville for the first fighter sweep
over Rabaul. Here F4U Corsairs of VMF-214 — Boyington’s
Black Sheep Squadron — line up for the mission. (USNA)
Bomb Group (H) moved to Munda it was
enthusiastic about the coral roads, taxiways
and runway and reported that it was ‘the best
yet in the South Pacific.’
But even with the legendary speed of the
Seabees, the construction took time, espe-
cially at Bougainville where the sites were not
as satisfactory. But Halsey had agreed to sup-
port MacArthur in the Cape Gloucester oper-
ation, and so the offensive against Rabaul
began almost immediately following the com-
pletion of the single strip at Torokina by the
17th Seabees in early December. The comple-
tion of Torokina was an important milestone
because now, for the first time since the dual
advance began, single-engine, land-based air-
craft had come within range of Rabaul.
On the morning of December 17, even
while troops of the 3rd Marine and 37th
Army Divisions were still engaged in heavy
fighting with the Japanese a few miles inland,
fighters began flying into Torokina from
bases in New Georgia to join the Marine
squadron already based there. Soon, 76 air-
craft — Navy F6Fs, New Zealand P-40s and
Marine F4Us — crammed the field. Their
mission that morning was a fighter sweep of
Rabaul. Major Gregory ‘Pappy’ Boyington
of the Black Sheep Squadron, VMF-214, an
ace several times over, was in command. The
plan was simple enough — lure the defend-
ing Japanese fighters into the air and destroy
them as a prelude to the attack of the heavy
bombers.
But little went right that day. Wing Com-
mander Trevor Freeman led his New
Zealand fighters into the air first and, with-
out waiting for the rest as was the plan, took
off for Rabaul. By the time that the Marine
and Navy squadrons arrived, the New
Zealanders were engaged with about two
dozen Japanese fighters down low. The New
Zealanders later claimed five enemy aircraft,
losing two over Rabaul and one in a crack-up
at Torokina on the way home. Two pilots
were lost over the target, one parachuted and
was captured after a collision with an enemy
fighter (the Japanese pilot survived also) and
Wing Commander Freeman was last seen at
1,500 feet headed in the direction of New Ire-
land, his P-40 trailing white smoke and under
attack by several enemy fighters.
Whereas the New Zealanders had flown
in circles, passing over all of the Japanese air-
fields, Boyington made straight for Lakunai.
But the Japanese, assured that no bombers
were in the offing, kept their aircraft on the
ground. ‘Come on up and fight’, Boyington
yelled on his radio. ‘Come on down, sucker!’,
a Nisei interpreter yelled back. Boyington
did, firing about 900 rounds in the direction
of the parked enemy planes — but they
stayed put. The only action occurred when
2nd Lieutenant Bob McClurg spotted a
Nakajima Type 2 A6M2-N, a floatplane ver-
sion of the Zero the Allies called a ‘Rufe’,
calmly patrolling low over Simpson Harbor.
The temptation was too great and breaking
formation, McClurg dropped down behind
the Nakajima, sent it flaming into the water,
and rejoined, earning a wagging finger of
rebuke from Boyington.
Despite other American claims, that was
the only other aircraft the Japanese lost for a
total that day of two and one pilot. The
Americans, on the other hand, lost two P-40s
and their pilots over Rabaul and a P-40 and
an F4U to accidents on the way home. A
P-40 crash-landed at Torokina and one of
Boyington’s pilots, 1st Lieutenant Donald. J.
Moore, missed the west coast of Bougainville
and was running low on fuel when he spotted
the airstrip the 87th Seabees were building
on Sterling Island in the Treasuries. Moore
overshot the finished area and landed on the
rough grade and hit a boulder. The Seabees
took him to the medics (he was out of action
for a week) and using a power shovel and
cables lifted the wrecked Corsair onto a
flatbed and carried it down to the dock area
in case anyone wanted to retrieve it.
Thus, ‘Pappy’ Boyington’s first fighter
sweep over Rabaul accomplished little. Then
the heavy bomber mission that was to have
followed on the 18th was called off on
account of bad weather. Bad weather had
hampered Kenney’s efforts badly in late
October, had been a factor in the November
11 carrier strike, and stayed bad almost con-
tinually throughout late December and early
January 1944. On November 19 some heavy
bombers got through to Rabaul but the mis-
sion was less than satisfactory with a number
of aircraft turning back and those making it
in hitting the town rather than the primary
target, Lakunai airfield.
But on December 23 the 5th Bomb Group
got in a good strike on Lakunai, on the 24th
the 307th Group hit Vunakanau squarely,
and on Christmas Day the 5th hit both Laku-
nai and Rabaul town, nearly killing the 8th
Area Army commander, General Imamura,
who was the only man to survive a direct hit
on the headquarters bomb shelter. In addi-
tion, fighter sweeps went in on 23rd, 24th,
27th and 28th. Halsey also hit from the sea.
On December 24-25, carriers struck the
Japanese airfields at Kavieng (see After the
Battle No. 129) and a cruiser force bom-
barded the airfields at Buka and Bonis.
 The new year, however, was to be a differ-
ent story. In early January, COMAIRSOLS
aircraft began their final advance of the war
in the Solomons. On January 1, the SB-24
Snoopers (B-24s equipped with low-altitude
blind-bombing equipment) were removed
from the 5th Bomb Group and organised
into the 868th Squadron and moved to
Munda. In the first week of January, the Piva
strips opened and COMAIRSOLS Head-
quarters and the single-engine bombers
moved there and shortly thereafter the Army
medium bombers and P-38s moved to Ster-
ling. Finally, at the end of the month, the
heavy bomb groups began moving from
Guadalcanal to Munda. The new year also
brought better weather. On January 21, the
COMAIRSOLS intelligence summary began
with ‘blessed again by bright blue weather’
and with the aircraft in place and the weather
co-operating, what the bomber crews called
the ‘Rabaul Blitz’ began in earnest.
The period from January 21-25 will illus-
trate. On January 21, 38 B-24s hit Borpop,
across St Georges Channel on New Ireland,
the only remaining satellite airfield, but a
heavy strike of SBDs, TBFs and fighters The air campaign against Rabaul continued without pause in 1944, the Americans
scheduled to hit Rabaul was turned back by beginning in January what they called the ‘Rabaul Blitz’. On January 14, Navy SBDs
weather. Early in the morning of the 22nd, 27 and TBFs, supported by fighters, bombed Japanese shipping in Simpson Harbor,
B-25s with 92 fighters bombed and strafed damaging the destroyer Matsukaze and the fleet tanker Naruto. The oiler ran
Lakunai airfield and that night six B-25s aground on the beach near Vulcan crater. (USNHF)
dropped incendiaries to mark the supply
areas in north Rabaul town and 30 B-24s tection, the P-38 pilots who were unaware Air Staff Officer, had arrived in advance of
bombed on the fires, leaving the area in that the F6F Hellcats of VF-40 had gone the air groups). Rear-Admiral Takaji Jojima
flames that could be seen 75 miles away. down with the bombers, dove after them. led in the 80 or so aircraft from the Junyo,
Next morning at 0915 47 SBDs, 18 TBFs and The Japanese pounced, catching the P-38s at Hiyo and Ryuho in what was to be the last
84 fighters struck Lakunai again and later low altitude where they were outmatched in Japanese attempt to stave off defeat, and the
that afternoon, 48 fighters made a sweep. On every way, and half of the Army fighters worn-out 26th Flotilla was ordered back to
the 24th, 18 TBFs with 88 fighters attacked failed to return. For sending five ships Truk (although some pilots stayed behind).
shipping in Simpson Harbor, sinking just totalling almost 19,000 tons to the bottom, The ‘Rabaul Blitz’ continued, however,
under 15,000 tons. Darkness brought no the Americans paid with eight P-38s, one and, if anything, intensified in mid-February
safety for every night one or two SB-24 F4U, one F6F, one TBF and one SBD. in order to smother Japanese air activity at
Snoopers were on the prowl between But COMAIRSOLS’s continuous and the time Halsey’s troops of the New Zealand
Kavieng and Rabaul. When a target was relentless attacks took their toll. Lieutenant 3rd Division with a regiment of Seabees
picked up, the Liberator dropped out of the Commander Okumiya, who arrived back at landed at Green Island on February 15.
night like a giant nocturnal bird of prey to Rabaul on January 20, was dismayed when Twenty days later, fighters from the new
attack with the bombardier using radar to he saw the men with whom he had served airstrip on Green Island hit Rabaul and in
drop his string of bombs, sometimes at mast- during the New Georgia campaign. ‘The late March the bomber strip became opera-
head level. fighting spirit which enabled us to ignore the tional.
Against these overwhelming odds, the worst at Buin was gone’, he wrote. ‘The men By the time the Green Island fighters
Japanese pilots of the 201st, 204th and 253rd lacked confidence; they appeared dull and appeared over Rabaul, however, there were
Air Groups fought with their traditional apathetic. No longer were they the familiar no longer any Japanese defenders to contest
courage and determination. Rabaul was a well-functioning team.’ the air. Between February 20-25, the opera-
‘hornet’s nest’, Kenney had written in his ‘Where is Tojo?’, COMAIRSOLS Intelli- tional aircraft at Rabaul, between 50 or 60,
instructions to the Fifth Air Force on gence asked on January 25 when a fighter were ordered back to Truk in the wake of the
November 10 regarding the scheduled mis- sweep met no opposition. As it turned out, heavy American carrier strikes of February
sion next day. Despite already having Japanese reinforcements came in the same 17-18. Left behind were about 30 pilots of
claimed credit for the ‘neutralisation’ of day from the 2nd Carrier Division (Lieu- whom many were sick and disabled, 15
Rabaul, he ordered the Fifth not to go in tenant Commander Okumiya, the division’s A6Ms in various states of disrepair, one Type
unless Halsey’s carriers attacked first. ‘We
never knew who would be missing after a
strike on Rabaul’, Dave Tribe, a New
Zealand PV1 crewman, wrote long after the
war. The Liberator that went down on the
Armistice Day mission was lost to a Japanese
pilot who pressed home his attack even
though his own aircraft was on fire and
exploded after he had made his pass. Colonel
Unruh, commander of the 5th Bomb Group,
went down on December 30 and on January
3, both ‘Pappy’ Boyington and his wingman
were shot down.
Mistakes over Rabaul were costly as the
January 17 strike on shipping in Simpson
Harbor will illustrate. Sixteen P-38s, drawn
equally from the 339th and 44th Fighter
Squadrons (the 339th was in the process of
relieving the 44th and had a number of inex-
perienced pilots), joined Marine F4Us and
Navy F6Fs to escort the 24 SBDs and 18
TBFs to the target. Two layers of clouds
blanketed the harbour and for one reason or
the other — the accounts conflict — the
Army fighters never made contact with the
Marine and Navy fighters and believed they
were the sole escort. Consequently, when the
bombers found a hole in the clouds and
dived suddenly without warning to make Our comparison taken by Neville Howcroft in March 2006. Again the 1994 eruption of
their attack, the P-38s were caught by sur- Vulcan (seen sloping on the right) significantly changed the area where the Naruto
prise. Then when the bombers called for pro- was beached, the shoreline having been moved much forward as a result of it.

27
100 reconnaissance plane, four Gekko night
fighters out of commission and a few trans-
port planes. In addition, eight Aichi Type 0
E13A (‘Jake’) floatplanes of the 958th Air
Group stayed while the group’s Mitsubishi
Type 0 F1M (‘Pete’) aircraft were ordered
back to Truk.
The air battle of Rabaul was over. ‘Where
is the Japanese Air Force?’, COMAIRSOLS
Intelligence asked on February 24 and, with-
out waiting for an answer, struck hard the
same day at the Imperial Army’s extensive
supply dumps at Vunapope. On the 26th 137
bombers from both Bomber Command and
Strike Command placed 164 tons of bombs
on the same target. With the exception of the
still very deadly anti-aircraft guns, the
Gazelle Peninsula lay defenceless beneath
the Allied formations. On March 2 wave
after wave of attackers all but levelled
Rabaul town and the COMAIRSOLS’s
intelligence summary next day headed out its
report, ‘Tojo Fiddles While Rabaul Burns’.
At 1030, ‘just before the bonfire was lit at
Rabaul’, 47 SBDs and 24 TBFs struck what Above: Also participating in the Rabaul Blitz was the special 868th Squadron
shipping was left at Karavia Bay. Twenty equipped with SB-24 Snoopers. A special and top-secret development, Snoopers
minutes later 20 B-24s put 86 tons of explo- were B-24s equipped with low-altitude blind-bombing radar equipment, which
sives squarely on the main centre of north- enabled them to pick up and attack shipping at night. Other than at first being
east Rabaul, leaving fires raging in China- painted black and the radar antenna on the starboard nose — when the crews were
town and the warehouses on the waterfront. photographed in front of their planes they would hang a jacket over the antenna —
Half of a flight of 23 B-25s followed within they looked no different from regular Liberators. First introduced in August 1943,
minutes to hit the town while the rest they proved highly successful, plane for plane sinking or damaging more vessels at
diverted because of cloud cover to bomb night than the heavy bombers that operated in daylight. The 868th Squadron, formed
Rapopo airfield and at 1100 14 P-38s carry- on January 1, 1944, was based at Munda airfield on New Georgia, where this picture
ing 1,000lb bombs dropped on the burning was taken. Parked (left to right) are Madame Libby, Devil’s Delight and Ramp Tramp.
north-east section of town. To finish the day- (868th Snooper Assn) Below: Munda is still an airfield today. Here a Twin Otter from
light hours before the Snoopers began their Solomon Islands Airline taxis out to the runway. (Day)
prowl, a PV1 guided 12 SBDs to hit the radar
station at Adler Bay. The escorting fighters
on each mission used up their .50-calibre
ammunition, strafing anything that looked
promising on the ground.
In early March, the first Marine squadron
of B-25s (PBJs) arrived at Sterling and the
attacks continued without let-up. By the third
week of March, there were no targets for the
heavy bombers and beginning with the 307th
Bomb Group’s raid on March 29, their
attacks were shifted to Truk. In April, the 5th
and 307th Groups and the 868th Squadron
left the South Pacific Area for good, flying
over an impotent Rabaul to their new base in
the Admiralties, which MacArthur had taken
in late February. (The capture of the Admi-
ralties with its fine harbour and airfield sites
provided MacArthur with a substitute for
Rabaul for his approach to the Philippines by
way of western New Guinea and, along with
Emirau in the St Matthias Group, completed
the encirclement of Rabaul.)

Left: A PBJ1-D (Marine B-25) piloted by Lieutenant Glenn Smith
of VMB-413 going down at Tobera on May 5, 1944, after being
hit by anti-aircraft fire. Note the damaged port engine. (R. Ray)
Right: Wreckage of the same PBJ in its original location
entwined in a tree on Vunatung Plantation. Since this picture
was taken, all the parts have been gathered up in one place.
After the war, some of the bodies were recovered, but in the
mid-1990s Rick Ray, manager of Vunatung, was ploughing
when he discovered the aircraft’s first impact area and four
more bodies. (Day)

30
Left: By early 1944, the relentless air attacks had forced the less station, part of the underground command facilities that
Japanese in Rabaul to go underground. In all, they constructed included hospitals, storage sites and maintenance shops, was
over 300 miles of tunnels. (USSBS) Right: This underground wire- pictured by the Australians after the Japanese surrender. (AWM)
THE AIR BLOCKADE P-39s now operating as fighter-bombers hit and carrying barges, ammunition and food,
At the end of March 1944, Vice-Admiral Talili, and five PV1s attacked installations on was the last ship to come to Rabaul, Admiral
Kusaka moved his South-Eastern Area Fleet the Duke of York Islands. Kusaka recalled for his USSBS interrogators
headquarters underground to one of the Throughout the summer and autumn, as after the war. Until early April, a few sub-
many tunnels the Japanese had dug into the American air and ground units departed, marines came in and safely unloaded muni-
North Daughter. The siege of Rabaul had New Zealand and Australian aircraft contin- tions and medical supplies. After that, the
begun. COMAIRSOLS never let up and ued the blockade — right up to the Japanese Rabaul garrison was left on its own.
when Halsey left the South Pacific in June surrender in August 1945. The most unusual During the first nine months of 1944, the
for the carrier drive through the Central attack came in October 1944 when a US Japanese built a complex of tunnels that
Pacific and COMAIRSOLS was dissolved Navy outfit known as STAG-1 tried out its Kusaka in his memoirs Rabauru Sensen Ijo
and replaced with Command Air North TDR-1 assault drone aircraft on Rabaul tar- Nashi: Warera Kaku Iki Kaku Tatakaeri
Solomons (COMAIRNORSOLS) that fell gets. The TDRs were remotely controlled (War in Rabaul: How We Fought and Sur-
under MacArthur, the attacks continued. On from a mother plane (a converted TBF), and vived) says that by November reached 70
June 2, the command’s intelligence sum- before their attack on Rabaul rehearsed kilometres for the Navy and 80 kilometres
mary, now referring to the operations as the against targets in southern Bougainville. Two for the Army. By the end of the war he esti-
‘Rabaul Blockade’, recorded that during the hits were made on gun positions during the mated that these had doubled. Gradually the
previous night four Marine PBJs had tests, but in the attack on Rabaul, heavy Japanese in the Rabaul area moved under-
bombed the town and when daylight came radio interference caused none to hit their ground. ‘Some tunnels got a good breeze, but
two fighter patrols roamed the coast for any target. ‘The results were disappointing’, the others did not; some had bad sanitation’,
available targets to strafe, 24 B-25s hit tar- Navy’s analysis concluded and the program Kusaka wrote. His own, unfortunately, had
gets from Lakunai to the town, three B-24s was terminated. no breeze and was so humid that fungus was
on a training mission bombed Tobera, a The transport Kokai Maru, arriving on a problem. The high humidity had other neg-
dozen SBDs struck Vunapope, 43 P-40s and February 19, 1944, and departing on the 25th, ative effects, especially on the spoilage of

Left: The Rabaul area is still literally honeycombed with tunnels in the sector occupied by the Imperial Navy. The eruptions of
of all sizes, some very elaborate, some merely caves. Ronnie Day 1994 have almost buried its entrance, leaving barely enough
explored one that is located on the flanks of North Daughter, space to crawl through. Right: Inside, the tunnels are bare.

31
The Japanese also constructed special tunnels for barges at dawn and back out after dark. The tunnels seen here were in
several places along the Rabaul shoreline. The barges only Blanche Bay, the middle part of Rabaul harbour. This is how
operated at night, being pulled into the safe shelters before the Australians found them in 1945. (AWM)

canned foodstuffs and the destruction of the

film negatives the Japanese had shot during
the campaign (this last to be lamented by his-
torians). Ultimately, as the months passed,
the supplies of food dwindled and medical
supplies were exhausted. The Japanese
turned to farming on a large scale that went
far in remedying the first problem but the
experimenting with local plants for herbal
medicines was less fruitful.
And the Japanese, again as typical as their
courage, never gave up. Using parts canni-
balised from wrecked aircraft, mechanics had
a few A6Ms flying by the end of March 1944.
The authority on this period, Henry Sakaida,
appropriately calls it Rabaul’s ‘guerrilla air
force.’ Aircraft — however few in number —
were kept flying until the surrender and in
the spring of 1945 two re-manufactured tor-
pedo bombers attacked two floating dry One of the best-preserved barge tunnels can be seen in Karavia Bay further south.
docks in Seeadler Harbor in the Admiralties It is similar to the Blanche Bay tunnels except that here the barges were winched into
that inflicted minor damage. The Japanese the tunnel along railway lines, the tunnel entrance being about 100 metres from the
had mistaken them for American carriers. water’s edge. Today the site is run as a tourist attraction. (Parker)

Left and right: Three original but by now very rusty barges remain lined up inside the tunnel. (Bradley/Parker)

32
Despite the destruction caused by the eruptions, Rabaul still holds
many reminders of the war. This wreckage of a Japanese Betty
bomber can be found at Vunatung Coconut Plantation on the site
of Tobera airfield. It is slowly crumbling, being eaten by the acid
emitted by the volcanoes. (Day)
The waters around Rabaul hide fascinating relics too. One of
the best-known wrecks is that of a Zero fighter surviving
almost intact at 33 metres’ depth in the clear blue water off
Kokopo. A popular diving site, this picture of the coral-covered
aircraft was taken by Blair Dixon in June 2005.

CONCLUSION
The Battle of the Philippine Sea of June
19-20, 1944, is held to mark the date that the
Japanese Naval Air Force died. But this was
not the force — among the world’s best —
that had begun the war. Most of the carriers
Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa commanded in that
battle were new as were some of the types of
aircraft crowding the decks. But the pilots
that were to fly them — to their deaths as it
turned out — had been only hastily trained
and lacked experience in flying, let alone in
combat and thus were no match for the F6Fs
from the most powerful fleet the world had
seen to that date. The American fighters shot
them from the skies in such numbers that
forever after it was called the ‘Great Mari-
anas Turkey Shoot.’
But the Japanese Naval Air Force had
been dealt its mortal blow in the South
Pacific. The omens of disaster appeared
before the Japanese had been a month at
Rabaul. The first — and one of the gravest
weaknesses — was the inability to construct
airfields. As the tide turned against them in
the South Pacific, the Japanese came to
realise what role engineering expertise and
the bulldozer had played in their defeat. The
Army and Navy’s explanation to the Japan-
ese people via the Domei News Service and
routinely intercepted by Allied intelligence
invariably began with something on the
order of ‘We are yielding to the advance of
enemy’s bases’. Ironically one of these
admissions was translated December 17,
1943, the day that ‘Pappy’ Boyington’s fight-
ers lined up at Torokina for that first fighter
sweep over Rabaul.
The second evil omen was the persistent
under-estimation of the Americans and the
aggressiveness of the US Navy. Fuchida from
his command aircraft over Pearl Harbor on
December 7, 1941, had watched with con-
cerned admiration the curtain of anti-aircraft
fire his second wave encountered and was
surprised at how fast the surprised Ameri-
cans reacted. Nonetheless, Admiral Goto in
mid-February 1942 as we have seen, when
the first American carrier threatened
Rabaul, rashly sent in his unescorted Type 1
bombers to be virtually annihilated and from
this no lessons were learned either about the
ability of the Americans or the weaknesses
of Japanese aircraft. Back home in the States
among media types and others far removed
from the reality, the ‘Zero’ might acquire a
mythic invincibility, but in actuality the
Allied pilots quickly took its measure and
learned that its weaknesses were equal to —
or greater — than its strengths.
Finally, the Japanese fed the cream of
their air fleet into the battle piecemeal. Had
they advanced down the islands quickly,
building bases, and bringing in adequate air-
craft to ensure air superiority, then the story
of Rabaul, while no doubt having the same
ending, would have been very different in the
telling.
I would like to thank the Research Devel-
opment Committee of East Tennessee State
University, whose major grant made possible
my first trip to Rabaul and Bougainville in
2000; the Papua New Guinea National
Museum and Art Gallery with which I was
affiliated in the summer of 2000 — especially
Ilaiah Bigilale, Director, and Senea Greh,
Department of Modern History (and the lat-
ter’s staff) — for their help and friendship.
Third, I could not have written this without
Hitomi Kinuhata who translated almost all of
the Japanese material and Hiromi Yamazaki
who translated the portion of Shoichi Morii’s
memoirs. Finally, on a personal note, thanks
to Brian and Bev Martin of the Rapopo
Resort for looking after me when I was in
Rabaul.

The Australian Memorial on the foreshore of Simpson Harbour
honours all those who lost their lives in the defence of New
Britain and during the Japanese occupation. Due to the memo-
rial being buried by the 1994 eruptions it was relocated to a
raised platform in 2002. (Saunders)
The Japanese War Memorial, erected in 1980 higher up the hill
above the town. It too was partly buried by the 1994 eruption
but, when dug out, turned out to have suffered little damage.
The road up to it was totally destroyed but has been rebuilt
with Japanese Government help. (Parker)

33
In December 1943, a Japanese Aichi D3A ‘Val’ bomber was lost the crew. Lost for nearly 60 years, but with rumours of its exis-
during air battles over Cape Markus in New Britain, the aircraft tence circulating since the 1980s, the wreck was not discov-
crash-landing into the water just off the coast, killing both of ered until September 2001. (A. Cowan)

AICHI D3A ‘VAL’ RECOVERY

Late in the summer of 1936, the Imperial
Japanese Navy issued a specification calling By Gail Parker and Rod Pearce
for an advanced design to succeed their car-
rier-based biplane, the Navy Type 96 (Aichi During the first ten months of the war the consisting of both fighter and bomber units
D1A2). This bomber had gained notoriety in Val enjoyed considerable success being — namely Vals — was established at the
1937 when it sank the American gun boat responsible for sinking more Allied ships Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan on May 31,
Panay, but during the Second World War the than any other type of Japanese aircraft. The 1942 and it arrived in Rabaul on August 6
D1A2 served mainly in second-line units, Japanese Navy’s 2nd Air Group (Kokutai) that year. The following day this group went
receiving the Allied code-name ‘Susie’.
The new specification called for a low-
wing, carrier-based dive-bomber. The single-
engine D3A monoplane with elliptical wings,
a fixed undercarriage and a two-man crew
was first blooded in the surprise attacks by
the Japanese Navy on Pearl Harbor in
December 1941. The aircraft was given the
code-name ‘Val’ by the Americans soon
after the Hawaii attack and thus it became
the first Japanese aircraft to drop bombs on
American soil. This plane was also the last
type of Japanese carrier-borne aircraft to use
a fixed undercarriage as this was considered
by many to be an almost obsolete design. A
total of 1,495 D3As were built: 1,294 by
Aichi Kokuki of Nagoya and 201 by Showa
Hikoki of Tokyo. Of the Aichi-built ones,
478 were Type 99 D3A1 (Model 11) and 816
were D3A2 (Model 22).

Right: Japan’s main carrier-based bom-

ber, the Val saw service throughout the
Pacific war, being operated by the carri-
ers Akagi, Chitose, Chiyoda, Hirya, Kaga,
Ryujo, Soryu, Zuiho, and Zuikaku and by
the 12th, 14th, 31st, 33rd, 40th, 541st and
582nd Air Groups. Here a D3A1 takes off
from a carrier on December 7, 1941, en
route for Pearl Harbor.

34
into action for the first time against the
American landing at Guadalcanal. On
November 1, 1942, as a result of the reorgan-
isation of the air groups due to catastrophic
losses, the 2nd Air Group was split into the
552nd and 582nd Air Groups. The 582nd
Group consisted of Vals and began to partic-
ipate in battles over New Guinea, commenc-
ing with an attack against the enemy trans-
ports on November 16, 1942.
On December 15, 1943, the Allies began
landing operations at Cape Merkus
(Arawee) on the south-western shore of New
Britain, the US 112th Cavalry Regiment pro-
viding the assault force. The Rabaul-based
Japanese air groups launched nine attacks
before the month was out involving a total of
622 bombers and fighters. Some of the fight-
ers were adapted to carry external ordnance
along with the Vals. Three days later, Rabaul
was reinforced by the carrier Zuikaku, its 18
Zero A6Ms being led by Kenji Nakagawa.
They were placed under the command of the
253rd Air Group and commenced air attacks
the next day. Also at that time ‘Kate’ B5Ns
and ‘Betty’ G4Ms carried out night attacks
against the beachhead.
Between December 17 and 27, seven mis-
sions were flown from Rabaul against Allied
landings by the Japanese 582nd and 552nd
Air Groups. Over 122 sorties were flown by
the Vals and over 40 crew members were lost
along with their aircraft.
I seldom ever flew the Zero on bombing missions. One of the bombing attacks
was against Cape Merkus. Kates and Vals took off respectively from
Vunakauna airfield and the first airfield [Lakunai] with about 40 Zeros in
escort and about 30 Zeros each carrying two 60kg bombs. Commander Shibata
stood in front of the command post and ordered in a strong tone: ‘We shall now
launch attacks against the enemy vessels at Cape Merkus. The Zeros equipped
with bombs should release them at below 1,000 meters in altitude. The bomb-
carrying Zeros shall be called a Special Attack Force’. [Not the same as the
Kamikaze special attack in later years.]
Equipping my Zero with bombs and, moreover, releasing them at a low alti-
tude was a totally new experience for me. The Kates and the Vals as well as the
Zeros tasked for direct escort flew far ahead at about 3,000 meters. When the
destination was near, the bomb-equipped Zeros released their drop tanks. It
appeared that there was no enemy fighter in the sky. Vals were already com-
mencing attacks. I could see columns of water spouting up or black smoke ris-
ing high from the ships hit.
Our commander banked to signal attacks. Enemy ships were so numerous
that it was difficult to pick up a target to plunge at following the aircraft ahead
of me. While descending, enemy shells exploded right and left shaking the plane
violently. Sweat must have been running from my hand that gripped the control
stick. Unable to choose a target despite rapid descent, I followed the aircraft
immediately ahead of me and let go of the bombs to attack the vessel that
entered my gun sight. I pulled the bomb-releasing cord with all my power, took
an evasive action by flying down to the right. I then looked up and joined the
friendly planes. I had no idea if my bombs had hit anything.
PETTY OFFICER SEKIZEN SHIBAYAMA

WRECK DISCOVERY
In 1984, Rod Pearce (a keen WWII
enthusiast), while looking for a downed air-
craft in the Arawee area, was told by a local
of an aircraft in the water near an exposed
wreck of an American B-25 Mitchell
bomber. Over the next few years, whenever
Rod was in that area, he searched for this
unknown aircraft but failed to locate it.
Many years later Rod passed this informa-
tion on to a friend, Mark Reichman, a New
Tribes Mission worker living and working in
Kandrian, some 25 miles south-east of
Arawee. Mark is also an avid WWII buff as
well as a keen scuba diver
In 2001, again on advice from a local,
Mark was told of a crashed aircraft in the
water near Arawee but this time the villager
offered to show Mark the location. However,
after a number of hours spent fruitlessly
searching with no contact, the local man gave
up. Later Mark went back to the area with
his two sons to carry out a further search.
Towing the boys wearing goggles and flip-
pers up and down behind his boat, in less The wreck was discovered on September 8, 2001 by local New Tribes Mission worker
than an hour the boys started yelling: ‘We Mark Reichman and his two sons Jared (left), then aged 10, and Micah (right), 15.
found it’. Anchoring the boat and marking Acting on advice from a local man, they scoured the water near Arawee and finally
the location, Mark then led his sons for a found the wreck at a depth of seven metres.
very exciting first dive to look at the wreck.
(Mark has commented since that day that
having returned to the site a number of
times, the water has never been as clear as it
was on that first day.)
Initially they had no idea what kind of air-
craft they had discovered so when they
returned home that night they looked in
every book they had. Matching up the distin-
guishing features of the aircraft, they soon
decided that it must be a Val.
Right: The aircraft rests upside down
on the seabed, which is an indication as
to how it came to its end. Apparently,
faced with battle damage or engine
trouble, the pilot had attempted to
ditch his aircraft but its fixed undercar-
riage had caused the plane to flip over
on contact with the water, the impact
tearing the engine from its mount and
breaking the fuselage. Obviously, the
pilot had already dropped his bombs on
a target or jettisoned his load before
attempting a crash-landing as there are
no bombs near the wreck. This is the
tail end, pictured by Anthony Cowan in
May 2005.

35
 RABAUL

CAPE MERKUS

The wreck lies just off Cape Merkus (Arawee) on the south- ings at Cape Merkus. These had begun on December 15 and
western shore of New Britain. The aircraft had taken off from were a diversionary for MacArthur’s main landings at Cape
Lakunai airstrip at Rabaul to attack the Allied seaborne land- Gloucester further west, launched on the 26th.

In December 2002 Rod Pearce (left), owner and operator of the wreck at Cape Merkus, returned to the site and himself
Niugini Diving, who had first tipped off Mark Reichman about explored the Val from his motor vessel Barbarian II (right).

Mark informed Rod of his find so while on
a charter to the Arawee area in December
2002, Rod decided to have a look at the air-
craft himself. It lay in seven metres of water
on a silty bottom, two miles from the outer
Arawee Islands. The underwater visibility
was excellent for that particular area, and on
examining the aircraft closely it was clear
that it was an Aichi D3A1 Navy Type 99.
The pilot it seems had tried to make a water
landing after suffering what appeared to be
battle damage and, with the fixed undercar-
riage, the plane had somersaulted upon con-
tact with the water. The Val now rested
upside down on its left side with one landing
gear intact and the other sheared off,
although the hydraulic ram remained in
place. The aircraft also had a broken fuselage
and severe damage to the front; the engine
torn from its mounts and lying under the
wing on the right side. Both the 7.7mm
machine guns in the cockpit were badly bent
as a result of the impact. Both soft and hard
coral had now grown around the plane.
Bearing in mind the frontal damage, it indi-
cated that both crew members would not
have survived unless they had bailed out, and
on closer examination of the cockpit, Rod
spotted human skeletal remains. The maker’s
plate on the tail hook of the plane was pho-
tographed as were the remains, this informa-
tion being passed to the Japanese embassy in
Port Moresby, along with maps of the area.
As Rod was again in the Arawee area dur-
ing May 2005, he once again dived on the Val
to do a feasibility study for the embassy as
they had indicated that a recovery was possi-
ble at a later date. Rod was curious to see if
the remains of the second airman — the
observer — were still in or around the plane.
On slowly fanning the silt away with one
hand he eventually came across the remains
of the second crew member just a couple of
inches beneath the silt. Photographs were
taken and forwarded to the Japanese as
proof that the second crew member
remained in the wreck as well.
The skeletal remains of both missing air-
men are in remarkable condition considering
the 60-odd years they have been in the water.
This preservation has been assisted by the The aircraft’s wings appear largely intact.
soft silty bottom on which the aircraft lays. (A. Cowan)

36
The Japanese Navy assigned each air-
craft a Type number (indicating the year
in which production was begun), a short
letter/figure description code (indicating
the aircraft’s function, number in its
class, manufacturing firm, and mark
respectively) and a model number (con-
sisting of two digits, the first relating to
the airframe, the second to the engine).
Thus the ‘Val’ bomber, as the Americans
dubbed it, was in official Navy nomencla-
ture the Type 99 D3A2 Model 11 — with
Type 99 standing for 1939 (2599 in the
Japanese calendar), D for Carrier
Bomber, 3 for third carrier bomber, A for
Aichi, 2 for Mark 2, while the Model 11
(one-one) indicated it had the first type
of airframe and first type of engine.
One of the wheels of the fixed undercarriage. (A. Cowan)
Having previously found other aircraft
underwater with missing still aboard, includ-
ing an Australian Beaufort A9-217 with four
crew members that had ditched on return
from a mission to Rabaul which resulted in a
complete recovery by the RAAF, Rod’s
team feel that in many circumstances
remains on underwater aircraft are better
preserved, provided they are covered by silt
or sand, than those found in crashes on land.
This is probably also assisted by the isolation
and limited human interference at these
remote underwater resting places.
Rod and his team at Niugini Diving
remain committed to seeking closure for the
lost airmen of both Allied and Axis forces in
and around Papua New Guinea. They hope
that this latest wreck discovery will result in
both crew members being identified and any
remaining next of kin notified.
TECHNICAL DATA OF THE AICHI TYPE 99 D3A1 MODEL 11 (‘VAL’)
Description: Armament:
Single-engine, two-seat, carrier-borne and Two forward-firing 7.7mm machine guns
land-based dive-bomber of metal and one rear-firing 7.7 flexible mount;
construction with fabric control surfaces bomb load, 1 × 250kg fuselage and 2 × 30kg
and fixed undercarriage. under the wings.
Power plant: Dimensions:
Single engine, 14-cylinder, air-cooled Span: 14.365 metres
radial made by Mitsubishi Kinsei, rated at Weight empty: 2,408kg
1,070 hp for take-off power and driving a Weight loaded: 3,650kg
metal three-blade propeller. Cruising speed: 160 knots (298 km/h)
Maximum speed: 209 knots (389 km/h)
Crew: Ceiling: 9,300 metres
Two in tandem enclosed cockpit. Range: 795 nautical miles
The tail wheel sticking out from the upturned frame. (A. Cowan)
A small plate found on the wreck’s recovered tail hook was at first thought to give
the aircraft’s serial number, which would have been vital for identifying the aircraft
and hence the crew, but later research showed that it was just a manufacturer’s plate
without any relevance to the aircraft’s identity. (T. Doyle)
Left: Human skeletal remains of both the
pilot and the observer were spotted in
the wreck. Rod Pearce and his associates
immediately informed the Japanese
Embassy in Port Moresby of the discov-
ery, providing them with the exact loca-
tion of the wreck and photographic evi-
dence of the skeletal remains, this
picture of a human bone sticking out
from under the fuselage being taken by
Blair Nixon during a dive in May 2005.
They also, at the request of the Japanese
Embassy, supplied information on
access, transport and accommodation to
the area. The wreck is in a very isolated
location and difficult to get to as it takes
two days by boat or a very long trek
through the jungle and then a boat trip
to reach it. At the time of writing, the
Japanese are still considering mounting
an operation to retrieve the remains of
the airmen for repatriation to Japan for a
proper burial. However it is debatable
whether attempts will be made to iden-
tify the two flyers, be it through DNA,
dental records, aircraft loss records or a
combination of these three data. We will
monitor further developments.
37
Right: They Were Not Divided, produced in
1949, is one of those war films that is
probably more interesting because of its
feel of authenticity than because of its
plot. The title refers to Americans and
Britons standing shoulder to shoulder in
the fight for democracy during the war,
but this is only a thin ideological veil over
the movie’s main theme, which is the
experiences of a British armoured
squadron at war. Portraying the wartime
service of a group of men in the Welsh
Guards, the movie can actually be seen as
a filmed version of a unit history, namely
that of the Guards Armoured Division, and
as such it was also advertised in its public-
ity posters. Making use of actors (most of
whom had served during the war) inter-
spersed with real soldiers; being filmed at
historic locations and utilising authentic
uniforms and equipment, the movie
attained an air of veracity that would be
lacking from many war films produced in
later decades. As such it ranks on a par
with Theirs is the Glory, the much better
remembered epic on the battle of
Arnhem, produced four years earlier.

Released in April 1950, in the face of

strong opposition from American war pic-
tures, such as Battleground and Twelve
O’Clock High, amongst others, They Were
Not Divided did not fare too well with critics
at the time though, as far as the paying public
were concerned, it was deemed worthy of a
place in that year’s top 30 films list. Today it
is barely remembered, only resurfacing occa-
sionally for an afternoon showing on televi-
sion. Its director and writer, Terence Young,
however, went on to make some pictures that
have sustained a higher profile, in the form
of three of the Bond films: Dr. No, From
Russia With Love and Thunderball.
Young’s own war had included working as
a screen writer, as well as serving as a captain
with the Guards Armoured Division, appar-
ently being wounded twice — once during
XXX Corps’ drive on Nijmegen. He had
been a tank commander with the Irish
Guards, and was to be found on manoeuvres
with the Guards Armoured Division in
Yorkshire in 1942. He later remarked that in
the first fortnight he had learned more about
tank warfare than he had absorbed about
film production in the previous five years.

THEY WERE NOT DIVIDED By Trevor Popple

Fresh from university, he had scored some
success as co-writer with On the Night of the
Fire in 1938 — a Ralph Richardson vehicle,
directed by Brian Desmond Hurst — contin-
uing after the outbreak of war with Hurst’s
Dangerous Moonlight (1941). Young’s next
picture was Clive Brook’s On Approval
(1944) — this being written whilst serving
with the Guards. Thus, with such a wealth of
experience, he was well placed to write the
screenplay for Hurst’s film Theirs is the
Glory, an account of the battle for Arnhem.
Released in 1946, it was shot mainly in the
ruins of Oosterbeek the previous year, using
veterans of the original action (see After the
Battle No. 58). Young later went on to write
and direct The Red Beret, starring American
Alan Ladd as a Canadian paratrooper, which
was released in 1953.
Left: Fresh recruit Philip Hamilton
(Edward Underdown) entering the
Guards’ Depot at Caterham.

38
Recruits Hamilton, David Morgan (Ralph Clanton) and ‘Smoke’
O’Connor (Michael Brennan) undergoing drill on the depot’s
parade ground. The movie actors of 1949 marched in company
of real guardsmen, the drill orders being given by a genuine
company sergeant-major, CSM King of the Welsh Guards (left),
and by Sergeant Dean (Rufus Cruikshank) (right). The Guards
Depot was built on land procured in 1875, and remained in use
until closure in 1995 whereupon the main barrack blocks, plus
some other buildings, were converted into private living
accommodation. Other structures (including the guardhouse
on Coulsdon Road where Hamilton had reported as a cadet)
were demolished with new houses being built on the site.
Today the parade ground, although still flanked by trees, is a
grass cricket pitch with a traditional wooden pavilion.

But between these two pictures he wrote
and directed They Were Not Divided under
producer Herbert Smith for the Rank
Organisation. Broadly the story follows two
friends, Philip Hamilton (Edward Under-
down) and David Morgan, an American
(Ralph Clanton), who join the Welsh Guards
just after Dunkirk. Commissioned as 2nd
lieutenants they spend their time training in
England and preparing themselves and the
vehicles for the North African campaign,
then Italy, only in the event to remain at
home until they are sent to Normandy with
the Guards Armoured Division in June 1944.
Whereupon the film follows their fortunes
through France, Belgium and the liberation
of Brussels, then to Holland and Nijmegen,
and finally to the Battle of the Bulge, where
the two lead characters are killed in action.
The love interest is provided by a wife
(Helen Cherry) for Hamilton, and an English
girlfriend (Stella Andrew) for Morgan.
The cast was to comprise of unknown, or
little known, professional actors, all ex-ser-
vice men, blended with genuine soldiers with
speaking roles. Only two of the professionals
would become well known in later years —
these being Desmond Llewelyn, the testy,
long-suffering ‘Q’ in the Bond films, and
Christopher Lee, once the doyen of the
Hammer Horror films, sometime Bond vil-
lain, and more recently Saruman in the Lord
of the Rings series. Llewelyn plays Welsh hull
gunner ‘77 Jones’, whilst Lee is Captain
Chris Lewis, one of the tank commanders.
As for the two male leads, Edward Under-
down continued to work regularly, tending to
be cast as doctors or military figures, thereby
typically appearing for Terence Young in
Thunderball, as an Air Commodore. Whilst
Ralph Clanton returned to America where
he worked steadily in theatre and television,
in the main, plus being cast in some small
film parts.
The third character — Corporal ‘Smoke’
O’Connor — was played by Michael Bren-
nan, an actor whose career spanned five
decades, starting on television in 1939. Fol-
lowing the war he continued, mainly playing
minor authority figures, heavies or petty
crooks, both on television and in the cinema.
One of the amateur performers did rather
well: this was Michael Trubshawe playing
Major ‘Bushey’ Noble, so named because of
a beautifully cultivated and impeccably
maintained moustache. In uniform he could
be regarded as the personification of car-
toonist Jon’s wartime strip The Two Types
— either of them. Trubshawe had served in
the Highland Light Infantry in Malta with
the film actor David Niven in the 1930s, and
the pair had become great friends, to the
extent that he had been Niven’s best man —
twice. Post war he had been the landlord of a
series of pubs in Kent and Sussex, in one of
which Young had met him, and become

Left: A memorable performance in the early training scenes
was given by the real Regimental Sergeant-Major Ronald Brit-
tain of the Coldstream Guards. A larger-than-life character,
affectionately known as ‘the man with the loudest voice in the
British Army’, ‘Tubby’ Brittain served in the Army for 38 years,
from 1917 to 1955, 25 of them as warrant officer. During that
time he drilled some 40,000 cadets, becoming a legend to thou-
sands of young soldiers. As senior RSM in the Army he was in
charge of ceremonial drills at many Royal occasions, including
the Jubilee Parades for King George V and Queen Mary, the
coronation of King George VI and also the latter’s funeral. They
Were Not Divided was his first film appearance, but he would
play the part he knew so well in other movies too. In this
scene, having spotted Guardsman Hamilton free-wheeling on
his bicycle, he charges him with ‘being idle whilst cycling’.
Looking on is Company Sergeant-Major King. Right: An
already-shorn Hamilton (left) experiences the wonderful velvet
tones of RSM Brittain during a barracks room inspection: ‘Am I
hurting you? I should be. Because I’m standing on your back
hair. GET IT CUT!’

39
It is early 1942 and O’Connor, their old friend from the days at Morgan and his crew painting their Cromwell in sand camou-
Caterham, having subsequently become an instructor at Lul- flage to prepare for embarkation to North Africa, which in the
worth and attained the rank of corporal, joins Lieutenants course of events does not materialise. Seen (L–R) are ’77 Dai
Hamilton and Morgan as replacement gunner for Morgan’s Jones (Desmond Llewelyn), ’45 Ivor Jones (John Wynn) and
crew in No. 1 Troop at their base in the UK. The two Cromwells Morgan. Behind them on the hull is the anonymous soldier
— Hamilton’s vehicle is just out of shot with one track who drove their vehicles for the production and, with the
removed, whilst Morgan’s stands in the background — are absent Michael Brennan as gunner, completed the five-man
backed up by a Centurion. Britain’s first post-war tank, the crew. Cromwells appeared in movies until the mid-fifties —
Centurion has its skirts removed, perhaps to create a degree of usually as enemy tanks, A Hill in Korea (1956) being an exam-
similarity with the Cromwells. However, at this point of time in ple — and then disappeared for nearly 50 years, leaving the cin-
the film, the Cromwells are as anachronistic as the Centurion, ema wars to be fought by Shermans, T34s and various types of
for they were not introduced until November 1942 and in post-war tanks, and then three turned up magnificently in
actual fact during 1942-43 the armoured battalions of the HBO’s landmark television series Band of Brothers in 2001,
Guards Armoured Division were equipped with Crusaders. courtesy of art director Alan Tomkins.
impressed enough to engage him for a he was now trying to regenerate his career. Hamburg during a break in filming, was his
prominent part in the film. And out of this With the advent of a new peace, and at a first son, Ivor, born on July 14.
chance meeting there spawned a career in time when theatre was hardly booming, it In a way They Were Not Divided was to be
pictures, and some television (The was not the best of times. His wife Pamela his break: just over a decade later Young cast
Avengers), that was to last 20 years, in which was two months pregnant, when he secured a him as ‘Q’ in From Russia With Love —
he too always seemed to play very ‘British’ screen test with Terence Young in January Peter Burton, the original actor who had
colonels, ambassadors, other establishment 1949. He was hoping that They Were Not played Major Boothroyd (later ‘Q’) in Dr
figures, or even an un-credited member of Divided — his biggest role so far — would No, not being available. Llewelyn was to
the Observer Corps in Battle of Britain (see prove to be his big break, and thus was irri- reprise the role a further 16 times, before his
After the Battle No. 1) — and always with the tated by the discovery that some of the ama- death in 1999.
moustache to the fore. teur players — Trubshawe in particular — Christopher Lee’s view of Young’s casting
Desmond Llewelyn was good-naturedly were assigned more substantial roles. Llewe- of amateurs was more pragmatic: on the one
critical of the ‘fabulously moustached’ Trub- lyn admitted that he was galled because hand their performances merely underlined
shawe’s success. He had been a struggling Trubshawe got a lot of work as a conse- the need for casting professionals, whilst on
actor before the war, and having returned quence of the film, whereas he did not. What the other, they withstood the buffets of film
home from spending five years as a prisoner, he did get, however, on a trip home from making without complaint.

Right: Seated on his Daimler Dingo scout

car, Major ‘Bushey’ Noble (Michael Trub-
shawe) observes his squadron, now con-
verted to Shermans, entering Camp A260
in the marshalling areas of southern Eng-
land prior to embarkation for the invasion.
Although the Guards unit in the movie is
identified as the ‘4th Welsh Guards’ — an
imaginary unit as this regiment never had
a 4th Battalion — by having the Welsh
Guards going to war equipped with Sher-
mans, the movie introduced another small
anomaly. Of the four armoured regiments
in the Guards Armoured Division in 1944-
45 (2nd Grenadier Guards, 1st Coldstream
Guards, 2nd Irish Guards and 2nd Welsh
Guards), the Welsh Guards were the only
unit not equipped with Shermans — being
the division’s armoured recce unit, they
had Cromwells. The film production prob-
ably used Shermans because that was a
type of tank available in sufficient num-
bers from the BAOR, but one wonders
whether the anomaly was written into the
script on purpose or, if not, whether the
film team ever considered changing the
storyline from Welsh Guards to one of the
other Guards regiments. Another anomaly
mixing up the various regiments within
the Guards Armoured is the ‘53’ unit serial
number seen on the Welsh Guards vehi-
cles in the movie, this number in actual
fact having been that of the 2nd Irish
Guards during the 1944-45 campaign.

40
Heading for the Normandy beaches, courtesy of back projec-
tion and archive inserts, Major Noble observes: ‘Different from
last time. Dunkirk in reverse’. With him is an anonymous
Guards officer (front right), being played by Peter Burton, who
would later be cast as Major Boothroyd, the original ‘Q’ in Dr.
No — the role subsequently taken over by Desmond Llewelyn.
Back row left is Christopher Lee as Captain Chris Lewis.
Real or reconstruction? The Welsh Guards arrive at their new
base in Normandy with the dust from Hamilton’s Sherman
nearly obliterating ‘Bushey’ Noble, who has just nimbly dis-
mounted from his still-moving scout car to guide the tanks in.
In an acknowledgement to the film’s authenticity, at the pre-
miere in April 1950 a high-ranking army officer had asked direc-
tor Terence Young where he had shot the film ‘during the war’!

He had already made one film with Young

three years previously, and now the director
was casting him in his latest picture, thereby
once again releasing him from the ‘purdah’,
in Lee’s view, that was the Rank Charm
School, to whom he was then contracted. He
freely admits he was in Young’s debt, but
nevertheless was not over-impressed with
the film, referring to the story as ‘mawkish’.
Another of the amateurs was Regimental
Sergeant-Major Ronald Brittain MBE of the
Coldstream Guards, seen in company with
Company Sergeant-Major King of the Welsh
Guards, during Hamilton’s bicycle infraction
scene at the Caterham depot. In typical army
fashion, because he is free-wheeling, Brittain
charges Hamilton with being idle whilst bicy-
cling. Brittain became something of a media
figure as well: he appeared in cameos on
British TV in the fifties and sixties, and even
featured in some films — Carrington VC and
55 Days at Peking, being examples — and
always playing to type.
As to locations: interiors were pho-
tographed at Denham Studios in Bucking-
hamshire, and early basic training scenes
were shot at the Guards Training Depot at
Caterham in Surrey — both interior and
exterior.
Some sequences were shot in Belgium and
France, but Soltau, close to Lüneburg Heath
in northern Germany, was the principal
Above right: Going into its first attack, the unit suffers its first
casualties — the sequence no doubt representing the opening
day of Operation ‘Goodwood’ east of Caen on July 18. As the
wounded are recovered, whilst under fire from a German 88,
Noble (with binoculars) assesses the situation: ‘That’s him in the
corner of the woods . . . So if No. 1 go around to the right, make a
demonstration, 3 and 4 can sneak through on the left, whilst the
rest of us give covering fire turret-down behind the hedges on
the left’. The burning cast-hull Sherman seen here is one of at
least two hulks utilised in the film to portray knocked-out Allied
tanks. Another is a welded-hull M4A4, minus one or two
periscopes, evident after the Welsh Guards’ first major action,
and again later in the Arnhem scenes. The wreck of an American-
made Staghound armoured car also ‘suffers for its art’ in a couple
of shots. Right: Another of the amateur actors selected by Young
was Iain Murray (right) who plays the Welsh Guards’ command-
ing officer. An Arnhem veteran, he had been demobbed from the
Grenadier Guards as a lieutenant-colonel, having previously com-
manded No. 1 Wing of the Glider Pilot Regiment. With Morgan
on the left, Murray is reprimanding an out-of-shot ’45 Jones from
his Jeep for having his three top buttons undone. Thoroughly
chastened, Jones expresses a desire to get on with the battle, on
the basis that it might be a safer place to be. (John Wynn, who
plays Jones, stopped acting in the 1960s, working instead in
lighting, sound and as a camera operator.)

41
location for the tank scenes. The Wooden
Horse — released in 1950 as well — was also
photographed there in the autumn of 1949
(see After the Battle No. 87) ), and thus must
have followed They Were Not Divided. Films
provided a boost for the local economy, with
German technicians building sets, or provid-
ing special effects for the productions.
Christopher Lee, however, holds a suspi-
cious view of German support staff of that
period: one of the ‘buffets’ of making the
film included the fitting of explosive charges
covered with foliage and petroleum jelly to
the tanks. These were fired electrically by the
joining of a pair of wires by one of those
aboard, with the result invariably being a
sheet of flame and a concussion for the crew,
be they actor or soldier. As Lee wrote: ‘It
was uncertain how much real animus
lingered on four years after the war’.
Underlying German hostility — real or
imagined — aside, there were dangers for
crew and cast alike: some of the tank scenes
were shot at Gmund-Eifel, an area still
strewn with mines. ‘Which made filming an
interesting exercise’, Lee added ironically.
Genuinely interesting, of course, is the
provision of tanks for the film: for scenes set
in the UK, two Cromwells were used (with a
Centurion tucked in the background), and
referred to by name. These were employed Young photographed his collection of Shermans performing the Welsh Guards’ first
statically, to illustrate the unit’s frustrations massed attack, protected by a smoke-screen, on German armour hidden in a wood.
as the crews paint them in a sand colour in In this shot there are five of the 75mm M4A4s visible, with one of the two mocked-up
anticipation of going to North Africa, only to 17-pdr Fireflies completely hidden by smoke in the right-hand corner. In addition to
have them revert to khaki drab when the the tanks, other vehicles supplied by the BAOR included Daimler scout cars, an M3
order is rescinded in March 1943. The half-track, various trucks and a field ambulance — in fact all the accoutrements to
Cromwell did not go into service until create a microcosm of an armoured division.
November that year, so its appearance in the
period between Dunkirk and Alamein was Certainly six, or possibly seven, Shermans sides, whilst another did not have it fitted at
pre-emptive. But archive footage of armour are seen running during the course of the pic- the front to protect the driver and hull gun-
on exercises, intended to be set during the ture, together with two hulks acting as battle ner. One Sherman, dubbed Llandudno (the
course of 1941, accurately includes the hap- casualties. The runners were all M4A4 Sher- third to bear the name in the film), com-
less Covenanter, and the earlier Cruiser, mans (designated the Sherman V in British manded by Morgan, in a scene where the
A13. service), with the extended welded hull to Guards link up with the American para-
The British Army of the Rhine provided accommodate the Chrysler Multibank troops at the Grave bridge in Holland, has
nine Shermans, and associated vehicles, for engine. For the most part they bore the 60- the later cast one-piece transmission cover
the production, and, according to one source, degree angle glacis with applique armour and commander’s vision cupola.
it would appear that the variants typical of added to the driver and hull gunner’s posi- Two of the tanks were converted into
the European campaign, which had ended tions, the original three-piece transmission 17-pdr Fireflies, technically making them
only four years previously, were something cover, early cast turret and commander’s Sherman VCs — of sorts. Extensions were
of a scarcity. It is claimed that these vehicles hatch plus the wide gun mantlet and 75mm fitted to the barrels of the 75mm guns and
were rescued from the scrap-yard, and gun, and drove on metal chevron tracks. draped with camouflage netting, but the
brought back to running condition for the Of course there were some variations to crude approximations of the 17-pdr muzzle
film — presumably by the REME. And as this: there were mudguards and the odd brake betrays them. Nonetheless, the nine
ever, there was an avid enthusiast on hand — headlight missing. One had rubber chevron Shermans being covered with stowage, net-
one Sergeant Ron Clothier of the Grenadier tracks, one or two others had grouser exten- ting and foliage look perfect representations
Guards — who elected to cancel his leave to sions attached to their tracks. Some carried of a British unit in Europe in 1944-45. Added
help with the refurbishment. applique armour on their hull and turret to which, given that most of them are crewed

Real or reconstruction? A Sherman roars across a field past a
dead cow — a familiar feature of the Normandy campaign —
towards a knocked-out Jagdpanther on the edge of the wood
before it in turn is brewed up — the final victim of a Tiger. The
tank attack was recreated on Lüneburg Heath in Germany and
the cattle cadavers were dummies produced by a company in
the UK.
The aftermath of the attack. Morgan (left) remarks: ‘Well, that’s
seven of them anyway’. To which Hamilton (right) responds:
‘Including a Ferdinand and a Tiger’. Certainly a late-model Tiger
with steel-rimmed wheels has been knocked out, but there is
no sign of a Ferdinand, though there is a dead Jagdpanther
behind Hamilton. Regrettably this vehicle is only visible in
some detail in a Rank publicity still.

42
Right: The Welsh Guards continue their
advance through France, encountering a
mix of enemy fire and cheering civilians.
To demonstrate their progress Young
used a montage of maps and original
footage mixed with archive inserts. Thus
the viewer sees their drive from Tilly-sur-
Seulles via Aunay-sur-Odon, Caumont
and Le Beny-Bocage, across the Seine,
and finally onto Brussels.

by Guardsmen, dressed absolutely authenti-

cally, the image presented is impeccable,
making the transition between Young’s orig-
inal footage, and archive insertions almost
impossible to detect.
German armour featured in the picture
does not disappoint either: Young shot an
impressive set-piece charge at speed by the
Shermans across the Lüneburg heathland
against enemy tanks in a bordering wood.
The viewer sees a Tiger advance, closely
accompanied by a Panzer IV with the short
75mm gun, together with an armoured car.
This is a clip that is part of a bigger sequence
that features in Theirs is the Glory, which in
full also includes a Panther, and a JgdPz38(t)
Hetzer, followed by an eight-wheeled
armoured car of the SdKfz234 family. The
extract used in They Were Not Divided,
showing the Tiger, is reversed so that the
vehicles face the British attack.

One original clip in the Aunay-sur-Odon sequence shows tanks The driver and commander bale out hurriedly as the vehicle
doing stunts: driving straight to camera a Sherman is hit and careers toward camera unmanned, pursued by a third Sher-
careers into an adjacent building; Llandudno, following, man, and then crashes over onto its side, and comes to a halt
swerves around it partly onto a raised bank, and is also hit. upside down.

The Guards’ mad race to Brussels in early September 1944 was Brussels is liberated and jubilant crowds mob the vehicles. The
graphically illustrated by this shot of a Sherman crashing through dialogue in this scene refers to the Welsh and Grenadier Guards
a customs barrier representing the French/Belgian border. both claiming to have been first to enter the Belgian capital.

43
Right: The film’s next episode deals with ‘Market-Garden’, the
great airborne operation in the Netherlands that started on
September 17, during which the Guards Armoured Division led
British Second Army’s drive to link up with the airborne troops
dropped in front of XXX Corps in an attempt to gain a bridge-
head over the Rhine at Arnhem. A quick sequence shows the
tanks meeting up with men of the US 101st and 82nd Airborne
Divisions on the road to Arnhem. Although the American para-
troopers are seen to wear the correct unit badges — the
‘Screaming Eagle’ of the 101st in this scene and the ‘AA’ (All
American) of the 82nd in another shot — they are not clad in
authentic American paratroopers’ combat uniforms, with the
typical baggy pants, but in a strange type of smock more remi-
niscent of that worn by German paratroops during the war.
Also, the sequence has got the order of the link-ups the wrong
way round, showing the 82nd first and the 101st second. In
reality the Guards first contacted the 101st, in Eindhoven on
September 18, and then the 82nd, at Grave on the 19th. The
error is more than a montage slip-up for in a later scene 101st
troopers are seen walking through Nijmegen, which leads to
the suspicion that the scriptwriters really thought that this
division was responsible for that sector.
The Guards have reached Nijmegen. It is the evening of Sep-
tember 19 and (L-R) the Earl of Bentham aka ‘his Lordship’
(Rupert Gerard — on tank), a Grenadier Guards major (Anthony
Dawson), Hamilton, Morgan and Noble discuss the situation.
Asked by Bentham what the position is, Noble replies: ‘The
[American] paratroops didn’t manage to get the bridge, so the
Grenadiers are going to have a crack in the morning with them.
Then, if they get it, we cross over and get the whip out. The
boys at Arnhem must be wondering, you see.’ ‘Is it a big
bridge?’, enquires Bentham. ‘Only the Rhine’, Noble responds,
thinking that crossing Nijmegen bridge will be suicide in day-
light. The next shot shows Noble driving across, looking up to
the big span from his tank turret and muttering ‘Impossible,
impossible’ in disbelief of its capture. (The bridge at Nijmegen
is actually across the Waal river, which is in effect a branch
river of the Rhine but equally wide.)
44
A second Tiger also emerges from the
woods, with the commander using the
loader’s hatch for some reason, seemingly
advancing briefly under its own power, and
firing. The Guards carry the day, and this
second Tiger is later seen knocked out on the
edge of the heath, burning slightly, with Mor-
gan and Hamilton beside it debating their
victory. Thus we know Young had at least
one Tiger on location for his film.
Left: Morgan in the lead tank, reaches
the Grave bridge over the Maas river
held by troops of the 82nd Airborne Divi-
sion. Or rather he has reached a special
effect in the form of an image of the
Grave bridge, plus some surrounding
countryside, including a crashed glider
to the left, painted on a sheet of glass.
Two paratroopers, also on the left, have
been placed too far back in the scene as
the tops of their heads are temporarily
cut off by the bottom of the painting. By
now, Morgan’s Sherman, Llandudno, is a
variant fitted with the commander’s
vision cupola. Its hatch cover, visible in
other shots, has been removed, presum-
ably because it intruded on the glass
painting.
The race to Arnhem has bogged down, and Noble is seen sit-
ting gloomily under an umbrella listening to the last broadcast
from BBC war correspondent Stanley Maxted isolated at
Arnhem — the dialogue being lifted from Maxted’s appearance
in Theirs is the Glory. Their vehicles exposed on high embank-
ment roads and held up by enemy anti-tank guns, the men are
told to dig in. Noble sums it up: ‘We may have advanced a hell
of a long way, but our front is only as wide as one main road.’
In a way, They Were Not Divided and Theirs is the Glory com-
plement each other, giving two sides of the same battle. Not-
ing that scriptwriter and director Young was ex-Irish Guards,
and remembering the acrimony that existed between the air-
borne men and XXX Corps after Arnhem, the former accusing
the ground army of having been ‘slow’, one can even regard
They Were Not Divided as XXX Corps’ cinematographic
answer to Theirs is the Glory.
Right: The movie does not take the story
to final victory in Germany but terminates
during the Battle of the Bulge in the win-
ter of 1944/45, when the Welsh Guards
are seen fighting side by side with the
Americans in the snow-covered Arden-
nes. The Guards Armoured Division was
hastily moved to the Namur area on
December 21 to back up the American
defence lines, but they saw little or no
real action during this period, activities
being limited to reconnaissance and
patrolling, and it is during one of these
patrols that the final sequence unrolls.

Rank never released They Were Not

Divided on video, so people who wanted to
see it had to be content with its all too rare
screenings on TV. However in 2005 Granada
Ventures, who today own the Rank cata-
logue, licensed the film to DD Home Enter-
tainment for DVD release, so it is now avail-
able for all to see. The viewer will be
rewarded with a pleasing, nostalgic 100 min-
utes, or so, of a period piece that presents
images and language of a bygone era, which
for those of a certain age is very comforting
— though the domestic scenes do not stand
the test of time. But lines such as: ‘Are you
using your Jeep, Bushey, I’m popping over to
Div to find out the form’, delivered in a

As they survey the enemy positions, Morgan is fatally hit by an friend, encouraging him that help is on the way, until both men
enemy shell, whereupon Hamilton stays with his American are killed by a direct hit.

clipped accent, make it obvious why on its

American release in 1951 Motion Picture
Herald’s correspondent wrote: ‘Exhibitors
should be warned that much of the dialogue
is spoken with pronouncedly British accents’.
That aside, the bulk of the people presenting
the story are real; the British costumes, and
in a number of instances, the locations, are
authentic, and, needless to say, the war mate-
rial is original. Young’s XXX Corps did not
have to resort to plastic mouldings and long-
wheelbase Land Rovers for Shermans, which
had partially been necessary for A Bridge
Too Far, nearly 30 years later (see After the
Battle No. 17). So for armour buffs it goes
without saying that this picture is definitely
one for the collection.

They Were Not Divided is available on

DVD from DD Home Entertainments
(DD.20758).
Right: In a final scene, Corporal O’Connor
puts two small flags — one a Union Jack,
the other a Stars and Stripes — on the
field graves of his two comrades. Not
sure which grave is which, he asks the GI
(William Sylvester) that is with him: ‘Do
you think they’d mind if I get it wrong?’
‘No, you go right ahead’, says the Ameri-
can, putting a final touch to the film’s
title.

45
This month sees the publication of a new After the Battle book by
our French author Jean Paul Pallud. Titled Rückmarsch — The
German Retreat from France — Then and Now, it presents the
story of the German withdrawal from France in the summer of
1944 — from the last German counter-attack in Normandy
launched at Mortain on August 7, through the debacle of the
Falaise Pocket and the desperate crossing of the Seine river, to
the miraculous recovery of the German army in the southern
Netherlands and along the German border in mid-September. As
we have come to expect from Jean Paul, the book is filled with
magnificent ‘then and now’ comparison photographs, illustrating
every phase and aspect of this dramatic episode. As an appetiser,
we hereby present an extract from the book that well conveys
the flavour of what it contains. This particular incident was
recorded on 35mm film taken by a German army photographer,
Kriegsberichter Zwirner. Driving east from Vimoutiers on August
17, Zwirner reached a section of road where a German ambu-
lance convoy had just been caught in the open and shot to pieces
by Allied fighter-bombers. Among his first exposures was this
one taken from position [1] (see the sketch on page 50) at the
point where he found the road blocked with wreckage. The two
vehicles in the foreground, an Opel Super 6 and a commandeered
civilian Citroën, show only minor damage but the third vehicle
just in front of the Opel has been badly damaged. (BA)

Since 1983 when I worked for After the

Battle on the production of Panzers in Nor-

RÜCKMARSCH
mandy Then and Now, I conceived the idea
of continuing the story to cover the subse-
quent German retreat across France — the
country of my birth — during the summer of
1944.
The first problem I had to solve was how
to describe with clarity a very complicated
period covering many days of swift-moving
events all over the country. Indeed, unlike
my earlier books — Blitzkrieg in the West
Then and Now and Battle of the Bulge Then
Events accelerated incredibly during the
second half of the month. As a result of the
failure of the Mortain attack, the German
By Jean Paul Pallud
and Now, and D-Day Then and Now to forces in Normandy found themselves in a formed. By about August 17 the pocket was
which I contributed — the retreat did not fall disastrous situation. Hemmed in in the south effectively closed on the Dives river, and
naturally into a set-piece operation, neither by the eastward advance of American units, those German elements which had managed
in the strategic plans drawn up by the Allies and compressed from the north by the to escape from it, together with others which
nor the defensive reactions by the Germans. British and Canadian forces, what became had not been involved there, were making a
I decided to start my account with Opera- known as the Falaise Pocket was thus fighting withdrawal towards the Seine.
tion ‘Lüttich’, the counter-attack launched
from Mortain on August 7 which had the
intention of reaching Avranches, so cutting Scale 1:200,000
off the rear of US Third Army. It was the
failure of this operation, the last major Ger-
man initiative in Normandy, that led directly
to Hitler’s order to Heeresgruppe B to with-
draw on August 16 — an implied admission
that his armies in the West had been
defeated.

Right: It was the accurate description

given by a soldier of the 9. SS-Panzer-
Division, SS-Sturmmann Rudi Cihotzki,
which led Jean Paul to identifying this
location as the D46 through the Bois de BOIS DE MEULLES
Meulles, ten kilometres east of
Vimoutiers on the road to Orbec. In mid-
August, this was the sector where the II.
SS-Panzerkorps, with the 2. and 9. SS-
Panzer-Divisions under command, was
moving to attack westward in order to
open a passage for the troops withdraw- Reproduced from Michelin Sheet 55, 25th Edition, 1986
ing from the Falaise Pocket.

46
From position [1] Zwirner walked 50 metres or so further along sight of a dismembered corpse hanging from the rear canvas
and then took this picture from position [2]. A Citroën P45 lorry support. Picking his way carefully between the wrecked vehi-
has received a direct hit, possibly from a 3-inch rocket fired by a cles, Zwirner then continued to the head of the column before
Typhoon. Bodies lie everywhere with the particularly gruesome retracing his steps to where he had left his own vehicle. (BA)

That river formed a formidable obstacle to Propagandakompanien travelled with the tured Germans and wrecked vehicles of
the Germans trying to extricate their army convoys during the mass withdrawal to the every sort. Prominent in this field were
but, in spite of the fact that almost all the north. We must therefore thank Kriegs- British Captain Derrick Knight and Sergeant
permanent bridges were out of commission, berichter Theobald, Casper, Kurth, Scheck, Norman Midgley of the Army Film and
they managed to save nearly a quarter of a Genzler, Jesse and Müller for making this Photo Unit, Canadian Lieutenants Ken Bell
million men. Over 95 per cent of those reach- book possible. However, as all their caption and Donald Grant of the Canadian AFPU,
ing the Seine succeeded in crossing together sheets were lost at the end of the war, it and American Sergeants Kitzerow and Irwin
with some 90 per cent of the motor vehicles required much painstaking detective work to Leibowitz of the US Signal Corps. Also some
and 70 per cent of the armour. trace the locations depicted. enterprising civilians risked their lives taking
The days which followed were ones of con- Meanwhile, over on the Allied side, pho- photos like M. Fernand Watteeuw at Beau-
fusion for the German command in the West. tographers were enthusiastically picturing vais, France, and M. Octave Sanspoux at
Continuous movement with staffs and tech- the results of the Allied victory: dead or cap- Nivelles, Belgium.
nical services dispersed or being overrun;
command and communication virtually non-
existent; roads congested and strafed; a
flurry of directives to build new lines of
defence almost immediately rendered obso-
lete by the flow of events . . . and all this
within a matter of a few days.
However, even though the withdrawing
forces comprised only separated, fragmented
formations, ignorant of the whereabouts and
intentions of either their own or Allied
troops, they showed no evidence of rout or
mass collapse. The Germans succeeded in
extricating fighting men of good quality,
although by the time they quit France they
had suffered 290,000 casualties: about 23,000
killed, 67,000 wounded and 200,000 missing.
Although this was a huge German defeat, it
was not necessarily a resounding Allied vic-
tory. The Allies failed to achieve even
greater successes in closing the Falaise
Pocket more quickly, and then enveloping
those forces that escaped by sweeping along
the Seine from the coast to Paris.
As all After the Battle publications rely
heavily on illustrations, the first challenge
was to find photographs to represent the
retreat (Rückmarsch in German), not an The same view along D46 as it passes the Bois de Meulles, looking eastwards. The
easy task since a retiring army does not waste trees have grown but the curve of the road remains the same. In all Zwirner took 27
precious time taking photographs. Fortu- photos here and we will follow in his footsteps on the following pages as he pictures
nately a few German war reporters of the the shattered column from end to end.

47
Having passed the Citroën lorry, Zwirner turned round to look men were examining each vehicle, looking for survivors, and at
back the way he had come and from position [3] he pictured the least one man has been saved and put on a stretcher. In the
scene with a Phänomen Granit 1500 S ambulance (registration background a Kübelwagen can be seen turning off to the left,
plate WH 838658) behind the shattered Citroën P45. Meanwhile using a makeshift bypass through the woods. (BA)

Research for this book involved travelling
all over France to trace pictures and take the
comparison photographs, a task that took me
over five years to complete. In this I have
been helped by many local historians and
like-minded enthusiasts who gave me their
generous help and support, and I am
indebted to the late Fernand Watteeuw and
Philippe Bonnet-Laborderie of the GEMOB
historical society, Stéphane Jonot of the
Montmormel Mémorial, Bruno Renoult of
Vexin Histoire Vivante, Daniel Rose, an
expert on the Seine river and the air attacks
at Rouen, and Henry Hoppe of Berlin who is
able to identify any vehicle, even if only a
part of the rear bumper is visible.
In following in the footsteps of the with-
drawing troops, I have travelled from the
French Riviera to the Dutch border and
from the Channel coast to the frontier with
Germany. One prominent feature in this
story is the Seine river and I spent many
interesting hours wandering along its banks,
enjoying crossing it back and forth on ferries
at the very same places used by the Germans
to transport their troops across. In Rouen I
explored the quays, looking for particular
bollards which appeared in the wartime pho-
tography. Fortunately they have all survived
and, being numbered, they are a valuable
landmark which enabled me to pinpoint the
exact locations for my comparison photos.
Of particular interest on the left bank is bol-
lard 224 that still shows the damage it suf-
fered in August 1944 from burning vehicles
and exploding ammunition.
Along the way I have made many thrilling
discoveries among the uncaptioned rolls of
film in the Bundesarchiv and the French
Army archives (ECPAD), for example the
series of pictures showing the German with-
drawal north along the Rhône valley follow-
ing the Allied landing on the French Riviera.
Kriegsberichter Möller was on the spot to
record history in August 1944 (see pages 253-
255 of the book) and 60 years later I was able
to retrace his route as he moved north up the
valley.

Soldiers offer the survivor some food and drink. The over- Looking at the peaceful scene along the D46 today it is diffi-
turned Kübelwagen was probably already there when the cult to imagine the carnage that once occupied this stretch
column was attacked as it has been stripped of its wheels. (BA) of road.

48
Having walked along the column and reached position [4],
Zwirner took this shot of a section of the road littered with
remains of totally wrecked vehicles. The scene of bloodshed that
unrolled here was also witnessed by SS-Sturmmann Cihotzki of
SS-Panzer-Pionier-Bataillon 9 as he retreated eastwards from
Vimoutiers during the afternoon of August 17: ‘A column of Ger-
man field ambulances has been shot to pieces by enemy fighter-
bombers. This is the most gruesome sight I’ve seen throughout
the whole war. The ambulances are burned out, and in the melted
hulks you can make out the remains of men — shrivelled to such
an extent by the heat that they look like dolls. Other bodies lie
strewn around beside the wrecked lorries. One glance at the
bloodstained, encrusted dressings is enough to make you realise
that these had been helpless wounded men.’ (BA)

It is hard to believe that this is where it all happened yet the curve in the road pinpoints the spot.

49
 1

From the 27 pictures taken by Zwirner, Jean Paul reconstructed a Citroën P45 lorry and the Kübelwagen in the ditch; a Renault
the shot-up column strewn along hundreds of metres of the AGC ambulance; a Kfz 12 Horch and a Phänomen Granit ambu-
D46 in the Meulles wood. The drawing is approximately to lance in the ditch; another disabled Phänomen Granit ambu-
scale, overlaid on an aerial photograph of the road. From west lance and an NSU motorcycle; a Peugeot DMA ambulance and a
(left) to east (right) there were a civilian Citroën, an Opel Super Simca 5; a Renault AFB ambulance and a Renault AHN or AHR
6 and an unidentified vehicle; a Phänomen Granit ambulance, with trailer.
As for the pictures of the shot-up German
ambulance convoy reproduced in the present
article, although a long time elapsed between
obtaining the photos and identifying the
location, in the end finding the correct spot
proved to be relatively easy. I first came
across the pictures in the late 1980s, while
doing photo research at the Bundesarchiv.
There were 27 of them, on a roll of film
which had 30 frames in all. I obtained prints
of three or four of the photos, made notes
about the others, and started making a
sketch to link the positions of the various
vehicles seen in them.
Some years later I bought Wilhelm Tieke’s
book Im Feuersturm letzer Kriegsjahre, the
unit history of the 9. and 10. SS-Panzer-Divi-
sions, which had been published in Germany
by Munin back in 1975. While reading this I
came across an account by SS-Sturmmann
Rudi Cihotzki, a member of SS-Pionier-
Bataillon 9, in which he described seeing a
Having passed a motorcycle (possibly an NSU 351/501 OSL) with a Streib sidecar, German ambulance convoy that had just
Zwirner turned round again at position [5] to look back the way he had come. The been strafed:
burned-out lorry in the foreground would seem to be another Phänomen Granit ‘Just as you get out of Trun, the straight
ambulance. The wrecked vehicle in the background, which can also be seen on the road rises for several kilometres. Then the
left in the photo on page 49, appears to be a Kfz 12 Horch. Beyond lies a Renault AGC road curves to the left and comes to a hill. To
ambulance, clearly marked and flying a Red Cross flag. (BA) the right of the hill lies a wooded area; below
and to the left there is a grassy valley. On this
hill, a column of German field ambulances
has been shot to pieces by enemy fighter-
bombers.’ Cihotzki also gave the date when
he saw this, August 17.
I did not immediately link this account
with the photos I had obtained from the
Bundesarchiv. It was not until some time
later, in the early 1990s, that it dawned on me

Left: Further along, at position [6],

Zwirner took a wider shot looking in an
easterly direction. In the foreground a
Simca 5 displays a large Red Cross flag
on its roof. Further up the road is
another ambulance alongside a burned-
out lorry and trailer. Two men are check-
ing the Simca, no doubt for medical sup-
plies. The one with the Red Cross
armband may be one of the survivors of
the medical column; the second man is
an Obergefreiter. (BA)

50
 8

4 6

that Cihotzki’s account referred to the same

incident as that depicted in the photos. This
realisation led me in 1993 to the right spot six
kilometres east of Vimoutiers on the road to
Orbec. Although Cihotzki had confused
Trun with Vimoutiers, with such a remark-
ably precise description, it was not a difficult
place to find. From the beginning I was sure
that others must also have read Cihotzki’s
account (which had meanwhile also been
used in Herbert Fürbringer’s book 9. SS-
Panzer-Division published by Heimdal in
France in 1984) and, from that, have found
the location, probably even before me. Yet,
surprisingly, I never saw a detailed study
published on it.
Right: From position [7], still looking
eastwards but closer to the pair of dis-
abled vehicles seen on the page oppo-
site, Zwirner photographed this ambu-
lance, which at first sight appears to be
unscathed yet a casualty who has taken
shelter underneath has not survived. (BA)

Having passed the ambulance and burned-out lorry pictured show odd men dealing with the shot-up column, but also, as
above, Zwirner turned round at position [8] to look back down illustrated here, individuals who appear to be continuing on
the column. The ambulance (right) appears to be a Renault AFB their way on foot regardless of the destroyed vehicles (see also
and the lorry (left) a Renault AHN or AHR. Zwirner’s photos the paratrooper in the centre picture on the page opposite). (BA)

51
 10

Further east, a lorry (which looks like a Renault PRC variant) on which has been blown into the ditch (not shown on the
its side with an Opel Super 6 in the opposite ditch; a Renault sketch); a Kübelwagen, a Renault AGC ambulance and another
AGC ambulance and a SdKfz 7/2 half-track AA gun; then three Schwimmwagen; a Peugeot 402 in the ditch; an SdKfz 251/8
unidentified cars and lorries; remains of a Schwimmwagen ambulance and two Fiat/Spa TM40 tractors.
Another event where I discovered the cor- showing another convoy caught in the open Other photographs showed Tiger ‘104’
rect place and time was the sequence show- by Allied aircraft (pages 129-134). Initially, I abandoned in a field. They are very impor-
ing the 84. Infanterie-Division moving was led astray when one published source tant as they show the tank now displayed in
through Beauchêne prior to Operation ‘Lüt- claimed that the pictures had been taken at the Armoured Fighting Vehicle Wing of the
tich’ (pages 23-27 of the book). I was so Ormes, 30 kilometres south of Elbeuf, but Royal Military College at Shrivenham and I
pleased to find the correct location for these when I went there I quickly saw that this just had to establish exactly where this par-
photos as I was tired of seeing this series location was incorrect. Tracing this particular ticular Tiger had been knocked out. The col-
being repeatedly captioned incorrectly as stretch of road with no identifying features lege had no definite information and the
showing elements of the 2. Panzer-Division seemed an impossible challenge but I finally location suggested in many printed sources –
in June 1944. succeeded by reading the map over the Magny-en-Vexin – turned out to be incor-
One real triumph was being able to iden- shoulder of the Germans looking at it in one rect. I finally identified the precise spot 40
tify the correct spot in a well-known series of of the photos, which enabled me to eventu- kilometres away in a field just west of Beau-
photos taken by Kriegsberichter Genzler ally find it at La Haye-du-Theil. vais (see page 282 of the book).

From position [9], still looking westwards back the way he had some time before the convoy was attacked and been pushed
come, Zwirner took another general view of the wrecked col- off the road then. Some distance behind are the Simca and the
umn. The lorry on its side had quite probably broken down Peugeot ambulance seen in the earlier pictures. (BA)

52
 13

11 12

Above: Having walked on another 100

metres or so, Zwirner performed
another about-turn at position [10] to
face westward. This is — or rather was
— a SdKfz 7/2, a quadruple 20mm anti-
aircraft gun on a semi-tracked chassis,
which has also received a direct hit, its
faintly readable registration plate indi-
cating that it belonged to a Waffen-SS
unit, possibly the 9. SS-Panzer-Division.
Out of the 30-plus vehicles that appear
along this stretch of road, this is the
only one fitted out with armament.
Nearby lies another disabled ambu-
lance, a Renault AGC. (BA)

My final problem was where to end the

book . . . at which point did the retreat end.
By mid-September the recovery of the Ger-
man forces along the 650 kilometres
between the North Sea and Switzerland
clearly marked the end of this phase, thus
giving me the logical point to end my Rück-
marsch story.

Right: It happened here over 60 years ago.

53
Now having reached the head of the convoy, Zwirner took this
photograph from position [11] showing a Kübelwagen lying
just behind another Renault AGC ambulance. The Kübel fea-
tures a faintly readable ‘WH’ registration plate and the Renault
bears markings that identifies the medical unit as the Kranken-
Kraftwagen-Zug 3. Across the road lies a Schwimmwagen and
inspection of the original print under a magnifying glass
reveals the insignia of the 12. SS-Panzer-Division. (BA)
Standing between the Renault ambulance and the Schwimm-
wagen at position [12], Zwirner took this shot showing a SdKfz
251/8 (an armoured ambulance) beside a ruined Fiat/Spa TM40
tractor. As with the Kübelwagen in the previous picture, the
faint ‘WH’ plate on the ambulance indicates that the medical
unit belonged to the army. The Kettenkrad and Kübelwagen
manoeuvring in the background appear not to be from the
medical convoy as both are undamaged. (BA)

Above: Having passed between the Fiat/Spa tractor and the

armoured ambulance (which appears to have suffered a
frontal hit from a rocket fired by a Typhoon), Zwirner looked
back up the road again, taking this shot from position [13]
showing a second disabled Fiat/Spa TM40 tractor just in
front of the SdKfz 251/8. In all, at least ten of the vehicles in
Zwirner’s photos are clearly-marked ambulances. The cars,
such as the Opel in the ditch and the Simca, carried large Red
Cross flags on their roofs and the small NSU motorcycle had
four crosses in addition to a flag on the sidecar. It is fairly
certain that the two wrecked Phänomens shown on pages 49
and 50 were also ambulances. Although the tactical marking
on the rear of the Renault ambulance (see top of this page)
indicates that it belonged to Kranken-Kraftwagen-Zug 3, this
is not sufficient information to identify the precise medical
unit to which this ambulance platoon belonged. Right:
Zwirner finally climbed onto the SdKfz 251/8 ambulance to
take this shot of the interior where one of the patients, a
Hauptmann, lay dead on a stretcher. The SdKfz 251/8 was
designed to carry two stretcher cases and four seated
wounded or up to ten sitting wounded. All armament was
removed and large red crosses were applied as per the provi-
sions of the Geneva Convention. (BA)

54
Still standing on the top of the ambulance, Zwirner took this
final shot looking back down the column; this is the Renault
ambulance that we saw from the rear on the page opposite. In
the ditch in the right foreground is the Peugeot 402 and further
along what appears to be part of a blown-up Schwimmwagen.
The SdKfz 7/2 flak wagon and Renault AGC ambulance that we
saw on page 53 can be seen in the distance. In between lie more
wrecked vehicles but as these do not appear on any closer pic-
ture, they cannot really be identified with any precision. All
reproduced from our new book Rückmarsch Then and Now (BA)

One last look along the D46 at the Bois de Meulles, once the theatre of such dramatic action.

55