AMERICAN STALINGRAD: WAR COMES TO THE SOUTH PACIFIC

Here is the first post of the series “American Stalingrad,” the history of the Guadalcanal campaign. There will be several other posts between now and July 31, at which time the series will go behind the paywall. I hope these will interest free subscribers sufficiently for them to take up a paid subscription to follow this and several other interesting projects under development.

Herewith begins the tale:

WAR COMES TO THE SOUTH PACIFIC

Twelve days after the fall of Wake Island, aircraft from the Imperial Japanese Navy Eleventh Air Fleet’s land-based 5th Air Attack Force, flying from the main Japanese base in the Central Pacific - Truk Atoll - attacked the Australian base at Rabaul on January 4, 1942. Following the raid, just before dusk, eleven Yokohama Air Group Kawanishi H6K four-engine long-range flying boats bombed Vunakanau again; all of the estimated 40 bombs dropped fell far from the airfield. The attacks signaled that war had now come to the South Pacific.

Simpson Harbor, the deep water port at Rabaul, capital of the Bismarcks Protectorate on the island of New Britain in the Bismarck Archipelago northeast of the island of New Guinea, was the best deep water port for use as a fleet anchorage in the South Pacific. The harbor was surrounded by active volcanoes and the rotting-egg smell of sulfur permeated the atmosphere. The archipelago, due south of the major Japanese Pacific base at Truk Atoll in the Japanese-controlled Caroline Islands of the Central Pacific, was the main barrier between the Japanese islands and New Guinea, with New Zealand and Australia beyond.

Rabaul was under Japanese control by the end of the month. The next two years of the Pacific War would center on the Allied campaign to retake or neutralize Rabaul.

The Japanese were not the only ones taking action in the South Pacific. Escorted by U.S. Navy task forces built around the carriers Enterprise (CV-6) and Yorktown (CV-5), the U.S. First Marine Brigade, built around the First Marine Division’s 7th Marine Regiment (7th Marines), arrived in American Samoa on January 23, 1942, to bolster a Marine defense battalion deployed there since early 1941. On the same day, a detachment of Navy light scout planes also arrived in American Samoa, the first American-manned military aircraft to reach the vital stronghold.

On January 29, a U.S. defense force that included the Army’s 70th Pursuit Squadron with 25 crated Bell P-39 Airacobra fighters, arrived for duty at Suva, Fiji. That same day, far from the war zone in Washington, D.C., the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff established the ANZAC Area under U.S. naval command. The new defensive region linked the defensive sectors in Australia, New Zealand, and New Caledonia.

Dale Brannon joined the Air Corps in 1937 after running out of money to stay in school at Ohio State University; by 1940, he found he liked service life enough to consider a career, and was granted a regular commission as a 1st Lieutenant. In the summer of 1941, having been one of three Army pilots to fly Bell Aircraft’s prototype P-39s and therefore considered “experienced,” he was assigned to the 67th Pursuit Squadron, since they were scheduled to re-equip with the new fighter. Immediately following Pearl Harbor, he reported to Harding Army Airfield at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where the squadron had relocated, to find himself in command. During the few weeks until they were ordered to prepare for overseas movement, Brannon was able to scrounge some decrepit P-35s and P-36s from other units on the base so the new pilots could gain as much valuable flight time as possible.

They traveled aboard what Brannon recalled as railroad cars that must have last been used on the Transcontinental Railroad, cooking their meals in the baggage car, to Fort Dix, New Jersey, where they learned they were headed to the South Pacific. On January 24, they departed New York harbor aboard the transport Thomas H. Barry, as part of a five-ship convoy. Another freighter in the convoy carried 45 disassembled and crated P-400s and two P-39Fs; “P-400" was the designation given to the Airacobra I fighters originally built for the British that were sequestered by the Army Air Forces in the wake of Pearl Harbor. Once through the Panama Canal, they were escorted across the Pacific by the light cruiser USS Honolulu (CL-48) and two destroyers to Melbourne, arriving on February 26, 1942, after 38 days at sea.

After a week in Australia, they went aboard the transport R.S. Berry, headed for New Caledonia, arriving on March 15, 1942. The Army’s 810th and 811th Engineer Aviation battalions also unloaded, assigned to improve and build air bases in the region. Bannon learned the 67th’s assignment was to provide air defense for the island, based at the half-completed airfield at Tontuta, 35 miles from Noumea. The one truck and trailer available on the island took one crated plane to Tontouta every eight hours, alternately groaning and highballing over the mountainous road over two weeks.

When the crates and men had all made the move and the crates were pried open, they found the P-400s, with instruction manuals for P-39D's, F's, and K's but none for P- 400s. Neither Master Sergeant Foye or Tech Sergeant Nebock - the two experienced mechanics in the squadron - had ever seen an Airacobra before. Still, the two noncoms took control of the assembly work. The men slept under shelter halves while the 44 pilots moved into a farmhouse, setting up sleeping bags in the parlor, bedroom, and earth-floored basement. All were soon united in cursing the sudden, unpredictable rain storms and fighting the mosquitoes.

There were ten kits of simple first-echelon maintenance tools available for assembly. Fuel lines were found plugged with Scotch tape; the electrical circuits of one P-400 had evidently been assembled by a factory maniac: pressing the flap switch resulted in retraction of the main gear, while pressing the gear switch fired the guns. Regardless, in an astounding feat of engineering ability and a real talent for scrounging what was needed, on the 28th day of assembly, 41 P-400s had been assembled with the construction of an A-frame from coconut tree trunks to raise the fuselages so they could be walked above the wings for mating. Brannon, the pilot with the most P-39 experience, test-flew each as it was completed and checked out the rest of the pilots with only a single accident. Finding the P-400's flight instruments were inferior, they learned how to fly without them. Spare parts all came from salvage. One Airacobra, named "The Resurrection," was built from parts of four different aircraft that each lacked major components. Once the planes were assembled and found flight-worthy, the ground crews set to painting fierce shark faces on the planes, inspired by photographs of the Flying Tigers in Burma that were featured in the new issue of Life Magazine which arrived that month.

Fortunately for the 67th, the squadron soon welcomed several fliers who had managed to make it out of the Philippines. Brannon recalled, “They were mostly all lieutenants, along with three captains.” One was Captain Thomas J.J. “Jack” Christian, great-great-grandson of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson. Soon thereafter, Captain Jack Bruce took command and Brannon became a flight leader. “I was fine with that, since those guys knew what was what and the rest of us didn’t.” These men, who had seen combat during the first months of the war, were able to spread their hard-won knowledge of the enemy to the green pilots who formed the rest of the unit. The pilots of the 67th flew as often as possible to become familiar with their new mounts.

On March 8, following the fall of the Bismarcks, the Japanese landed at Lae and Salamaua on the north coast of New Guinea. An attack by aircraft from Lexington and Yorktown on March 10 sank three transports and damaged several other ships, but by March 13 the Japanese were firmly in command of the region and soon moved A6Ms of the Tainan Kōkūtai (Naval Air Group), part of the 25th Air Flotilla, to the airfield at Lae to commence attacks against Port Moresby on the south coast of the big island preparatory to an invasion.

The Japanese made their next move on March 13, when an invasion flotilla departed Rabaul for Buka, an island off northern Bougainville at the northern end of the Solomons Archipelago. An Imperial Navy landing force swiftly occupied the island; work began shortly thereafter on an emergency airstrip that would later evolve into a major air base, while plans were made for the further development of both Buka and Bougainville.

In Washington on March 14, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) decided to wage the Pacific War with forces already deployed, while building up a much larger combat force in the United Kingdom for service against Germany and her Axis partners in Europe and North Africa.

King and MacArthur were forced to put their plans for an offensive on hold in mid-April, when U.S. intelligence discovered the Japanese plan to reinforce their army in New Guinea and undertake an invasion of Port Moresby, while also moving southeast into the Solomons Islands.

On May 3, the Japanese landed on Tulagi in the southern Solomons, site of a world-class fleet anchorage. In the Imperial Navy’s plans, Tulagi was slated for use as an advance seaplane base from which Allied bases in the New Hebrides could be reconnoitered and harassed.

At 0845 hours on May 4, 28 SBD-3 dive bombers and 12 TBD-1 torpedo bombers from Yorktown’s Air Group 5 attacked the Japanese invasion flotilla and shore facilities at Tulagi. One destroyer, one small cargo ship, and four landing craft were sunk, and an auxiliary cruiser was damaged and forced aground. The escorting VF-42 Wildcat pilots shot down two of the new A6M2-N seaplane fighters, then strafed the many H6K flying boats and six A6M2-Ns moored in the harbor.

Three SBDs and two F4Fs took hits and made forced landings on nearby Guadalcanal, becoming the first Americans to set foot on that island. They were rescued by Solomon Islanders working for coastwatcher Martin Dempsey, and were picked up by a Catalina flying boat that flew in from New Caledonia.

Following the strategic victory at the Battle of Coral Sea, new Allied forces arrived in the South Pacific. On May 10, Navy Seabee construction engineers commenced work on an advance airstrip at Upolo, in the French Wallis Islands. On May 11, VMF-212's 21 Wildcats arrived at New Caledonia aboard the carriers Hornet (CV-8) and Enterprise. May 13 saw Army ground forces arrive in Fiji to take over defense of the islands from the Royal New Zealand Army. On May 17, the 68th Fighter Squadron at Tongatabubegan a transition from their P-400s to P-40E fighters. On May 26, an advance detachment of VMF-212 Wildcats flew from New Caledonia, to Vila Field, Efate.

On May 28, Pacific Area commander Admiral Chester Nimitz proposed that the U.S. 1st Marine Raider Battalion should seize Tulagi Island as a first step in the projected Allied Pacific War offensive.

Within a matter of days after Coral Sea, intelligence revealed the Imperial Navy was set to make a move in the Central Pacific that - if successful - would gain all of Admiral Yamamoto’s original goals in his plan for the Pacific War. This quickly led to the Battle of Midway on June 4-5, in which the Japanese Combined Fleet lost the heart of its carrier striking force.

After five and a half months’ garrison duty on Midway, Marion Carl and his fellow fighter pilots, along with the crews of Scouting-241 (VMSB-241) which had been on the island since April, entered combat. By the second day of the battle, both units had suffered losses that left them incapable of engaging in further combat, while Carl had demonstrated his ability as a fighter pilot by shooting down a Zero.

The U.S. Navy had, within a space of 30 days, brought the heretofore unstoppable Japanese offensive to a stop. King saw Midway as his moment to gain official support and approval for his planned offensive. While others in the top naval circles counseled delay until the “new navy” then under construction was ready to enter combat the next year, pointing to the fact that the Imperial Navy was still a major threat to the U.S. Navy as it then existed in the Pacific, King was adamant in his desire to take the offensive.

Before further actions could be taken, military politics had to be dealt with. King had an ally whose desire for action in the Pacific was equal to his own. In the wake of the victory at Midway, General Douglas MacArthur, the Allied supreme commander in the South West Pacific Area that included Rabaul, the Bismarcks and the Solomons, proposed a lightning offensive to retake Rabaul, moving from New Guinea.

His and King’s competing proposals were resolved by consultation in mid-June between Admiral King and Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, which created a three-task plan: Task One was the capture of Tulagi in the Solomons, which the Japanese had turned into an advanced air base capable of interdicting Allied convoys from the United States to Australia; Task Two was an advance by MacArthur’s forces along the northern New Guinea coast; Task Three was the capture of Rabaul, which was foreseen as happening by late 1943.

MacArthur’s protests that he should command were to no avail; George C. Marshall was no “MacArthur Man,” having seen the general in action over the previous 20 years, and King held similar views. The two cordially changed the map, shifting the boundary between the Southwest Pacific and Pacific Ocean areas 360 miles west as of August 1, 1942; the Solomon Islands as far north as Bougainville, the New Hebrides and Fiji were then sub-divided and assigned to the new South Pacific Theater, controlled by the U.S. Navy. MacArthur received orders to place his New Guinea forces in support of the coming Solomons operation.

The Joint Chiefs approved Task One on July 2, 1942. Operation Huddle would see the invasion and occupation of Santa Cruz Island in the southern Solomons, to be followed by Operation Pestilence which would take the Japanese base at Tulagi and the neighboring Florida Island. The word “Guadalcanal” did not appear anywhere in the plans the Joint Chiefs approved.

On July 8, 1942, all previous plans were cast aside when the photo technicians of the USAAF’s 14th Reconnaissance Squadron at Espiritu Santo saw the prints that emerged in the darkroom from the film taken that day by a B-17 sent to photograph Tulagi and the surrounding islands in preparation for Operation Pestilence.

A major Japanese airfield capable of supporting long range bombers was under construction and nearing completion at Lunga Point on the large island of Guadalcanal across Sealark Channel from Tulagi. Such an airfield would allow the Imperial Naval Air Force to interdict and perhaps cut the crucial Allied supply line that passed through the Coral Sea to Australia.

In a matter of 72 hours, Operation Watchtower was hurriedly presented to the Joint Chiefs. The objective now was to land the First Marine Division on Guadalcanal and take the airfield before it could be completed.

Time was of the essence.

Thus began the Solomons Campaign, which would become the bloodiest battle the U.S. Navy ever fought.

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