The Pacific War - week by week

- 76 - Pacific War - Operation Postern, the drive to Salamaua, May 2-9, 1943

Last time we spoke about actions in New Guinea and the Japanese counteroffensive in Arakan. The good ol boys down unda were getting ready to launch a major offensive aimed to seize Lae and Salamaua. The Australian and American forces gradually built up enough strength to commence the offensive and high command decided to launch some feints, such as at Mubo to distract the Japanese from their real intentions. Over in Arakan, Irwins disaster was still paying dividends to the Japanese as General Koga launched a massive counterattack. Things were continuing to get worse for the British in Burma, though General Slim was beginning to make improvements. Lastly the British began a propaganda campaign to boost morale in the far east using the mad onion man Wingates recent adventure with the Chindits. Things were looking rough in the CBI theater. 

This episode is the Operation Postern, the drive to Salamaua

Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

 

I just want to say before we begin, this episode will feel a bit like one of those old tv episodes that rehashes what happened during that season. You’ve heard me say it a few times, but because we do this series in the week by week format sometimes we get into these messy weeks where either not much occurs or too much occurs. Regardless this episode is about multiple ongoing operations that culminate into the drive upon Salamaua and for the sake of coherency I am going to have to summarize a lot of what occurred in the south west pacific area for early 1943. 

General Blamey devised a plan to capture Lae, codenamed Operation Postern. General MacArthur approved of the plan, which was quite complex and reflected the growing power of the allied forces in the southwest pacific. Blamey moved to New Guinea to take overall charge, reverting Herring to commander of the 1st corps, responsible for tactical operations. The key to quick success lay in convincing General Adachi, that Salamaua was the primary target for any major offensive. To accomplish this, it was necessary for the Australian and American forces to press upon the Japanese around the Salamaua area, but not Salamaua. 

Operation Postern was preceded by three simultaneous operations occurring in the South west pacific area and the south pacific area. Together the three operations helped set up the conditions necessary to allow for an amphibious landing at Lae, by tying up the Japanese ground, naval and airpower in the region alongside creating important feints. The invasion of New Georgia was the first of these operations carried out by Admiral Bull Halsey and the 1st raider battalion. That offensive codenamed operation Toenails took up a lot of the Japanese ground, sea and air forces and would gradually see the allies capturing Munda. The 2nd was operation Chronicle, the seizure of Kiriwina and Woodlark islands located just northeast of Milne Bay. With their seizure, the allies were able to create new forward airfields from which to launch air strikes against Rabaul and provide air cover for multiple other operations in the region. Lastly the third operation was to be an assault on Nassau Bay, which we will talk about a bit later. Now back to the ground forces.

 

The 8th Area Army at Rabaul sent General Adachi and the 18th army to secure important areas west of Lae and Salamaua and to do so an offensive was launched against Wau. This prompted the Australian high command to send Brigadier Moten and the 17th brigade over to defend Wau in January of 1943. The battle to defend was tough, but the allies were able to prolong the Japanese advance long enough to transport enough troops to save Wau. The Japanese were sent retreating over to the Mubo area, but instead of pursuing the enemy, Moten limited his men's actions to patrols. The New Guinea force wished to pursue the Japanese, but was prevented by logistical difficulties. As the Australians gathered more strength, the Japanese prepared a second attempt to capture Way. This time the Japanese planned to approach Wau from the north, building a road from Markham point into the snake river valley. From there the Japanese advance would hit Wau. The 51st division was earmarked for the task, but the battle of the Bismarck sea had caused devastating losses to the convoy bringing them over in March of 1943. 

The battle of the Bismarck sea had pressed upon the Japanese high command the increasing allied airpower, leading them to reformulate their plans. The Japanese began to construct a road to compensate for their inability to transport men and materials to New Guinea via the sea. As the Japanese did this, on the other side, the allies now felt very secure at Wau and were willing to perform some offensives. General Savige’s 3rd division was given command of the Wau-Bulolo area. For this task he had the 17th brigade, the 2/3rd, 25th and 2/7th independent companies. It was believed the Japanese had around 5500 men around Lae and Salamaua with around 6-8 thousand at Madang and 9- 11 thousand at Wewak. Savige was ordered not to attack Salamaua directly, so he decided to establish firm bases as far forward as possible to harass the Japanese, basically you can see this as forward offensive patrol actions.

Now the Japanese had dug in some defensive positions in places called the Pimple, Green Hill and Observation Hill which were along the main track from Wau to Mubo. On April 24th, the 2/7th independent company were given a new mission; to clear the Japanese from the vicinity of Mubo. Moten approved a plan for the seizure of the Pimple and Green Hill, ordering Major Warfe and his 2/3rd company to harass the Japanese logistical routes in Mubo as a distraction as the 2/7th hit the Pimple. The Japanese had made the Pimple a nightmare for the allied forces. They had taken defensive positions on commanding ground allowing for concealed ambushes. They cleared firing lanes to enable their machine guns to gundown anyone who took a forward approach. By holding the high grounds they also thwarted the allies from utilizing grenades effectively.

 

On the morning of April 24, after 20 minutes of air attacks by Boston aircraft against Green Hill, Stony Creek, Observation Hill and Kitchen Creek, the offensive kicked off with a two pronged attack. The 2/7th would start from the Vicker’s ridge track, moving in two columns: one going along the Jap track towards the Pimple; the other would move north along the Laws track, a very difficult and quite unknown trail to try an encircle the Pimple from the west. When the two columns got within 100 yards of the pimple, they were met with light machine gun fire and snipers. The Australians attempted an all out assault in the late afternoon, but were unable to gain any ground. The next morning 3 Bostons came roaring in to strafe and bomb Green Hill while allied artillery began to bombard the Pimple. Despite the increased firepower the Australians still were unable to dislodge the enemy with their proceeding assaults. It turns out the Australians had greatly underestimate the defensive capabilities of the Pimple position. Reconnaissance had failed to pinpoint the enemy positions prior to the offensive. A major lack of communication between the two columns because they had no telephone lines or wireless communications led to a lack of coordination, neither allied column knew the plight of the other. Runners were used, but they were too slow and extremely vulnerable to Japanese snipers. The offensive was quickly falling apart as the Japanese continued to reinforce their lines.

Meanwhile Warfe’s men conducted a number of raids and ambushes in the Missim area, Komiatum Hill and Bobdubi Ridge. Warfe then sent a patrol from Namling along the Bench Cut track to ambush the Japanese at the junction between the Francisco river and the Buirali Creek. The ambush was a large success leading to the deaths of 18 Japanese. Warfe tried to perform an identical operation on April 28th, but this time his men were ambushed by the Japanese at Goodview junctions suffering considerable casualties. As a result of the forward patrolling of Warfe’s men, the allies had learned the Dobdubi ridge area was defended quite lightly. Having learnt this, Ware decided to order a second platoon to capture the northern part of the ridge on April 27th. By the end of the month Warfe had two platoons spread over the Bobdubi ridge area, with a 3rd platoon held in reserve at Missim. 

Over in his headquarters, Moten now realized the offensive against the Pimple was far too costly and he decided the men should simply bypass it. However the commander in the field, General Savige continued to launch attacks. The reason why Savige pressed on was because on April 28th, one of his reconnaissance patrols found a position on Pimple unoccupied and kicked seized it before the Japanese could return to man it. Colonel Guinn on the ground there deduced the Japanese must have been expecting an airstrike and momentarily left their positions. He therefore elected to order another company led by Captain Leslie Tatterson brought forward to assault the pimple. This time however, the allies used deception. Instead of launching an airstrike and artillery against the Pimple they passed over it and bombarded Green Hill. The deception did not work as planned and Saviges men yet again were unable to make any ground against the pimple. By early May the 2/7th battalion had lost 12 men dead with 25 wounded against the pimple with no end in sight.

Meanwhile on May 3rd, an offensive was launched against the northern part of the Bobdubi ridge. The Australians were able to  fight their way close to the mouth of the Francisco river, prompting the Japanese to pull up reinforcements in the form of 70 SNLF marines from Salamua. A battle was fought in a place called the South Coconuts on May 5th. The Australians performed encircling maneuvers, managing to surround large pockets of the Japanese whom they smashed with artillery. The Australians were met with 3 major counter attacks but held their ground successfully occupying another place called the Center Coconuts by May 7th. However the Japanese then performed another counterattack, utilizing mortars to great effect, pushing the Australians back. The Japanese further reinforced the area with 60 additional men coming up from Salamaua, but they were ambushed by the Australians at the North Coconuts location suffering 20 casualties.  

 

On May 9th, Captain Tattersons men were struck a lethal blow when they ran into a Japanese booby trap along the Jap Track. The Japanese opened fire upon the Australians on the track and began to encircle them. Colonel Guinn led a small force along the track to break the encirclement while Tatterson’s men resisted tenaciously against the Japanese. Tatterson’s force had been completely surrounded by the afternoon of May 9th and were in a state of desperation. The Australians utilized booby-traps, fire control and mass grenade attacks to force the Japanese to give them breathing room. The next day the Japanese launched a fierce attack against Tatterson’s rear. The Australians could hear Japanese officers screaming orders as their riflemen poured lead upon them. As the Japanese pressed upon them they were receiving 500 additional reinforcements from the 102nd and 115th regiments. Meanwhile the 3rd battalion of the 102nd regiment in Nassau bay received orders “to capture the high area on the right bank of the Buyawim River fork” to be done in coordination with the May 9th attacks. This action would have endangered the allied positions at Lababia camp, but luckily the Japanese commander decided instead to hold a defensive positions at the bank of the Bitoi mouth. This allowed Colonel Guinn to concentrate some of his forces at Lababia camp.

By May 11th, a company of 60 men managed to break the Japanese encirclement of Tatterson’s men. According to Tatterson, by 7am on the 11th, the Japanese had continued to fire heavily upon his force, but made no further attempts to advance. It seemed to him the Japanese were actually withdrawing and the increased rifle fire and mortars was a cover. Tattersons men had been battered, he himself was wounded. His force received 12 casualties and estimated they had inflicted 100 casualties upon the enemy with possibly 50 deaths. Having saved Tatterson, Guinn reorganized his forward units and began to dig in along the Jap track and Lababia camp. From May 15th onwards the 17th brigade focused on aggressive patrolling in all sectors. Aggressive patrols each day harassed the Japanese around the Pimple and Observation Hill. The Australians set up booby-traps, practically paralyzing the Japanese troop movements outside their trenches.

General Okabe received some much needed reinforcements over the course of the week and began to launch some limited attacks against the south, central and north Coconut areas. Okabe’s forces were repelled on the 12th and 13th, but things would greatly change on the 14th.  The 14th saw a heavy shelling of the Bobdubi ridge area before Okabe launched a full scale attack that overwhelmed the Australian defenders forcing them to make a fighting withdrawal from the north and central area further down in the south coconut area. General Nakano was displeased with his troops and issued an address of instruction of May 17th, it is as follows  "In the attack at Bobdubi, although a certain group was advancing on a height on the enemy's flank, instead of really carrying out the attack in such a way as to prepare the way for an assault by our main force, they went no further than a vain firing at the enemy with their weapons. The spiritual and physical strength which was worn down in the Wau campaign is at the present time still lower, but I believe it can easily be restored if the officers will take the initiative, set an example and command as leaders of their men." Despite Nakano’s criticism, his men would take a lot of ground forcing the Australians further south, dangerously close to Warfe’s headquarters. Warfe realized maintaining the position would lead to heavy casualties, so he pulled his force out and took up a position at Namling. 

It was quite fortunate as the day after he made this decision, 20 Japanese dive bombers strafed and bombed the village of Bobdubi. This was part of a Japanese heavy air raid that began on May 15th, culminating in over 100 Japanese aircraft hitting multiple Australian positions over the course of a few days. Three heavy raids were performed, but these air attacks focused general far into the Australian rear, leaving the forward positions rather untouched. On may 17th and 18th large formations of Japanese aircraft performed a raid against Wau’s airfield. Although the Australians ultimately were forced to withdraw from many forward positions, such as Warfe’s units, they managed the ultimate objective of operation Postern, to take Japanese resources away from Mubo and Lae. They had inflicted numerous casualties upon the Japanese including against Major General Okabe who had stepped on a booby trap that put a bullet through his right foot. Okabe had to be evacuated on the night of may 16th as a result, flown back over to Rabaul. Command was handed over to Major General Muroya Chuichi of the 51st division.

The battle for Dobdubi was nowhere near done. General Nakano sent 170 soldiers of the 115th regiment on May 17th to attack Hote via the Malolo track. Nakano estimated the Australians had around 50 men defending Hote. The Japanese force ran into 25 Australians at Cissembob along the way and the defenders inflicted 50 casualties upon the Japanese before withdrawing towards Ohibe. One Australian commander at Cissembob had this to say about the engagement  "During this running fight, all men were under very heavy fire, but once again it was brought out what rotten shots the Japanese were. Not one of our boys were hit, and believe me things were hot." The Australians would return to the Hote area on the 22nd to find it completely deserted, so they simply reoccupied their lost positions. That is it for the New Guinea campaign, but other significant events unfolded for the Pacific War during this time period.

On April 21st, with a heavy heart President Roosevelt announced to the American people the Japanese had executed several airmen from the famous Doolittle raid. To refresh your memories, 8 of the Doolittle pilots had been captured in Jiangsu province and put on military trial within China and sentenced to death “because of their act against humanity”. They were then transported to Tokyo where the Army ministry reviewed their case. Hideki Tojo initially opposed the death sentences for fearing the Americans would retaliate against Japanese living in America, he would be right about this. Sugiyama and the rest of the Army general staff however insisted on executing all 8 of the pilots who had contributed to the deaths of around 50 civilians and thwart possible future air raids against Japan. The executions would be authorized by an ex post facto military regulation specifically drafted by the army ministry.

What is interesting to note, is Emperor Hirohito chose to intervene and commuted the punishment of 5 out of the 8 pilots. Why he allowed the other 3 to die in violation of international law is unknown as the Japanese destroyed nearly all documentation pertaining to prisoners of war by the end of the war. Some historians theorize Hirohito wished to demonstrate his benevolence. Yet again, this is one of those moments that showcases Hirohito was a very active participant, despite the claims made for decades after the war that he was merely a powerless hostage. The 3 men were executed via firing squad at a cemetery outside Shanghai in China on October 14th of 1942.

It was not until april of 1943 that the Doolittle Raid operation was fully disclosed to the American public. The US war department said the chief reason for not explaining the full details of the Doolittle raid sooner was the need to bring the Doolittle pilots safely home and to prevent reprisals against their Chinese allies who aided the pilots.

In April of 1943 the 5 surviving pilots were moved to Nanjing and in December of 1943 Pilot Robert Meder died of beri beri. He had been starving for months and rejected medical assistance. His death would result in improvements of conditions for the remaining 4 pilots. A truly tragic part of this war and to add to this I would like to read a short piece written by one of the pilots who survived the captivity and became a Christian missionary in Japan after the war.

 

I Was a Prisoner of Japan

 

By Jacob DeShazer

 

I was a prisoner of war for 40 long months, 34 of them in solitary confinement.

 

When I flew as a member of a bombing squadron on a raid over enemy territory on April 18, 1942, my heart was filled with bitter hatred for the people of that nation. When our plane ran out of petrol and the members of the crew of my plane had to parachute down into enemy-held territory and were captured by the enemy, the bitterness of my heart against my captors seemed more than I could bear.

 

Taken to prison with the survivors of another of our planes, we were imprisoned and beaten, half-starved, terribly tortured, and denied by solitary confinement even the comfort of association with one another. Three of my buddies were executed by a firing squad about six months after our capture and 14 months later, another one of them died of slow starvation. My hatred for the enemy nearly drove me crazy.

 

It was soon after the latter's death that I began to ponder the cause of such hatred between members of the human race. I wondered what it was that made one people hate another people and what made me hate them.

 

My thoughts turned toward what I heard about Christianity changing hatred between human beings into real brotherly love and I was gripped with a strange longing to examine the Christian's Bible to see if I could find the secret.

 

I begged my captors to get a Bible for me. At last, in the month of May, 1944, a guard brought me the book, but told me I could have it only for three weeks.

 

I eagerly began to read its pages. Chapter after chapter gripped my heart. In due time I came to the books of the prophets and found that their every writing seemed focused on a divine Redeemer from sin, One who was to be sent from heaven to be born in the form of a human babe. Their writings so fascinated me that I read them again and again until I had earnestly studied them through six times. Then I went on into the New Testament and there read of the birth of Jesus Christ, the One who actually fulfilled the very prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, and the other Old Testament writers.

 

My heart rejoiced as I found confirmed in Acts 10:43, "To Him give all the prophets witness, that through His Name, whosoever believeth on Him shall receive remission of sins." After I carefully read this book of the Acts, I continued on into the study of the epistle Paul wrote to the Christians at Rome.

 

On June 8, 1944 the words in Romans 10:9 stood out boldly before my eyes: "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved."

 

That very moment, God gave me grace to confess my sins to Him and He forgave me all my sins and saved me for Jesus' sake. I later found that His Word again promises this so clearly in 1 John 1:9, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

 

How my heart rejoiced in my newness of spiritual life, even though my body was suffering so terribly from the physical beatings and lack of food! But suddenly I discovered that God had given me new spiritual eyes and that when I looked at the enemy officers and guards who had starved and beaten my companions and me so cruelly, I found my bitter hatred for them changed to loving pity.

 

I realized that these people did not know anything about my Savior and that if Christ is not in a heart, it is natural to be cruel. I read in my Bible that while those who crucified Jesus had beaten Him and spit upon Him before He was nailed to the cross, on the cross He tenderly prayed in His moment of excruciating suffering, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."

 

And now, from the depths of my heart, I too prayed for God to forgive my torturers, and I determined by the aid of Christ to do my best to acquaint these people with the message of salvation that they might become as other believing Christians.

 

With His love controlling my heart, the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians took on a living meaning: "Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in truth; beareth all things, believeth all things. Love never faileth."

 

A year passed by and during that year the memories of the weeks I had been permitted to spend with my Bible grew sweeter and sweeter day by day. Then, one day as I was sitting in my solitary confinement cell I became very sick. My heart was paining me, even as my fellow prisoner had told me his was paining him just before he died of starvation.

 

I slid down onto my knees and began to pray. The guards rushed in and began to punish me, but I kept right on praying. Finally they let me alone. God, in that hour, revealed unto me how to endure suffering.

 

At last freedom came. On August 20, 1945 parachutists dropped onto the prison grounds and released us from our cells. We were flown back to our own country and placed in hospitals where we slowly regained our physical strength.

 

I have completed my training in a Christian college, God having clearly commanded me: "Go, teach those people who held you prisoner, the way of salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ," and am now back in that land as a missionary, with one single purpose--to make Christ known.

 

I am sending this testimony to people everywhere, with the earnest prayer that a great host of people may confess Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.

 

Alongside the unfortunate news for the Americans on May 14th a major tragedy occurred for the Australians. At 4:10am on the 14th, the Australian Hospital Ship Centaur was on a run from Sydney to Port Moresby when she was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. The torpedo struck her portside oil fuel tank below the waterline, creating a 10 meter hole, igniting fuel and setting the ship ablaze. The ship was luckily not carrying patients, but held her normal crew staff, around 332 personnel on board. Many of those on board were killed instantly from the concussion blast, others from the blazing inferno. Centaur quickly took on water from her breach, rolled to port and sank bow-first, submerging within 3 minutes. Her rapid sinking prevented the deployment of lifeboats, though two would break off as she went down. According to Centaurs second officer Gordon Rippon, she was hit 44km northeast of Point Lookout.

Of the 332 people onboard, only 64 would survive, most of the crew had been asleep when she was hit, giving barely a chance to react. It is estimated that 200 people may have been alive inside Centaur as she sank. Several who escaped the ship would die of shrapnel wounds or drown having found nothing to support them in the water. The survivors spent 36 hours in the water clinging to barrels, wreckage and two damaged lifeboats. The survivors drifted around 36 kms in the water going further north east. On the morning of May 15th, the destroyer USS Mugford departed Brisbane, escorted the New Zealand freighter Sussex when she saw some of the shipwrecked survivors. Sailors aboard the Mugford took up positions with rifles fending off sharks from the survivors. It took an hour and 20 minutes to rescue all 64 people. One of the survivors was sister Ellen Savage, the only surviving nurse from 12 aboard the Centaur. In 1944 Ellen Savage was presented the George Medal for providing medical care, boosting morale and displaying courage during the time they waited for rescue.

The identity of the attacker was suspected to be a Japanese submarine. At the time of the attack three KD7 Kaidai class submarines were operating off Australians east coast; The I-177 commanded by Hajime Nakagawa, the I-178 commanded by Hidejiro Utsuki and the I-180 commanded by Toshio Kusaka. None of these submarines survived the Pacific War; the I-177 was sunk by the USS Samual S Miles on october 3rd of 1944; the I-178 was sunk by the USS Patterson on august 25th of 1943 and the i-180 was sunk by the USS Gilmore on april 26th of 1944. In December of 1943 following protests, the Japanese government issued an official statement denying any responsibility for the sinking of the Centaur. The sinking of a hospital ship was a war crime, and investigations were conducted between 1944-1948. The conclusion of the investigate suspected the I-177 of Nakagawa to be the most likely culprit, but there was not enough evidence, thus the case was closed on december 14th of 1948. Nakagawa survived the war and until his death in 1991 refused to speak about the suspected attack on the Centaur.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

The Australian and American forces in New Guinea were fighting tooth and nail towards their ultimate goal of Salamaua, trying to deceive the Japanese the whole while. Soon battles for Lae and Salamaua will be fought to rid New Guinea of the Japanese menace. 

- 75 - Pacific War - Japanese counteroffensive in Arakan, April 25 - May 2, 1943

Last time we spoke about Operation Vengeance, the assassination of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. When the decrypted intelligence hit Admiral Nimitz desk about the vulnerability of his Japanese rival, he wondered what he should do. Was it moral? Would it even benefit the allies, Yamamoto was arguably losing the war on his own? In the end he ordered the hit and sent the job over to Admiral Halsey who enthusiastically took the bull by the horns. A special squadron of P-38 Lightnings were sent over to perform an extremely precise interception of Yamamoto’s G4M Betty aircraft enroute to Ballale airfield on Bougainville. Yamamoto’s aircraft was shot down killing him and all those aboard it. The death of the admiral was hidden from the Japanese public for an entire month and upon learning of it the Japanese people all mourned. It was a terrible moment for the Japanese, one of the greatest had fallen, how would the rest of the war play out? 

This episode is the Japanese counteroffensive in Arakan

Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

 

Before we jump back into the CBI theater some action was heating up in New Guinea. The Okabe detachment was defeated during the battle of Wau seeing the Australians controlling the area from Waipali to Buibaining and much of the Mubo Valley. However the Japanese remained resilient and would not give up Mubo without a fight. Vigorous patrolling and ambushes were all the Australians could perform, because they did not have the necessary numbers to launch a major offensive. In early March General MacKay sent word to Blamey, advising him he believed the Japanese might try another shot to seize Wau. He believed even with the projected arrival of the 4th and 15th brigades they would still be outnumbered by the Japanese. MacKay estimated the Japanese had roughly 7500 men in the Lae-Salamaua area and were maintaining a formidable defense in the Mubo region. Therefore he wanted to continue to restrict their activity to patrols to prevent the Japanese from surprising Wau again and allowing vital time to build up the defenses.

The attack on Mubo in January had not accomplished its objectives, but it did show the Japanese at Lae and Salamaua how much of a hornet’s nest they had stirred up by attacking Wau. The Japanese were not done however and hoped to launch a counteroffensive. They planned to bring the 51st division in a large convoy across the Bismarck Sea. But as we saw in a previous episode this was met with catastrophe during the battle of the bismarck sea, denying the reinforcements, equipment and supplies the Japanese at Mubo desperately needed. 800 units, mostly from the 102 regiment held various positions at Mubo and they could not hope to launch a counteroffensive. 

The supply situation in New Guinea remained a nightmare for both sides. In January Blamey authorized the construction of a new jeep trail going from Bulldog to Wau and it would take months to complete the 68 mile path. By April the Australians improved their situation in the Mubo area by occupying the heights called Saddle and Vicker’s ridge. They began placing artillery on the heights and on the 20th began to bombard the Japanese position on Green Hill. On the 23rd, Major General Stanley Savige of the 3rd division established his Headquarters at Bulolo. Kanga force had been officially dissolved, thus henceforth the 3rd division was responsible for offensives in the Wau-Lae-Markham area. For months the focus had been on reinforcing Wau, expecting a major Japanese offensive. But the Australians had also maintained a small force 11 miles from Salamaua guarding the entrance to the Markham valley. The 2/3rd independent company was occupying in the vicinity of Missim village along the Francisco river between the Powerhouse and Salamaua. In early april they began performing reconnaissance of the area. On the 21st the ambushed a column of 60 Japanese managing to kill over 20 of them and wounding 15. Soon after their commander was notified by Moten that they were going to launch an offensive against Mubo finally set for the 24th.

The offensive against Mubo was actually part of something grander. General Blamey planned to capture Lae forming a plan codenamed Operation postern which was quickly approved by General MacArthur. For the plan to work, the allies needed to trick General Adachi that Salamaua was the primary target for a major offensive. Thus to accomplish this, the Australians had the ⅔ independent company operate just a few miles from Salamaua. General Stanley Savige would not even be aware of these grander planes until June of 1943. Postern called for a large pincer movement, involving an amphibious assault east of Lae and an airborne assault near Nadzab 50 kms to the west of Lae. Planning for Postern had begun in May, with Generals Blamey and Herring proposing to seize Nadzab as soon as possible with Brigadier Eather’s 25th Brigade and a parachute battalion, while the 9th Australian Division, now under the command of Major-General George Wooten, was to take Lae in early August. Nadzab was an obvious target, undefended and of immense value, not only for the Lae operation but also for extending the range of Allied air power. In the meantime Blamey had various forces drive the Japanese from key areas, but not to attack Salamaua directly. The Japanese were going to be in for a major surprise. But now we are turning over to the CBI theater.

Last time we were speaking about General Irwins Arakan disaster and the mad onion man Wingate’s operation Longcloth. Irwins blunders had cost countless lives and provided General Koga’s 55th division ample time to regroup. By March 20th, Wavell, Irwin and Lloyd were accepting they would have to withdraw the forces to the Maungdaw-Buthidaung line. Wavell was incredibly pissed off and decided to make Lloyd a scapegoat. Lloyd was dismissed and replaced by Major General Lomax who was ordered to simply carry on doing what Lloyd had been doing. Lomax came just in time to meet General Koga’s counteroffensive which practically annihilated the 47th brigade. Irwin looking to blame anyone and anything but himself, shifted the blame to the brigade itself rather than his tactical blunders and tried again to bring Slim into his mess. The British forces were forced to flee east of the Mayu river and this severely beat India morale which was already horrible to begin with.

 

Now how bad was morale? By early April morale had plummeted to an all time new low. This was because of the series of terrible defeats, terrible casualties and growing more from malaria. The 6th brigade wsa evacuating 50 men due to malaria a day. Despite using mepacrine as a suppressive treatment alongside anti-moquito nets, cream and wearing long clothes at night, in 8 weeks the 6th brigade lost half its total strength. Desertions were on the rise from many units, causing the British commanders a lot of anxiety over their loyalty. 

General’s Slim and Lomax met at Chittagong as Koga was sweeping everything before him. Both generals scoured over the maps and agreed, Koga’s next logical step was an assault on the Maungdaw-Buthidaung line. To meet this attack, Slim and Lomax devised a stratagem for catching Koga in a box along the Mayu peninsula. The box was to involve 6 battalions, two on the ridges of the Mayu hills, two along the mayu river and two in the hills south of the Maungdaw-Buthidaung road. The idea was to let the Japanese advance through the most likely location, some tunnels on a disused railway track. Once the Japanese were along the tunnels, they would close the lid on the box using a force of brigade level strength. The hope was to achieve a perfect encirclement, chasing the legendary glory of Hannibal’s victory at the battle of Cannae. To do this they had exhausted and unbelievably demoralized men and would have to achieve a scheme of geometric perfection. 

The troops Lomax came to command were shaken badly, malaria riden battalions, departing the disastrous Arakan campaign at the point of exhaustion. There were no trained formations available in India to replace them, thus they would have to be retained in combat. By early April, Lomax had skillfully managed to stabilize the front at the Maungdaw-Buthidaung. On April 14th Marshall Wavell had appointed General Slim’s 15th corps to lead the British-Indian forces retreat. The Japanese sensing weakness amongst the allied forces continued their advance. On April 24th, the Japanese reached the British defenses at Buthidaung and Maungdaw. The 55th indian Brigade held the first attack at Kanthe while carefully preparing their entrapment box strategy, pushing the Japanese advance along the spine of the Mayu mountains; however it all went to shit. Two demoralized battalions gave way to Japanese pressure, breaking the box. This forced everything to come undone and soon the British-Indian forces were yet again performing a fighting withdrawal going north. 

It was reported that the fighting efficiency was so low by April 28th, the men of the 8/13th frontier force regiment had literally fired off all their ammunition at an imaginary opponent, and when they actually were attacked the next day they had no option but to retreat. The withdrawal culminated with the capture of Buthidaung on May 9th. The 55th brigade narrowly escaped annihilation by abandoning their vehicles and heavy equipment while limping by foot over some jungle covered hills to safety. Five days later the port of Maungdaw was evacuated and the British-Indian defenders began to take up defensive positions in the open rice-field country near Cox’s Bazar. As General Slim noted “Our only hope of stabilizing the front, if the Japanese really pushed us, was to hold the rice-field country. Our men were still untrained for the jungle; they feared it more than they did the enemy. We had to select areas where we could give our troops reasonable fields of fire and open maneuver.‘It was too much like 1942 over again, with the added bitterness that this time we had been defeated by forces smaller than our own.” Slim was very better about the entire ordeal. To make matters worse, the men only pulled out after Slim’s incessant pressure applied to Lomax, because Irwin was counter arguing they should toss the kitchen sink for a siege strategy.

All the way over in London Sir Winston Churchill had this to say “‘This campaign goes from bad to worse, and we are being completely outfought and outmanoeuvred by the Japanese. Luckily the small scale of the operations and the attraction of other events has prevented public opinion being directed upon this lamentable scene.” Churchill was writing at a time, after the Anglo-American victory in North Africa and the crushing soviet victory at Stalingrad. It was obvious to Churchill and the other allied leadership, Europe was won. Churchill was furious with Wavell, a man he never really liked. The Americans likewise were not happy with Wavell. Meanwhile Irwin kept blaming everyone except himself, even sending reports of how cowardly his troops were. Irwins last absurdity was to signal a recommendation that General Slim by removed from commanding the 15th corps. But Wavell, under severe criticism of himself by this point was determined that Irwin would be canned. Slim was ordered to report to Irwin’s HQ. Slim told his colleagues around him he was about to be dismissed as he made his way. When he got to Irwin he was met with this ‘You’re not sacked. I am.’ Upon hearing this, Slim remarked: ‘I think this calls for the opening of a bottle of port or something if we have one.’

 

The British-Indians forces had  916 dead, 2889 wounded and 1252 missing; the Indian high command had suffered another heavy blow, with the myth of Japanese superiority, excellence and skill as a jungle fighter being strongly reinforced in the minds of British and Indian troops, something that gravely affected their morale General Slim held a rather remarkable ability, mental toughness with some extraordinary resistance to stress. The frustrations of all the defeats and the constant shuffling between HQs and the front was a lot to bear. Slim actually found something positive about the Arakan disaster. The British battle casualties were high, but they could have been a hell of a lot higher, given Irwins insistance to perform endless frontal attacks. The British had learnt valuable lessons about the Japanese and the lack of their own training in specific areas. There had been over 7500 cases of malaria and they were only truly learning on the spot how to deal with the pesky disease. Troops heanceforth would be routinely issued with mosquito nets, repellents and by autumn of 1943 a wonder drug was developed, Mepacrine which significantly helped with the symptoms of malaria. 

But by far and large the most significant long term development in 1942-1943 was the gradual reasseration of allied air superiorirty. By the end of 1942, 150 new airfields were constructed, RAF pilots and aircraft began to arrive to them in large numbers and the Americans had sent 10,000 air force personnel to serve in the CBI theater. Heavy B-24 Liberator bombers began to appear at the battlefront for the first time and in November of 1942 some made the spectacular 2760 mile return trip after bombing Bangkok. The Japanese quickly realized their proposed Burma-Siam railway was very vulnerable. When the war in the middle east came to a close in early 1943, the US army airforce transferred a ton of their heavy bombers to the far east. Bombing raids on Bangkok, Rangoon and Mandalay were increased significantly by Christmas of 1942. The Japanese were gradually losing their air superiorirty and this was deeply troubling for them. 

During the Arakan campaign a Japanese colonel issued the following orders ‘There must be no fear of aircraft. As long as you are not discovered you must seek to remain so. If once our position is revealed, the enemy planes must be shot down. It is not permissible to suppose that our soldiers are no match for aircraft.’ The Japanese were forced to yield the skies over Arakan even though they had taken its ground. The RAG would conduct search and destroy missions over Thaitkido, Buthidaung, Sinho and Akyab island in June. 6 Hurricanes would escort some Blenheim bombers on a long range raid against Ramree island, even though they were not safe. Allied air superiority would eventually become the crucial factor to win the struggle over Burma.

Now we cant talk about Burma without talking a bit more about the mad onion man Wingate. While the Arakan campaign was coming to its disastrous conclusion, Operation Longcloth had reached its own. The last remaining columns made their way back to allied territory. 2182 returned out of the original 3000 men that entered Burma; an estimated 818 men had been killed, taken prisoner or died of disease. There was a ton of criticism tossed at the operation and the effectiveness of the Chindits, but the operation was moderately successful. To be brutally honest, the Burma campaign had basically no success stories except for the Chindits, thus it got inflated quite heavily. Wavell was very pleased with the performance of Wingate’s forces, so much so he put in an order to form the new Long Range Penetration group, the 111th Indian Brigade. Wavell handpicked their commander, Brigadier William Lentaigne who would come to hate Wingate and Wingate hated him haha. The success of the Chindits would be tossed in all the major headlines of every newspaper from England to India. The British had to do something to raise morale and the Chindits kind of just fell into it.

Now one last major event that occurred during all of this was a major conference. Wavell had been flown to Washington to partake in the Trident Conference which was carried from May 12-25th. The main focus of the conference was on the European theater, in fact there was an obsession over the Mediterranean cross channel invasion plans. When it came to theaters like Burma there was little interest. In fact Churchill would often only talk about Singapore when the east was brought up, showcasing full and well he only sought to revitalize the prestige of the British empire over other things. Churchill was quite in favor of bypassing Burma which he viewed as only being beneficial to China, a subject he could not understand why FDR obsessed over. It seemed the Churchill FDR regarded China as the emerging dominant power in the far east, while he only regarded CHina as a pacific power, ignoring China’s claims over Tibet, Mongolia and northeastern Burma, and of course Churchill would completely ignore any mention of Hong Kong. FDR was seen to be extremely Pro-Chiang Kai-shek, almost maniac by British accounts. The British began to adopt a machiavellian stance of supporting Chiang Kai-shek and Chennault's airpower idea, thinking it would surely fail, which served Britain just fine. 

Meanwhile, Vinegar Joseph Stilwell also at the Trident conference, kept trying to persuade his president that Chiang Kai-Shek was cunning and quite evil. He stressed the danger of American becoming a solitary atlas bearing the burden of the world because the British were outplaying them. He underlined Chiang Kai-sheks ambitions to get rid of him and replace him with a “yes man”, so he could acquire lendlease material for his own ends without any pushbacks. Stilwell recommended sending US troops to the CBI theater; to get Chiang Kai-shek to make specific commitments and stop wiggling around issues and above all to stop Chiang Kai-sheks stab-in-the-back secret diplomacy antics. Stilwell would find the British at Trident very unimpressed with him and his opinions. Stilwell also chose to bitterly argue with Field Marshal Alanbrooke, the chief of the imperial staff and a rampant Americanphobe. It got so bad, George Marshall told Stimson ‘Stilwell shut up like a clam and made an unfavourable impression.’ 

During the conference FDR did ask Stilwell in private what he thought of Chiang Kai-shek to which Stilwell said ‘He’s a vacillating, tricky, undependable old scoundrel who never keeps his word.’ By contrast Chennault, when asked a similar question, replied: ‘Sir, I think the generalissimo is one of the two or three greatest military and political leaders in the world today. He has never broken a commitment or promise made to me.’ Meanwhile Chiang Kai-sheks representatives including his wife were threatening to pull out of Burma and to make a separate peace with Japan, unless the British finally took action to seize Rangoon. Instead it was agreed, more supplies would be tossed over the Hump and for the future operation Anakim to be shelved, to which Stilwell argued that if the allies waited another year before launching a land-based campaign, China would collapse. 

Trident was chaotic as hell. Admiral King slammed the table with his fists many times violently supporting Marshall and Stilwell. King and Marshall wanted the land route to China open, but the British kept tossing their support for the Hump operations. Stilwell was not having a good time, but then he had a surprising victory. Stilwell met with Churchill privately, complaining about the abysmal situation in Burma, and Churchill 100% agreed with his criticisms. Churchill acknowledged the high command in India was terrible and that he was going to replace Wavell. As Stilwell wrote after the experience.

 

“With Wavell in command, failure was inevitable; he had nothing to offer at any meeting except protestations that the thing was impossible, hopeless, impractical. Churchill even spoke of it as silly. The Limeys all wanted to wait another year. After the Akyab fiasco, the four Japanese divisions in Burma have been scared to death. The inevitable conclusion was that Churchill has Roosevelt in his pocket. That they are looking for an easy way, a short cut for England, and that no attention must be diverted from the Continent at any cost. The Limeys are not interested in the war in the Pacific, and with the President hypnotised they are sitting pretty. Roosevelt wouldn’t let me speak my piece. I interrupted twice but Churchill kept pulling away from the subject and it was impossible.’

Thus Wavell was as they say “kicked up stairs”, promoted to viceroy of India and replaced as commander in India with Sir Claude Auchinleck. Stilwell returned to China and participated on a celebrity tour arranged by George Marshall to heighten his profile. Once that was done, Stilwell fell into a depression writing this 

“‘Back to find Chiang same as ever – a grasping, bigoted, ungrateful little rattlesnake.Any Jap threat will put the Peanut in an uproar, and if they are wise they will repeat their attempt, for this if for no other reason. And if they seriously want to gain the game, they can attack Kunming or Chungking, or both, with five divisions on either line and finish the matter. If we sting them badly enough in the air, they are almost sure to try it . . . The Peanut’s promise of picked men for India is so much wind; last year 68% of the men sent were rejected for trachoma or skin disease . . . This is going beyond all bounds. This insect, this stink in the nostrils, superciliously inquires what we will do, who are breaking our backs to help him, supplying everything – troops, equipment, planes, medical, signal, motor services, setting up his goddam SOS, training his lousy troops, backing his dastardly chief of staff, and general staff, and he the Jovian dictator, who starves his troops and is the world’s worst ignoramus, picks flaws in our preparations and hems and haws about the Navy, God save us.”

Stilwell’s frustration was a bit understandable as Chiang Kai-shek had still not replied to FDR about if or when he could commit forces into Burma again. Stilwell was baffled by his nations continued support of what he saw as a fascist regime in China, while simultaneously fighting the fascist regimes in Europe. What Stilwell really wanted was to be made field commander in China, and if he ever got that position, the first thing he would do was cancel the lendlease. Things were not going so well for the married couple of Vinegar Joe and Peanut.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

Things were not going well in Burma to say the least. Well except for the Chindits minor success, but that simply could not overcome the incredible low morale of the far east allied forces in the face of what seemed an unstoppable Japanese goliath. 

- 74 - Pacific War - Operation Vengeance, April 18-25, 1943

Last time we spoke about the situation in the north pacific and the grand conclusion of the Chindits Operation Longcloth. The battle of the Komandorski islands had basically put a nail in the coffin that was the Aleutian islands campaign for japan. They could not hope to resupply Attu and Kiska properly, therefore America had a free hand to build up to invade them. Also the crazed Onion man Wingate had taken his boys in the fray of Burma and they paid heavily for it. Yes despite all the glory and fame that the propaganda perpetuated the operation had done, in reality, Wingate had sacrifice many lives for little gain. His erratic behavior led to dangerous decision making which took a toll on the men. In the end what can be said of the operation was it atleast provided something positive to boost morale for the British in the far east. But today we are going to speak about the falling of a major giant of the pacific war.

This episode is Operation Vengeance 

Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

Now two weeks ago I covered Operation I-Go and you may have noticed I sprinkled a bit of foreshadowing information here and there. But to catch you back up to speed so to say let me just summarize those events and the dire circumstances what person would find himself in. 

It can easily be deduced by early 1943, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto knew Japan was staggering towards a catastrophic defeat. Rather ironically, he was one of those figures in Japan that tossed as much as his political influence could against the decision to go to war with america. He warned his high ranking colleagues of the great industrial might America held and that it would inevitably overwhelm Japan. His obsession over a decisive naval victory was driven mostly because he knew the only possible way for Japan to come out of WW2 positively was to bring America to the negotiating table as early as possible. But how does one do that exactly? Well Japan held a significant advantage over America in 1941, their Pacific Fleet was by far larger, vastly better trained and held considerable technological advantages. Thus like a game of Axis & Allies, a game I have been playing since I was a teenager and hope to livestream now and then for audiences like yourself, well like a good old game of Axis & Allies if you are the Axis you typically toss the kitchen sink at the offset of the war hoping to break the allies before their productive advantage gradually wins them the board. Yamamoto engineered the raid on Pearl Harbor to smash the US Pacific fleet enough to thwart them of any offensives for 6 months at minimum, though he definitely hoped for a year. After that his plan had always been to force america into a naval surface battle in the hopes of taking out their fleet and forcing them to negotiate. If they did not negotiate after that, well he hoped to buy Japan enough time to build a complex defensive perimeter which perhaps could be used to bleed Americans dry and thus gradually get them to come to terms. Well his obsession for the grand naval battle led him into a trap.

Yes, a critical thing the Japanese overlooked during most of the Pacific War was code breaking. The Cryptanalysts at Station Hypo did miracles breaking the JN-25 code, leading them to deduce Admiral Yamamoto’s operation MI was directed at Midway atoll. They had knowledge of the locations, the units and the timetables and they used this intelligence to set up a major trap for the combined fleet. The June 1942 disaster at Midway had been a major gambit aimed at forcing the war to an early conclusion, a gambit which fell apart. The losses at Midway meant the war was not to be a prolonged one, though it might surprise many of you to know, the chance of another decisive naval battle was not all but lost, it would just be harder to configure. Regardless the overall viewpoint after the failure at Midway now meant Japan had to fight a war of attrition, something Japan could not hope to win. 

Yamamoto had obsessed himself and countless other high ranking figures that Midway was to be the decisive battle, but in reality it fell upon Guadalcanal. Yes the battle for Guadalcanal emerged the decisive battle they had all sought, but the Japanese high command were late to this conclusion. The Americans basically snuck onto the island in an extremely bold manner, forcing what became a horrifying bloody war. In the end the Americans won the battle for Guadalcanal and because of Japan’s lackluster planning, this simultaneously led to the major loss of the Buna-Gona-Sanananda front as well. New Guinea and the Solomons were intertwined and Japan kept fumbling back and forth between them which inevitably was leading to them losing both.

After the loss at Guadalcanal, Japan had lost the initiative for the Pacific War, now America was in the drivers seat. The battle of the Bismarck Sea proved to the Japanese high command, their sealanes were no longer safe. America was dominating Japan’s ability to move men and supplies across the ocean through a war of attrition using airpower and submarines. The Japanese planners understood the allies were going to advance in two prongs; one through New Guinea and the other up the central and northern solomons. For the allies to advance, they required the construction of airfields along the way to provide air superiority to cover their surface fleets and transports of men and supplies. Japan had been massively depleted of ships, aircraft, trained men, resources in general, but one thing they still had an advantage over the allies was their airfields scattered about the Pacific. 

On March 15th Japanese high command in Tokyo demanded plans be made to build a new defensive strategy in the central Pacific. The main idea was to build a stronger defensive perimeter emanating from Rabaul. Thus on the morning of April 3rd of 1943, Admirals Yamamoto and Ugaki, accompanied by more than a dozen officers of the combined Fleet staff boarded two Kawanishi flying boats and headed for Rabaul. Yamamoto and the high ranking figures scoured their maps and came up with what was needed to be done to meet this new demand. They needed to hinder the American airpowers advance up the Solomons and New Guinea, this meant hitting allied forward airfields. Four locations were chosen: Guadalcanal, Oro Bay, Port Moresby and Milne Bay. It was to be called Operation I-GO Sakusen and would be the responsibility of the IJN.

Admirals Yamamoto and Jinichi Kusaka established temporary headquarters on Rabaul and began planning. The planning led to an incredible concentration of Japanese airpower. The 11th airfleet and 4 aircraft carriers of the 3rd fleet: Zuikaku, Zuiho, Junyo and Hiyo would amass a force of 224 aircraft. The airpower was going to be used to smash the 4 targets and then they would be dispersed to several airfields to mount a new defensive perimeter. They would be sent to places like Buka and Kahili on Bougainville and Ballale in the Shortland Islands.

Admiral Yamamoto would personally supervise Operation I-GO as he took up quarters on a cottage high on a hill behind the town of Rabaul. He spent weeks inspecting airfields and other military installations, meeting with local army and navy commanders at various headquarters scattered about New Britain. As was his typical behavior, he bid farewell to departing air squadrons waving his hat to them. For 10 consecutive days, Japanese bombers and fighters hit their designated targets. More than 200 aircraft attacked Guadalcanal on April 7th, a raid larger than any attempted during the 5 month battle over the island. The Japanese pilots came back with extremely exaggerated claims of success. They claimed to have destroyed dozens of ships and hundreds of aircraft. In reality operation I-Go amounted to the destruction of 25 aircraft, 1 destroyer, 1 corvette, 1 oil tanker and 2 transports. The Japanese had lost around 40 aircraft for this. 

The Japanese high command including Yamamoto and even Emperor Hirohito bought the success stories. Hirohito send word stating “Please convey my satisfaction to the Commander in Chief, Combined Fleet, and tell him to enlarge the war result more than ever.” On the other side of the conflict, General Kenney had a more damning critique of the way Yamamoto used his air forces during Operation I-Go, “… the way he [Yamamoto] had failed to take advantage of his superiority in numbers and position since the first couple of months of the war was a disgrace to the airman’s profession.” The reality was, the aircrews were not the same types that raided Pearl Harbor in 1941, no these men in 1943 were forgive me to say, kind of the bottom of the barrel types. Sure there remained some veterans and experiences men, but far and too few to trained what should have been a brand new generation of Japanese airpower. Japan had squandered their veterans and now she was paying a heavy price for it. On October 25th of 1942, Rear-Admiral Ugaki had written this in his diary “every time it rained heavily, about ten planes were damaged due to skidding.” The Japanese airfields were no match for the American Seabees who were performing miracles across the pacific building superior fields for their airpower. By contrast the Japanese could not hope to match this, they lacked resources and trained personnel. Operation I-GO in the end costed the allies advance 10 days.

Yamamoto had his spirits lifted somewhat by Operation I-GO believing it to be a triumph. He announced he would conduct a one-day tour of forward bases at Buin, Ballale and Shortland Island set for April the 18th and this is where our story truly begins. Yamamoto’s tour was sent over the radio waves using the JN-25D naval cypher to the 11th air flotilla and the 26th air flotilla. Admiral Yamamoto’s operations officer Commander Yasuji Watanabe would go on the record complaining that the information about Yamamoto’s visit to the Ballalae Airfield should had been done by courier and not by radio, but the communications officer replied “this code only went into effect on april 1st and cannot be broken”. The message was picked up by three stations of the “Magic” apparatus, the United States cryptanalysis project.

One of the three stations ironically was the same team responsible for breaking the codes that led to Midway, station Hypo at Pearl Harbor. Major Alva B. Lasswell, a duty officer at Joseph Rochefort's Combat Intelligence Unit Station HYPO deciphered it and pronounced it to be a "jackpot". The message contained highly detailed information and it was easy to deduce the message was about Yamamoto. It contained his departure time: April 18, 06:00 Japanese Standard Time, 08:00 Guadalcanal Time set for Ballale, 08:00 Japanese Standard Time, 10:00 Guadalcanal Time.; his aircraft which was a G4M Betty and the number of his escorts, 6 Zeros; as well as the entire itinerary for his tour. Admiral Yamamoto’s plane was going to be heading over the southern end of Bougainville on the morning of the 18th, a location that happened to be just within the fighter range of Henderson Field. Alva Bryan Lasswell and intelligence officer Jasper Holmes took the decrypted message to CINCPAC headquarters and handed it to the fleet intelligence officer Ed Layton who tossed it upon Admiral Nimitz desk a few minutes after 8 on April 14. 

Nimitz scrutinized the chart on his wall and confirmed himself that Yamamoto’s plane would enter airspace that could be reached by american fighters from Henderson. “He asked Layton “Do we try to get him?”. The question honestly was a tough one. Was it wrong to target the combined fleet chief based on some sort of convention upon military chivalry? Like most naval officers, Nimitz had interacted socially with Japanese officers during the interwar years. Nimitz was not a particularly vengeful nor bloody-minded man. In era’s past, an American flag or general officer would certainly refuse to have his rival commander assassinated. For you American listeners, can you conceive George Washington ordering a hit on William Howe? How about Robert E Lee ordering a hit on Ulysses Grant? However war in the 20th century was not like the previous centuries. Hell even by the standards of the war in europe, the Pacific War was unbelievably more brutal. Honestly if you wanted a good book on the subject of how brutal the Pacific war was, try John D Dowers “War without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War”. 

Now during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, cough cough if you want to hear about that one check out my Youtube channel, the IJA and IJN had strictly adhered to the rules of war. Russian prisoners were housed well, fed well, provided good medical care, given cigarettes and alcohol, the 2nd one very important to russians as we know haha. Those who died within captivity were even buried with military honors. During WW1 the Japanese took German prisoners after the siege of Tsingtau and treated them extremely well in Japan, let them parade the country with a band and such. In fact the treatment of the German POW’s had a small hand to play in how Japan got into bed with Germany later, and honestly to this very day Japan and Germany have this special relationship. However, Japan certainly did not bring this type of chivalrous etiquette into the Pacific War. 

Nimitz may have hesitated to give the order, but he knew full well of the Japanese actions in China, the Philippines, Malaya, Hong Kong, the East Indies, the Solomons. I guess you can say barbarity dishes out barbarity. Yet aside from the morality question, was it wise to kill Yamamoto? This was after all the man who planned and executed the disastrous Midway offensive losing 4 aircraft carriers with nearly all their aircraft. Yamamoto had also mismanaged the guadalcanal campaign by deploying air and troop reinforcements in piecemeals. He arguably was doing a good job losing the war.

Layton knew Yamamoto personally and argued that he was the best-respected military leader in Japan and that his death “He’s unique among their people… Aside from the Emperor, probably no man in Japan is so important to civilian morale. [His absence] would demoralize the fighting navy. You know Japanese psychology; it would stun the nation.”. Layton said to Nimitz “You know, Admiral Nimitz, it would be just as if they shot you down. There isn’t anybody to replace you”. To this Nimitz smiled amusingly and replied “it’s down in Halsey’s bailiwick, if there’s a way, he’ll find it. All right, we’ll try it”. Thus sealed the fate of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.

Thus Admiral Nimitz sent a “your eyes only” message to Admiral Halsey, alerting him to the situation and ordering a fighter interception with the concluding remarks “best of luck and good hunting”. Codenamed Operation Vengeance approved on the 14th, the assassination of Admiral Yamamoto was done under utmost secrecy to protect the cryptanalysis teams. It just so happened Halsey had already been informed of the operation in a chance encounter in Melbourne Australia. He was inspecting naval facilities in the city and dropped by the communications intelligence office where a yeoman named Kenneth Boulier was working on one of the draft decrypts. Halsey came to his desk and asked “what are you working on son?”. And when Boulier explained, Halsey raised his voice and addressed the entire unit “Goddamit, you people knock off this Yamamoto business! I’m going to get that sonofabitch myself!”. I guess one can say he was enthusiastic about the job.

Halsey informed his subordinate air commanders, Admirals Aubrey Fitch and Marc Mitscher about the details of Operation vengeance. Southern Bougainville was roughly 400 miles away from Henderson field and the aircraft would need to take a roundabout route to evade detection. Thus the mission would require 1000 miles or so of flying, a range that would test the capabilities of even the longest legged American fighters. AirSols commander Mitscher called for a secret meeting of his staff on April 16th to figure out the logistics of the operation. It was determined that to intercept Yamamoto’s flight, they should use Lockheed P-38 Lightnings which held a comparable range to that of the Zero fighter, though it would not alone be enough. They would need to use a lean fuel mixture and drop tanks to barely make the long flight. It was going to be quite tight, thus the timing had to be precise, or else the aircraft would burn their fuel while waiting for the enemy to make their appearance. Major John Mitchell of the 339th fighter squadron was assigned the commander of 18 P-38’s piloted by handpicked airmen. 4 P-38’s would be designated as “killers”, ie: the guys who would target Yamamoto’s G4M Betty, while the other pilots would cover them against the Zero escorts. The killers were to be Captain Thomas Lanphier, Lieutenants Rex Barber, Joseph Moore and James McLanahan. They were going to intercept Yamamoto in the air just south of Empress August Bay. 

Now the direct flight to Bougainville meant crossing over or very close to Japanese held islands which held observers. This meant they would need to veer far out to sea to avoid any visual contact made by Japanese coastwatchers. Likewise they would skim the ocean at wave-top height to avoid detection by Japanese radar. Mitchell plotted their missions course to remain at least 50 miles offshore. This also meant they would have no landmarks to use as checkpoints: it would have to be dead reckoning the entire way, flying by airspeed, clock and compass under strict radio silence for over 2 hours, until they saw the Bougainville coast. The strike force would depart guadalcanl at 7:20. Even after all the precision and planning, the lightning force would only have around 15 minutes to shoot down Yamamoto, this was a extremely tight one. Mitchell gave the odds of the operation succeeded about a thousand to one.

Back over in Rabaul commanders like Admirals Ozawa and Jojima were trying to change Yamamotos mind about making the tour to the forward airbases thinking he was taking a large risk. Adamiral Ozawa argued with Captain Kameto Kuroshima, a senior member of Yamamoto’s staff “If he insists on going, six fighters are nothing like enough. Tell the chief of staff that he can have as many of my planes as he likes.” Admiral Ugaki who was sick in the hospital with dengue ever tried to send a message to Yamamoto to not go on the tour. That message though it did not make it to Yamamoto directly was interceived by Admiral Jojima. Admiral Jojima argued “what a damn fool thing to do, to send such a long and detailed message about the activities of the Commander of the combined fleet so near the front. This kind of thing must stop” Jojima had actually flown over to Rabaul to stop Yamamoto, but Yamamoto did not back down. Yamamoto was a stickler for punctuality, he alongside his party arrived to Rabaul’s Lakuni field a few minutes before 6am Japan time, thus around 8am rabaul time. The party wore their field green khai uniforms and airmens boots, aside from Yamamoto who wore his customary white dress uniform, with his usual white gloves carrying his ceremonial sword. Yamamoto climbed into one of the two G4M Betty medium bmbers and Ugaki climbed into the other. Yamamoto’s Betty had the number 323 painted on its vertical stablizer. The planes roared down the runway and climbed. The weather was clear, with excellent visibility above and below the high ceiling. The aircraft leveled out at 6500 with the bombers holding a close formation, enough for Ugaki to clearly see Yamamoto through the windshield of the other plane. The fighters hung out at 8200 feet above them and around a mile around them. The formation headed southeast making its first landfall on the southern tip of new ireland, then south along the coast of Bougainville, past the Japanese bases at Buka and Kieta, then on to Ballale. Ugaki began to nod off as the group began its descent towards Ballale. 

 

Major Mitchells strike group launched at 7:10 guadalcanal time, seeing 2 lightnings fail as a result of a blown tire for one and a fuel transfer problem for the other. Both aircraft were part of the killers team, thus Lieutenants Besby Holmes and Raymond Hine, were replaced with Joseph Moore and James McLanahan. Not a great way to start such a precise mission by any means. As they made the first leg of their route, the P-38’s descended to 50 feet to avoid radar detection while the pilots had to endure extremely hot temperatures due to the sea level. The temperature was above 90 degrees as the sun blazed through their Perspex canopies causing the pilots to sweat like pigs. The P-38 was a high altitude fighter and its canopy could not open in flight to regulate the cockpit temperature. Thus instead it kind of acted like a convection oven, building up heat as the sun beat down on it. With nothing but hte sight of rolling waves for over 2 hours, the pilots could have very well dozed off. After 55 minutes of hte first leg, Mitchell turned right to 290 degrees then after another 27 minutes, 305 degrees. 38 minutes after this another 20 degree turn to make the 40 mile leg to the south edge of Empress Bay, all using clocks & compass. 

As they crossed the bay they turned 90 degrees and were around 4 minutes from their calculated interception point. The lightnings began to close in and made sight of the southwest corner of Bougainville. In an act of extraordinary navigation they hit the precise location intended at 9:34am, a single minute ahead of schedule. Right on top of them, passing serenly overhead was the Yamamoto and unfortuntately for him, security was quite lax. You see the Japanese held air superiority at Buin, thus they did not anticipate any enemy action. Alongside this the escort zero’s had their radiots stripped out to reduce their weight. This meant they would not be able to communicate with the Betty’s. Ugaki’s Betty was carrying its regular armament of 3 13mm guns and 1 20mm gun, but because of the weight of the munition boxes, only a single belt was filled up for each. As for Yamamoto’s Betty, there does not seem to be evidence it was armed at all.

Mitchell was shocked to see the two Betty bombers, the intelligence had told them one. This somewhat disrupted his plan not knowing where the escorts were hiding, futhermore 2 lightnings piloted by Lieutenants Besby Holmes and Raymond Hine had to pull out when their belly tanks were released and it caused a technical problem. Thus Mitchell had only half the fighters as planned and now faced double the Betty’s. He did not know which Betty was Yamamoto’s, but with icy resolve he did not improvise the plan and ordered Captain Lamphier to attack as planned stating “he’s your meat, tom”. The rest of the lightnings climbed to perform CAP actions as Mitchell expected the Japanese air base at Kahili to toss some zeros over to greet Yamamoto. None would come, another toss of the dice of fate as it were.

As Ugaki recounts the event, at 9:43 he was awoken when his plane suddenly began a steep diving turn. The pilot was unsure what was happening, but all of a sudden evasive maneuvers of the Zero escorts alerted him something was wrong. The dark green canopy of the jungle hills were closing in on them as the gunnery opened up the gun ports to prepare firing. Between the rushing wind from the openings and the guns things were incredibly noisy. Ugaki told the pilot to try and remain with Yamamoto’s plane, but it was too late. As Ugaki’s plane banked south he caught a glimpse of Yamamoto’s plane “staggering southward, just brushing the jungle top with reduced speed, emitting black smoke and flames.” Ugaki lost visual contact for some time then only saw a column of smoke rising rom the jungle. Ugaki’s pilot flew over Cape Moira and out to sea, descending steadily to gain speed. Two lightnings were on their ass and some .50 caliber rounds slammed into their wings and fuselage. The pilot frantically trid pulling up, but his propellers dug into the sea causing the Betty to roll hard to the left. Ugaki was tossed from his seat and slammed agianst an interior bulkhead. As water flooded the aircraft he thought “this is the end of Ugaki”. But luckily for him, and 3 other passengers they managed to get free and swim to the beach as they were helped ashore by Japanese soldiers and transported to Buin. Despite his miraculous survival, Ugaki’s injuries were severe, including a severed radial artery and compound fracture of the right arm, which would leave him out of action until 1944

From the American point of few, they came upon the Japanese formation catching them by complete surprise. The escorting Zeros were flying above the bombers, scanning hte horizon ahead of them to the south and now suspected American fighters would be approaching them from behind at a lower altitude. There are quite a few accounts of how this went down, but by all of them Lamphier climbed to the left, going nose to nose with 3 escorting Zeros, while Lt Rex Barber banked to the right. In response all 6 of the Zeros made a straight dive from their higer altitude position to get between the bombers and the lightnings. Rather than firing directly at the American fighters, they kept their firing infront of the lightnings trying to prevent their line of sight meeting up with the bombers. With the eruption of the choas, both Betty’s accelerated into their dives, distancing themselves. One plane banked right going southwest towards the shoreline while the other banked left going east. Now what follows next has actually been a fight going on for decades with all participants going to their grave swearing their perspective was the legitimate account of the event.

Lamphier’s story, which is by far the most well known, states he quickly engaged the 3 diving Zeros to the left, managing to shoot down one before twisting away to attack the Betty’s. He found the lead Betty skimming the jungle, heading for Kahili and dived in pursuit of it. With the other 2 zeros chasing to cut him off, Lamphier held course and fired a long steady burst across the Betty’s course of flight. He watched the Betty’s right engine and right wing catch on fire and in his words “the bomber’s wing tore off. The bomber plunged into the jungle. It exploded. That was the end of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.” While racing out over the open sea towards Moila Point, Ugaki himself was horrified to see the funeral pyre of Yamamoto’s crashed bomber. But at the same time, Rex Barber tells a different story. 

Rex claims Lamphier’s initial maneuver going to the left was smart, as it allowed Barber the opportunity to attack the bombers without the Zeroes being on his tail. Thus Rex banked sharply to the right to fall in behind one of the Betty’s. At around 1000 feet above the jungle canopy, Rex opened fire, aiming over the fuselage at the right engine. Rex could see chunks of the Betty’s engine and fires emerge as he continued to ranke the Bettey with his guns, until the Betty suddenly stopped in mid-air, nearly colliding with him before crashing into the jungle below. Rex also claimed the Betty did not fire back at all. The zero escorts however did catch up to him, but the sudden appearance of Lt’s Besby Holmes and Raymond Hine saved him as they shot down the 3 zeros. 

Heading to the coasts, Holmes and Hine pursued the remaining Betty and fired upon it scoring some hits. Rex also dropped in behind what is assumed to be Ugaki’s Betty firing a burst over it before it hit the water. Holmes claimed to have shot down Ugaki’s Betty by himself. Rex states that “Holmes rounds must have hit the tanks and filled the bomber swings with gas fumes, because the ship exploded in his face”.

As Rex flew through the black smoke and debris a large chunk of the Betty hit his right wing cutting out his turbo supercharger intercooler. Meanwhile Holmes and Hine were dog fighting two more Zeros. Holmes would claim to have shot one of the zeros down, making his total around 3 Zeros and one betty; Hine’s lightning was damaged in the fight forcing him to head east out to sea with smoke trailing his engine. Hine would be last seen around 9:40am, he was to be the only allied casualty of operation Vengeance. With both Betty’s down, the mission was done and Mitchell ordered a withdrawal. The lightning’s each headed home individually, operating at the limit of their range and suffering the hot weather. The controversy over who shot down Yamamoto’s aircraft would begin the moment the pilots got back to base. In the words of Lt Julius Jacobson “there were 15 of us who survived, and as far as who did the effective shooting, who cares?”

Yamamoto’s plane had gone down about 4 miles inland, in a remote part of the jungle. Search parties took over a day to find the wreck. On April 20th they found the wrecked aircraft, there were no survivors. According to eyewitness testimony, Yamamoto was found sitting upright, still strapped to his seat, with one white gloved hand resting upon his katana. Yamamoto’s watch had stopped at 0745hrs. A bullet had entered his lower jaw and went out from his temple; another pierced his shoulder blade. Yamamoto’s body was wrapped in banyan leaves and carried down a trail to the mouth of the Wamai River, where it was taken to Buin by sea. His body would be cremated alongside the 11 other men aboard that Betty,  in a pit filled with brushwood and gasoline and his ashes were flown back to Truk and deposited on a Buddhist altar in the Musashi’s war operations room. 

New’s of Yamamoto’s death was at first restricted to a small circle of ranking officers, and passageways around the operations room and the commander in chiefs cabin were placed off limits. But the truth eventually leaked out to the crew of Musashi. Admiral Ugaki was seen in bandages holding a white box containing Yamamoto’s ashes as he came aboard and the smell of incense wafted from his cabin. Admiral Mineichi Koga was named the new commander in chief. For over a month the news was kept under wraps.

On May 22nd, Yamamoto’s death was heard on the NHK news. The announcer broke into tears as he read the announcement. A special train carried the slain admiral’s ashes from Yokosuka to Tokyo. An imperial party, including members of the royal household and family greeted its arrival at Ueno Station. As diarist Kiyoshi Kiyosawa noted “There is widespread sentiment of dark foreboding about the future course of the war”. Admiral Yamamoto was awarded posthumously the Grand Order of the Chrysanthemum, first class and the rank of Fleet admiral. His funeral was held on June 5th, the first anniversary of the battle of Midway, which also coincided with the funeral of the legendary Admiral Togo Heihachiro, 9 years previously. It was held in Hibiya park with hundreds of thousands coming to pay their respects. Pallbearers were selected from among the petty officers of the Musashi, carrying his casket draped in white cloth past the Diet and Imperial Palace. The Navy band played Chopin’s funeral march as the casket was driven to Tama Cemetery where it was placed in a grave alongside that of Admiral Togo. Some sought to make a Yamamoto shrine, but his close friend Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai said “Yamamoto hated that kind of thing. If you deified him, he’d be more embarrassed than anybody else”. 

The new commander in chief of the combined fleet, Admiral Koga Mineichi would later say “There was only one Yamamoto and no one is able to replace him. His loss is an unsupportable blow to us.” 

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

Operation Vengeance was a success, leading to the death of the legendary, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. Would his death help or worsen the allied war effort? For that question to be answered only time could tell.

- 73 - Pacific War - Return of the Chindits, April 11-18, 1943

Last time we spoke about Admiral Yamamoto’s Operation I-Go. The empire of the rising sun had to do something about the allied advance up the solomons and New Guinea. Yamamoto devised a grand counter air offensive to hinder the allies airfield building in the regions. However, this was not 1941, it was 1943 and the Japanese aviation crews and pilots were not the same men they once were. The war was taking its toll on the effectiveness of Japan’s airpower and it was showcased during Operation I-Go.  Despite the wild claims of the pilots who would have Japan’s leadership believe they shutdown every allied aircraft in existence, the reality was they had only inflicted enough damage to set back the allied timetables for 10 days. Unbeknownst to the Japanese also was that allied cryptanalysts were continuing to break their codes and found out fateful information about the mastermind behind Operation I-Go. But today you need to grab your onions cause were are talking about Chindits.

This episode is the return of the Chindits 

Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

For a few weeks we have been covering what basically can be described as the major strategic shift during the Pacific War. I know I repeat it so often, but the battle of guadalcanal was the real turning point of the Pacific War. It led the allies to grab the initiative for the rest of the war and as a result the Japanese were forced to take a defensive stance. The taking of guadalcanal and the Buna-Gona-Sanananda areas led to a lot of shuffling for both sides. And with all that shuffling came heavy losses and resources being forcefully allocated to certain areas at the cost of others.

Now up in the frigid northern waters of the north pacific, the 6 hour battle of the komandorski islands had nearly ended in an American debacle. If admiral Hosogaya had pressed his advantage, he would have most likely destroyed the Salt Lake City alongside several other warships. But as we saw, the high explosive shell fired by a single man had prompted Hosogay to falsely believe American airforces were attacking him and he pulled out. Hosogaya’s conservative decision was condemned by his superiors and he was forced into retirement as a result. Admiral McMorris’s force suffered damage to 3 ships and lost 7 men, but he walked away and the Japanese convoy failed its mission. It was to be Japan’s last attempt to resupply the Attu and Kiska garrisons with surface ships, all future runs would be done via submarine.

Thus the success of Admiral Kinkaids daring blockade had sealed the fate of the Japanese garrisons on the two islands. Yet before the Americans could begin invading these two islands they needed to perform basically the same strategy their colleagues were doing in the south pacific. They needed to secure advance bases and island hop their way west. One of the first major moves came when Admiral Kinkaid and General Buckner made the joint decision to move the Army, Navy and Air Force headquarters out to Adak. Adak was a thousand miles nearer to the enemy, but concentrating so much on the island created its own problems. A year prior, there had been only 5000 people in the Aleutians, now there were nearly 40,000. The bottleneck became so severe, Buckner’s soldiers were being supplies with just 10 rounds of ammunition per weapon and food rations were very limited. The men were living off canned vegetables and the occasional shiploads of foul-smelling mutton from New Zealand. Mutton in general was notably not very loved amongst American forces. Australians took a notice of this as Americans began to complain in Australia that they were tired of eating it all the time there. Actually a hilarious rumor emerged amongst the Americans in Australia that General MacArthur owned a sheep ranch and was being enriched at their expense. Yes I managed to toss another punch at Dougey. Medical problems began to emerge in the Aleutians as many American bodies began to reject the environment, that is polite talk for Americans who can't handle a bit of cold. Lingering head colds became so bad, the men began to refer to it as “Aleutian malaria”. I mean I do get it, snow can suck, the cold sucks, waking up at 6am to record this podcast only to look out my window at what is becoming a hours shoveling of my driveway sucks, Canadian problems 101. 

As for the US Navy, the north pacific submarine force had spent the first few months of Kinkaids command simply gathering strength, building up enough to make a final push, but nothing too exciting. A new PT boat squadron had been assembled employing the Higgens model. Now I don’t know about all of you, but the idea of being on a tiny PT boat in the Aleutians sounds horrifying. If you might recall in January, 4 torpedo boats led by Lt CLinton McKeller had departed King cove to sail for Dutch Harbor. They sailed through a squall, coated with 4 inches of ice. The 4 boats made it to the nearest harbor, Dora Harbor on Unimak and were stuck there for nearly a week. There anchored they were bashed around by howling 80 knot winds, and Pt-27 smashed into some jagged rocks, Pt-28 went aground and sank, pt-22 crashed on a reef and sank, but McKellar was able to keep his crews intact. The two surviving boats had to be rescued some days later by the tender Virginia E. 

The devastating experiences of the McKeller’s men led to this new squadron of PT boats being outfitted with hot-air heaters. To compare to the PT boat crews miseries, the experience of the pilots in the Aleutians was not any better. Butler lost 11 planes due to bad weather in January alone. The weather improved in February allowing for some missions, but they were hampered terribly by a technological issue. The B-24 liberators constantly had their bomb-bay rack mechanisms freeze on them. Thus the bombing missions half the time went bust.

Now Admiral Kinkaid suggested an attack on Kiska in January of 1943. The plan found its way to the Casablanca conference in north africa where president FDR, Sir Winston CHurhcill and the allied combined chiefs of staff hammered out the fine details. Kinkaid’s plan to attack Kiska actually managed to become an item debated at the conference. The allied leaders approved it and sent it over to the US joint chiefs of staff to develop it into a real operation, which became code named Operation Landcrab. The task was handed over to General John DeWitt, who recommended using the 35th infantry division, but the war department decided instead to use the southwestern 7th motorized division. However this division was trained in desert warfare. The rationale for this was due to Rommel’s recent defeat and the lack of need for desert trained troops in Europe.Well obviously the desert tactics nor the tanks, truck and other armored vehicles were of any use to the Aleutians, the entire division required training in arctic amphibious operations which would take over 3 months.

Luckily amphibious assault specialists like Major General Holland “Howlin Mad” Smith, Colonels Castner, Eareckson, Alexander and Carl Jones were accustomed to the Aleutian theater and helped retrain the 7th division at Los Angeles. By February Washington had assigned an insufficient number of ships for the invasion of Kiska. This prompted Kinkaid to suggest instead of attacking Kiska to bypass her and hit Attu. Attu was believed to only have a garrison of 500 men and Kinkaid believed seizing Attu, just west of Kiska would prompt the Japanese to abandon Kiska.

Thus operation Landcrab was greenlit and ready to go, and all the major commanders of the theater would meet at a conference in San Diego to hash out the final details. The San diego conference quickly deteriorated into a series of arguments between two new commanders, rear-admiral William Ward Smith and Vice admiral Francis Warren Rockwell and the experienced Alaskan leaders Buckner and DeWitt. They squabbled over reconnaissance issues, in truth the Americans did not have a good picture of the western Aleutians. Bucker pointed out that the Navy, Army and Airforce had 4 different sets of map coordinates and asked the issue be rectified. This led the Alaska Scout leader Colonel Castner to urge Major General Albert Eger Brown who would be commanding the 7th infantry division to perform a reconnaissance personally. Brown however did not do this. Furthermore Buckner requested they employ a battalion of his ground forces for the operation to improve their low morale. Rockwell argued his shipping capacity was overstretched, leading DeWitt to assign the commercial ship Perida to take Buckner’s troops into the battle. Rockwell then complained the commercial ship would not be able to land his troops quickly enough to protect them it the enemy resisted the landings and Brown threw back at him the addition of these troops just disrupted the entire mission. So as you can see a lot of dick waving.

In the end they reached a compromise, to hold Buckner’s 4th regiment in reserve at Adak, ready to ship out in less than a day to hit Attu if needed. On April 18th, reconnaissance revealed there were at least 1600 Japanese on Attu, prompting Rockwell to commit the entire 7th division, 10,000 men in all and the extra 4th regiment for operation landcrab. Now before the men his the island Rockwell sent a small team of combat specialists to come up behind the Japanese to prevent them from falling back into the mountains where they could hold out for weeks or even months. Captain Willoughby’s Scout battalion, 410 officers and men, trained vigorously in a short amount of time for the operation. They replaced all of their rifles and submarine guns with automatic rifles, machine guns and mortars and soft lead bullets for armor piercing bullets as those could penetrate ice without ricocheting. The mens packs were filled to the brim with grenades. 

Meanwhile General Butler began a bombing campaign to soften up the island. A terrible storm prevented air raids during the first half of april seeing winds his 115 miles per hour and gusts over 127. Nonetheless over 1175 combat sorties would be made in april, with over 4000 pounds of bombs falling on Attu. Though it should be mentioned most of the bombers dropped their loads blind as Attu was covered in a thick fog. Finally on April 24th, the 7th division departed San Francisco at 1pm aboard 5 transports. The Aleutian campaign was soon coming to an end. But now we need to grab our onions and travel back to Burma to talk about good ol Wingate and the boys. 

Back in Burma, Wingates forces were beginning the last phase of operation Longcloth, fleeing for their lives back to India. Now Fort Hertz and the new Ledo Road had been protectedAt his headquarters in Wuntho Wingate had to make a choice: retire back to India or press on and cross the Irrawaddy. Being Wingate he chose to press on with the Japanese hot on the Chindits trail. Now I do apologize I believe this will be the second time I am rehashing most of the Chindit story, I sort of am forced to do so as a result of how the week by week format laid out this story on the youtube channel. Think of it as a refresher to finish off the operation. 

Major calvert’s Column 3 and Fergussons column 5 headed towards the Gokteik Gorge to blow up its viaduct; Colonel Alexander’s southern group was to rendezvous with the Kachin guerillas at Mongmit; and Wingate would personally lead columns 7 and 8 to hit Inywa one of the main based of the Burmese independence forces. Wingates northern force made its way to the Irrawaddy’s principal northern tributary, the Shweli by March 17th. Here the river was so wide, their ropes and dinghies would not suffice, the crossing had to be made by boat. The approach to the stream was over open paddy fields, where they could easily be spotted and gundowned. Another major issue of course was the Burmese liberation Army. Wingate began by sending an envoy across the river to treat with the BLA and they promptly decamped. While this was going on Wingate discovered the local boats and their skilled native paddlers could help move his forces. They helped tow the Chindats RAF circular dinghies using 1500 lb net weights. Upon seeing how the locals managed Wingate wrote notes that in the future he should employ at least 40 men to each column who were skilled in handling boats and that 80 percent of his men needed to know how to swim. Yes many of these Chindits did not know how to swim. The mules as usual proved to be difficult to get across, leading 40 to be abandoned while the rest were tethered to boats and paddled across. 

Fergusson’s Column 5 crossed the Irrawaddy at Tigyaing with assistance of local villagers, missing the Japanese pursuers by a hair’s breadth. Fergusson turned south, but then received orders from Wingate to abandon his mission to help Calvert and instead rejoin the rest of the brigade. Calvert completely unaware of these orders, faced a game of hide and seek with the Japanese, leaving them boody traps as they marched. At Tigyaing, Calverts group’s rearguard were being hit by the Japanese as they crossed the river. Further south of him, the Southern group had crossed the river at Taguang on March 10th, continuing east. Wingate’s men were making their own way eastwards, but the supply drops were becoming less and less frequent and the amount of wounded men was increasing. Wingate was forced to leave many men behind as the Japanese continued to pressure them.

On march the 15th, the Southern group met up with Calvert’s column 3 near Pegon where they exchanged information. Despite orders to head for Mongmit, Major dunlop and Colonel Alexander decided to advance to Namhkan, crossing the Shweliriver and making an escape for China. As the southern group continued they ran into Fergusson’s column 5 on March 20th at Inbale Chaung. There they received orders to continue with the original plans, so they redirected themselves to Mongmit again. There they were supposed to meet with the Kachin guerrillas, but they were so late the Kachin had departed. Meanwhile Calvert and Fergusson were having a rough time as an entire Japanese battalion had arrived at Myitson and they were fanning out patrols to hunt them down. On March 23rd, Calvert found one of these patrols near the Nam Mit River and laid a trap killing 100 of them. In his words  ‘We let fly with everything we had and a lot of Japs could never have known what hit them. It was one of the most one-sided actions I have ever fought in.’ He paid for the ambush with a dozen Gurkhas. Calvert’s column made its way towards Gokteik, their glittering prize when disappointment was dealt to them. They received orders from Wingate to withdraw back to India. Wingate also took the care to tell his commanders not to call it a “retreat”, but instead to tell their men they were marching north to cooperate with parachute troops in an attack on Bhamo and Indaw. This was to deceive the enemy if men were captured and to simply boost morale. Calvert complied with the order, but in a bit of defiance decided he wanted to hit a railway on the retreat. Reading Calvert’s mind Wingate sent an additional message to Calvert saying he needed to get out as fast as possible and not perform any additional strikes, he finished with this “we can get new equipment and wireless sets. But it will take 25 years to get another man. These men have done their job, their experience is at a premium”.

Wingate at this point decided they needed a good supply drop and ordered one for March 24th in a paddy field near the village of Baw, which happened to be held by a Japanese company. This was the same location for the rendezvous with Fergussons column who were in bad need for supplies having been forced to butcher their own mules for meat and eat stews of monkeys, rats, locusts and cockroaches. Disaster struck. Wingate sent his forces to attack the Japanese company at Baw leading the RAF pilots seeing the confused battle to only drop one third of the supplies. Fergusson met up with Wingate on the 25th finding his superior to be a bit manic. Wingate was now claiming because of their actions, the Japanese commander would be hard pressed to annihilate them all to save face.

Wingate faced a daunting issue, the Japanese would contest the passage of the Irrawaddy, how would they get through now? He decided to try a bluff, they would march back to Inywa and cross at the identical point they had taken to go east, thinking the Japanese would never expect it. To do this they would have to kill all their remaining mules and lighten their loads, perhaps we can take a moment of silence for these poor mules. Wingate told the men once they got across the river they were to break up into smaller groups, try to sabotage more railway installations and make their way back to Assam. The forces made a dreadful march back to Inywa, slaughtering their mules as they went, much to the grief of the muleteers. It became clear early the Japanese were following them. Colonel Tomotoki Koba had set up three defensive lines between the Chindits and the Indian border: 1 at the Irrawaddy, 1 along the Mu valley and 1 following the line of the Chindits. Koba’s orders were pretty simply, to drive the Chindits into a trap as if they were wild beasts to hunt. 

Wingate attempted feints and decoys, such as sending Fergusson’s Column 5 towards the village of Hintha. This decoy worked great for everyone else of course, as Fergussons men suffered heavy casualties for their efforts. The feints and decoys worked as the bamboozled Japanese never fully caught up to the main body, failing to capture the Chindits in the Shweli loop as it was known. By 4pm on 28th, the main body reached Inywa where they lucked out greatly. It turned out the Japanese had neglected to commandeer the boats along the Shweli. Wingate was able to commander a number of local boats and his men began to cross the river. Column 7 went first followed by 2 and 8. But Column 8 as they made their way were fired upon by Japanese patrols. It was fortunate for the Chindits the Japanese patrols were small and lacked heavy machine guns. Even so, the mortar and rifle fire was enough for Wingate to call off the rest of the columns leaving column 7 on the other side of the river to make their own way home to India.

Wingate took the rest of the forces to a secure bivouac 10 miles south east of Inywa where he ordered the men to disperse into 5 smaller groups. It was now every man for himself as they say. The first group to really suffer was Fergussons column 5. After the bitter fight at Hintha, he sent word to Wingate advised him where they should be rendezvousing for a supply drop. But when Fergusson got to the location, there was no drop and no Wingate. Fergusson’s radio radio was destroyed at Hintha so he had to rely on runners and now knew he basically was on his own. Fergusson decided to take his column and head for the Kachin hills. When his men tried to cross the Shweli it turned into a disaster. Many men were swept away by a flood and most of their animals alone with them. 46 men had to be abandoned on a sandbank in the middle of the river and in Fergusson’s words “‘the decision which fell on me there was as cruel as any which could fall on the shoulders of a junior commander’. His men staggered on half crazed with hunger and thirst. After 15 days they reached the Chindwin on April 24th and would limp over to Imphal 2 days later. Their column suffered horribly, 95 survivors out of an original 318.

Major Ken Gilkes column 7 managed to get to China with 150 survivors and would fly back to India. Wingates dispersed groups would have a particularly horrible time on their way home. They had tales to tell of Japanese atrocities, the treachery of Burman villagers, the constant battle to stay awake, the agony of hunger and thirst and the feeling of being hunted down like beasts. Their menu more often the naught was python meat and nettles. There also began a rumor amongst the dispersed groups that Wingate had intentionally taken the easy way out for himself while using the rest of them as decoys. 

As for Wingates group, his original thinking was that the trek would take 2 weeks but it took roughly 22 days. They spent 2 full days around the Irrawaddy trying to find a safe way across as the Japanese patrols attacked them. On April 13th, with the help of friendly locals who provided paddlers and bamboo rafts they got across. They planned to go across in three groups, and unfortunately for the last group who was acting rearguard they would be left behind. The starving survivors made their way to the Wuntho-Indaw railway then through the Mangin range. At this point all of the food ran out, making even the Python stews seem appetizing. They would make the mistake of trying to buy rice from a pro-Japanese village who began hitting gongs to summon the Japanese causing them to run. At another more neutral village they were able to buy some buffalo meat. As they continued through the Mangin range they nearly died of starvation if it was not for a stroke of luck when one of their Burmese interpreters contacted a local monastery who sold them chicken, tomatoes, rice bananas and 5 pigs. Refreshed they continued and by the 23ed of april could see the Chindwin river. Wingate recounted stating ‘Behold the Chindwin. It is a poor heart that never rejoices.’ The 30 mile trek to the Chindwin was the hardest part of the journey. When finally facing the great river Wingate was forced to divide his men into those deemed strong enough to swim across and those who needed a boat. It took 5 men 7 hours to hack some elephant grass to make rafts. Wingate and others swam the Chindwin at a narrow point 500 yards or so wide. Even the strong swimmers were in danger of drowning, many forced to float on their backs. Wingate himself was pretty close to being swept away but managed to keep afloat using a pack for buoyancy. Everyone who got to the other side of the river were utterly exhausted. To their misery they soon heard the incoming Japanese on the other side of the river. As they hit the first village they came across they devoured the meals they could find. But they had left countless non swimming comrades on the other side and Wingate was desperate to send rescue parties. They found a post manned by some Gurkha rifles and obtained their help grabbing local boats and taking a flotilla back over the Chindwin to save the men they could find. In the end Wingates small group of 43 would see 34 survivors reach Assam.

Meanwhile far to the south, Dunlop and Alexander’s southern group were the furthest away from India. They decided to try and head back to Fort Hertz, but would be ambushed many times along the way. They crossed at the head of the Irrawaddy using stealth to avoid clashes with the Japanese. With the help of locals who gave them food and boats they made it across by April 20th, but after crossing were hit again by the Japanese suffering heavy casualties. Now down to 350 men, they continued towards the Mu River where they were ambushed yet again on the 28th. Colonel Alxander would be killed among others, as Dunlop recounted  "Clarke told me that the last mortar bomb had blown away most of the Colonel Alexander and officer De La Rue's legs. Edmonds and some orderlies had carried them away into the jungle, but that no one could now be found who knew of their whereabouts." Dunlop led the force of exhausted men to the Chindwin river fighting off multiple Japanese patrols. They would wander into early may and were saved by Karen guerilla forces a very lucky break.

Lastly, Calverts column 3 made their way to the Shewli river by March 27th with Japanese patrols hot on their trail. Calvert decided the best course of action was to break up into 9 smaller groups. Out of the 360 men in Column 3, 205 eventually recrossed the Chindwin by mid April. Calvert personally would lead a group to detonate more explosives across the Burmese railway. 

So ends operation longcloth. Two major things to note were Wingates character and behavior during the expedition. For the first, it is not surprising to see that extreme stress brought up the brittle personality of mr Wingate. It seems in his own mind, Wingate could never be at fault. Wingate clearly had not factored the importance of river crossings, which is unforgivable given Burma’s riverine system. The crossings over the Irrawaddy showcased Wingates glory hunting nature. Wingate also was draconian in his punishment of the men. He told his men if any of them plundered villages or lost their own equipment he would have them shot. This went beyond normal army code. If sentries fell asleep and were caught, Wingate gave them 3 choices; be shot, make their own way back home or be flogged, not surprisingly everyone chose to be flogged. Wingate’s behavior likewise kept switching from mania to depression given the circumstances. 

The casualty figures of the operation were appalling. Out of 3000 men of the 77th brigade that Wingate took into Burma, 2182 returned; 450 were killed in action and the rest went missing. Out of the southern group 260 men out of the 1000 survived. What had been achieved to justify such losses? There are arguments made on both sides. General Slim said of the operation 

“They had blown up bridges and cuttings on the Mandalay–Myitkyina railways that supplied the Japanese northern front, and attempted to reach across the Irrawaddy to cut the Mandalay–Lashio line. Exhaustion, difficulties of air supply, and the reaction of the Japanese, prevented this, and the columns breaking up into small parties made for the shelter of 4 Corps. About a thousand men, a third of the total force, failed to return. As a military operation the raid had been an expensive failure. It gave little tangible return for the losses it had suffered and the resources it had absorbed. The damage it did to Japanese communications was repaired in a few days, the casualties it inflicted were negligible, and it had no immediate effect on Japanese dispositions or plans.’”

Even Wingates supporters admit the operation was a failure, some describing it “an engine without a train”. Fergusson would add it ‘What did we accomplish? Not much that was tangible. What there was became distorted in the glare of publicity soon after our return. We blew up bits of railway, which did not take long to repair; we gathered some useful intelligence; we distracted the Japanese from some minor operations, and possibly from some bigger ones; we killed a few hundreds of an enemy which numbers eighty millions; we proved that it was feasible to maintain a force by supply dropping alone.’

Really in the end, Wingates exploits were used for propaganda purposes lifting the terrible morale amongst the British. The sacrifice of over 800 men for a rather pointless operation had to be glorified for if not it would have crushed morale further. Sit Winston Churchill would say of Longcloth on July 24th of 1943 ‘There is no doubt that in the welter of inefficiency and lassitude which has characterised our own operations on the Indian front, this man, his force and his achievements stand out; and no question of seniority must obstruct the advance of real personalities in their proper station in war.’

Wingate performed a press conference on May 20th to spin the allied propaganda machine. Reuters called them “the british ghost army”, the daily mail hailed Wingate as “clive of Burma”. Wingate had performed the typical British habit of turning obvious defeats into glorious victories, it was very much his Dunkirk.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

The mad onion man Wingate successfully, or unsuccessfully performed Operation Longcloth. His exploits became legendary, but perhaps one should look closer at the reality behind what occurred in the depths of Burma.

- 72 - Pacific War - Operation I-GO, April 4-11, 1943

Last time we spoke about the disastrous first Arakan campaign and the Pacific Military conference of 1943. Yes Mr. Irwin had royally messed up the Arakan offensive, so much so it was gradually bringing his bitter rival General Slim into the mix. While Irwin failed, Slim gradually was placed in operation control and would soon unleash a box strategy against General Koga’s forces in Burma. On the planning front, the war between MacArthur and King raged on, but compromises were finally hashed out. The July 2 directive, became the Elkton plan which in turn would evolve into Operation Cartwheel. The allies were learning how to play nice together in the Pacific at last. MacArthur was gradually shifting the war towards his own personal goals. However while all of this was going on, the Japanese were also forming their own plans, which would soon be unleashed.

This episode is the Operation I-GO

Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

It is April of 1943, a year ago, the Empire of the Rising sun stood proud and victorious over the Pacific. The Japanese had taken Malaya, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Burma and pretty much anywhere they went, victory was at hand. Yet as Admiral Yamamoto moved his flag from super battleship Yamato to the Musashi, he looked quite withered down. The past 14 months since the great raid on Pearl Harbor had aged him considerably. His close-cropped hair had turned almost entirely gray and his eyes looked discolored. It was rare to see him leave his quarters and whenever he did it was quite briefly, usually him waving his hat in the air as a departing sign to a squadron of aircraft. Rarely did he join his fellow staff officers for a game of ring-toss on deck. In a letter he wrote at the end of January of 1943 he asserted he only set foot ashore 4 times since the previous august, only to check in on the sick or wounded men at the hospitals or to attend funerals. Critics of Yamamoto would claim he actually made considerable amounts of visits to the “naval restaurant” on an island in the lagoon. This “naval restaurant” was actually a well-known brothel near Yokosuka Naval base in Tokyo Bay.

The commander in chief seemed resigned to his fate. When he was asked in October of 1942 what he would do after Japan won the war he replied “I imagine I’ll be packed off either to the guillotine or to set Helena”. On most occasions he would openly declare he did not believe he would live through the war. Yamamoto mourned the loss of so many IJN officers and sailors and was especially saddened by the loss of the commanders who refused to leave their doomed ships. Yamamoto had actually campaigned to reform the principle that a captain could and should honorably survive the destruction of his ship, but it was to little avail. The belief was so hard-wired into the Japanese naval officer corps. 

Yamamoto knew Japan was staggering towards a catastrophic defeat, but he could not openly say it to those around him. He had tossed everything he could to thwart the war in the first place, warning everyone of the great industrial power of America that would gradually overwhelm Japan. His operation against Midway in june of 1942 was a major gambit aimed at forcing a decisive victory to bring the Americans closer to the negotiating table. The utter failure at Midway had ensured the war would be prolonged, it would become a war of attrition and one that Japan could not hope to win.

On the morning of April 3rd, 1943 Admirals Yamamoto and Ugaki accompanied by more than a dozen officers of the combined fleet staff boarded two Kawanishi flying boats enroute for Rabaul. The battles of Guadalcanal and Buna-Gona-Sanananda were extremely heavy setbacks to Yamamoto’s plans of extending the defensive perimeter towards the east of Australia so it could be strangled of supplies. The disaster that occurred at the battle of the Bismarck Sea showcased how vulnerable their shipping lanes were. The state of their land-based aviation was abysmal, it failed to protect the convey sent to Lae resulting in the terrible loss. As Commander Toshikazu Ohmae stated “The land-based air groups at Rabaul were not effective, largely because there were only a few experienced pilots in them.  Vice-Admiral Ugaki was even harsher, adding “We cannot expect much of the land-based air force partly because of a passive atmosphere among them.” 

Admiral Kusaka’s 11th air fleet had suffered tremendous losses from a series of serious ongoing issues, but two were of vital importance; 1) the poor health and low morale of those at Rabaul. Men were succumbed to widespread diseases, such as malaria and chronic diarrhea. And 2) the terrible situation when it came to replacing men such as their valuable veterans. As Yamamoto put it “They used to say that one ‘Zero’ fighter could take on five to ten American aircraft, but that was at the beginning of the war. Since losing so many good pilots at Midway we’ve had difficulty in replacing them. Even now, they still say that one ‘Zero’ can take on two enemy planes, but the enemy’s replacement rate is three times ours; the gap between our strengths is increasing every day, and to be honest things are looking black for us now.” The new recruits were unfamiliar with the aircraft employed by Kusaka’s command, requiring to be re-trained upon their arrival to Rabaul. Without their veteran pilots to train these men the task took longer and resulted in less capable pilots and crews.

The replacement issue for aircrews was a fleet-wide issue forcing the IJN to shorten their training syllabus for commissioned and enlisted pilots by 2 months. To achieve this reduction, the amount of instructional time devoted to skill areas like tactics, gunnery and formation flying were reduced or in some cases even eliminated. The veterans who began the war in a third position of a 3-plane sector and were still alive now took upon the role of shotai or chutai leadership. Shotai leaders were responsible for flights of 3 aircraft and Chutai leaders were responsible for 9 aircraft or better said 3 shotai. However many of these men did not really have the necessary experience to assume such responsibilities.

On March 25th a directive was established to quote “create a superior and impregnable strategic position”. In other words, Tokyo was demanding the Army and Navy come up with a plan to stop the allies southern offensive. Tokyo wanted the two services to actually work together so they could defend the precious gains they had made in the early part of the war, like their holdings in New Guinea which were currently being hammered upon by MacArthur's forces. To implement the new directive, General Imamura summoned a conference on Rabaul for April 12th. Commanders of the 17th and 19th armies, the 6th air division would be in attendance. During the conference it was decided General Hyakutakes 17th Army would take on the responsibility for defending the northern solomons in coordination with the Navy. They would also have to help assist the navy who was expecting allies attacks directed at the central solomons. General Adachi’s 18th army was given responsibility to defend Lai-Salamaua, but because of the shipping lane crisis this would have to be done mostly via land routes. They were going to establish a major overland and coastal supply route linking Madang and Western New Britain to the Lae area to aid this. Furthermore naval and air bases would be built up in eastern New Guinea to aid Lt General Itahana Giichi’s 6th air division to operation in the region. Despite all these grand plans, American air power was already making Tokyo express runs to places like Finschhafen impossible. The Japanese war effort in New Guinea was gradually being torn apart by constant air raids. Therefore, the only way to get men and supplies to places like Lae would be using the ever glamorous submarine or barge methodology. Now that is all for the Imperial Japanese army boys planning session, but what about Yamamoto and the Naval gang.

By the time of the conference, MacArthur’s efforts in New Guinea had basically ruined Yamamoto’s expansionist strategies. A complete strategic rethink was now necessary. Yamamoto was quartered in a cottage high on a hill behind the town of Rabaul. He spent the following week inspecting airfields and other military installations, meeting with the local army and naval commanders all around New Britain. As was typical of him, he bid good luck to the departing air squadrons, with his usual wave of his hat. Yamamoto set to work creating a new offensive directive erected as part of the March 25th plan. The IJN planned for an air campaign against allied positions in New Guinea and the Solomons. The 11th air fleet, on its lonesome would not able to mount an effective strike, thus Yamamoto called upon the 3rd fleet to augment them.  Admiral Ozawa who led the 3rd fleet voiced opposition to this, not wanting his precious elite units to be squandered. But he eventually gave in and provided aircraft carriers and agreed to supervise plans for the new operation. At the same time it was decided that Yamamoto and Ozawa would shift their headquarters temporarily to Rabaul, this would prove to be a fateful mistake on his part. You see him doing so was announced using a radio message. His operations officer Commander Yasuji Watanabe would go on the record complaining that the information about Yamamoto’s visit to the Ballalae Airfield should had been done by courier and not by radio, but the communications officer replied “this code only went into effect on april 1st and cannot be broken”. It would be broken, but more about that later. Now the Zuikaku, Zuiho, Junyo and Hiyo would toss up 160 aircraft: 54 Vals, 45 Kates and 96 Zeros to augment the 155 aircraft of Admiral Kusaka pushing them to a strength of over 350 aircraft. The aircraft were dispersed to multiple airfields such as Buka and Kahili on Bougainville and Ballale in the Shortlands.

 

Now before Yamamoto and his team launched their new offensive, Admiral Kusaka decided to do a preliminary fighter sweep down the Slot on April 1st. He hoped to draw out large portions of the allied airpower on Guadalcanal to soften them up. Kusaka launched a first wave of 32 and second wave of 25 Zeros which intercepted 42 fighters of Admiral Mason’s ComAirSols command. The allied force consisted mostly of Wildcats, some P-38’s and a few new F4U Corsairs. They were intercepted over the Russell Islands causing a giant melee of dog flights lasting over 3 hours. The Americans had home field advantage over the Japanese, managing to shoot down 9 Zero’s at the cost of 5 Wildcats and a Corsair. It was not exactly a promising start for the Japanese. As usual both sides of the air battle submitted exaggerated reports. The Americans claimed to have taken down 18 Zeros and the Japanese claimed to have downed 47 American fighters. So yeah the Japanese claimed to have shot down more aircraft than they even encountered haha.

Now it was on April the 3rd when Yamamoto and his staff arrived in Rabaul and he personally took command of the upcoming operation alongside Admirals Ozawa and Kusaka. Now Yamamoto had accurately anticipated the allied advance into the solomons and New Guinea would focus on the subjugation of Rabaul. Within five days of the battle of Guadalcanal being officially declared on February 9th of 1942, Lt General Kenney had authorized a plan to take down Rabaul. This plan commence on the night of February 14th with a bombing raid consisting of 12 B-29’s from the 63rd bomb squadron. They targeted the fuel dumps and munitions. A second wave of 10 B-29’s from the 65th bomb squadron came in dropping incendiaries upon the town of Rabaul. The Japanese had managed no fighter interceptions. Yamamoto had further predicted the allies would launch a double-pronged advance through New Guinea and the northern Solomon islands. To meet this advance he had set up a ring of airfields around Rabaul. His visit to Ballalae airfield was part of developing the rings and it would be his death sentence in the end. The result of these plans led to a triangular combat zone with Port Moresby on its west point, Guadalcanal at its east and Rabaul as its northern apex. 

Yamamoto knew the US forces would advance under the cover of air superiority which in turn depending upon their ability to build forward airfields. In anticipation of his Yamamoto had as we mentioned gathered a massive build up of aircraft with the intent to hammer the allies ability to supply materials and build further airfields. The battle for Henderson field on Guadalcanal was the first of these contests and many would follow. Yamamoto hoped the shorter lines of supply from airfields closer to Rabaul would give them an advantage over the Americans, but despite all the claims of great air victories, Yamamoto’s personal tour was revealing the opposite. In fact, as Yamamoto used the post-guadalcanal lull in action to bolster his defenses for a anticipated battle ahead, Halsey had likewise prepared his forces for their advance into the central and northern solomons. 

Halsey would have a number of new toys to play with such as the Chance Vought F4U Corsair and Grumman F6F Hellcat. 4 new airbases were built upon Guadalcanal and during march of 1943 allied bombers made sporadic attacks on the Japanese airfields at Ballalae, Kahili, Shortland Island and Munda. On top of that large scale reconnaissance efforts were made to get a good picture of the Japanese build up of their airfields. When reconnaissance found out the Japanese were developing a seaplane off southern bougainville, the Japanese launched a dawn fighter attack on March 28th. Led by Captain Lanphier of the 70th squadron, 6 P-38’s destroyed 8 Japanese seaplanes. Now after a week of sporadic bombing raids from both sides, allies watchers on the New Guinea coast indicated a major offensive was afoot. 

Yamamoto’s grand air campaign was codenamed operation I-GO with attack day X set for april 5th. The first target was to be guadalcanal, but bad weather forced a postponement of 2 days. Japanese reconnaissance since March 25th had indicated the allies had roughly 300 aircraft on the island, alongside transports, cargo ships, warships and other goodies going between Lunga Point and Tulagi. In the early hours of April the 7th, Yamamoto unleashed a massive strike force consisting of over 224 planes, the largest striking force since the attack on Pearl Harbor. 67 Vals and 157 Zeros were enroute to smash Guadalcanal.

But the allies enjoyed great intelligence and received several warnings of the impending offensive. The coastwatchers were hard at work transmitting their sightings. Rear-Admiral Marc Mitscher , the new commander of AirSols scrambled 76 fighters consisting of Wildcats, Lightnings, Airacobras and Kittyhawks from Hendersonfield, Milne Bay and other outlying airfields. Despite the prior warnings, the allied scramble was rather disorderly and to make matters worse the Japanese cleverly split up their attack force into 4 groups to confuse the allied radar systems. 4 squadrons of Vals were preceded by 2 sweeps of Zeros which were intercepted by 3 squadrons of Wildcats. Marine 1st Lt James E Sweet of the VMF-221 was credited with shooting down7 Vals and possibly an 8th using his Wildcat. His aircraft was badly mauled during the combat forcing him to make a water landing outside Tulagi harbor. He would be awarded the Medal of Honor for this great feat. 

Despite valiant efforts made by the allies, the Vals laid havoc to the Tulagi anchorage. The destroyer USS Aaron Ward, New Zealander corvette Moa and US tanker Kanawha were sunk. THe crews over in Henderson field were fortunate as it was not hit too hard as the dog fights broke up the Japanese Vals and Zeros who were forced back towards Bougainville. For their efforts the Japanese lost 12 zerosand 12 vals. The Japanese pilots claimed to have downed 41 allies aircraft, which turned out to be 7 Wildcats and 12 major warships which were the 3 previously mentioned. With what seemed to be a large success for operation X, Yamamoto felt confident and decided to launch operation Y of I-GO.

While operation X of I-GO was directed at Guadalcanal, operation Y would hit New Guinea. On april 11, 27 Vals and 73 Zeros departed Rabaul to hit Oro Bay which was adjacent to the rapidly expanding airdrome complex at Dobodura. The allies scrambled 50 aircraft consisting of Lightning and Warhawks of the 7th, 8th and 9th squadrons. The vals managed to sink a US cargo ship, heavily damaging a transport and an Australian minesweeper. The next day Yamamoto traveled to Vanukanau airdrome to personally send off another strike and announced he would do a tour of the forward bases of Buin, Ballale and Shortland island. The signal was picked up by allied listening posts. Cryptanalysts at Station Hypo led by Joseph Rocherfort decrypted the message and pronounced it a jackpot. The message referred to Yamamoto was easily deduced, and the geographic designators for Rabaul, Ballale and Buin were easily extracted. Better than that the message contained the specific information that Yamamoto would be traveling on a medium bomber escorted by 6 fighters, and would arrive at RYZ at 8am. This would put Yamamoto’s aircraft over the southern end of Bougainville on the morning of the 18th, a location just within the fighter range of Henderson Field. I will not be speaking anymore of this as it will be discussed in depth in a future episode, just a tease I know.

At Vanukanau Yamamoto presented himself in his crisp white uniform, waving his hat to the crews of 43 Bettys followed up shortly by 65 Zeros. A second group of 66 Zeros assisted the raid to perform a sweep, leaving a combined total of 174 aircraft. They flew in two large formations with an initial course direction going towards Milne Bay. Allied radar picked them up prompting General Kenney to scramble every fighter had in the area. However the course the Japanese took was a feint and without warning they broke out going across the Owen Stanley range enroute for Port Moresby. 44 allied fighters were able to intercept them, but many of the bombers managed to get past them. The bombers hit the airstrips, damaged installations alongside 15 grounded aircraft. The Japanese would claim sinking a transport anchored in the harbor and the destruction of 28 enemy planes in the sky, though only two P-39’s were shot down at the cost of 2 Zeros and 7 Bettys. 

On april the 14th, Yamamoto again personally waved off another attack, this time targeting Milne Bay. 23 vals and 75 Zeros were launched from carriers Hiyo and Junyo joined by 54 fighters and 44 Bettys from the 11th air fleet for a total of 196 aircraft. Here the Japanese scored some luck, because as a result of the air raid against Port Moresby the allies had actually rerouting most of their shipping to Milne Bay. The allies scrambled 44 fighters, 36 Kittyhawks from Milne Bay and 8 lightnings from Dobodura to intercept them. Despite the efforts of the allied airmen, Japanese bombers broke through making their way to Milne Bay in several waves. The high level bombers dropped at least 100 bombs over the anchorage, while the dive bombers attacked the allied shipping. The Dutch troop transport Van Heemskerk was forced to beach itself after suffering several hits lighting her ablaze; the British cargo ship Gorgon was also hit many times and lit on fire; the Dutch transport Van Outhoorn and Australian minesweepers Wagga and Kapunda were damaged by near misses. In the battle in the sky one Kittyhawk was shot down, 4 p-40’s were severely damaged and 1 lightning was forced to make a crash landing.

The Japanese claimed to have sunk 3 large and 1 medium transport, heavily damaged 6 transports and shot down 44 aircraft. During the air battle one Lt Richard Bong was starting to make a name for himself having shot down a pair of Betty’s. He would earn a lot of attention from General Kenney who described him “as a little blonde-haired Norwegian boy. Best watch the boy Bong”.The Japanese claims was so incredible, upon hearing of it Emperor Hirohito sent a message stating “please convey my satisfaction to the commander in chief, combined fleet, and tell him to enlarge the war result more than ever”. To contrast this, General Kenney made some remarks about the intense air raids “the way yamamoto had failed to take advantage of his superiority in numbers and position since the first couple of month of the war was a disgrace to the airman’s profession”. The reason he had this scathing remark was because apart from the rare exception of mass attacks, the Japanese attacks were marked by their use of aircraft in Penny-packets. What Kenny did not know was how the IJN’s air forces were being hampered heavily by logistical issues. Their inability at this time was a result of lack of experienced aviation engineers, ground crews, adequate airfield facilities and airfield equipment. They simply were not the same aviation force that had hit Pearl Harbor, the spear had been heavily blunted. Yamamoto planned to perform another fighter sweep of the 16th, but reconnaissance flights failed to turn up adequate targets on New Guinea’s northeast coastline. 

On April the 17th, Yamamoto’s chief of staff, Vice-Admiral Ugaki Matome held a conference to review the lessons learned from their air offensive. The staff were reluctant to admit a startling and horrifying truth. Hundreds of aviators had been burnt to a crisp because the aircraft engineers messed up installing the protected fuel tanks. This led to countless aircraft catching fire from minor hits, even tracer rounds. When Japanese aircraft saw they were on fire, they assumed they had been scored a fatale hit from the enemy, though in most cases their aircraft were minorly damaged. Many of the pilots in these situations chose to kamikaze their aircraft.

Thus Operation I-Go was finished, but despite all the unrealistic exaggerated reports from the Japanese pilots, the entire operation only really amounted to setting back the American operations in the Solomons for about 10 days. While the Japanese believed they had inflicted tremendous damage, in reality the only real insignificance for the allies was to postpone some bombing raids and minelaying activity. The most significant consequence of operation I-Go would actually end up being Admiral Yamamoto’s decision to personally carry out a tour of the forward airbases, as he tried to raise morale for the men like he had done at Rabaual. This would have a very dire effect on the future of the Empire.

 

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

Operation I-Go was quite the lackluster offensive, despite what the Japanese pilots were claiming to their leadership. The leadership likewise believed the claims or were unwilling to see the truth of the matter. They had only accosted the allies about 10 days in the solomons.

- 71 - Pacific War - Pacific Military Conference, MacArthur vs King, March 28 - April 4, 1943

Last time we spoke about the battle of Komandorski islands. Admirals Kinkaid and McMorris began a naval blockade of Attu and Kiska putting the IJN in a terrible bind. They could either give up the Aleutians, or they would have to reinforce them, either of which came at huge costs. Admiral Hosogaya had no choice but to try and breach the allied blockade to get the much needed reinforcements to the frozen islands. Hosogaya’s fleet was superior in numbers and firepower to that of McMorris when they fatefully met in the frigid northern seas. Yet by a stroke of luck, a single man fired a High Explosive shell during the heat of battle causing Hosogaya to make a terrible blunder. Under the impression allied airpower was about to attack them, Hosogaya backed off, losing the chance to claim a major victory. And today we are going to venture, behind the desk so to speak. 

This episode is the Pacific Military Conference: MacArthur vs King

Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

Now before we jump into the real war of the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur vs Admiral Ernest King, I first want to jump over the good old CBI theater. Interesting to mention I recently did a livestream, gaming with a friend of mine, answering some audience questions from you dear old audience members and others from my Youtube channel and Fall and Rise of China Podcast. One guy asked me “how important was the CBI theater?” and it really got me thinking on the spot. Honestly when Americans talk about the Pacific War, two things immediately come to mind, naval battles and island warfare. China gets overshadowed despite literally being the lionshare of fighting against the Japanese, I mean hell they kept like 30+ divisions in China out of 50 or so. But even more than that you hardly hear about Burma or India, they are always the quote en quote benchwarmers compared to lets say your Guadalcanal’s or Iwo Jima’s. As I said to the audience member on the livestream, its hard to quantify something, but honestly tossing %’s around you could argue the CBI was a hard 50-60% of the war effort, because it did the most important thing necessary to win a way, it drained Japan of men/resources. So lets jump into it a bit shall we?

So the last time we were talking about the disastrous First Arakan Campaign. The British launched their offensive and saw heavy resistance at Rathedaung and Donbaik. General Irwin continuously made blunders. When Wavell made an inspection of the battlefields later on he commented how Irwin’s forces had “fought in penny packets”. Basically what he was getting out with this little jab, was unlike conventional battles, take for example the famous battle of Alamein. Instead this offensive consisted of hundreds of chance encounters, dozens of disparate set piece clashes, hand-to-hand conflicts, frontal attacks, ambushes, desperate defenses, bombing raids, all of which had been minutely chronicled, but the details of them were quite the mystery. General Slim when asked described it all ‘as an epic that ran across great stretches of wild country; one day its focal point was a hill named on no map; next a miserable unpronounceable village a hundred miles away. Columns, brigades, divisions, marched and counter-marched, met in bloody clashes and reeled apart, weaving a confused pattern hard to unreal”. 

Now the beginning of the first arakan offensive seemed to go well. Despite the logistical nightmares, Lloyd enjoyed the advantages of both air superiority and numerical superiority. But the Japanese built their defenses knowing full well what was coming to hit them. The Japanese made no attempt to hold onto the lines between Maungdaw and Buthidaung, nor resist the British forces at Kyauktaw. Lloyd began sending optimistic reports, such as on Christmas Day when the enemy pulled out of Ratheduang. And so the British continued along the peninsula until they came a few miles north of a point of Donbaik, sitting on the coast of the Bay of Bengal. It was here, General Koga had dug in and waited for his enemy. It was to be here, after showcasing the Japanese superior jungle fighting tactics, their roadblocks and amphibious hooks, that they would unleash a new unsuspecting weapon, that of the bunker. General Slim described it as such “‘For the first time we had come up against the Japanese “bunkers” – from now on to be so familiar to us. This was a small strong-point made usually of heavy logs with four to five feet of earth, and so camouflaged in the jungle that it could not be picked out at even fifty yards without prolonged searching. These bunkers held garrisons varying from five to twenty men, plentifully supplied with medium and light machine guns.’ The bunkers were impervious to field guns and medium bombs. They also had crossing fire lanes, thus for one force to attack a bunker they would be fired upon by 2 more. The redoubt at Donbaik was situated alongside a “chaung”, which was a natural anti-tank position, having steep sides up to 9 feet high up on the bunkers.

On January 7th of 1943, the forces got their first taste of these defenses and were tossed back with heavy casualties. For days a pattern emerged of men throwing themselves at the bunkers, only to be butchered. It was so bad, both Wavell and Irwin were forced to come visit Llyod on the 10th, just to tell him “you must take Donbaik at all cost”. And so Llyod asked for tanks, and he was given them. But to Slims horror the man only asked for one troop of them, prompting Slim to object stating “the more you use the fewer you lose”. His argument was sound and simple, if you were going to utilize tanks, you tried to do so en masse to overwhelm, otherwise the resources would be vulnerable and most likely lost. His objections were tossed aside, and half a squadron of tanks, merely 8 hit the bunkers. The british attacks were beaten off all he same.

Now Koga knew he had to fight off the enemy until at least the end of march to receive some decent reinforcements. Thus he determined to hold out; he needed to perform a counterattack. Meanwhile his counterpart Irwin was determined that overwhelming infantry numbers on narrow fronts could achieve victory. And as one contemporary analysis called it “an idea rich in casualties”. Koga brought up the bulk of his 55th division to Akyab and on March 7th the 213th regiment attacked the Kaladan Valley, driving away the V force. Then the 112th regiment attacked the 123rd and 55th Indian brigades north of Rathedaung who were forced to pull back to Zedidaung. This left the 47 indian brigade trapped at the Hwitze bridgehead and the Japanese carried out wide outflanking maneuvers and infiltration attacks against the British lines. In response Irwin tried to toss another assault against Donbaik, which had just been further reinforced by Koga. On March 18th, the 6th brigade of Brigadier Ronald Cavendish launched a front attack on a very narrow front, despite multiple advice given by other commanders stating he should try to outflank the Japanese along the mountain crest. His force made little progress and suffered heavy casualties for their efforts. Meanwhile the 213th regiment secured the eastern side of the Mayu river and the 112th regiment was preparing to cross it.

In early March Irwin was doing something aside from tossing his men into a meatgrinder, he began covering his ass. Sensing defeat was staring him in the face, in his desperation he tried to coopt his hated rival, General Slim into sharing some of his blame to come. He sent Slim to Maungdaw to see Lloyd and report on the situation there. When Slim asked him if this meant he was now in operational control, Irwin said absolutely not, he just wanted Slim’s assessment of the situation over there. Irwin did however add in, that Slim might gain operational control in the future, but only when Irwin said so and even in that case, Irwin would be retaining administrative control. Well Slim found the Lloyds men’s morale was at an all time low. He advised Lloyd to abandon the idiotic frontal assaults and instead to try and flank the enemy through the jungles. Lloyd argued that was too unfeasible and because of Irwins ordered overruled Slim. Thus Slim returned to Irwin with a useless report.

Up until this point Wavell pretty much had no idea what was going on. He continued to urge action from Irwin, so Irwin ordered action from Lloyd and the result was just more disaster. By March 20th Wavell, Irwin and Lloyd all accepted they would have to withdraw the forces to the Maundaw-Buthidaung line. Wavell was livid at his subordinates writing “It seemed to me to show a complete lack of imagination, and was neither one thing nor the other. An attack in real depth with determined soldiers like the 6th Brigade would, I am sure, have accomplished something, though it has cost us casualties. But to use one battalion at a time, and that usually only deploying one company, seems to me to be poor tactics. With the Japanese in a pocket like that, I cannot believe that a plan could not have been made to eat them up; it looked to me like practically ideal for covering machine gun and mortar fire from a flank.”

On the night of the 24th, the 112th regiment crossed the Mayu river, marched along narrows paths and jungle to get to the crest of the supposedly impassable Mayu range. The following days say lines of communications to Kyaukpandu severed, the enemy captured the mountain crest near Atet Nanra on the 39th and in response to this Lloyd sent the 47th and 6th brigades to retreat west before they were encircled. This of course was in contradiction to direct ordered he had received to wait until the monsoon season had broke before pulling out. Thus Irwin was forced to countermand Lloyd’s order. Wavell was livid over his insubordination blundering of things and sought to toss Lloyd under the bus. Thus Irwin was discreetly told to sack Lloyd, and before doing so he took direct command of the 14th indian division. 

Lloyd was replaced by Major General C.E.N Lomax who was promptly ordered to carrying on doing the exact same things Lloyd had done. The 26th Indian division and Lomax were sent to bolster the peninsula, Lomax was going to assume command of all the Arakan forces when he got there, but until then Irwin had to run the show. Koga was not letting up of course and the 112th regiment managed to build a roadblock north of Indian village b April 3rd, successfully cutting the lines of communication of the 47th and 6th brigades. Simultaneously the 143rd regiment burst into the area advancing northwards up the Mayu River valley. The Japanese were soon infiltrating British positions at Indin village and overran the HQ of the 6th brigade capturing its commander, Cavendish in the process. However one of Cavendishes last orders before being grabbed was for the British artillery to open fire on Indian, which they did, taking the Japanese completely by surprise. It caused significant casualties on the Japanese, but also the British, killing Cavendish in the end.

With the 47th brigade practically annihilated by Koga’s forces, Irwin began to launch himself into a frenzy of blame-shifting. He argued the brigade, not his own tactical ideas, was alone to blame and yet again he tried to drag Slim into the mess. This time he told Slim to hold himself in readiness to take over operational control and to move his HQ to Chittagong. But again Irwin reminded him he would not have administrative control of operations nor operational direction until Irwin said so. Slim met with Irwin in Calcutta on April 5th, having been recalled from leave in the small hours, something Irwin did often to him. That evening he dined with Lloyd at the Bengal Club and heard his side of the story, which the man remarkably told without any bitterness of his shabby treatment. After this Slim had a meeting with Lomax at Chittagong. The 6th brigade narrowly escaped annihilation by retreating along a beach road and the 47th brigade avoided the same by destroying their own heavy equipment, broke out into small parties and ran for their lives cross-country to the beach, thus ceasing to be a fighting force.

 

Following that initial catastrophe, Lomax and Slim devised a stratagem for catching Koga’s men in a box along the Mayu peninsula. The box would involve 6 battalion, 2 on the ridges of the Mayu hills, 2 along the mayu river and 2 on the hills due south of the Maungdaw-Buthidaung road. The idea was that the Japanese would be bound to utilize the tunnels on a disused railway track, dismantled for years. They would be led into a box on their way to the tunnels and then the lid of the box would be shut by a force of brigade strength. It was in many ways an attempt to replicate Hannibals famous victory at the battle of Cannae, every generals dream since ancient times. Lomax and Slim were going to used their tired and greatly demoralized men to carry out a scheme of geometrical perfection. But that is all for this week at the CBI theater.

 

Now as we all know, during the Pacific War General MacArthur and Admiral King both laid out their own plans for the drive towards Japan. This led to a compromise plan that held 3 phases: Phase 1 was to seize Guadalcanal; phase 2 was to drive up the central solomons and New Guinea; lastly phase 3 was to neutralize Rabaul. Now as much as MacArthur and King hated another, they both understood Rabaul was a crucial lynchpin for both their plans. Working together did not always go so well as you might imagine. Take for example Admiral Halsey who continuously found himself in the middle. At one point in early February  he was forced to go meet MacArthur to request reinforcements, because Operation KE made the allies think a major offensive was on its way. MacArthur argued that his heavy bombers were too few and that he could not promise much support as he believed an impending offensive was about to be launched in his own area. Now Halsey was one of the few men, a Navy man no less, that MacArthur did not hate, so if he was going to jerk him around, you can tell he was being difficult to work with. All of these difficulties emphasized the two services and two area commands needed to better coordinate. And thus a conference was called to hammer out the fine details of how they would all play nice together.

 

Now meeting all in person was not feasible so the commanders sent their representatives to Washington to present their plans. On March 12th, the Pacific Military conference was held with representatives from each Pacific area command: Lt-General George Kenney, Major General Richard Sutherland and Brigadier-General Stephen Chamberlin represented MacArthurs Southwest command; Lt-General Millard Harmon, Major-General Nathan Twining, Captain Miles Browning and Brigadier-Genreal De Witt Peck represented Halsey’s south pacific command; Lt-General Delos Emmons, Rear-admiral Raymond Spruance, Brigader-General Leonard Boyd and Captain Forrest Sherman represented Nimitz Central Pacific command.

 

Now small side note here, since MacArthur could not make this conference I still wanted to toss my good old 2 cents at the man. While all of this was going on, Richard Sutherland had been sent on another mission to Washington by MacArthur. Richard sutherland was sent to meet Arthur Vandenburg, a senior Republican senator. They met informally at the home of Clare Booth Luce, a strongly anti-Roosevelt republican. She was also the wife of Henry Luce, the man in control of the Time-Life media conglomerate. The purpose of the meeting was to discern how much republican support MacArthur could expect if he ran for President in 1944. Vandenburg was onboard for it and a month later MacArthur would send another aid over bearing a note to the senator stating “I am most grateful to you for your complete attitude of friendship. I can only hope that I can someday reciprocate”.

 

Vandenburg and his allies  drafted MacArthur for the republican nomination as MacArthur met with his public relations staff, better called his court. One of his court members, Colonel Lloyd Lehrbas was disgusted by open discussions of MacArthur winning the presidency and running the war from washington. Lehrbas was a former newspaper editor who now reviewed press releases in MacArthur's name. MacArthur kept the man on his staff specifically because of his media connections. Vandenburg found strong support for MacArthur amongst the arch-conservatives. The republican party was going to nominate two candidates: Wendell Wilkie and Thomas Dewey, but Vandenburg was trying to sneak MacArthur in as a third. However there was a specific group of republicans who adamantly opposed MacArthur’s nomination, veterans who had served under him during the Pacific War and before. Vandenburg tried to get a better picture by sending representatives to canvas the troops in the Pacific theater for their thoughts. The consistent response was overly negative about MacArthur.

 

In early 1944, a private conversation between MacArthur and Congressman Arthur Miller of Nebraska was leaked to the public. It revealed MacArthurs plot behind the scenes to run for presidency and this forced MacArthur to back pedal heavily. On April 30th of 1944 his staff released a statement from MacArthur stating  “I request that no action be taken that would link my name in any way with the nomination. I do not covet it nor would I accept it”. Yeah, MacArthur would try two more times to run. But anyways now that you know that little tid bit information on my favorite figure lets carry on.

 

The Pacific Military conference lasted until march 28th, conducted under the supervision of the joint staff planners, headed by Rear-Admiral Charles Cooke and Major-General Albert Wedemeyer. Now MacArthur’s team came to the conference with a plan in hand, codenamed Elkon. Elkon was a town in Maryland, a famous destination for quick marriages, and the operation was to be a two-pronged offensive. It called for the seizure of the New Britain, New Ireland and New Guinea area which would be based on phase 2 and 3 of the July 2 directive. That being the two approaches heading for Rabaul: one proceeding along the northern coast of New Guinea and the other through the Solomons. This ambitious plan called for first seizing airfields on the Huon Peninsula and New Georgia, then air bases on New Britain and Bougainville, then the seizure of Kavieng and finally Rabaul would be isolated enough to be invaded.

 

The first week of the conference became a arm-wrestling match between Sutherland and the other join chiefs, especially General Marshall who squabled over the details of Elkton. Admiral King and the navy were quite hostile to the plan, but rather shocking to some, William Bull Halsey was a large supporter of MacArthurs plan. Halsey’s team argued the plan did not overstretch their resources and in fact Halsey was finding working with MacArthur was enormously benefiting the Pacific War effort. Halsye and MacArthur were a lethal combo, but King was hard pressed because the truth was they simply did not have the necessary resources for MacArthur's plan. So as you can imagine compromises were made. Macarthurs initial calculations for the plan to work required 12 and ⅔ divisions and 30 air groups for the southwest pacific area, while 10 divisions and 15 air groups were needed in Hasleys south area. 

 

The joint chiefs responded by asking what the pacific representatives thought they could accomplish in 1943 with the best reinforcements washington could deliver. Sutherland and Halsey’s team agreed task two: taking northeastern New Guinea, Madang-Salamua-Huon gulf triangle, Bougainville, New Georgia, Cape Gloucester and New Britain could be taken, but they would probably run out of resources to take Rabaul. The joint chiefs said to forget about Rabaul for the time being and focus on taking the Bismarck Archipelago. MacArthur began writing from Brisbane he thought this idea to be a huge mistake “We are already committed to the campaign in New Guinea….If at the same time we enter upon a convergent attack on the New Georgia group, we have committed our entire strength without assurance of accomplishment of either objective.” This led Hasley to agree to wait for his attack on New Georgia until MacArthur had achieved his objectives of taking the islands of Kiriwina, Woodlark and the Trobriand islands. When proposed back to the joint chiefs, to everyone's amazement King accepted the revised Elkon plan with little compliant. The final directive went out on March 28th, officially canceling the 3 stage drive to rabaul. Instead the objectives for 1943 would be first Woodlark and Kiriwina, then the Madang-Salamaua-Finschhafen triangle and New Britain, and finally the Solomons + southern Bougainville.

For the first time in the Pacific war, there was an agreed-to strategy for winning in the southwest pacific. In the mind of MacArthur, who you can imagine was only thinking about the Philippines, he had achieved his plan to direct the war where he wanted it and he had a surprising naval ally in Bull Halsey. The Elkon plan would eventually be called operation Cartwheel

 

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

Operation Cartwheel was greenlit and it showcased MacArthur could under extremely rare circumstances, make peace with his true enemy during the Pacific War, the United States Navy. Yes MacArthur would be able to direct the war, at least for a bit, to where he wanted it, the Philippines.

- 70 - Pacific War - Battle of the Komandorski Islands, March 21-28, 1943

Last time we spoke about Wingate, the Chindits and Operation Longcloth. The onion eating madman Wingate certainly pushed his men to the limits as Operation Longcloth was in full swing. The Japanese had been alerted to the presence of the Chindits when they started blowing up railways and soon a game of cat and mouse was set loose. Some of the CHindit columns, especially those in the southern group were absolutely battered and had to flee for their lives back to India. Meanwhile Wingate and the main body were in a sticky situation and probably should have turned back from the offset, but Wingate pushed on regardless. His rather reckless attitude led the men to be hunted down more fiercely until orders from India forced Wingates hand to return home. In order to return home Wingate would have to sacrifice some and push others to the absolute limit. But today we are venturing back to the icy cold waters of the northern Pacific.

This episode is the battle of Komandorski islands

Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

Raid, counterraid and a constant battle against the brutal power of mother natures frigid northern climate occupied both the Japanese and Americans in the Aleutians for much of 1942. Things did not really quick off much until the arrival of Rear Admiral THomas C. Kinkaid on january 3rd of 1943. Kinkaid quickly persuaded his chiefs to send both men and materials to Alaska to help expel the Japanese menace from their footholds on Kiska and Attu. Thus a naval force led by Rear Admiral Charles McMorris was sent. McMorris led Task force 8 which consisted of the heavy cruiser Indianapolis, light cruiser Richmond and the destroyers Gillespie, Coghlan, Bancroft and Caldwell. One of their early successes as we saw last time was the occupation of Amchitka. The race to take the island between the Japanese and Americans was a bit of a nail biter, but in the end it would fall securely into allied hands and a new airstrip was quickly built. 

Kinkaid and McMorris began a blockade of the enemies approaches to Kiska and Attu trying to squeeze them out of the region. Submarine reconnaissance gave a report on February 18th claiming to have spotted several enemy warships harbored at Attu’s Holtz Bay. McMorris decided to carry out an attack against Attu as a result. The submarine report however also made its way to Adak and the report prompted General Butler to order a bomber strike against Holtz Bay before McMorris could arrive to the scene. Unexpectedly the Americans were met with clear weather for once, which allowed McMorris to make it over to Attu in great time, so both the naval and aerial forces reached their target around the same time. This also however almost was met with disaster as a single B-17 flying around 10,000 feet mistook the american task force to be Japanese. The pilot attempted two bomb runs, but luck would have it, the bombs failed to release because of mechanical malfunctions. Meanwhile some anti-aircraft fire from the Americans forced the B-17 to withdraw.

McMorris set to work ordering his task force to shell Chicagof village and Holtz Bay. They fired their salvo’s using a checkerboard pattern, firing for 2 hours while some of his ships paraded back and forth. The bombardment managed to kill 23 Japanese, wounded one and demolished a building, but was not overly successful at neutralizing the airfields. After the bombardment, McMorris took the Indianapolis and destroyers Gillespie and Coghlan westward to bolster the blockade. This also allowed him to tease Japanese home waters a bit and potentially intercept some outbound convoys. The Japanese had actually launched a convoy back on February 13th. The convoy was transporting an infantry platoon, airfield construction materials and munitions, all escorted by the light cruiser KISo and destroyers Hatsushimo and Wakaba. Until this point the allies had never ventured to these waters and when they did, the Japanese were caught off guard and dispersed quickly leaving the 3100 ton Akagane Maru vulnerable. She was caught, fired upon and sunk while the other IJN vessels made way back to Paramushiro, not wanting to get caught up in the enemy's activity.

The fact the allies were now prowling out in these waters indicated to the Japanese they were blockading Kiska and Attu. This left General Higuchi in quite a predicament; he had two options laid bare: to simply withdraw from the Aleutians or to continue reinforcing Attu and Kiska. The later of course would require more resources from the IJN, perhaps even sending naval assets to hit allied strongholds like Adak or the newly acquired Amchitka base. General Higuchi made a request for the later choice and this was vetoed down by Admiral Boshiro Hosogaya. As I have mentioned in some episodes, the IJN held an aggressive doctrine that held most actions to be directed at enemy warships. What I mean by this, take for example with the IJN submarine fleet, was that they viewed merchant raiding as dishonorable and instead favored using such assets in fleet engagements. It honestly goes far too unnoticed that during the Pacific War the other key actors, such as Nazi Germany, Britain and America employed considerable assets to hit their enemy's merchant fleets. The Nazi’s devestated Britain with their U-boats, trying to strangle the island nation similarly to what the German empire did in WW1. Likewise the US employed its submarines in the Pacific almost exclusively against Japanese merchant shipping lanes and it was one of the major reasons for their victory. The American effort to eventually strange the Japanese home islands of their merchant fleet brought her literally to her knees, while the IJN submarine fleet only began significant efforts to do the same far too late into the war. On top of this, partly as a result of not having a doctrine to attack enemy merchant fleets, the IJN had basically no doctrine on how to defend their merchant fleets, and this proved disastrous from the early days of the war.

Admiral Hosogaya had vetoed General Higuchi’s call to perform some merchant attacks based on the grounds it was dishonorable, but when Higuchi requested then to simply abandon the Aleutians, he vetoed this as well on the grounds it would leave the Kuriles and northern Japan bare to attacks. It is rather interesting, if you pull out a map and look at the Aleutian island chain that extends over towards Japan, how likely this could have been. Though the weather conditions would have made it an absolute nightmare, a drive from the north could have had major potential. In the end Higuchi and his forces would be forced to make do, trying to build up their fortifications and airfields to combat the American campaigns to bombs them out. Higuchi had not a ton at his disposal. He had 8000 troops on Kiska and around 1000 at Attu, none of which were first rate soldiers, but it was to be expected given the nature of where they were and their roles. They had around 60 trucks, 20 motorcycles, some cars and small tractors. Anti aircraft guns were plentiful, but they had no artillery, not any significant mechanized strength. 

They mined and barbed wired their sparsely defended beaches, hoping the war over the skies would keep the Americans at bay. But after the loss of Guadalcanal, the Japanese could ill afford to spare much in terms of aircraft to the North Pacific. By early march American bombing campaigns had crippled or sunk over 40 vessels and inflicted a total of 3477 casualties. Higuchi’s men were running low on provisions, beginning to face the same fate as their comrades once did on Guadalcanal, albeit a very different type of climate. A resupply convoy slipped past the American blockade on March 9th, but it was to be the last. McMorris was stepping up the blockade game, finally forcing Admiral Hosogaya into a corner. Again Hosogaya was facing the dilemma, abandon the aleutians or commit significant assets to break the blockade.

Hosogaya planned a major resupply mission using 2 large transports filled to the brim and 4 destroyers likewise carrying loads. He planned to blast his way through the American blockade, personally taking command of the 5th fleet “Northern Force” which consisted of heavy cruisers Nachi and Maya, light cruisers Tama and Abukuma and destroyers Wakabam, Hatsushimo, Ikazuchi, Inazuma and Usugumo. Hosogaya would be taking Nachi as his flagship for the operation set to depart on March 22nd. In keeping with the IJN’s tradition of overly complicating operations, 3 groups of ships would converge on a rendezvous point 60 miles south of the Soviet owned Komondorski islands.

Meanwhile Admiral Kinkaid had made some reforms to Task Force 8, forming it into the new Task Force 16 consisting of heavy cruisers Salt Lake City, light cruiser Richmond and destroyers Bailey, Coghlan, Dale and Monaghan. The Indianapolis had been switched out for the older Salt Lake City, which recently had been repaired after being damaged at the battle of Cape esperance. The same day Hosogayas 5th fleet departed, so did McMorris’s from Dutch Harbor, heading to the west to enforce their blockade efforts. What is a bit interesting for this event, while dozens of carriers were being constructed, literally a 100 would be afloat by the end of the war, the war in the aleutians would see no more of these. In the remote fog-bound and storm lashed waters of the north, neither the Japanese nor Americans would field any carriers, after Yamamoto had withdrawn his during the Midway catastrophe. The battle for control over the Aleutian sea’s would be quite the traditional one. Small task forces meeting and engaging another in furious exchanges of cannon fire at line of sight ranges.

Hosogaya sailed his 5th fleet northern force to meet the transports, supply ships and escorts to shepherd them the rest of the way to Attu. His convoy sailed in two separate sections, the 2nd escort force consisting of Usugumo and transport Sanko maru and Convoy D led by Rear Admiral Mori Tomoichi comprising of Abukuma, Ikazuchi, Inazuma and the transports Sakita Maru and Asaka Maru. The second escort force left Kataoka naval base on the 22nd, while Convoy D departed on the 23rd. Hosogaya sailed south over the gray northern seas as the convoys went north. The Japanese did not realize it, but Joseph Rocherfort and his fellow cryptanalysts at Station Hypo were continuing to break Japanese naval codes, providing invaluable information on IJN movements. The Americans knew of the convoy sailing for Attu and Kinkaid was planning to intercept it.

Now the IJN warships outmatched the Americans in terms of firepower, both in gun and significantly more so in torpedoes. The type 93 long lance oxygen torpedo boasted a 25 mile range against the Abysmal american Mark 15’s which held a 7.4 mile range. The Long lances also held a 1080 lb warhead compared the Mark 15’s 827 lb warhead. Regardless, the Americans had the distinct advantage of intelligence and the sailors were in high spirits despite knowing how outgunned they were. Joseph Candelaria, a water tender aboard the Monaghan said this prior to the battle “ I remember going up on the deck and across it going down to the fire room. We was going to attack some transports; going to be all over in a few minutes; duck soup”. 

As the two fleets were edging closer to another in the northern sea, a terrible storm broke out. The battering winds and huge swells made the destroyers heave and thrash terrible and soon the light and heavy cruisers began to experience some minor damage. Hosogaya’s force remained ignorant of the American threat stalking them through the inhospital weather. The weather issue caused problems for the Japanese at their rendezvous point. They were forced to cut speed by half on march 24th due to the violent weather and Hosogaya was only able to link up with Convoy D by 4pm on march 25th. The two other ships of 2nd escort force remained missing, thus Hosogaya’s vessels began patrolling in a 60 mile line while awaiting their comrades. In the meantime the Americans had their own problems, the sea had grown so violent the crews feared sinking. Geoerge O’Connell aboard Salt Lake City recalled this  “the Salt Lake City would literally dive into the base of the next wave. Tons of water would come crashing down onto the forecastle, sweeping over Turrets I and II and... the open bridge. Shortly after our turn into the sea, and after only a few moments of that dangerous agony... Commander Bitler came to the bridge. Visibly disturbed, he said the ship patently could not take the punishment” By the early morning of march the 26th the storm finally died down making it safer for both sides. Damage to the American ships saw some smashed hull plates, bent stanchions, flooded storerooms, but nothing major. 

The morning saw the furious ocean calmed to a near smoothness with almost no swell. Thick grey gloomy clouds hung over the expanse. McMorris had received a number of reports from PBY’s stating they had seen the enemy ships appearing and disappearing in the west. McMorris was certain this had to be the large convoy and was anxious to intercept it, under the belief they would only have a few destroyers as escort. The leading destroyer Coghlan made a rader contact showing several unidentified ships around 10 miles north. McMorris took his force, then strung out in one mile intervals to close in around his flagship the Richmond and begin sailing towards the northeast to intercept the enemy. The mood amongst the Americans was exuberant, they believed the radar blips indicated a helpless line of transports with perhaps a destroyer or two in attendance, nothing to match their 6 vessel group. As one officer aboard Salt Lake City, Lt Howard Grahn put it “fox in the henhouse, the chickens had all turned to wolves and the door was locked”. As the forces came closer together, Japanese lookouts saw the Coghlan and Richmond and initially thought it was the second escort force, but quickly surmised their identity. Hosogaya ordered a message to be sent via signal lamp and this confirmed for the Americans to their horror that they were not facing a helpless convoy but rather 2 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers and 4 destroyers.

McMorris had orders to avoid superior forces and could have dashed for safety, but with the Japanese force so close chances of that were quite slim. It was likely the Japanese would overtake them all and sink them regardless, thus he decided to engage the enemy. Hosogaya upon realizing what he was facing motioned the transports further back and got his warships between the foxes and his chickens. McMorris sent word to Kinkaid asking for air support. The two fleets set into a collision course with the Japanese destroyers swing to bear down on the port bow of Richmond. McMorris planned to draw the enemy cruisers away with a feint and then dash in behind them to attack the cargo ships. The Japanese cruisers were the first to fire with Nachi in the lead. At 8:40 cruiser Maya opened first at 20,000 yards upon Richmond which swung into a westward turn. Nachi suddenly received some electrical problems cutting power to her turrets for several minutes. As the range closed in more between the forces, the American ships began to open fire while the Japanese shifted their attention from Richmond to the larger and more threatening looking Salt Lake City. The Tama continued to fire upon Richmond scoring no hits, causing the surface around the American vessel to erupt in fountains of spray. Hosogaya ordered his destroyers to make torpedo runs, but none of them obeyed the order. Various captains would later make excuses such as not receiving the signal or being unable to reach the correct speed for proper maneuvers, but this was certainly a sharp contrast from IJN destroyers whose commanders and crews were famous for aggression. Meanwhile the American ships began “chasing salvos” to avoid taking hits, altering their course towards the last splash in order to foil enemy gunners.

The IJN cruisers began launching their torpedoes, but all missed with one churning past dangerously close to Richmonds bow. The American guns put Nachi’s main battery out of action forcing Hosogaya to change his course to get even closer to bring his other batteries into play. In response McMorris made a 40 degree turn to port to confuse the enemy’s gunner. Captain Bertram Rodgers, soaked to the skin with ice cold water made gast guesswork as to where the next enemy salvos were aimed and expertly headed towards the point the last salvo had hit, assuming the enemy spotters would correct their aim each time. In this manner Rodgers chased salvoes with great skill exclaimed “fooled em again!”. At 10am, with almost no actual its having been achieved, Salt Lake City landing 3 hits on Nachi damaging her rudder and jamming her starboard. Her crew managed to free the rudder but it began functioning erratically. Noting the ships loss of maneuverability, and within 20,000 yards the crews all shifted their fire onto salt lake city. Hits were made from Richmond and Coghlan upon Nachi causing much smoke.

McMorris then decided to disengage turning his force westwards. Upon seeing the Americans trying to flee, Hosogaya ordered Tama to cut across their arc and deployed Nachi, Maya, Hatsushimo and Wakaba to cut off the American escape route. Task force 16 was forced to flee for their lives going west and northwest. During this chase, both sides began frantically calling for aerial support, but both were informed no were coming. The Maya and Salt Lake City were the only ships dueling during this interval and Maya managed to hit Salt Lake City’s amidships catapult taking out a floatplane and then hit her quarterdeck. Salt Lake City’s own gunfire managed to damage her hydraulic steering system making her maneuvers more difficult. Over 200 shells fell around her until a dud hit and caused flooding to an engine room forcing her to slow down. In response to this McMorris ordered Coghlan and Bailey to drop back to the rear of the line and generate a smoke screen

Hosogaya had the initiative now, the enemy was fleeing and they were far from Alaska, in fact they had managed to get themselves much closer to the Kuriles. The American crews believed their only chance of survival lay getting interned by the Russians, but Hosogaya squandered that chance by speeding up to block them. The Japanese were closing in and believing they were close to point blank range McMorris decided to make a wide turn south covered again by his destroyers smoke screen. The Japanese launched 16 torpedoes all at the same time but missed with all of them.

At 10:59am the Nachi finally ranged in on the Salt Lake City, despite the smoke screen cover and landed a shell killing 2 men, one of which was Captain Rodgers second in command Lt Commander Windsor Gale. Then a 8 inch shell from Nachi hit her below the waterline at 11:03am destroying 2 fuel tanks, damaging propeller shafts and started flooding her engine room. Soon Salt Lake City was dead in the water as the Japanese concentrated their fire upon her. Her engineers struggled to restart her boilers and offset the flooding as McMorris ordered his destroyers to perform basically a suicidal torpedo run at the enemy in the hopes of saving Salt Late City time to repair herself. The 4 US destroyers began surging at the enemy as the Salt Lake City continued firing her guns back at Nachi. The Salt Lake City landed some hits on Nachi killing several men. Admiral Hosogaya himself was saved by a hairsbreadth as a shell had gone through the bridge killing 3 officers standing right next to him. By the time Salt Lake City had exhausted 80% of their armor piercing rounds, one Lt Benjamin Johnston made an amazing hit, largely by accident as he recalled “ I guess I probably would have asked permission to throw rocks had the Japs been close enough! […] In order to conserve armorpiercing ammo, I shifted to high capacitys [sic] with the hope that one shell at a time might just possibly cause the Japs to think a plane or two from Amchitka […] was dropping a few bombs. The high capacitys, not having shell dye, just might appear similar to bombs exploding on the water. They did, and the Japs fired off bursts into the overcast” After seeing the blue shell dye of the American armor piercing shots for hours, the Japanese believed Johnstons random HE shell was from an aircraft as the Nachi and Maya anti-aircraft guns suddenly began to fire into the clouds. 

Meanwhile the American destroyers continued their charge forward with the Bailey in the lead. At 10,000 yards the Japanese concentrated fire upon Bailey and a shell through her killing 5 men. Captain Ralph Riggs of the Bailey ordered her to fire torpedoes at the extreme range of 9500 yards and just as the first fish was launched into the water suddenly the Japanese ships began steaming away. Hosogaya had ordered his fleet to retreat!

Hosogaya had broke off the battle for a variety of reasons. His warships were dangerously low on ammunition and sailing back and forth in search of the second escort force had used up most of their fuel. The smoke screens had masked the state of Salt Lake City, Hosogaya believed she was still combat ready during the battle. Also the admiral had received reports about the Americans calling in for air support and alongside the odd HE shell incident he believed there might be American aircraft in the vicinity. There is also another factor no Japanese admiral would ever admit, fearing shame brought upon him. He saw 3 officers blown into chunks of flesh a few feet from himself and perhaps the commanders nerves were shot.

Hosogaya’s sudden departure was a miracle for the men aboard Salt Lake City. Admiral Kinkaid after investigating her damage declared “the Japanese could have sunk Salt Lake City with a baseball”. Likewise Ensign F.R Floyd wrote this on the ships log shortly after the battle ended “This day the hand of Divine Providence lay over the ship. Never before in her colorful history has death been so close for so long a time. The entire crew offered its thanks to Almighty God for His mercy and protection”.

As indecisive as the battle was, it caused major changes. Hosogaya lost his command when the IJN staff analysis recognized correctly that more aggression would have resulted in Salt Lake City and perhaps more ships being sunk. In all 7 Americans and 14 Japanese were killed with 20 Americans and 26 Japanese wounded, no ships sunk. Most importantly the battle caused the Japanese to abandon efforts to resupply and reinforce Attu and Kiska. Now the IJN would rely on submarines to carry out the task, which could only manage so much. The battle of the Komandorski islands resulted in a tactical draw, but a strategic victory for America. It was also the last real slugout gunnery duel ever to take place between opposing surface fleets without the use of combat airplanes. Basically it was the last of the good old fashioned naval battles, those of you who play world of warships could probably make a “get rid of CV’s joke”. McMorris received praise from Nimitz and Kinkaid for the unlikely victory.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

The ice cold water in the north pacific saw a good old fashioned naval brawl the likes of which would not be seen again. It was a strategic victory for America and one that would advance her recapture of the Aleutians.

- 69 - Pacific War - Operation Longcloth, March 14-21, 1943

Last time we spoke a bit about the ongoings of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Mao Zedong’s Fourth Army faced off against the IJA in the western Hubei area causing significant casualties to both sides. The engagement was a mixed one with both sides claiming victory, and it seems it was a tactical draw. Over in the Solomons, Halsey had fixated his eyes on Munda and this prompted him to perform a naval bombardment of it and Vila-Stanmore. Some very unlucky Japanese aboard two destroyers ran right into the Americans enroute to bombard the airstrips and this led to their terrible defeat at the battle of Blackett Strait. The small and short battle showcased the Japanese were being bled and things were only going to continue to get worse for the empire of the rising sun. But today we are venturing back to Burma to talk about the Chindits so grab your onions. 

This episode is Operation Longcloth

Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

 

A few weeks ago we began the story about Wingate and the Chindits. The first task given to the Chindits was Operation Longcloth which Wingate did not like as a title because it did not hold the grandiloquence he sought. Now a major rationale for Operation Longcloth was to help relieve some pressure from places like Fort Hertz, the last remaining British outpost left in Burma. Fort Hertz was around 60 miles south of the Chinese border manned by Karen levies and was on the brink of collapse. The fort was maintained as an outpost originally by the Myitkyina Battalion, but after the Japanese pushed the allies out of Burma it began to see many retreating allied troops who would garrison it. The military authorities within India however had no direct contact with the fort during most of the summer of 1942. Luckily for the allies, the Japanese did not continue their advance towards the northern Burmese border, most likely because they did not believe a allied outpost could be maintained in such a remote place. To get a picture of what the hell was going on at the Fort, the 153rd Gurkha Indian Parachute Battalion led by Lt Colonel James Owen Merion Roberts were parachuted into upper burma to investigate the state of the Myitkyina area on July 3rd of 1942. Alongside this on August 12th of 1942, Major Hopkins of the 50th Indian Parachute battalion overflew Fort Hertz and discovered unexpectedly that it was still in British hands. Lt Colonel Roberts had reached the fort some days prior and figured out the landing strip near the fort was still usable. The Fort Hertz airstrip served as an emergency landing strip for aircraft flying over the Hump to get supplies into China. The same airstrip was naturally also a supply line for Fort Hertz. The day after the discovery of the usable airstrip was made, a party led by Captain G.E.C Newland of the 153rd indian parachute battalion dropped into Fort Hertz with engineering supplies and they quickly went to work repairing the airstrip. By the 20th the airstrip was fully functional and Lt Colonel Gamble was sent to be the new commander of the area followed by a company of the 7/9th Jat regiment. A special force was created called the Northern Kachin Levies. They were made up of member of the Kachin people under the command of British officers. Originally Colonel Gamble was their leader and they helped various British Indian army units in the area to engage the Japanese and rally locals to their cause.

Now way back at the beginning of the war, Chiang Kai-shek sought the construction of a road from Ledo to Assam that would cut through the mountains, forests and rivers of northern Burma to link it with the Burma road at Lungling on the Chinese side. This was to be a colossal amount of work, Chiang kai-shek estimated it would be built in 5 months, while Stilwell’s team of experts believed it would take 2.5 years. The British were wary about the Ledo road because it destroyed their private shipping monopoly by allowing the Chinese direct access to India. However washington forced them to accept it, despite Britain trying to obstruct its construction by claiming they would perform a amphibious assault to recapture rangoon to reopen its road to China. Wavell argued that even if the Ledo road was complete it would be too costly to maintain, but washington was adamant about it, so they took full responsibility for its construction and cost. The Ledo road would be agonizingly slow to construct. It would take all of 1943 for the road to be cut from Ledo to assam to Shingbwiyang in Burma, just 103 miles in all. This was not surprising given it consisting of 100,000 cubic feet of earth that had to be removed along a track that ran as high as 4500 feet over the Patka range through thick jungle. The workforce consisted of 15,000 us troops, of which 60% were african-american and 35,000 locals. Churchill famously described the Ledo Road as “a road that would be open only when there was no longer any need for it”.

 

Chennault likewise eager to do anything to increase his funding for the airforces in CHina began argued that the road used up precious resource that would never provide the 65,000 tons of supplies over the Hump that his pilots could deliver. A lot of the allied analysts crunched the numbers and agreed with Chennault, and even General Slim added his agreement to the mater, stating they should better focus on simply retaking burma by military means and thus the road to china would be open. General Slim actually had a lot to say in the matter and wrote this

 

“I agreed with Stilwell that the road could be built. I believed that, properly equipped and efficiently led, Chinese troops could defeat Japanese if, as should be the case with his Ledo force, they had a considerable numerical superiority. On the engineering side I had no doubts. We had built roads over country as difficult, and with much less technical equipment than the Americans would have . . . Thus far Stilwell and I were in complete agreement, but I did not hold two articles of his faith. I doubted the overwhelming war-winning value of this road, and, in any case, I believed it was starting from the wrong place. The American amphibious strategy in the Pacific, of hopping from island to island would, I was sure, bring much quicker results than an overland advance across Asia with a Chinese army yet to be formed. In any case, if the road was to be really effective, its feeder railway should start from Rangoon, not Calcutta.”

 

Regardless the Ledo Road was to be built, all 1072 miles of it . Back in December of 1942, the 45th american engineer regiment and the 823rd aviation battalion, two african-american units arrived to begin the first segment of the colossal project connecting Ledo to Hukawng Valley. To build these 103 miles had the men led by Major General Raymond Wheeler braving the difficult Pangsau Pass of 3727 feet before dropping 700 feet to Shingbwiyang. By January 20th of 1943, construction was being done on a 24 hour basis at a rate of 3 quarters of a mile a day. By February 18th Wheeler was given command of the defense of the Ledo sector and despite Wavell’s engineer in chief giving a skeptical estimate that the next 45 miles of the road would only be done by March 1st, on February 28th they crossed the Burmese border.

 

Meanwhile the 18th division led by General Mutaguchi Renya was given the responsibility of defending northern Burma. General Mutaguchi was a victor of the Singapore campaign. In fact the 18th division was something of an elite division having fought in China, Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines and now Burma. The logistics as you can imagine for his forces all the way in Northern Burma were not good. The men were greatly fatigued by the heavy fighting and lack of everything, so Mutaguchi was content simply garrisoning the region. He deployed a single regiment, the 114th in Hukawng Valley, the 55th in the Indaw area and the 56th in Myitkyina. Mutaguchi’s men were plagued by Kachin levies performing guerilla warfare. Soon he was forced to deploy his men to embark on vigorous patrolling north of the area of Myitkyina, leaving his 19th division vulnerable to attrition and without much in terms of replacements for casualties. In the words of Private Fujino Hideo: “Our enemy was not actually British, Chinese, nor Indians but the Kachins. They were quicker than monkeys and talented in shooting … After the eight month occupation, the punitive force at Sumprabum suffered heavy damage and the casualties from the Kachins’ guerrilla tactics … In the course of the campaign, the killed and wounded amounted to a great number.” 

 

By february the situation prompted Mutaguchi to redirect his attention towards the Kachin state where he planned to send the 114th regiment to attack Fort Hertz and Hkalak Ga, one of the important bases for which the Kachin levies operated. This also happened to be a place the Kachin levies screened for the building of the Ledo road. Thus in order to save everything, Wavell had gone along with allowing Wingate to launch operation Longcloth in an effort to prevent the offensive against Fort Hertz, the Ledo Road and the Hump air route.

 

Now the last time we were talking about the Chindits they had scored a success attacking Pinlebu and demolishing major parts of the Bongyaung railway. Wingate 10 miles north of Wuntho had established an HQ in the Bambwe Taung hills and was faced with a large decision, to carry on across the Irrawaddy or to retire back to India. Being Wingate he carried on. However while the Japanese at first were a bit bewildered by the attacks, they soon figured out what kind of force they were facing and set out to search and destroy them. The success of the railway demolition had thus created new perils. The Japanese were gathering in number to the rear of the Chindits. The No 1 column in the southern force that had survived the multiple disasters had blown up the railway bridge at Kyaikthin and crossed the Irrawady at Taguang on their own initiative. By March 10th, they had no time to lose as the Japanese were in hot pursuit. The people of Tigyaing welcomed the British and made boats available for their crossing. Fergusson and the No 5 Column got across by nightfall just before a JApanese column appeared on the westen bank to smash them. Learning the enemy had occupied Tigyaing, Calvert with the No 3 column crossed 5 miles downriver. Then on march 13th they were ambushed. Calvert tried to hold the Japanese off with rearguard actions, while his main body crossed some islands midstream and luckily for the men the Japanese did not press their attack or else the entire column likely would have been annihilated. The Japanese were uncertain of the numbers of this new enemy and were being cautious, again they had been fooled into believing the force facing them might be large. Regardless of getting the majority to safety, 7 of Calverts men were killed with 6 wounded who had to be left on an island. Calvert left a note with the 6 wounded men directed towards the Japanese commander asking him to treat the 6 wounded men in accordance with the code of bushido.

 

Meanwhile Wingate and the main body of the northern force, around 1200 men left Bambwe Taung and came to a major tributary of the Irrawaddy called Shweli on March 17th. Here the river was so wide it made ropes and dinghies useless and the crossing had to be made by boats. The danger was that the approach to the stream was over open paddy fields, where they could easily be spotted. On top of this intelligence had revealed the far shore was held by units of the Burmese Liberation Army. When Wingate sent across an envoy to treat with them, the fearless warrior of the BLA promptly decamped. Wingates men crossed at once, but yet again their mules gave them trouble. 40 mules had to be left behind, while the rest were tethered to boats waddling across. They crossed during the night of March 17th and all got over by sunset. With Calvert and Fergusson well ahead of him, Wingate signaled the forces to march for the Gokteik viaduct so they could demolish it,thus severing the Mandalay-Lashio road. 

 

Calvert turned south towards Mytison, while Fergusson was ordered to rejoin Wingates force. However Calvert was unaware of this order thinking Fergusson was backing him up as he approached Mytison. Without the extra man power, when he got to Mytison he knew he could not hope to take it head on, so he prepared an ambush. He called the RAF in to bomb the town while his men laid a trap along the Nam Mit river. A japanese patrol walked right into the ambush and lost 100 men. Calvert reported ‘We let fly with everything we had and a lot of Japs could never have known what hit them. It was one of the most one-sided actions I have ever fought in.’ For this great feat, the paid with the lives of around 6 Gurkhas. Calvert’s group continued on receiving an airdrop on the 19th, a 10 ton dump of supplies that would be the largest drop of the entire expedition. With their supplies in hand they trekked up the hills to prepare for their assault against Gokteik, but they suddenly received an order to return to India. Calverts force were too far south of the main body and would have to achieve the objective on their own initiative, thus he could not hope to ignore them. Calverts men turned back, but made sure to demolition a railway in their retreat. Wingate sent Calvert word that he should get out as fast as possible in order to bring the most survivors he could for quote ‘we can get new equipment and wireless sets. But it will take twenty five years to get another man. These men have done their job, their experience is at a premium.’ Calvert and the No 3 column reached the Chindwin on april 14th crossing it without opposition and were the first out of Burma. Calvert and his column were the real success story of Operation Longcloth.

 

As for Wingate, according to those in his company he came into a “down period” for his bipolar cycle. Many accounts refer to him at this time as “luth suspendu” highly strung, irritable and irrational. During the crossing of the irrawaddy, an officer had reported to Wingate he had a snag and apparently Wingate reacted by throwing himself to the ground in a cry of exasperation despair. Wingates biographer had this to say about the minor event “it was one among a hundred evidences of his impersonality at continual variance with his egotism’ he left no record of exactly where he crossed the Irrawaddy. He seems to have concentrated on the negative and discounted the amazing run of luck the Chindits had enjoyed so far – crossing the Chindwin, cutting the railway in 70 different places, crossing the Irrawaddy, all without significant losses – suspecting that, in the words of one of his sergeants, ‘there must be a catch somewhere’. It seems Wingate did not know his men were at their limits and he made the cardinal mistake of funneling his columns together, perfect to bring them into a death trap. Instead of spreading them over a wide area, he compressed them within 15 miles of each other in a king of peninsula surrounded by the Shweli and Irrawaddy rivers, making it much easier for their japanese pursuers to find them. The Chindits were also on a terrain mainly made up of paddy fields rather than jungle, thus they were particularly visible to the enemy. A Japanese spotter plane detected the No 5 column at one point and basically all the Japanese needed to do was take the roads from Mytison to Male where they could have encircled them. But suddenly Wingate realized his predicament and ordered his men to break out of the Shweli loop. This was to be easier said than done. The men were slow, due to hunger, their boots were worn out, they had not had a supply drop in many days. No 5 column had gone 48hours without food and it was becoming apparent Wingates force was too large to be supplied by air. 

 

Back over in Imphal the 4th corps whose role was to provide logistical back up for the CHindits were greatly puzzled by Wingates plans once he had crossed the Irrawaddy. The signaled to know what exactly his intentions were and Wingate replied that his destination was the Kachin hills, from where he would launch an attack against the Lashio-Bhamo road. The 4th corps gently reminded Wingate that such a distance meant they would be unable to supply him by air and suggested he try to instead attack Shwebo west of the Irrawaddy. It was clear they wanted him to go there, but Wingate responded the men could not get back across the Irrawaddy as the Japanese had stolen all their boats and were patrolling the access routes. To this the 4th corps ordered him to end his operation and make their withdrawal back to India. It was actually the order that prompted Wingate to sent his message to Calvert when he did, while he also sent word to Fergusson to rendezvous with him at Baw, where Wingate hoped to get all his men a supply drop before making the journey home. Ferguson's column were in really bad shape, they had no water and began sucking the fluid from any green bamboo stems they could find. They butchered their mules for meat and made stews of monkeys, rats, locusts and cockroaches. They were ridden with lice and leeches. The leeches were particularly bad, as when a man pulled one off, the parasite's head would get stuck in the skin creating an infected oozing sore. Fergusson sent word via radio to Wingate stating a bitter bible verse ‘I can count all my bones: they stare and gloat over me. (Psalms 22:17).’

 

It was a mistake to send the bible thumper Wingate such a message as he quickly responded back a quote from St John’s gospel ‘Consider that it is expedient one man should die for the greater good of all people.’. It seems Wingate was overconfident about the supply drops, having success prior by allowing some of his forces to attack Japanese garrisons while other oversaw aerial drops had driven the CHindits to take it all for granted. At Baw disaster struck. Wingate launched an attack hoping the RAF would support him, but the pilots could not make out friend from foe and ended up flying off after only dropping a third of the supplies. Fergusson finally rendezvous with Wingate at Shaukpin Chuang river on march 25th. Wingate told the men he thought the Japanese commander was pressed to do everything he could to annihilate them all just to save face at this point. Wingate held a conference with the officers where Fergusson recounted it as being ‘the last reunion of a very happy band of brothers before setting out on the perilous homeward journey, which many of them did not survive’. Knowing the Japanese would block their passage across the irrawaddy, Wingate decided to try a bluff. He would march back to Inywa and cross at the identical point of the eastward crossing. They would have to kill all their remaining animals to make the traverse lightly armed, and once across they would to split up into small groups to try and sabotage more railway installations on their way back to India. Wingate arranged for the drops to be made south of the Shweli loop in the hopes of persuading the Japanese that was where the brigade was to buy his men time. He sent No 1 column eastwards to the Kachin hills, basically to their doom to save the rest of his brigade.

 

All the columns would endure a terrible march back to Inywa. The mules were slaughtered as they went, and the Japanese were hot on their heels. Colonel Tomotoki Koba had set up 3 defensive lines between the Chindits and the border to India: the first position was at the Irrawaddy, the second along the Mu valley and the third following the line of the Chindwin. Meanwhile the Japanese hot on their trail’s purpose was to drive them into the trap. Wingate tried to toss the enemy off the scene by using feints and decoys, including ordering Fergussons No 5 column to attack the village of Hintha, halfway between Baw and Inywa. The feints it seems worked as the Japanese never caught up to them, missing the opportune chance to trap the Chindits in the Shweli loop. The main body of the Chindits reached Inywa at 4pm on the 28th and their luck had not run out. While the Japanese had stolen their boats over the Irrawaddy, they had neglected to do so on the Shweli. The Chindits gathered the boats they could and crossed the river. No 7 column was first followed by 2 and then 8. 8 was fired upon by the enemy halfway across, fortunately the Japanese force was quite small and lacked heavy machine guns. Even so their mortars, rifles and light automatics was enough to drive many of the CHindits into the jungle as the No 7 column was left on its own to flee. Wingate tried to secure a bivouac 10 mile south east of Inywa and divided his columns into 5 dispersal groups arranged for supply drops. From that point on, they were on their own initiatives. 

 

Fergusson’s No 5 column suffered heavily during their fight at Hintha and having lost his radios equipment they were own their own. Fergusson decided to take his men to the Kachin hills the closest sanctuary it seemed. But when they tried to cross the Shweli it turned into a nightmare. Many of his men were swept away during a flood as were many mules. 46 men were abandoned on a sandbank in the middle of the river as the Japanese began to attack. Fergussons recalled ‘the decision which fell on me there was as cruel as any which could fall on the shoulders of a junior commander’. Fergusson’s group staggered on, starving and dehydrated and would limp to Imphal by april 26. Column 5 had suffered tremendously, only 95 survived the ordeal out of 318 men. Column 7 managed to get 150 of his men to China and flew back to India. All the dispersed groups had terrible tales to tell about atrocities committed by the Japanese, or treachery on the part of Burman villagers. Men spoke of having to struggle to stay away, hiding in caves while the enemy hunted them down like dogs. Rice and buffalo meat were rare luxuries for them, more often than naught they ate python and nettles. But here we have to end to story, for the next time we come back to the Chindits we will conclude Operation longcloth and the daring retreat back to India by the Chindits.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

The onion eating madman Wingate took his men dangerously into the fray and many of the paid dearly for it. Their success brought the anger of the Japanese bearing upon them, how many would survive the trek back to India? 

- 68 - Pacific War - Battle of the Blackett Strait, March 7-14, 1943

Last time we spoke about the battle of the Bismarck Sea. Though it was called a battle, what occurred at the Bismarck Sea was more of a catastrophic slaughter and a showcase of how the Japanese were no longer capable of performing offensives. The allies performed skip bombing and mast head bombing techniques against a convoy heading for Lae to deadly effect. 4 destroyers, 8 transports, 20 fighters were destroyed and nearly 3000 Japanese were killed. The allied pilots were ordered to give no mercy to the enemy and many reluctantly attacked the survivors of the shipwreck carnage. Their commanders justified the actions stating the men would have been landed and put right onto the front lines in New Guinea causing even more suffering. Yet as magnificent a victory as it was for the allies, it certainly was not the only one at this time for another major naval battle was occurring in the solomons

This episode is the Battle of Blackett Strait 

Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

 

Yet before we can jump back into the turbulent seas of the south Pacific we will talk a bit more about the theater of the Pacific War that goes far, often too forgotten, that of China. 

Its been quite sometime since we were last in China. Now stating the Second sino-Japanese war is complicated is an overstatement. To simplify it somewhat know this, there were 22 major engagements between the NRA and IJA during the war. One of these engagements is known as the Battle of West Hubei, which was one of four major battles that took place in Hubei. Now in July of 1938 the IJA Dai-Jyu-ichi gun “11th army” was formed under the Japanese central China area army. The purpose of such a formation was to conquer and occupy central provinces in China, specifically those between the Yangtze River and the Yellow River. The 11th army had played a crucial role during the battle of Wuhan and had seen quite a list of differing commanders. In December of 1942 Lt General Isamu Yokoyama took control of the 11th army and he set his sights on various targets. But before he could unleash his forces, Yokoyama was dealing with major sabotage operations against his main base. And these sabotage operations were not being performed by the NRA, no they were being performed by the CCP’s New Fourth Army.

Now the CCP had limited actions against the Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese war. Although the press, such as the New York times had parroted some CCP propaganda insisting Mao and his forces were tying down 80 percent of Japanese forces in China, this is not at all true. The CCP did not have the means to do this, nor did they even want to. Mao Zedong himself was not an all-powerful leader at the offset of the Pacific War. The USSR favored his colleague, Wang Ming who was known as one of the 28 Bolsheviks, ie: moscow educated leaders. Mao referred to these people as “ the dogmatist faction”. Mao also had to deal with empiricist faction members such as the former party leader Zhou Enlai and other CCP military commanders such as Peng Dehuai and Chen Yi. In February of 1942 the CCP began the “rectification Movement” known as (Zhengfeng) and on February 1st Mao Zedong have a speech in Yanan calling for a study of the CCP’s history and suggesting “the party not only needs democracy but needs centralization even more”. The roots of Zhengfeng indicate a Confucian philosophy emphasized the importance of ethical education “The cultivation of the person depends on rectifying the mind,” Confucius had instructed his followers”. Mao organized the Rectification Meetings expecting CCP members to indulge in self-criticism and confession. As you can imagine there were nefarious reasons for this. Mao alongside his close allie Kang SHen, the CCP’s ruthless head of intelligence took charge of the Central General Study committee and began to get false confessions using psychological torture. Kang’s methodology would define Mao’s growing grip over the CCP and the future of it. Residents of Yanan would recount “the valleys and cave outside the town held victims of psychological bullying who produced screams and howls like wolves every night. Suicides occured often, one victim who survived swallowing glass was immediately forced to write self-criticism”. By 1943 the Rectification campaign had become a system of mass arrest, torture and execution. In essence it was a purge that carried on well into 1944 using false confessions from prisoners who were trying to save their own lives. It is estimated 10,000 CCP members, many of which were former inhabitants of KMT held areas were executed. Wang Ming, Mao’s primary target at the time was spared, but he alongside the 28 Bolsheviks were forever sidelined, but hell better then being dead I guess? Meanwhile Zhou Enlai and the empiricists swung firmly behind Mao fearing for their lives.

The Rectification movement was to be one of many themes played out by Mao Zedong. There was a cycle throughout his reign where intellectuals were invited to be open, then the party turned against them, they were destroyed by self-criticism, paraded as criminals, tortured until they revealed traitors real or not and executed. As Mao put it in August of 1943 “It is not good to correct too early or too late, Too early … the campaign cannot unfold properly; and too late … the damage [to torture victims] will be too profound.” One of the 28 Bolsheviks, Wang Shiwei who worked as a journalist for Liberation Daily wrote an article titled “Wild Lilies” in 1942, which criticized Mao Zedong for womanizing and enjoying too many luxuries. He spoke about how Mao took an ambulance sent as a gift by the Chinese New York Laundry workers to the CCP to carry wounded troops and instead used it as a private transport for himself as his 23 year old mistress, actress Jiang Qing. Mao would later marry her after leaving his third wife He Zizhen who he had 5 children with. Well Wang Shiwei was expelled from the CCP on Mao’s orders in October 1942 having been found guilty of treason and would be executed in 1947 on Mao’s orders. Anyways, enough sidelining about Mao, closer to the story at hand Mao had unleashed a propaganda campaign promoting the false image of the CCP’s war effort against the Japanese. The KMT actually captured documents with orders from Mao which explained his thoughts on the war “The Sino-Japanese War affords our party an excellent opportunity for expansion. Our fixed policy should be 70 percent expansion, 20 percent dealing with the Kuomintang and 10 percent resisting Japan.” Between 1937-1940 the CCP grew its 8th army from 45,000 to 400,000. Meanwhile the 4th army increased from 15,000 to 100,000. The CCP’s lionshare of war effort was aimed at the KMT but they did perform considerable actions against Japan. The Fourth Army was led by Commander Chen Yi and he had an irregular force known as the 15th brigade of the 5th division led by Commander Li Xiannian. Their arms and ammunition were self manufactured and though they had enough of them, the quality suffered heavily. Their main base was in Northern Jiangsu, but they also operated in central Jiangsu, northern and southern ANhui, northern Jiangxi and Zhejiang provinces. They were all over the place specifically to thwart any efforts of the NRA from encircling and destroying them. They also clashed with the NRA much more than they did with the Japanese. Despite that, the 5th division of Li Xiannians forces had fought tenaciously during the 1942 battle of the Dwarf Mountain. The CCP forces defeated the forces of Wang Jinwei and captured Mienyang in the process. This success however drew the 11th army in who carried out attacks from the north to drive the CCP out, but the CCP troops dug in and would not budge.

Yokoyama sought to surprise the CCP menace by attacking their positions rear from Yueyang and Jingzhou. The idea was to grab the CCP’s attention while his 58th division launched an attack against Mienyang. In early february the 40th and 13th divisions began to raise their activity at Yeuyang and Jingzhou to deceive the CCP into believing a major offensive was about to be made against Changsha, which had been the crux of the IJA for a long time. On February 15th the 40th crossed the Yangtze river and began to attack Zhuhezhen, Jianli County and Hubei. Meanwhile the 13th division advanced east sneaking over the Yangtze river from Shashi and marched through a gap between the CCP positions in Jiangnan. The Chinese defenders were taken by complete surprise and it would be the 87th army garrison who would be first hit. The defenders were taking heavy losses and had to pull back to Mienyang. Soon the 40th and 13th divisions were closing in on Fengkow and Fuchang as the CCP resisted their advances killing 354 and wounded 890 Japanese. The final phase of the operation saw the 58th division begin a march south upon Mienyang, enjoying aerial support in the form of the 44th air regiment.

The CCP’s fortified positions were obliterating and the defenders were forced to disperse and escape before encirclements could be made. Many would manage to avoid capture by disguising themselves as civilians, but this only prompted Yokoyama to enact intense search and pursuit actions lasting into late march. The CCP leader Wang Haishan along with countless CCP troops were captured by these means. What was the battle of west hubei resulted in a mixed victory for either side. Many in the allied camp reported the Chinese had achieved a major strategic victory. However they paid a heavier price than the Japanese, it is estimated the CHinese had nearly 24,000 dead and 18,000 wounded while the Japanese had 25,000 casualties. Alongside this Historian Barbara Tuchmen states “the Japanese withdrew without pursuit from what appeared to have been a training and foraging offensive to collect rice and river shipping”. Thus it perhaps should be better called a tactical draw between the two forces.

 

Japan had just lost 4 destroyers, 8 transports and the lives of 3000 or so men. These figures did not even count the numerous sailors and irreplaceable pilots lost. The battle of the Bismarck Sea was strategically a defeat for Japan, second only to that of Coral Sea and it confirmed their inability to control the air in the region and ensured the continued isolation of their forces in New Guinea. In many ways New Guinea was facing the same fate that had befallen Guadalcanal. The Japanese logistics simply could not stretch that far and the allies were strangling their enemy the same way siege warfare had been done since ancient times. Japanese commanders would never again send transports or capital ships into the waters off Papua. From this point on the garrisons on New Guinea would only receive meager supplies brought via submarine or barges, completely inadequate to the task. Thousands of Japanese troops manning the defenses at Lae and Salamaua would basically be left on their own to face a growing allied advance. General Douglas MacArthur went on the recond to say “the battle of the Bismarck Sea was a decisive aerial engagement of the war and marked the end of the Japanese offensive in the Southwest Pacific”. For those Japanese survivors who did manage to land on friendly territory after the slaughter, they were finished as combatants. Lieutenant Masamichi Kitamoto observed survivors coming ashore at Tuluvu on the west of New Britain and had this to say “Their eyes were glassy and deeply sunk into their faces. All were jittery … as if they were seeing a horrible dream … a pitiful scene of a vanquished and defeated army.”

Despite the amazing victory, MacArthur's forces could not capitalize on the success and perform a major offensive against Lae. The major reason for this was MacArthur lacked amphibious forces to support the overland march through New Guinea. Since mid 1943 MacArthur’s forces had been advancing up the northern coast of New Guinea while a amphibious force was in the making. Rear Admiral Daniel Barbey took command of what would become the 7th amphibious force on january 10th of 1943. Barbey had immediately hit it off with MacArthur in a similar fashion to how General Kenney had hit it off with MacArthur. However Barbey had pretty much nothing to work with. There were no amphibious training facilities, therefore one of his first actions was to establish some at Toobul Bay near the mouth of the Brisbane river and point Stephens. Meanwhile MacArthur requested small craft and transports, as aside from his command everyone else was receiving such equipment en masse, obviously because Europe and the central pacific had been priorities. As Australian and American troops began to arrive to MacArthurs command he began to demand they train to debark from larger ships down cargo nets onto smaller craft. But Barbey did not have any attack transports (APA), which were key for these types of operations. The first Landing ship tanks (LST)s and Landing craft Tanks (LCT)s would not arrive until mid January. Until he received these he began training up the Landing craft infantry (LCI) by tossing nets over cliffs to replicate the debarkation from large ships. By march 15th of 1943 Admiral King signed off that the Southwest Pacific force was to be the 7th fleet, under the command of Admiral Arthur Carpender. This did not go over well with MacArthur who believed quote “much like his predecessor, Vice Admiral Leary, Carpenter seemed to be working more for the Navy rather than MacArthur”. All was not well in the court of camelot.

PT Boats of the MacArthur fleet would once in awhile engage an enemy submarine, but they usually got away with ease. Bad weather, large coral reefs made it sort of a nightmare for the smaller ships and PT boats were very fragile, striking just a log could knock them out. But they were enough to scare the Japanese from using too many barges and thus were sort of a fleet in being. The PT boats would have something of a surface monopoly in the Solomon sea for 6 months, constantly looking for action and finding none. Admiral Carpender encouraged their use in his command as they had shown their effectiveness during the battle of the Bismarck Sea. 

Now back over in Rabaul, Vice Admiral Jinichi Kusaka remained in command of naval forces at Rabaul and had the responsibility for the defense of the central solomons. He knew he could not expect much help from the combined fleet and definitely nothing from the Army so he set about strengthening the air defenses at Rabaul and rapidly tried to develop airfields at Munda and Vila-Stanmore. Alongside this he performed a survey of Santa Isabel island incase it could also provide an additional strip. With over 200 fighters and bombers under his thumb he hoped to hold the Central Solomons with air power alone, but he would be horribly overwhelmed. Against his command, Admiral Fitch had some 316 aircraft of various types on Guadalcanal and the Cactus air force could easily be reinforced from a pool of 200 more aircraft from Espiritu Santo and New Caledonia. And here we have another decisive advantage coming to the allies, that in technology. New aircraft were coming to the Pacific such as the Grumman F6F Hellcat and the Vought F4U Corsair which were significantly more advanced than the Zero fighter in terms of speed, armament, ceiling and rate of climb, the key parameters for a good fighter. The Hellcat was the next generation for carrier fighters and the Corsair was a gull-winged fighter bomber issued to marine fighters on Guadalcanal. Just for you tech geeks, the Hellcat was a very large aircraft for its type, weighing 1200 pounds unloaded, powered by a 2000 horsepower Pratt & Whitney engine that could climb 3500ft per minute. It held a flying range of 1000 miles, had a cockpit slickly faired into the fuselage and heavily armored. It carried 6 electrically charged .50 caliber guns and twice the ammunition to its predecessor the Wildcat. While the Wildcat lagged behind the Zero, the Hellcat outdid her in speed and dive. As Bill Davis said upon first encountering a Hellcat “the plan was a monster. From the moment I started the engine I was thrilled and amazed, there was a thunderous backfire as flames shot out of the exhaust pipe. A sailor with a fire extinguisher moved toward the plane, but the engine quickly caught and the flames disappeared as the engine started to purr with a mighty roar. I could feel the power through the throttle as well as my ears and every quaking fiber of my body”. In contrast, the Japanese continued to employ the same types of aircraft knowing full well their weaknesses and knowing full well the Americans were developing new models to counter them. The only advantage the Japanese still enjoyed was their airstrips laid out all over the South Pacific, with Munda base being a particularly important one to allow bombers from Rabaul or Bougainville to stop and refuel for striking missions. 

Munda’s airfield was attacked countless times by naval and aerial bombardment which filled her up with holes, but just as fast as they were maid her Japanese construction crews filled the craters with crushed coral and in a matter of minutes or hours the strip was made operational again. As Admiral Ainsworth said “The fact is inescapable that the Japs have gone right ahead and built two airfields in spite of constant bombing by aircraft and two bombardments by surface vessels. We may destroy large quantities of gasoline and stores, and we may render these fields unusable at critical times, but the only real answer is to take the fields away from them.” Regardless of the lack of success neutralizing the airstrip for good, Admiral Halsey had his eye on Munda from the offset of finding out the Japanese had begun constructing an airfield upon it. Halsey saw it as a very valuable new site offering terrain suitable for a large bomber field. In order to invade it simply needed to be pounded to dust and if Aerial bombarding was not enough to do the job he was willing to navally bombard it to hell if he must.

The Japanese had become emboldened by the increasing failures of the allies to hit their airfields at Munda and Vila-Stanmore and allowed cargo and troopships to make runs between them and Rabaul more frequently. Thus far only piecemeal attacks had been made against either outpost, but Hasley was planning to send a larger force with considerably larger firepower.

On february 27th, Halsey appointed Rear Admiral Aaron Merrill’s Task Force 68 to smash Munda and Vila-Stanmore. Task force 68 consisted of 3 light cruisers: Montpelier, Cleveland and Denver and 7 destroyers: Waller, Cony, Conway, Fletcher, Radford, Nicholas and O’Bannon. Merrill divided his force into two groups, the first group of 4 destroyers led by Captain Robert Briscoe would hit Munda, while the rest led by Merrill himself would hit Vila-Stanmore. On March 4th Merrill departed Espíritu Santo heading for the new allied base at the Russell islands. Merrill intended to use the same tactics employed during the last two bombardment attempts back in January. Navigation was to be by SG Radar, gunfire to be continuous after the first ranging salvos were fired and he would use all ships in a column formation to fire simultaneously to limit the time period of time they had to stay in the enemy waters. By the afternoon of March 5th, Merrills force left the Russells en route to their departure point just 7 miles north of Daisen island. During the night the 4 destroyers detached to go hit Munda while Merrills group continued en course towards the Kula Gulf, believing they would manage to do so undetected. However that night the IJN destroyers Murasame and Minegumo were bringing supplies from their base at Vila to Kolombangara. These 2 ships were part of the 2nd fleets Destroyer squadron 4 under the command of Captain Masao Tachibana. They had taken their route through the Vella Gulf and Blackett Strait and were going to return to the Shortland Islands via the shorter route through the Kula Gulf. The Japanese destroyers were discovered by American aerial reconnaissance prompting Admiral Merrill to engage.

The Americans estimated the Japanese destroyers were going to reach Blackett strait at about 11:30, while Merrill’s schedule called for him to make a course change to enter Kula Gulf by 12:17. The distance from the mouth of Kula Gulf to the eastern entrance of Blackett strait was around 20 miles thus it seemed to Merrill to be senseless to change his plans and increase their speed, he did not think they could catch them in time. Thus he opted to simply carry out his original bombardment plan before the Munda group did their which would raise the alarm for the nearby Japanese vessels in the strait. But After Captain Tachibana delivered his supplies he had chosen to take the shorter route back through the Kula Gulf which would fatefully shove him into Merrills position.

Just after midnight, Merrills 3 light cruisers were swinging into Kula Gulf while his destroyers detached to perform an advance sweep of the Gulf. Meanwhile the two Japanese destroyers were coming in from the opposite direction along the east coast of Kolombangara when at 12:53, the radar aboard Montpelier detached them northeast of Sasamboki Island. The ships all began to converge on the contact as they tracked the enemy, training their guns on the enemy. Now Radar controlled gunnery was still new to the US Navy and thus the first barrage tended to target the nearest and same target. This was actually a tactical deficiency that had given the IJN an advantage on multiple occasions. At a minute after 1am, the Montpelier broke the silence of the night and opened fire with her main batteries, followed by the Cleveland and Denver. The cruisers 6 inch guns were firing at a round of 11,000 yards battering her. Their fire was concentrated upon the Murasame and their radar controlled gunnery successfully straddled the destroyer. In just 5 minutes a salvo hit caused a large explosion on the Murasame with large fires erupting across her deck. 

While this was going on the Waller launched a volley of 5 torpedoes and scored a hit on the Murasame causing a tremendous explosion breaking her in two as she quickly sank. Apparently the explosion from the torpedo hit was heard by Briscoes force around 25 miles away over at Munda. Merrill then directed fire upon the Minegumo as it tried to keep a northerly course while returning fire. After charging north for 4 miles under intense fire the Minegumo came to a stop suffering from heavy damage. The American destroyers tried to get into position to fire torpedoes, but by the time they did the Minegumo was sinking. Merrills cruisers likewise had begun firing starshells over the Blackett Strait and the illumination indicating there were no more enemy vessels.

Merrill force began their bombardment of Vila-Stanmore at 1:25 targeting supply dumps, runways, bivouacs and the various aircraft they could see on the ground. Using aid from their aerial reconnaissance they were able to score many hits on emplacements such as shelter tents, barracks, ammunition dumps, grounded planes and such. It was very successful causing a lot of damage and they knocked out the shore batteries that tried to respond. By 1:40 Merrill ordered a withdrawal through the North Georgia Sound. 174 IJN personnel had been killed, of which 128 were aboard the Murasame. There was two submarines the USS Grayback and Grampus that had been assigned to support Merrills force and the Grampus would never return from her voyage. It is possible during the battle one of the IJN destroyers sunk her, but her wreckage has never been found.

At the same time the battle was occurring, Captain Robert Briscoe’s group proceeded unmolested to to their bombardment point. At 1:04 they group began to hear and saw the firing flashes from the battle and alongside this unidentified aircraft were coming over Rendova island prompting their caution. Nonetheless by 1:39 they began their bombardment striking the center of the landing strip. By 1:50 the bombardment ceased and they made their withdrawal. Although the airstrips were repaired quite easily, the loss of 2 destroyers in a fast fashion was a bad omen for the Japanese.

During March of 1943 allied bombers would make sporadic attacks on the Japanese airfields over Ballalae, Kahili, Shortland Island and Munda. Alongside this allied photo reconnaissance got a good picture of Japanese movements between all their bases and this soon revealed a new Seaplane base being built off southern Bougainville prompted a dawn fighter attack on the 28th. Led by Captain Lanphier of the 70th fighter squadron, 6 P-38’s destroyed 8 Japanese seaplanes. Every month brought the Japanese more losses, whether it be shipping, men or materials they simply could not afford, while the American production capabilities were only growing bigger.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

The Japanese had a mixed success in central China and a rather small, but terribly loss in the Solomons. They simply could not afford any more losses, for each one was drawing them ever closer to losing the war. 

- 67 - Pacific War - Battle at the Bismarck Sea, February 28 - March 7, 1943

Last time we spoke about the landing at Amchitka and the invasion of the Russell Islands. The Aleutian island campaign saw a lot of action when the allies decided to investigate whether Amchitka island would be suitable for a new airfield and what the Japanese intentions were with it. A race began between the two, but it would be the Americans who would seize the island and begin the process of building up an airfield upon it. Then over in the south Pacific, the Japanese had finished up Operation KE and with it had used and abandoned the Russell Islands. The allies quickly launched an invasion of the islands prompting the Japanese to send some air raids, but all for naught. Now with the Russells in hand, the Americans had a launching point to attack New Georgia. Yet today we are going to jump into one of the major naval battles of 1943.

This episode is the battle of the Bismarck Sea.

Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

Last time we were in New Guinea the forces of Brigadier Moten had arrived in the nick of time to save Wau from the main Japanese thrust.The Australians were pouring reinforcements and supplies via transport aircraft daily. On January 31st 35 aircraft had made 71 trips, the next day 40 aircraft made 53 trips. This allowed the Kanga force to increase to 3000 men and receive heavy equipment necessary to smash the Japanese. Facing larger numbers and possible encirclement, Major General Toru Okabe had to order his men to withdraw. With that order came the lost hope of capturing Wau it seemed. By February the 1st, Moten had 201 officers and 2965 soldiers of all ranks at his disposal. He began sending patrols across the Black Cat trail and the Jap trail. He quickly surmised the Japanese threat was strongest in the Crystal Creek area where they had established a headquarters The Australians neutralized the crystal Creek area and began pushing the Japanese towards Mubo. By late February the Australians controlled the area from Waipali to Buibaining and a large part of the Mubo valley. Nerve wrecking patrols set off multiple ambushes and skirmishes for countless days. The Australian high command could only authorize such limited activity as they did not yet possess sufficient numbers to undertake further major offensive operations. Moten was awarded a bar to his distinguished service order for “his high order of leadership and control at Wau”.

While the Australians were tossing all they could via aerial transport, the Japanese attempted to thwart this. Aerial strikes were sent to hit the airstrip at Wau, but the typically terrible New Guinea weather hampered the Japanese. Aircraft dispatch from Rabaul were unable to locate Wau through the torrential weather and would return back without any success. Then on February 6th, 8 P-39’s of the 40th fighter Squadron were escorting 5 Dakota transports incoming to Wau when they sighted 24 Japanese aircraft. Captain Thomas Winburn led the P-39s to engage the enemy claiming to have downed 11 Zeros and a Sally. Simultaneously 8 P-40’s of the 7th fighter squadron were escorts other Dakota’s inbound for Wau when they sighed 12 Japanese bombers attempted to bomb the airstrip. The Dakota’s were turned back at the last second as the P-40’s engaged the bombers claiming to have downed 7 aircraft. On the ground at the airstrip in Wau were 4 Dakota’s while 5 circled its skies hoping to land after the combat was over. Second Lt Robert Schwensen was circling around in his Dakota and was shot down by a Japanese bomber, he alongside 4 other crew died. Another grounded Dakota was damaged and a CAC Wirraway was destroyed by a bomber. The increased aerial pressure prompted Major General Ennis Whitehead over in Port Moresby to order 3 squadrons to join the battle for Wau’s skies. P-38’s of the 39th and 9th fighter squadrons and P-40’s of the 41st fighter Squadron intercepted a Japanese fighters and bombers claiming to have shot down over 23 aircraft. The Japanese were decisively losing the war of the skies, showcasing the limitations of their offensive capabilities in the area.

Now while the Japanese surprise attack against Wau had failed and they had been pushed back heavily, all was not lost for the Japanese. They still held some high ground around Waipali and Guadagasal. Yet in order to turn things around, Major General Toru Okabe would require significant reinforcements to defeat Moten’s 17th Brigade. Things were extremely chaotic at this time for the Japanese high command. The battle for guadalcanal collapsed, leading to Operation KE which involved a major shuffling of troops all over the place. They first ordered Lt General Jusei Aoki’s 20th division to depart Korea for Guadalcanal and for Lt General Heisuke Abe’s 41st division to depart China for Rabaul. Lt General Hitoshi Imamura commander of the Japanese 8th area army at Rabaul ordered Lt General Hatazo Adachi’s 18th army to secure Wewak, Tuluvu and Madang in New Guinea. Adachi was the one who ordered Major General Toru Okabe, commander of the 51st division and the 102nd infantry regiment to capture Wau in order to further secure Lae and Salamaua. However with the conclusion of Operation KE, the focus was reshifted from the Solomons to New Guinea. General Imamura and Vice admiral Gunichi Mikawa, the commander of the south east area fleet developed a plan to move the 18th army HQ and the rest of the main body of the 51st division from Rabaul to Lae. They would also follow this up by moving the remaining forces of the 20th division to Madang. The first movement was set for the 3rd of march and the second for march 10th. It was to be a very risky plan, as the allies held aerial supremacy. The 18th army held some war games indicated the operation would lose around 4 out of 10 transports and upto 40 aircraft. They believed the operation stood a 50/50 chance of success and there were limited alternatives. If they tried to land all the forces simply at Madang, the men would have to march over 230 km’s over swamplands, mountains and jungle terrain. It seems the Japanese were beginning to acknowledge their lack of success at logistics as this course of action was deemed impossible. 

Over on the Australian side, General MacKay sent word to Blamey that he feared the Japanese would make a second attempt to capture Wau. He reasoned that even with the projected arrival of reinforcements in the form of the 4th and 15th brigades, they would still be outnumbered by the Japanese. MacKay estimated the Japanese held around 7500 men in the Lae-Salamaua area while they held onto their position in the Mubo region. Because of this, he had restricted activity to patrolling to not allow for any gaps allowing an opening against Wau so that more men could be brought over for its defense. Despite the enormous success in transporting men to the area, supply continued to be a major issue. There was a major increase in the number of aircraft at the Dobodura airfields thanks to the capture of Buna allowing for men and materials to be tossed to Wau, but in early February General Whiteheads confided to MacKay that 2 of his squadrons of 18 aircraft were pressed to their limits and the bad weather was greatly reducing their ability to deliver the men and supplies. Whitehead predicted, correctly that the bad weather would continue for the next 6 weeks, which left typically 2 hour windows for the deliveries per day. Attempting to improve the situation General Blamey had begun the construction of a Jeep trail all the way back in January from Bulldog to Way. But during the process the surveyors quickly discovered the terrain was extremely formidable and the job would take many months. Native carriers performed the lionshare of work as the 68 mile trail would end up taking 4 months to complete.

Now during the campaign for Buna-Gona, the allies owed much of their success largely due to their control of the air, and this as we can see at Wau continued to be a vital factor. The Japanese of course held their large air and naval base at Rabaul and since the early days of the war remained an ongoing threat to air and sea supremacy in the region. Blanche Bay in Rabaul provided the Japanese with one of the best natural harbors in the south pacific. It is encircled by hills, is around 6 miles long and 2 and one half miles wide. It alongside 3 other harbors provided an anchorage for a large body of ships, as many as 60 by some accounts. The Japanese had built up the harbors and their defenses to more than 300 antiaircraft guns. By the fall of 1943 the Japanese had almost 100,000 men stationed at Rabaul, the vast majority being army troopers. The Southern fleet force had around 21,000 men under the command of Vice admiral Jinichi Kusaka. Air strength at Rabaul depending on reinforcements provided by the combined fleet, but in early 1943 they held a significant enough number to pose a major threat to the allied operations, if utilized properly.

General MacArthur was deeply concerned about Rabaul, despite having the number in theory to negate its threat. MacArthur consistently pushed for an invasion of eastern New Britain in early 1943 and disagreed on using airpower to negate Rebaul. Then during the bloody campaign against Buna-Gona he declared the decision to bypass Rabaul would “go down in history as one of times greatest military mistakes”. THEN later on he would agree that bypassing Rabaul was a good strategy and that it had largely been done because of his advisement. Basically what I am saying is MacArthur is full of shit and more worried about his autobiographies that actual decisions. Regardless of that, MacArthurs early suggestions indicated Rabaul was vitally important and needed to be neutralized. This is sort of a no brainer as you can imagine, it was one of Japan’s largest naval air force bases covering all major operations in the eastern and central solomons. Fortunately for the allies there was no unified command at Rabaul. As we all know the IJA and IJN did not get along very well and Rabaul’s operations is a great example of it. The IJA had fewer aircraft based regularly at Rabaul although its responsibility was to cover New Guinea. Throughout 1943 the IJN’s air forces were primarily concerning themselves with the Solomons, which would eventually see them losing nearly 400 aircraft and irreplaceable pilots for all their efforts.

Because of the catastrophe of the Guadalcanal campaign, Rabaul was largely neutralized by US bombers from the solomons. By mid February Imamura and Kusaka recognized the need to reinforce Lae. They had sent a 3 ship convoy on the 19th which went unmolested to Wewak and this emboldened them to brave the allied aerial supremacy. Thus on February 28th a convoy of 16 ships commanded by Rear Admiral Masatomi Kamura departed Rabaul. 6 transports, a oil tanker and their destroyer escorts would be combat loaded so that supplies and the men could be off loaded quickly to minimize turnaround time. Almost 7000 men, mostly from the 115th regiment of the 51st division and some SNLF were crowded onto the transports guarded by an escort force of 8 destroyers. Lt General Hatazo Adachi and his staff were on board accompanied by Lt General Hidemitsu Nakano and his staff. The planned route was to go along the northern coast of New Britain through the Bismarck Sea, to Cape Gloucester and then through the Vitiaz strait to the Huon Gulf. The Japanese commanders believed their movement would be masked by the terrible weather. 

Allied command began detecting signs of a major convoy operation in early february. On february 14th aerial photographs taken over Rabaul indicating over 79 vessels at port, including 45 merchant ships and 6 transports. It was clear to allied command a convoy was going to be dispatched, but its destination was unknown. Two days later naval codebreakers at FRUMEL in Melbourne and Washington DC decyphered some coded messages revealing the Japanese were going to send the convoy to Wewak, Madany and Lae. Other intercepted coded messages from the Japanese 11th air fleet to the convoy indicated they would reach Lae by March the 5th or by latest 12th. Another aerial reconnaissance over Rabaul on the 22nd indicated 59 merchant vessels were at harbor. Kenney read the Ultra intelligence to General MacArthur on the 25th and the prospect of 7000 Japanese being landed at Lae certainly disturbed him. Kenney then sent word to Whitehead of the proposed convoy date and warned him the Japanese would most likely perform a pre-convoy aerial strike. Kenney urged he cut back on the transport hours so the aircraft could be made ready the moment the convoy appeared. Kenney would fly over to Port Moresby on the 26th to speak to Whitehead personally and the two generals concluded the Japanese convoy was going to go through the Vitiaz strait. 

Now in the south west pacific conventional strategic bombing was not really on the menu as industrial targets in Japan were obviously too far away. Thus since the early days of the way, the primary mission of the allied bomber force in the region was to intercept Japanese supply lines, particularly their sea lanes. Some 416 sorties were flown in January of 1943, resulting in only 2 ships sunk and 3 ships damaged, clearly the allied tactics needed revamping. Captain Bill Garing of the RAAF, part of Kenney’s staff, held considerable experience in air to sea operations and he began to recommend that Japanese convoys should be met with simultaneous attacks from different altitudes and directions. This led allied air force brains to come up with some innovative tactics. In February of 1942 the RAAF began experimenting with “skip bombing”. Skip bombing was an anti-ship technique used primarily by the British and Germans in the atlantic. It involved flying ones aircraft just a dozen feet above the sea level towards a target whereupon bombers would release their bombs, which ideally would ricochet across the surface of the water to hit the sides of the ships or explode overhead, IE “skipping”. If you play world of warships, you know exactly what I am talking about, nasty stuff. Another similar technique involved bombs taking a low altitude between 200-500 feet and dropping around mast height, approximately 10-15 feet and 600 yards from their target, IE “Mast height bombing”. This when performed well would see the bombs smash into the sides of a ship. These two techniques paired with slow fuse bombs would see considerable use in an event we are about to jump into.

Now Kimura envisioned, by taking the route along the northern coast, that this would put enough distance between the convoy and allied reconnaissance aircraft until they reached Vitiaz strait. Kimura took the destroyer Shirayuki as his flagship to command the operation. Destroyer Tokitsukaze would carry General Adachi and destroyer Yukikaze would carry General Nakano. The idea was that upon arrival at Lae the ships would anchor 600 or so meters apart along the shoreline due west of the airfield around the mouth of the Busu river. They would use a smoke screen to cover the anchorage to make their unloading activity to hinder aerial attacks as well. A escort of 40 IJN and 6 IJA aircraft would provide aerial protection for the convoy from 5am to 6pm each day it operated. 

General Blamey wrote “every effort will be made by our own air force to deal with the enemy as he approaches”. Thus Generals Blamey and MacArthur tossed the job to General Kenney, the commander of allied air forces. Kenney had at his disposal the RAAF under air vice marshall William Bostock and the 5th air force led by Brigadier general Ennis Whitehead. In total 154 fighters, 34 light bombers, 41 medium bombers and 39 heavy bombers available for combat operations in New Guinea. The 5th air force was subdivided into two commands: the V fighter command  led by Brigadier General Paul Wurtsmith consisting of 95 fighters, some P-39’s, P-38’s and P-40s. Then there was V bomber command led by Brigadier General Howard Ramey which had 28 worn out B-26’s, 27 B-25’s, 55 B-17’s and 60 B-24’s. Alongside this Kenney and Whitehead had at their disposal the 3rd attack groups of light bombers, nicknamed the Grim Reapers which included a squadron of A-20 Bostons equipped with 4 .50 caliber guns and long range fuel tanks. You see the A-20 Bostons usually were equipped with .30 caliber machine guns and could not fly across the Owen stanley range from Port Moresby, but Kenney was very keen on the “attack aviation” concept which focused on using low-level strafing and bombing methods. Alongside the grim reapers was 2 squadrons of B-25’s that had been modified by Major Paul Pappy Gunn, the same man who had altered the Grim reapers. The B-25’s had their lower turrets and tail guns removed and instead had 4 .50 caliber machine guns installed in the nose and another 4 in the forward firing chin blisters. With the top turret firing its guns forward, the aircraft boasted an extraordinary strafing firepower and on top of that still carried 6 100 pound bombs and 60 23 pound fragmentation bombs. The fragmentation bombs were outfitted with small parachutes so they could be used for low-level bombing of airfield without damaging the aircraft trying to drop them. Honestly try to imagine this goliath beast firing those .50 cals, would have been like torrential rain of lead.  All of these modifications would allow aircraft like the B-25 to be much more capable of pulling off the masthead bombing technique without the need for a bombardier, which ironically was in opposition to their original role of carrying out bombardier assisted missions from altitude. The Australians could also count on the support of the No. 9 Group led by Captain William Garing consisting of 59 fighters, 26 light medium bombers and 2 heavy bombers; the no 73 wing of Hudson bombers, P-40 Kittyhawks and Beaufort bombers operating at Port Moresby and the no 71 Wing of Wirraways, A-20’s and Beaufighters operating out of Milne Bay. So needless to say a lot of allied airpower was on hand.

Now as I had mentioned prior, allied attempts to hit Japanese shipping, particularly that coming out of Rabaul had not shown much results in the past. So in order to increase the success of hitting this convoy, Garing persuaded Whitehead to rehearse a plan for the attacks, integrating all available aircraft. This specifically included performing the bomb skipping a masthead bombing techniques. Garing’s idea was to get all the aircraft to gather over Cape Ward Hunt at 9:30am so they could get themselves over the enemy convoy by 10am all at once to completely overwhelm the enemy escorting aircraft and anti-aircraft defenses. Two rehearsals were carried out, with the 2nd one turning out to be “damn good”.

 

On March the first at 2am the Convoy departed Rabaul. The convoy slowly made its way across the Bismarck Sea undetected as for the past two days major tropical storms had been occurring since February the 27th. However on March the 1st there was a clearing and a crew of patrolling B-24 Liberators managed to spot the convoy. They reported the sighting, prompting a dispatch of 8 B-17 to be sent to the location, but they failed to relocate the convoy. The Destroyer Tokitsukaze then intercepted an allied message stating their convoy had been spotted. This prompted Kimura to put the forces on full alert. General Adachi who was onboard the Tokitsukaze was uncensored by the report stating it was all part of the plan. His reasoning was that the allies were always going to find them, but with the terrible weather it would be unlikely they could manage to perform a decent attack.

 

At dawn on march the 2nd, a force of 6 RAAF A-20 Bostons coming out of Ward’s Strip at Port Moresby performed an air strike against Lae to hinder its use to the fighter escorts for the convoy. At 10am another B-24 liberator found the convoy, prompting another order for 8 B-17’s to be sent to attack. They would soon be followed up an hour later by a group of 20 B-17’s. The B-17’s planned to rendezvous with some P-38’s of the 9th fighter squadron, but they arrived too early to the convoy’s location and thus had to face the Japanese escort fighters on their own until the P-38’s eventually arrived to the scene. The first group of 8 B-17’s made their runs at the convoys through anti-aircraft fire and Zero fighters. They dropped 1000 lb bombs from 5000 feet claiming 5 critical bomb hits and sinking 3 merchant ships. The Kyokusei Maru was hit and sunk carrying 1200 IJA troops. The second group of B-17’s then showed up and luckily for them, 12 P-38’s had managed to haul it quickly enough to escort them in the nick of time to make their bombing runs. The B-17’s claimed to have sunk 4 enemy ships, but in reality only damaged two transports, the Teiyo Maru and Nojima. 8 Japanese fighters were shot down with 13 others damaged at the cost of 9 B-17’s damaged in return. While the Kyokusei Maru was sinking, the destroyers Asagumo and Yukikaze managed to rescue 950 troops out of the water alongside 2 mountain guns. Because destroyers are fast, the two ships opted detach from the convoy and haul it over to Lae to drop off the survivors before trying to regroup to reperform their escort duties. The survivors and General Nakano would be brought to Lae by the end of the day and the two destroyers turned around to rejoin the convoy by daybreak.

Throughout the rest of the day the convoy would be subjected to multiple heavy bomber attacks. 11 B-18s made an evening strike inflicting minor damage to another transport. The days efforts saw the convoy zigzagging to save its life from high level bombing and this led it to be stretched out for 20km. Rather bizarrely, the Japanese fighter escorts showed little aggression towards the American heavy bombers and departed rather early from the days action. During the night PBY Catalina’s from the No 11 RAAF squadron began shadowing the convoy. One PBY flown by Flight Lt Terry Duigan received a message from HQ to shadow the convoy in order to guide a strike of torpedo bombers, which did not make sense, so he discarded it. However the message as he would later find out, was not necessarily for him, but rather to trick the enemy. The allied intelligence officers back at HQ were certain the Japanese were listening in on their radio traffic so they began sending false messages.

Early the next day, Admiral Kimura made what would be a disastrous decision, ordering his ships to mark the time and circle in the dark. This process cost the convoy 2 hours of night cover and the reasons behind the decision are quite unknown. It is theorized Kimura was trying to make sure his convoy would appear to the destination at the same time their fighter escort would show up for the daily activity. In any case, Kimura’s convoy would not see their escort nor stormy weather at sunrise to their dismay. Sunrise on march the 3rd saw a beautiful sunny day, a terrible omen. The convoy was now within striking distance of Milne Bay and 8 Bristol Beaufort Torpedo bombers of the No 100 RAAF squadron took off at 4am. Only 2 Beauforts would make it to the convoy and fail to cause any damage. The Japanese commanders however were now alerted by the presence of torpedo bombers, so they began maneuvers, turning the beam of their ships to the enemy aircraft, exposing the full length of their ships to strafing. 

 

At 5:10am, 4 Australian A-20’s performed an airstrike against Lae, catching several grounded planes that were needed to escort the convoy. At 8:30am, a striking force of 90 aircraft consisting of a squadron of B-17’s, 4 squadrons of B-25’s including some grim reapers, a squadron of Beaufighters, a squadron of A-20’s and 2 squadrons of P-38 lightnings. The striking group departed Port Moresby and headed for Cape Ward Hunt while 22 A-20 Bostons of No 22 RAAF squadron attacked Lae to reduce the convoys air cover. The striking group took up their practiced formation with the B-17’s leading the echelon at 7000 feet, the B-25’s behind them at 4000 feet, the Beaufighters at 500 feet, some other B-25’s designated to perform low level bombing at around 700 feet and the P-38 lightings hanging above at 12,000 feet.

 

At 10am, 13 B-17s reached the convoy first and began bombing them from 7000 feet causing the convoy to zigzag, dispersing their formation and reducing the concentration of their anti-aircraft fire considerably. The B-17’s attracted the Zero fighter escort, but were quickly pounced upon by the P-38 lightnings. One B-17 was shot apart by a Zero and its crew took to parachuting. The parachuting men were fired upon by Zero fighters and when they hit the water some Zero’s continued to strafe them. Although the B-17’s inflicted no damage, 7 Zero’s would be shot down by the P-38s reducing the convoy's protection.

 

Meanwhile the Beaufighters were coming in just above the waves making it look like they were Beaufort torpedo bombers. Admiral Kimura ordered his ships to maneuver so their beams were towards the enemy expecting torpedo runs and this exposed his ships to the Beaufighters strafing runs. The Australian pilots began to open up with their 6 .303 machine guns and 4 20mm Hispano cannons. The combination unleashed a carnage seeing rivers of fire erupt across the lengths of the ships. Some vessels were stopped dead in the water as a result of their officers being cut down to pieces across their bridges. Much of the convoys anti-aircraft positions were destroyed by the strafing. After the first strafing run, B-17’s and B-25s began to make their bombing runs rather unexpectedly, leaving the BEaufighters scrambling to flying as the bombs were literally falling down around them. Out of 37 bombs dropped by the 90th attack Squadron Grim reapers, 17 were claimed as direct hits. 12 A-20 bostons from the 89th bomb squadron claim while performing low level bombing that 11 out of 20 bombs made hits. The B-25’s of the 405th bomb squadron dropped 35 500 lb bombs from low level and claimed 4 direct hits, these bombs had 5 second delay fuses. The bombing runs caused massive chaos amongst the convoy, so much so that pilots claimed to have seen 2 japanese vessel collide into another. The modified grim reappears strafed the convoy during all of the runs. A squadron leader named Brian Blackjack Waler recalled this “I was observing it from the side and all these ships - honestly, I’ve never seen anything like it. Dozens of planes all going in at zero feet. In fact, I could see a Beaufighter and a B-25 both going in at the same target and I thought, get out one of you!” The assortment of differing aircraft were coming in at all sorts of angles and all sorts of altitudes, many low. 

 

Garrett Middlebrook, a co-pilot in one of the B-25s, described the ferocity of the strafing attacks:

“They went in and hit this troop ship. What I saw looked like little sticks, maybe a foot long or something like that, or splinters flying up off the deck of ship; they’d fly all around ... and twist crazily in the air and fall out in the water. Then I realized what I was watching were human beings. I was watching hundreds of those Japanese just blown off the deck by those machine guns. They just splintered around the air like sticks in a whirlwind and they’d fall in the water.”

The Shirayuki was the first ship to be hit, by a combination of strafing and bombing attacks. Just about all of the men on her bridge were strafed, including Kimura who was wounded. She received a bomb hit that stated a magazine explosion breaking her stern off and causing her to sink. Her crew transferred to the Shikinami as the Shirayuki was scuttled. The Tokitsukaze was hit fatally and her crew had to abandon her. The Arashio was strafed violently causing her to collide with the transport Nojima disabling both ships. Both ships would be abandoned as the allies strafed and bombed them sinking Nojima eventually. The remaining destroyers struggled to save survivors in the water.

 

By 10:15, all 7 of the transports had been hit and we're sinking 100km’s southeast of Finschhafen. After midway a second series of attacks were made by B-17’s and A-20’s who strafed and bombed the Asashio while she was trying to rescue survivors. The 4 remaining destroyers withdrew up the Vitiaz strait and were joined by the destroyer Hatsuyuki coming from Long Island. The Hatsuyuki and Uranami brought 2700 survivors back to Rabaul while the 3 other destroyers continued picking up survivors and would eventually bring them to Kavieng by march 5th. During the night of march 3rd, a force of 10 PT boats led by Lt Commander Barry Atkins made an attempt to finish off the convoy alongside some B-17’s and Beaufighters. 2 of the PT boats hit submerged debris and were turned back, but the other 8 continued and arrived off Lae in the early hours of March 4th. Atkins spotted a fire that turned out to be the transport Oigawa Maru. Pt-143 and PT-150 fired torpedoes at it, further crippling and eventually sinking the transport. The Asashio was hit by a B-17 with a 500 bomb bomb as she was grabbing survivors and sunk. Amongst the 4 surviving destroyers it would only be the Yikikaze that went undamaged. The PT boats and allied aircraft attacked the Japanese rescue vessels and survivors clinging to rafts or floating in the sea. The decision to attack the survivors was highly unpopular amongst the pilots and sailors but was deemed necessary on the grounds the rescued Japanese were most likely going to be landed for military duty if not attacked.  One Japanese survivor wrote in his diary of the ordeal “The Boeing B-17 is most terrifying. We are repeating the failure of Guadalcanal. Most regrettable!” Many allied pilots were sicked by these actions.  

One pilot recalled "as per instructions, we flew around to see if some ships were still afloat. Some were sinking and burning--we san a lifeboat with about 20 people. I thought these poor guys. But we had a job to do because if they got to shore, they were going to kill our guys. So I came around and strafed them. One of the cruel things of war which had to be done"

 

Another pilot recounted this “At the briefing, Australian officer had told us we must not permit a single enemy to reach the shores of New Guinea. They explained the suffering, agony, and loss by our troops in having to hunt down and kill a suicidal Jap”.

It is estimated around 352 Japanese troops were killed during these attacks adding to the 2890 casualties suffered during the battle. Another 224 survivors in the water would be rescued by the I-17 and I-26 shuffled over to various nearby islands such as Goodenough island. Of the 116 Japanese that would be landed on Goodenough island, 72 would be killed with 42 captured and 2 missing.

 

Officials at the Advanced air echelon at Port Moresby went through the claims of their pilots and sailors and believed a great number of ships had been destroyed. Their conclusion was that 12 transports, 3 cruisers and 7 destroyers had been sunk, which MacArthur readily believed, although a report would later come out to claim the number was actually 4 destroyers and 8 transports. Later the Japanese would admit that 3000 soldiers had been killed during the battle, but this did not count the hundreds of sailors lost on the ships, nor the pilots in the aircraft. MacArthur would make a commendation on march the 4th for all the air force units in New Guinea stating “it cannot fail to go down in history as one of the most complete and annihilating combats of all time. My pride and satisfaction in you is boundless” Kenney added to it stating “tell the whole gang that I am so proud of them I am about to blow a fuse”. MacArthur would also at the offset claim they had caused 15,000 enemy casualties describing the battle as a decisive aerial engagement for the southwest pacific theater. And it certainly was a decisive victory, it was a devastating loss for Japan that showcased Japan was no longer capable of being on the offensive. I will finish off the tale of the battle of the Bismarck sea with a account from Reiji Masuda, a crewman aboard the destroyer Arashio, as it leaves a vivid and harrowing account of the attack.

 

They would come in on you at low altitude, and they’d skip bombs across the water like you’d throw a stone. That’s how they bombed us. All seven of the remaining transports were enveloped in flames. Their masts tumbled down, their bridges flew to pieces, the ammunition they were carrying was hit, and whole ships blew up. . . . They hit us amidships. B-17s, fighters, skip-bombers, and torpedo bombers. On our side, we were madly firing, but we had no chance to beat them off. Our bridge was hit by two five-hundred-pound bombs. Nobody could have survived. The captain, the chief navigator, the gunnery and torpedo chiefs, and the chief medical officer were all killed in action. The chief navigator’s blackened body was hanging there, all alone. Then a second air attack came in. We were hit by thirty shells from port to starboard. The ship shook violently. Bullet fragments and shrapnel made it look like a beehive. All the steam pipes burst. The ship became boiling hot. We tried to abandon ship, but planes flying almost as low as the masts sprayed us with machine-guns. Hands were shot off, stomachs blown open. Most of the crew were murdered or wounded there. Hundreds were swimming in the ocean. Nobody was there to rescue them. They were wiped out, carried away by a strong current running at roughly four or five knots.

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The battle of the Bismarck sea proved the Japanese were indeed incapable of being on the offensive, the allies were now in the driving seat. It also showcased war produces wild innovations that can prove quite deadly.