|
This article
needs to be read in conjunction with these two maps |
|
PNG
Theatre of operations |
Pacific Theatre of
Operations |
Introduction
World War II was the largest and most
violent armed conflict in the history of mankind. However, the half
century that now separates us from that conflict has exacted its toll on
our collective knowledge. While World War II continues to absorb the
interest of military scholars and historians, as well as its veterans, a
generation of Americans has grown to maturity largely unaware of the
political, social, and military implications of a war that, more than
any other, united us as a people with a common purpose.
Highly relevant today, World War II
has much to teach us, not only about the profession of arms, but also
about military preparedness, global strategy, and combined operations in
the coalition war against fascism. During the next several years, the
U.S. Army will participate in the nation's 50th anniversary
commemoration of World War II. The commemoration will include the
publication of various materials to help educate Americans about that
war. The works produced will provide great opportunities to learn about
and renew pride in an Army that fought so magnificently in what has been
called "the mighty endeavor."
World War II was waged on land, on
sea, and in the air over several diverse theaters of operation for
approximately six years. The following essay is one of a series of
campaign studies highlighting those struggles that, with their
accompanying suggestions for further reading, are designed to introduce
you to one of the Army's significant military feats from that war.
This brochure was prepared in the U.S.
Army Center of Military History by Edward J. Drea. I hope this absorbing
account of that period will enhance your appreciation of American
achievements during World War II.
|
GORDON R. SULLIVAN |
|
General, United States Army
|
|
Chief of Staff
|
New Guinea
24 January 1943-31 December 1944
The campaign on New Guinea is all but
forgotten except by those who served there. Battles with names like
Tarawa, Saipan, and Iwo Jima overshadow it. Yet Allied operations in New
Guinea were essential to the U.S. Navy's drive across the Central
Pacific and to the U.S. Army's liberation of the Philippine Islands from
Japanese occupation. The remorseless Allied advance along the northern
New Guinea coastline toward the Philippines forced the Japanese to
divert precious ships, planes, and men who might otherwise have
reinforced their crumbling Central Pacific front.
New Guinea is the second largest
island in the world. Its north coastline extends nearly 1,600 miles from
twelve degrees south latitude to just south of the equator. A major
mountain range cuts across the island's center from the eastern end of
New Guinea to Geelvink Bay on the west and makes passage overland
through the jungled mountains by large units nearly impossible. The lee
of the mountainous spine, around the Port Moresby area, is wet from
January to April but otherwise dry. On the windward side, scene of most
of the ground fighting during 1942-1945, rainfall runs as high as 300
inches per year. As one veteran recalled, "It rains daily for nine
months and then the monsoon starts."
Disease thrived on New Guinea. Malaria
was the greatest debilitator, but dengue fever, dysentery, scrub
typhus,
and a host of other tropical sicknesses awaited unwary soldiers in the
jungle. Scattered, tiny coastal settlements dotted the flat malarial
north coastline, but inland the lush tropical jungle swallowed men and
equipment.
The terrain was a commander's
nightmare because it fragmented the deployment of large formations. On
the north shore a tangled morass of large mangrove swamps slowed
overland movement.
Monsoon rains of eight or ten inches a day
turned
torpid streams into impassable rivers. There were no roads or railways,
and supply lines were often native tracks, usually a dirt trail a yard
or so wide tramped out over the centuries through the jungle growth.
Downpours quickly dissolved such footpaths into calf-deep mud that
reduced soldiers to exhausted automatons stumbling over the glue-like
ground. Fed by the frequent downpours, the lush rain-forest jungle
afforded excellent concealment to stubborn defenders and made
coordinated overland envelopments nearly impossible. Infantrymen
carrying sixty pounds of weapons, equipment, and pack staggered along in
temperatures reaching the mid-90s with humidity levels to match. Thus
the U.S. Army faced a determined Japanese foe on a battleground riddled
with disease and whose terrain made a mockery of orthodox military
deployments.
Strategic Setting
In January 1943 the Allied and the
Japanese forces facing each other on New Guinea were like two battered
heavyweights. Round one had gone to the Americans and Australians who
had ejected the Japanese from Papua, New Guinea. After three months of
unimaginative frontal attacks had overcome a well-entrenched foe,
General Douglas MacArthur, the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA) commander,
had his airstrip and staging base at Buna on the north coast. It was
expensive real estate. About 13,000 Japanese troops perished during the
terrible fighting, but Allied casualties were also heavy; 8,500 men fell
in battle (5,698 of them Australians) and 27,000 cases of malaria were
reported, mainly because of shortages of medical supplies. Besides
ruining the Australian 7th and U.S. 32d Infantry Divisions, the campaign
had severely taxed the Australian 5th and U.S. 41st Infantry Divisions.
The exhausted Americans needed six months to reconstitute before their
next operation. Australian ground forces, despite heavier losses, became
the front line of defense against the Japanese who, though bloodied,
were ready for round two.
To block the Allied counteroffensives
on New Guinea and in the Solomons, Tokyo dispatched thousands of
reinforcements to its great bastion at Rabaul, New Britain. On 9
November 1942, Eighth Area Army, commanded by Lt. Gen. Hitoshi
Imamura, opened on Rabaul. Eighteenth Army, commanded by Lt. Gen.
Hatazo Adachi, was organized the same day and subordinated to Eighth
Area Army. Adachi took charge of operations on New Guinea. Despite
their defeat at Buna and the heavy losses in the continuing struggle for
Guadalcanal, in January 1943 Japan still held the preponderant air,
naval, and ground strength in the Southwest Pacific and retained the
strategic initiative in New Guinea. With these advantages, they planned
to strike again for Port Moresby.
Japanese construction battalions had
transformed the prewar airfield and harbor at Lae, North East New
Guinea, into a major air base and anchorage on the Huon Gulf. Japanese
infantrymen could land at the stronghold and then sortie under air cover
to seize a forward air base at Wau, located in the malarious Bulolo
Valley about 150 miles west-northwest of Buna. With Wau in hand, the
Japanese could lunge forward again toward Moresby protected by an aerial
umbrella. Isolated and weakly defended, the Australian airstrip at Wau
seemed ripe for Eighteenth Army's picking.
In January 1943 Eighth Area Army ordered
reinforcements to Lae. Forewarned of the impending convoy by decrypted
Japanese naval messages, MacArthur's air chief, Lt. Gen. George C.
Kenney, commander of Allied Air Forces and U.S. Fifth Air Force, sent
repeated air attacks against the enemy ships. Allied pilots sank two
troop transports, damaged another, and killed 600 Japanese soldiers.
Only one-third of the intended Japanese reinforcements reached Lae, and
these survivors salvaged only half of their equipment. Without
reinforcements, the desperate attack on Wau failed. The defeated
Japanese remnants fell back into the jungle, slowly giving ground toward
Lae.
Repulsed at Wau and pressed by the
Australians, Japanese forces on New Guinea urgently needed
reinforcements. On 19 February 1943, U.S. Navy cryptanalysts handed
MacArthur solid intelligence that the enemy was planning another major
transport to Lae in early March. Kenney threw every available aircraft
into a three-day struggle from 2 to 5 March, known as the Battle of the
Bismarck Sea. Eight transports and four destroyers were lost in all. Of
the 51st Division's 6,912 troops, about 3,900 survived, but only
1,000 soaked, oil-stained, and dispirited officers and men reached Lae.
Kenney's destruction of the 51st Division condemned the Japanese
to the strategic defensive on New Guinea.
From February to June 1943 the
battleground in eastern New Guinea lapsed into a stalemate as the
opponents reinforced and replaced earlier losses. Shipping shortages
created logistics and transportation bottlenecks for both sides. The Imperial
Navy could not make good its heavy losses in naval planes and pilots
so the Japanese Army Air Force was gradually taking control of
air bases and operations in New Guinea. For the Allies, Europe also had
first priority, for long-range heavy bombers and fighters were needed in
North Africa. Kenney found himself trying to justify additional scarce
warplanes from Washington for New Guinea. Carrier-based aircraft in the
Pacific remained firmly under U.S. Navy control, as did the greater part
of the Pacific Fleet. MacArthur was limited to cruisers, destroyers, and
submarines. He lacked transports, cargo vessels, and landing craft as
well as the specialized crews to man them. Neither side had the
resources in early 1943 to force a decisive victory, and the campaign
seemed likely to continue as a war of attrition.
Operations
At SWPA General Headquarters
MacArthur's staff was planning the timetable for his triumphant return
to the Philippines. Code-named RENO, it became the basis for operations
against Japan from February 1943 through August 1944. During that time,
RENO underwent five modifications to keep pace with changing operational
and strategic requirements. RENO I envisioned leapfrogging past Japanese
strongholds in New Guinea and using paratroopers to seize key bases en
route to Mindanao in the southern Philippines. The Japanese roadblock to
MacArthur's scheme was the so-called Bismarck Barrier, that is, New
Britain and its naval and air bases at Rabaul in combination with the
series of Japanese air enclaves dispersed along the northern New Guinea
coastline.
The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff
directive of 28 March 1943 described Southwest Pacific objectives as a
line running across the straits between Finschafen, New Guinea, and New
Britain. They ordered MacArthur to establish air bases on Woodlark and
Kiriwina Islands; to seize the Huon Peninsula and Madang; and to occupy
western New Britain. Meantime, under Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr.,
Commander in Chief, South Pacific Area, the U.S. Navy with Army and
Marine troops would clear the Solomons to southern Bougainville. These
operations were seen as preparatory for the ultimate seizure of Rabaul.
From these decisions grew the
CARTWHEEL operation, a joint Southwest and South Pacific undertaking
that originally envisioned thirteen amphibious operations, over six
months, culminating in the capture of Rabaul. It began the night of
29-30 June when Halsey invaded New Georgia, Solomon Islands, and
MacArthur struck at Nassau Bay. The following day two U.S, Army separate
regiments, the 112th Cavalry and the 158th Infantry, made unopposed
landings at Woodlark and Kiriwina respectively.
For CARTWHEEL MacArthur created ALAMO
Force, an independent operational command that was in reality almost
identical to Southwest Pacific's newly created U.S. Sixth Army. By
placing ALAMO Force directly under General Headquarters, MacArthur
removed American troops engaged in tactical operations from the control
of Allied Land Forces commanded by the Australian General Sir Thomas
Blamey. MacArthur personally selected Lt. Gen. Walter Krueger to command
Sixth Army. Another American, Vice Adm. Arthur S. Carpender, commanded
Allied Naval Forces which included the U.S. Seventh Fleet. His
aggressive assistant was Rear Adm. Daniel E. Barbey, who commanded VII
Amphibious Force, the ships that would carry the ground forces, their
equipment, and supplies forward into battle against the Japanese during
CARTWHEEL.
The limited sixty-mile range of the
boats of the 2d Engineer Special Brigade, selected to transport the
troops and equipment, dictated that the 1st Battalion, 162d Infantry,
land in Nassau Bay. On 30 June a makeshift fleet of 3 PT boats; 29
landing craft vehicles, personnel (LCVP), and 1 landing craft,
mechanized (LCV); and 2 captured Japanese barges carried the battalion
to its objective. Although the troops landed without enemy opposition,
SWPA had much to learn about amphibious operations. Pounding surf had
beached or wrecked eighteen of the precious landing craft. Small bands
of enemy soldiers appeared the following day, but after confused
nighttime skirmishes in a tropical downpour the outnumbered Japanese
fled into the concealment of the thick jungle. They left behind some 50
of their dead comrades as well as 18 dead and 27 wounded Americans.
About forty miles from Lae, Nassau Bay
became a staging base that threatened Japanese defenders at Salamaua, a
village midway between the two points that guarded the overland approach
to Lae. As the 162d Regiment, 41st Division, pushed slowly north along
the coast from Nassau Bay, Adachi had to siphon troops from Lae to
protect Salamaua. This left his already understrength Lae garrison
vulnerable to a flanking attack by sea and air.
An Allied pincer was slowly closing on
Lae. While the Americans pushed along the coast, Australian troops
advanced on a western axis from Wau through the Markham Valley. The
mainstay of the Japanese defense was a lone infantry regiment. In such
rugged jungled terrain, however, a few determined men could slow down a
division. Numerous streams cut the coastline into a swampy, muddy bog
that impeded the American push. The few jungle trails capable of bearing
basic logistic support made the direction of the Australian overland
thrust predictable. Japanese infantrymen dug in along key terrain
dominating the obvious approaches. A grueling 75-day ordeal followed in
the jungle wilds under appalling conditions. Patrol-size probes lurching
through overgrown and tangled vegetation became the principal maneuver
elements. Ambush and sudden death awaited the careless or unlucky
because it was often impossible to see more than a few feet into the
undergrowth. In the Southwest Pacific, small arms claimed 32 percent of
Americans killed in action during the war and artillery 17 percent—a
marked contrast to the overall rates in the European theater of 19.7 and
57.5 percent respectively. In part the aberration stemmed from the
relative paucity of Japanese artillery compared to their Axis allies; in
part it reflects the face-to-face combat characteristic of jungle
fighting.
American losses from the end of June
until 12 September, when Salamaua fell, were 81 killed and 396 wounded
while the Australian 15th Brigade suffered 112 killed, 346 wounded, and
12 missing. Japanese losses surpassed 1,000 men. The battle casualties
tell only part of the struggle fought out against nature in the jungle
wilds. Men on both sides collapsed, exhausted from the debilitating
tropical heat and humidity; soldiers shook violently from malarial
chills or from a drenching in tropical downpours. Others simply went
mad. The neuropsychiatric rate for American soldiers was the highest in
the Southwest Pacific theater (43.94 per 1,000 men). The same monotonous
field ration—bully beef and biscuits for the Australians, C-rations
for the Americans—left soldiers undernourished and susceptible to the
uncountable tropical diseases that flourished in the warm, moist jungle.
Japanese losses in their prolonged
defense of Salamaua had left Lae exposed to an Allied envelopment. For
his part, General Adachi expected the newly organized Fourth Air Army
at Wewak to protect Lae's flanks against possible Allied airborne or
seaborne assaults. As for MacArthur, the continuing shortage of ships
and aircraft in SWPA meant that an envelopment of Lae required a total
effort and all available resources. He could not, however, take that
risk without local air superiority.
Faced with Japanese air power on two
fronts—Rabaul and now Wewak—Kenney concentrated all his might
against the latter. Wewak, however, lay beyond the effective range of
Allied fighters, and ordering unescorted heavy bombers to make the
attack risked unacceptable losses. Instead Kenney built an advance
secret air base sixty miles southeast of Lae from where his fighters
could reach Wewak. He planned the raid on the basis of compromised Japanese
Army Air Force air-ground codes which revealed that the enemy had
concentrated ten flying regiments at Wewak. On 17 August 1943, Kenney's
airmen struck Wewak and left 100 parked airplanes destroyed on taxiways
or damaged in their earthen revetments. A follow-up strike the next
morning wrecked 28 more Japanese
planes. In just two days Fourth Air
Army lost three-quarters of its aircraft. Temporarily crippled, it
was unable to oppose the first coordinated airborne and amphibious
assault in the Pacific that occurred two weeks later.
More than forty ships manned by 3,200
sailors of Barbey's VII Amphibious Force, with the 2d Engineer Special
Brigade attached, carried the Australian 9th Division to landing areas
eighteen miles east of Lae. A two-echelon landing spread over 4 to 6
September placed some 7,800 Australian troops in the rear of the
Japanese defenses. Meanwhile, unchallenged by Japanese air power, on 5
September 96 C-47 transports, escorted by another 200 fighters and
bombers, ferried the 503d Parachute Infantry Regiment to Nadzab, about
twenty miles west of Lae. In a spectacular display, hundreds of American
paratroopers emptied the C-47s within five minutes. They met no
opposition on the ground and quickly secured the landing zone. Within
two days C-47s were flying troops from the Australian 7th Division into
the airhead. The sea-air envelopment threatened to cut off the 51st
Division at Lae from the rest of Eighteenth Army. Adachi ordered
the division to withdraw to Finschafen fifty miles east of Lae. The
luckless Japanese had to detour around the Australians blocking the
coastal road and into rugged, 12,000-foot-high mountains to reach the
north coast. About 8,000 officers and men trekked into the foreboding
mountains. More than 2,000 Japanese never came
out, most victims of
starvation.
Coupled with the loss of the Central
Solomons and the Aleutians, this latest reversal convinced Tokyo that
its forces were dangerously overextended. Imperial Headquarters therefore
established a revised main perimeter line from western New Guinea
through the Carolinas to the Mariana's. Although Rabaul and eastern New
Guinea were now expendable, Japanese forces there were ordered to delay
MacArthur's advance as long as possible.
Meanwhile Allied strategy also
underwent a major shift. At the QUADRANT Conference held during August
1943 in Quebec, Canada, the Combined Chiefs of Staff approved the Joint
Chiefs' recommendation to bypass rather than to capture Rabaul. Now
MacArthur's task became the neutralization of the Japanese on New Guinea
as far west as Wewak. QUADRANT'S decisions gave priority to the U.S.
Navy's drive across the Central Pacific and naturally disappointed
MacArthur, who had argued for the seizure of Rabaul. The SWPA commander
received official notification of the Combined Chiefs' decisions just
five days before his attack on Finschafen.
Finschafen was the strongpoint that
guarded the western side of the sixty-mile-wide straits separating New
Guinea and New Britain. About 3,000 Japanese construction and engineer
troops defended from fortified Satelberg Ridge. This high ground
overlooked the entire coastline about Finschafen and blocked any further
ground push northward toward Sio. The Japanese perched on the
jungle-covered ridgeline waiting for the inevitable Allied landing.
Australian troops arrived at Finschafen
on 22 September. They quickly cleared the narrow coastal enclave
encompassing the port and then started up the Satelberg ridgeline. The
fighting deteriorated into a series of deadly small unit combats against
a well-entrenched and fanatically stubborn opponent. By the end of
September 2,400 more men from the 20th Division had reinforced
the battle-depleted engineers.
Two weeks later the Japanese launched
a combined ground and amphibious counterattack. Australian infantrymen
beat back the ground attack, but in the early morning darkness of 17
October one barge full of Japanese troops got ashore on the Allied
beachhead. Pvt. Nathan Van Noy, Jr., of the 532d Engineer Boat and Shore
Regiment, although seriously wounded by enemy grenades, sprayed the
advancing Japanese with .50-caliber machine-gun fire. Van Noy's body was
later found with his finger still on the trigger, his last round of
ammunition fired, and thirty slain Japanese sprawled in front of his
position. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
The Japanese counterattack was broken,
but they fought on for two more months. Australians of the 9th Division
attacked the ridgeline again and again, isolating and destroying pockets
of Japanese resistance one at a time. At least 5,500 Japanese perished,
but they held their ground until late November. MacArthur found himself
bogged down at Finschafen, where he had expected a walkover.
While the Australians were bearing the
majority of the fighting from Nassau Bay to Finschafen, General Krueger
was training his growing number of American divisions to fight as
amphibious task forces. Admiral Barbey had responsibility for the
amphibious portion of the training designed to take full advantage of
Southwest Pacific's domination of the air and sea by moving infantrymen
over water to strike at their objectives. The seizure of undefended
Woodlark and Kiriwina Islands in the southern Solomon Sea about 180
miles east of Buna during June 1943 had served as dress rehearsals for
American GHQ planners as well as for lower echelon commanders of combat
and service support units.
Southwest Pacific Area had expanded
dramatically. From two infantry divisions, the 32d and 41st, in December
1942, the American contingent numbered five divisions (1st Cavalry, 6th,
24th, 32d, and 41st) by 31 January 1944. MacArthur also had three
regimental combat teams (formed by attaching a field artillery battalion
to the 503d Parachute Infantry, 112th Cavalry, and 158th Infantry
Regiments), three engineer special brigades, and five Australian
infantry divisions. Three more U.S. infantry divisions—the 31st, 33d,
and 43d—were on the way. A combination of organized mosquito control,
scientific treatment, and improved malaria discipline drummed into the
GIs during training decreased outbreaks of the epidemic six fold and
thus improved combat effectiveness. Kenney had about 1,000 combat
aircraft at his command. The new Seventh Fleet commander, Vice Adm.
Thomas C. Kinkaid, had about the same number of warships as his
predecessor, but Barbey's amphibious fleet had grown with transports,
cargo vessels, and landing craft. Together with Admiral Halsey's South
Pacific force, the Allied commands enjoyed overwhelming numerical
superiority in air and naval strength. They also held the strategic and
tactical initiative and could select the times and places for
forthcoming operations that were most advantageous to the Allied cause.
The Japanese, in contrast, could not
replace their losses in aircraft, shipping, and skilled manpower.
Japan's air losses on the New Guinea and Solomons fronts perhaps
surpassed 3,000 aircraft. On the ground, Eighteenth Army had
suffered around 35,000 casualties. Of the three divisions in eastern New
Guinea—the 20th, 41st, and 51st—only the 41st was
near full strength. Airfield, shipping, engineer construction, and
assorted service units brought Japanese strength in the eastern half of
the island to around 60,000 troops. A dangerous 350-mile gap separated
maneuver elements of the 41st Division at Wewak from those of the
36th Division at Sarmi, Netherlands New Guinea. The 36th was
part of a frenetic Japanese effort to strengthen the western half of the
island through the construction of a web of interlocking airdromes.
Until the buildup in the west was completed, Imamura and Adachi were
locked in a desperate battle of attrition against a foe with a crushing
superiority in resources.
Paradoxically, the jungle that had
claimed so many Japanese lives now sheltered them from a concentrated
Allied ground offensive. The jungle rendered large unit maneuver
impossible so the Allies could not bring their overwhelming firepower,
manpower, and material resources to bear en masse against a selected
Japanese stronghold. To sustain an infantry regiment in combat devoured
the resources of two division equivalents. Every Allied operation
depended on an extensive logistics infrastructure, painstakingly
scratched out of the wilds, that stretched from engineers developing a
coastal enclave and port back through the ships that were the umbilical
cord between the advance base and the staging areas. Few soldiers
actually fought the Japanese. The majority, perhaps seven of every
eight, served in support roles— unloading ships, building roads,
hauling supplies, preventing malaria, constructing airfields and bases,
and so forth.
How best to use the favorable military
balance was a question whose answer depended on where MacArthur decided
to go next. CARTWHEEL had scheduled landings by U.S. Marine and U.S.
Army units at Cape Gloucester and Gasmata on the New Britain coasts as
part of the re-conquest of Rabaul. The Quebec decisions, however, meant
that MacArthur's staff had to modify the original plan.
MacArthur's intermediate objective was
Madang, about halfway between Finschafen and Wewak. To strike Madang,
any Allied amphibious force had to cross the straits separating New
Guinea from New Britain. To protect the Allies' flank during the Madang
and Cape Gloucester operations, Southwest Pacific headquarters also
ordered the seizure of an air and PT base on New Britain. Thus, on 15
December 1943, MacArthur's forces crossed the straits and invaded Arawe
on the western tip of New Britain. The 112th Cavalry Regiment tried to
surprise the enemy at Arawe by a predawn attack in rubber rafts.
Although Japanese gunners shot the flimsy boats to pieces and repulsed
this diversionary assault, the 112th's main force did get ashore by more
conventional means. After suffering through numerous Japanese air raids,
the 112th repulsed a Japanese counterattack at the end of the month and
eventually pushed the enemy away from its perimeter. Thereafter the
cavalrymen, despite the swampy ground and thick mud fed by almost
continuous tropical rains, successfully performed every task that the
limited nature of their mission allowed. At Cape Gloucester on the north
side of New Britain, the 1st Marine Division found itself in similar
circumstances, but on a larger scale. Mud, unbroken swamp, and dense
jungle made an overland advance toward Rabaul impossible. Indeed the
increasing tempo of MacArthur's advance rendered it unnecessary.
On New Guinea Australian troops of the
7th Division were ahead of schedule, advancing rapidly through the Ramu
Valley on the south side of the Finisterre Range. On the Huon Peninsula
the commonwealth's 9th Division had secured Finschafen in early December
and was moving along the coastline north of the range. To exploit the
success at Finschafen, Sixth Army received orders on 17 December to
capture Saidor, thereby severing the Japanese line of retreat.
Barbey's VII Amphibious Fleet carried
the 126th Infantry Regimental Combat Team (RCT), 32d Division, from Finschafen
through the Dampier Straits 175 miles to Saidor. In contrast to the
confusion at Nassau Bay just six months earlier, the unopposed landing
at Saidor on 2 January 1944 was a model of precision. Troops and cargo
were unloaded in record time, and, at the cost of 6 battle casualties,
more than 6,700 troops and their supplies were ashore by evening.
MacArthur now had an intermediate staging base for his Madang operation,
control of both sides of the straits, and an enemy division trapped at
Sio between the Australian 9th Division's steady advance and the 126th
RCT's blocking position at Saidor.
Once again the Japanese found
themselves forced to flee into the rugged mountains in order to escape
encirclement. As they sidestepped inland around Saidor, the retreating
Japanese left a trail of abandoned equipment. On 15 January 1944, an
Australian patrol pushing through Sio after the fleeing enemy discovered
a half-buried trunk in a stream bed. It held the complete cipher library
of the Imperial Japanese Army's 20th Division. The find was
immediately returned to Central Bureau, MacArthur's Allied cryptanalytic
agency in Brisbane, Australia. Central Bureau used the captured code
books to solve the Japanese Army's main cipher system. This
intelligence windfall arrived exactly when MacArthur was most prepared
to take advantage of it.
In January 1944 MacArthur and his
staff were searching for ways to accelerate the final phases of the
campaign against Madang and complete the isolation of Rabaul. Around
this time, Fifth Air Force pilots consistently reported the absence of
any signs of Japanese activity on Los Negros, largest of the Admiralty
group which lay about 360 miles west of Rabaul. Kenney insisted that air
power had driven the Japanese from the island and recommended to
MacArthur that ground troops immediately seize the supposedly undefended
island with its valuable airstrips. Despite intelligence from decrypted
enemy communications which revealed that more than 4,000 Japanese were
defending the Admiralties, MacArthur approved Kenney's scheme. On five
days' notice, Sixth Army was ordered to land in the Admiralties. If the
troops encountered too much opposition, they would withdraw the same
day.
On 29 February 1944, a
reconnaissance-in-force of about 1,000 officers and men from the
reinforced 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, landed on Los
Negros. The initial landings caught the Japanese off guard, facing the
opposite direction. But the Japanese fought back with a fury; vicious
night fighting typified the next five days. Krueger threw sufficient
reinforcements into the battle to tip the balance in the cavalrymen's
favor. After three days of piecemeal attacks, the Japanese struck hard
on the night of 3-4 March and nearly succeeded in breaking the
cavalrymen's lines. During this action Sgt. Troy A. McGill and his
eight-man squad withstood repeated attacks. When all but McGill and
another man had been killed or wounded, McGill ordered the survivor to
the rear, fired his rifle at the advancing Japanese until it jammed,
then fought them in front of the position, using the rifle as a club
until he was killed. His actions earned him a posthumous Medal of Honor.
MacArthur's luck and daring, plus the courage of a handful of cavalrymen
like Sergeant McGill, had won an impressive victory.
Capture of the Admiralties isolated
Rabaul and gave MacArthur a forward air base that extended his fighter
range past Wewak. Seizing the Admiralties two months ahead of schedule
also led the Joint Chiefs to reevaluate Pacific strategy. MacArthur sent
his chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Richard K. Sutherland, to Washington to
brief an operation remarkable in scope, daring in execution, and
promising to cut months off the Southwest Pacific advance. This was the
revised RENO IV plan to jump an unprecedented 400 miles up the New
Guinea coastline to capture the major Japanese air and supply base at
Hollandia. Code-named RECKLESS, the Hollandia operation was a
masterpiece of sound planning that took full advantage of extremely
accurate intelligence obtained from reading Japanese codes. For
MacArthur it proved the decisive operation on New Guinea and was the
turning point in his war against the Japanese.
When Allied code-breakers lifted the
veil shrouding Japanese defenses, it became evident that MacArthur's
next landing, scheduled for 26 April in Hansa Bay, midway between Madang
and Wewak, could expect strong ground opposition. Moreover Japanese
aerial reinforcements were filling up the major air base complex at
Hollandia from where they would support the land defense of Madang.
Conversely, Hollandia's land defenses were almost nonexistent. The soft
Japanese center remained vulnerable to an Allied landing.
JCS approval of RECKLESS did not
automatically ensure success of execution. MacArthur, for instance,
needed carrier air support because Hollandia was far beyond the range of
his land-based fighter aircraft. The U.S. Navy, busily preparing for its
assault of the Marianas, could provide three days of carrier support and
no more. General Headquarters planners then decided to seize Aitape,
about 140 miles east of Hollandia. Aitape's airstrips could provide
land-based fighter support to the ground troops at Hollandia after the
carriers departed. The operation now evolved into a Herculean effort by
217 ships to transport safely 80,000 men, their equipment, and supplies
1,000 miles to conduct three separate amphibious landings deep in the
enemy rear area. The Japanese fleet was no longer a threat, having
withdrawn from Rabaul to the safety of the Philippines. Control of the
skies along the invasion route, however, was the prerequisite to
success.
By late March, Kenney knew from
deciphered Japanese communications that about 350 enemy warplanes were
concentrated near Hollandia where they believed themselves safely beyond
the range of Allied air strikes. Employing new model P-38s whose
extended range made them ideal as escorts, Kenney sent sixty B-24 heavy
bombers against Hollandia on 30 March. Follow-up raids demolished nearly
all the operational Japanese aircraft at Hollandia on the ground. Never
again would the enemy contest air superiority over New Guinea.
For MacArthur to bag all of Eighteenth
Army, it was imperative that Adachi continue to believe that
MacArthur's next blow was aimed at the Madang-Hansa area. A
well-designed deception effort fed General Adachi and his staff a steady
diet of false information about an Allied landing in Hansa Bay that the
Japanese were predisposed to believe. The deception was so successful
that on 22 April the 24th and 41st Divisions, led by Lt. Gen. Robert L.
Eichelberger, commander of I Corps and the RECKLESS Task Force, landed
unopposed twenty-five miles apart at Hollandia. The 163d Regimental
Combat Team simultaneously waded ashore against no opposition at Aitape.
In one swoop MacArthur had split the Japanese defenses on New Guinea in
half, isolating Eighteenth Army in eastern New Guinea.
Once ashore, the 24th and 41st
Divisions, moving east and west respectively, conducted a pincer
movement to encircle Hollandia's three airfields. The maze of jungle
trails, rain-swollen streams, marshy lowlands, and numerous hills and
defiles proved a harsher opponent than the Japanese. Although there were
7,600 enemy near Hollandia, most were assigned to service, airfield, and
communications units. Only one in ten carried a rifle. Surprised, badly
outnumbered, demoralized, and ill equipped for battle, the Japanese fled
into the jungle in hopes of reaching Sarmi, about 150 miles to the
northwest. On 26 April the pincers closed on the airdromes where GIs
discovered an aircraft graveyard of 340 wrecked planes that provided
silent testimony to the deadliness of Kenney's earlier air raids.
With the enemy disorganized and
confused, MacArthur's strategy was to capture additional forward
airfields from which to cover his further advance into Geelvink Bay and
thence the Vogelkop Peninsula. While his Sixth Army advanced rapidly
westward to exploit his Hollandia advantage by not allowing Japanese
defenders any respite, General Krueger simultaneously had to prevent
Adachi's Eighteenth Army from breaking through the Hollandia
encirclement. Just five days after the Hollandia/Aitape landings,
MacArthur ordered the 41st Division to leapfrog to Wakde Island and the
airstrips at Sarmi on the adjacent New Guinea coast by mid-May.
The 163d RCT landed unopposed in
Maffin Bay near Sarmi on 17 May and prepared to take Wakde. The
following day four rifle companies of the 163d assaulted the tiny
island. Wakde proved a tough nut to crack. It took two days of nasty
squad-size fighting to pry almost 800 Japanese defenders from their
spider holes, coconut log bunkers, and coral caves. In sum, 40 American
soldiers were killed and 107 wounded to take Wakde. They counted 759
Japanese corpses and brought back 4 prisoners of war.
By 22 May Krueger had achieved his
objectives near Sarmi. He then enlarged the mission. To secure the high
ground overlooking Maffin Bay, Krueger ordered an overland advance
toward Sarmi village about eighteen miles west of the beachhead. The
American push by the 158th RCT ignited a sharp battle for a coral lump
overgrown with rain forest, forever after known as Lone Tree Hill.
Following several days of close-in fighting, correctly believing itself
outnumbered and overextended, the 158th pulled back toward its
beachhead.
Three separate Japanese forces
threatened the Americans. Units of the 223d and 224th Infantry
Regiments had checked the 158th RCT at Lone Tree Hill.
Simultaneously a second Japanese task force composed of the main force
of the 223d Infantry had infiltrated through the jungle and
worked its way behind the strung-out American advance. Yet a third enemy
force, a battalion of the 224th Infantry, was returning from the
direction of Hollandia, which placed it on the exposed eastern flank of
the American beachhead. Fortunately for the GIs, the Japanese could not
coordinate their offensive, but their piecemeal attacks alerted Sixth
Army to the potential danger of the situation.
Operations farther west required the
158th RCT and the 163d Infantry. To replace them, and to strengthen Army
forces, Krueger ordered the entire 6th Infantry Division to the Sarmi
region. On 14 June the 6th Division relieved the 158th and took up the
fight for Lone Tree Hill. After ten days of tough, close infantry
fighting, the now veteran 6th Division held Lone Tree Hill. Division
members counted nearly 1,000 Japanese bodies and sealed other enemy
soldiers forever in fortified caves. The division itself suffered about
700 battle and 500 non-battle casualties. With the high ground in
American possession, Maffin Bay became a major staging base for all or
parts of five different task forces—Biak, Noemfoor, Sansapor, and
Leyte, plus Luzon in the Philippines.
The 6th Division was slated to
spearhead the Sansapor landing, so Sixth Army headquarters ordered the
31st Infantry Division to Maffin Bay to replace it. From mid-July until
the end of August, the 31st conducted aggressive patrolling to keep the
Japanese at bay. It suffered about 240 battle casualties while killing
nearly 300 Japanese and capturing 14 others before it departed in early
September to invade Morotai. The 123d Regimental Combat Team, 33d
Division, arrived on 1 September to garrison the area. It remained until
January 1945 when a battalion combat team of the 93d Infantry Division
replaced it. Altogether the fighting near Sarmi cost U.S. Army units
approximately 2,100 battle casualties. Five times that number of
Japanese perished. Although the area later supported five invasions, the
push toward Sarmi was a significant distraction at a time when Krueger
had his hands full juggling four other major operations—Aitape,
Noemfoor, Sansapor, and Biak.
Biak Island dominates strategic
Geelvink Bay. Its coral airstrips, suitable for heavy bombers, were a
powerful lure to MacArthur and Kenney. On 27 May the 41st Division
(minus) arrived at Biak which lies only sixty miles south of the
equator. The first wave landed exactly as planned, but strong currents
carried subsequent units well west of their designated landing beaches.
There was, fortunately, only nominal enemy resistance because the
invasion caught the Japanese garrison flat-footed. Still, the steaming
equatorial heat, thick, twelve-foot-high scrub growth, rugged terrain,
and small parties of Japanese entrenched in caves cut into the face of a
200-foot-high cliff combined to slow the American advance along the
coastal track toward the vital airstrips. Nevertheless, by the following
morning, patrols of the 162d Infantry Regiment were within 200 yards of
the island's airfields. Then a violent Japanese counterattack drove them
back.
American troops now found themselves
under attack from the west and the targets of well-aimed fire from the
East Caves which dominated the coastal road. In constant danger of being
cut off, the 162d fought an unseen enemy until ordered to withdraw in
late afternoon. The next morning opened with another counterattack by
the 222d Infantry Regiment supported by half a dozen light tanks.
Sherman M4 tanks dispatched the inferior Japanese models while the 162d
broke the infantry attack. The Japanese, however, regrouped for another
attack. More importantly, the Americans finally recognized the
importance of clearing the high ground of Japanese.
In these circumstances, the 41st
Division commander, Maj. Gen. Horace H. Fuller, requested
reinforcements. Krueger dispatched the 163d RCT, which had accomplished
its mission at Wakde and was an organic regiment of the division. It
arrived on 1 June along with an admonition from Krueger to the division
commander to push the offensive vigorously. Meanwhile the 186th Infantry
Regiment had occupied the plateau overlooking the landing beaches and
was pushing westward. With the 162d along the coastal road pinning the
Japanese defenders, the 186th threatened the East Caves from the rear.
MacArthur, however, wanted the airfields immediately to support planned
landings farther west. His unrelenting pressure on Krueger translated,
in turn, to Krueger's demands that the 41st Division quickly take the
airfields. Thus the 186th Infantry was ordered from the high ground down
to the airfield on the coast. By moving into this basin, the regiment
placed itself under Japanese guns and suffered a continual pounding.
Because the enemy dominated the airdrome by fire, it remained unusable
by Allied warplanes.
MacArthur then dispatched General
Eichelberger to the island with orders to get the troops moving on the
airfield. Despite a shakeup of commanders, the fighting continued
unabated on Biak through June, and the island was not completely secured
until mid-July. The doomed garrison fought tenaciously, but to a
foregone conclusion that left more than 4,800 Japanese dead at the cost
of nearly 2,800 American casualties. Because Biak's airfields were not
taken as scheduled, MacArthur ordered the capture of the strips on tiny,
15-mile-long by 12-mile-wide, Noemfoor Island situated 60 miles west of
Biak.
Preceded by an intense naval
bombardment, more than 13,500 troops of the 158th Regimental Combat Team
(Reinforced) stormed ashore on Noemfoor on 2 July against desultory
resistance. One dazed Japanese prisoner announced that recently arrived
reinforcements had raised the garrison's strength to nearly 4,500 men.
The surprised task force commander immediately requested reinforcements
from Sixth Army. In truth no Japanese reinforcements had landed on
Noemfoor, but the reserve of 1,500 officers and men of the 503d
Parachute Infantry Regiment jumped onto the island using its runway as
their drop zone. High winds carried the parachutists to bone-cracking
landings in supply dumps, vehicle parks, and amidst wrecked Japanese
aircraft. No paratroopers fell to hostile fire, but 128 were injured in
the jump, including 59 serious fracture cases.
To the paratroopers also fell the
nasty job of mopping up the enemy on Noemfoor. "Mopping up"
meant searching for an elusive enemy and hoping you found him before he
found you. When the Japanese did surprise a platoon from the 503d, Sgt.
Ray E. Eubanks led his squad to their relief. Enemy fire wounded Eubanks
and smashed his rifle, yet he continued to lead his men forward and,
using his rifle as a club, killed four Japanese before he was again hit
and killed. His heroism earned a Medal of Honor. For the entire Noemfoor
campaign, the task force incurred a total of 411 battle casualties while
killing 1,759 Japanese and capturing another 889, mostly laborers. While
GIs secured Biak and Noemfoor, 500 miles to the east Eighteenth Army was
approaching Aitape.
After scant opposition following the
22 April landing at Aitape, Allied engineers had quickly converted the
existing Japanese airdromes into a major fighter base. By early June the
32d Division had established an outer defensive perimeter along the
western banks of the Driniumor River, about fifteen miles east of the
airstrips. Extensive intelligence reports warned the American commanders
of the coming offensive.
Privy to the unfolding enemy plan
thanks to code breaking, Krueger asked MacArthur for, and received,
additional infantry, artillery, and air reinforcements for Aitape,
bringing the total forces, either present or en route, to two and
two-thirds divisions. Eventually the 32d and 43d Infantry Divisions,
plus the 124th Infantry, 31st Division, and the 112th RCT as well as a
corps artillery section and tank destroyer battalion stiffened the
defense. On 28 June Krueger created XI Corps to oversee the growing
Allied force and appointed Maj. Gen. Charles P. Hall its commander. Hall
enclosed the vital airstrips with a semicircular, ten-mile, defensive
belt whose flanks rested on the sea. Along this line were more than
1,500 mutually protective log bunkers. Barbed wire obstacles and
entanglements girded the line. Within that perimeter stood the
equivalent of two divisions, including nine infantry battalions. Fifteen
miles east, however, only three infantry battalions and two
understrength cavalry squadrons defended the Driniumor River line. They
had little barbed wire, few bunkers, poor fields of fire, and miserable
jungle tracks for communication.
The Driniumor's twenty-foot-wide
stream was easily fordable, calf-deep water. Dense jungle and towering
trees on both sides of the wider riverbed effectively masked movement on
the opposite banks. American riflemen and machine gunners in foxholes,
pits, and a few bunkers along the river nervously awaited a Japanese
attack. Japanese prisoners of war told of a forthcoming assault.
American patrols had encountered stiffening Japanese resistance, and
numerous decrypted messages pointed to an imminent offensive. Rather
than wait for the Japanese attack, Hall ordered a textbook maneuver, a
reconnaissance-in-force along both enemy flanks, to commence on 10 July.
That morning an infantry battalion on
the north and a cavalry squadron on the south crossed the Driniumor and
probed cautiously eastward. The reconnaissance-in-force passed north and
south of Eighteenth Army's main assembly areas which were from
two to four miles inland from the coast. Only two infantry battalions
and a cavalry squadron remained to defend the Driniumor line.
That night ten thousand howling
Japanese troops burst across the shallow Driniumor and charged through
the center of the badly outnumbered and undermanned covering force. GIs
fired their machine guns and automatic rifles until the barrels turned
red hot, but the Japanese, eerily visible under the light of flares,
surged forward. American artillery fell in clusters on the Japanese
infantrymen, killing and maiming hundreds or crushing others beneath the
tall trees that snapped apart in the unceasing explosions. Japanese
numbers proved irresistible. Their breakthrough precipitated a
month-long battle of attrition in the New Guinea wilds.
GIs moved behind heavy artillery
support to close off pockets of Japanese resistance. The jungle
restricted movement so the hardest fighting fell to rifle squads or
platoons. Infantrymen fought a disconnected series of vicious actions
that appeared coherent only on headquarters' situation maps. Adachi's
men asked no quarter and received none. During July and August 1944,
nearly 10,000 Japanese perished. Almost 3,000 Americans fell along the
Driniumor, 440 of them killed. In terms of American casualties, it was
MacArthur's most costly campaign since Buna.
One measure of the severity of the
fighting was the award of four Medals of Honor, all posthumously, for
the campaign. Three soldiers received the decoration for self-sacrifice.
Pvt. Donald R. Lobaugh of the 127th Infantry, 32d Division, launched a
single-handed attack on a Japanese machine gun nest that saved his squad
but cost him his life. S. Sgt. Gerald L. Endl, 128th Infantry, 32d
Division, also single-handedly engaged the enemy at close range to save
seven wounded Americans. As Endl was carrying the last wounded man to
safety, a burst of Japanese machine gun fire killed him. Second Lt.
George W. G. Boyce, Jr., of Troop A, 112th RCT, threw himself on a hand
grenade to save his men. Second Lt. Dale Eldon Christensen, also of
Troop A, won the medal for his series of heroic actions and outstanding
leadership during the 112th's mid-July counterattack. Christensen was
later killed "mopping up" after a Japanese attack. Their valor
and the anonymous heroism of their comrades broke the back of Eighteenth
Army.
Hall's victory allowed Sixth Army's
other ongoing operations to proceed on or ahead of schedule and
validated MacArthur's concept of bypassing the enemy. Adachi's terrible
defeat left Eighteenth Army trapped between the Americans in the
west and the Australians in the east. In mid-December 1944 Australian
forces began a slow, determined drive from the east toward Wewak, which
finally fell on 10 May 1945. Australian losses were 451 killed, 1,163
wounded, and 3 missing. Some 7,200 Japanese fell. Adachithen kept his
approximately 13,000 survivors together in the hills and surrendered
only in September 1945. Adachi himself was tried at Rabaul for war
crimes, but beat the hangman by committing suicide in September 1947.
With the fighting along the Driniumor
flickering out, MacArthur's final assault landing on New Guinea took
place at Sansapor, a weak point between two known Japanese strongholds
on the Vogelkop Peninsula. There were about 15,000 Japanese troops of
the 35th Division at Manokwari, 120 miles east of Sansapor. Sixty
miles to Sansapor's west were 12,500 enemy soldiers at the major air
base complex of Sorong. Rather than fight on the enemy's terms,
MacArthur employed SWPA's well-tested amphibious capability to leapfrog
to Sansapor where, on 30 July, 7,300 men of the 6th Division conducted
an unopposed landing. Sixth Army had once again split the Japanese
forces in order to seize a coastal enclave that combat engineers quickly
transformed from jungle overgrowth into two airfields that provided
valuable support during MacArthur's invasion of Morotai in the Molucca
chain. Japan's 35th Division found itself isolated in western New
Guinea. For historical purposes, Sixth Army closed the Vogelkop
operation on 31 August 1944, although the 6th Division remained there
until it left for Luzon, Philippines, in January 1945. Units of the 93d
Infantry Division then took over the defense of the airfields.
Analysis
The New Guinea Campaign is really the
story of two Allied armies fighting two kinds of war—one of grinding
attrition and one of classic maneuver. During the attrition period, from
January 1943 for the maneuver phase of the campaign. During
attrition warfare characteristic of eastern New Guinea ground operations
through the seizure of the Saidor in January 1944, the Allies suffered
more than 24,000 battle casualties; about 70 percent (17,107)
were Australians. All this to advance the front line 300 miles in 20
months. But following the decisive Hollandia, Netherlands New Guinea,
envelopment in April 1944, losses were 9,500 battle casualties, mainly
American, to leap 1,300 miles in just 100 days and complete the
re-conquest of the great island.
The series of breathtaking landings,
often within a few weeks of one another, were the fruits of the
Australians' gallant effort in eastern New
Guinea. They fought the
Japanese to a standstill at Wau and then pushed a fanatical foe back to
the Huon Peninsula. This gave Sixth Army the time to train and to
prepare American forces for the amphibious assaults that MacArthur
envisioned. It also bought the time to bring the industrial capacity of
America to bear in the Southwest Pacific. Aircraft, ships, landing
craft, ammunition, medicine, equipment—in short, the sinews of war—gradually
found their way to MacArthur's fighting men. Still, without flexible
senior commanders who adapted their plans to wring full advantage of
Japanese weakness, the campaign could have degenerated into a
meat-grinder.
|