The Second World War (88 page)
As he had promised Churchill, Harris told his men that the Battle of Berlin would be the decisive battle of the war. But his campaign of attrition, night after night, wrecked the nerves of many of his own men as well as those of Berliners. His aircrews went back time and time again grasping at Harris’s mantra that it would shorten the war, and thus save many more lives in the end.
The battle went on from August 1943 until March 1944, yet 17,000 tons of high-explosive bombs and 16,000 tons of incendiaries failed to destroy the German capital. The city was far too spread out to be vulnerable to a firestorm, and its wide open spaces absorbed the bulk of the bombs. Harris had badly miscalculated, and was finally forced to back down. All his assurances to Churchill had proved empty. Bomber Command lost over a thousand aircraft, the majority to night-fighters. It had killed 9,390 civilians, but lost 2,690 of its own aircrew in the process.
Harris’s attempt to break German morale had failed. Yet he still refused to admit defeat and he certainly refused to recant. He despised government attempts to whitewash the bombing campaign by claiming that the RAF was going only for military targets and that civilian deaths were unavoidable. He simply regarded industrial workers and their housing as legitimate targets in a modern militarized state. He rejected any idea that they should be ‘
ashamed of area bombing
’.
The Americans, meanwhile, were becoming as chary and euphemistic as Harris’s critics in the air ministry. Although General Arnold privately acknowledged that they were bombing ‘blind’ in the majority of cases and going for area targets as a result, he refused to say it publicly. After all the claims of ‘pickle-barrel’ bombing, American bomb patterns in the autumn of 1943 were no better than those documented in the Butt Report. ‘
In periods of sustained
bad weather,’ as an air-power historian put it, ‘overall American accuracy was no better than–and often worse than–that of Bomber Command.’ USAAF commanders refused to believe the evidence when it was put to them.
Hitler ordered retaliatory raids on England’s historic cities–Bath, Canterbury, Exeter, Norwich and York. A press official in the Wilhelmstrasse announced that ‘
the Luftwaffe will go
for every building which is marked with three stars in Baedeker’. The name of the famous red-bound travel guide was then attached to these attacks, which became known as the Baedeker raids. Goebbels was furious about this blunder, since he wanted the British to be tarred with the brush of destroying ancient cities.
Whether or not Harris suffered from a ‘
Jupiter complex
’, flinging down thunderbolts from heaven in retribution (an idea which the British public generally supported), his was a form of that ‘total war’ which Goebbels had called for in his frenzied demand from the podium of the Sportpalast in February. Harris’s belief that his strategy was shortening the war to save lives was strikingly similar to the huge slogan behind Goebbels during his speech which proclaimed: ‘Total War–Short War’. The inevitable question of whether waging total war from the air on German civilians was the moral equivalent of the Luftwaffe’s own version is too complicated to
answer satisfactorily. In statistical terms, however, the Combined Bomber Offensive turned out to be slightly less murderous in the end, if you include all the western European, central European, Balkan and Soviet citizens killed by the Luftwaffe.
MARCH–DECEMBER 1943
A
fter the exhausting battles to secure Guadalcanal and eastern Papua New Guinea, the Americans knew that to eliminate the Japanese base at Rabaul would be long and difficult. The command rivalries between MacArthur and the US Navy did not make it any easier. But when Admiral William ‘Bull’ Halsey Jr, who had now taken over as commander-in-chief South Pacific, visited MacArthur at his headquarters in Brisbane, they got on together surprisingly well. In April 1943, it was agreed that Halsey’s forces would leapfrog north-westwards from Guadalacanal along the Solomon Islands chain. At the same time MacArthur’s forces would clear the Japanese from New Guinea and seize the Huon Peninsula opposite New Britain, thus combining in a pincer attack on Rabaul. Two islands to the south of New Britain, Kiriwina and Woodlark, would also be seized as air bases.
The Japanese reinforced Rabaul, New Guinea and the western Solomon Islands with 100,000 troops taken from Korea, China and other areas. Their first priority was to strengthen Lae in the Huon Peninsula with the 51st Division. On 1 March, the Japanese convoy of eight troop transports, escorted by eight destroyers, steamed into the Bismarck Sea off the western end of New Britain. It was spotted by B-17 Fortresses from the Fifth Air Force supporting MacArthur. The Fifth had been greatly improved by a new commander, General George C. Kenney. Kenney’s reforms included ordering his B-25 medium-bomber crews to abandon high-level bombing, which had proved so futile against ships. Instead they were to attack at low altitude, with newly mounted forward-firing machine guns to deter anti-aircraft gunners on board, and then bounce their bombs just short of the vessel’s side.
The Battle of the Bismarck Sea began with low-level attacks by Australian Beaufighters, followed by some high-level bombing which sank one transport and damaged several others. The Japanese Zeros providing air cover were fought off by recently arrived P-38 Lightnings, which proved more than a match for them. Over the next two days, the convoy struggled on across the Vitiaz Strait to New Guinea. On the third day, Kenney’s crews tried out their new ‘skip-bombing’ technique for the first time in action. After another strafing attack by Beaufighters to knock out
anti-aircraft guns, the B-25s and A-20 attack planes went in bouncing their bombs, which had delayed fuses so that they would explode inside the ship. The effect was devastating. The remaining seven transports went down along with four of the destroyers. On the grounds that the Japanese would never surrender, fast PT boats and fighter aircraft machine-gunned the lifeboats and men in the water. Some 3,000 died. With skip-bombing, the United States had found its killer solution in the war at sea, and Japan was unable to reinforce or resupply its garrisons except by submarine or night-time dashes by destroyers. In many places, Japanese troops began to starve.
Admiral Yamamoto redoubled his efforts to bolster his forces in the region. A further 200 aircraft were sent to Rabaul and the island of Bougainville in the western Solomons, doubling their strength. He flew to Rabaul to supervise operations. On 17 April, in the largest Japanese strike since Pearl Harbor, dive-bombers escorted by Zeros attacked Guadalcanal and Tulagi. And during the next few days Japanese aircraft pounded Port Moresby and Milne Bay at the easternmost point of Papua.
On 14 April, the Americans had intercepted a radio message which indicated that Yamamoto would be flying from Rabaul to Bougainville, on 18 April. Admiral Nimitz sought and received approval from Washington for an ambush. They knew the time of arrival over Bougainville. Eighteen twin-tailed P-38 Lightnings from Henderson Field on Guadalcanal were waiting. While most of the Lightnings dealt with the escort of nine Japanese Zero fighters, the other pilots went for the two bombers, one of which carried Yamamoto. Lieutenant Thomas Lanphier shot the wing off the admiral’s plane and it crashed on the island. The other bomber fell into the sea. The charred body of the commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy was later retrieved from the jungle by a squad of Japanese soldiers sent out to search for him. On 5 June, Yamamoto’s ashes received a state funeral in Tokyo.
Operation Cartwheel, the advance on Rabaul, began on 30 June. A regiment from the 41st Division under MacArthur’s command landed on New Guinea near Lae. Some of the landing craft became grounded in the heavy surf, and the sound of their engines racing and grinding in an attempt to free themselves in the dark sounded like tanks landing. Japanese troops fled into the jungle and a beachhead was quickly established. The same day American forces landed on the two islands of Kiriwina and Woodlark, some 500 kilometres south of Rabaul. They were unopposed, and airfields were constructed so that P-38 Lightning squadrons were now within easy striking distance of the great Japanese base.
Also on 30 June, Admiral Halsey’s ships landed 10,000 troops on New Georgia in the Solomons north-west of Guadalcanal. Already the
Americans had improved their landing techniques immeasurably with many more amtracs, or amphibious tractors, and the amphibious trucks known as DUKWs. They were assured of strong air support from Guadalcanal, but the dense jungle on New Georgia was more impenetrable than the planners had imagined. Soldiers who had just arrived with the 43rd Division found the jungle exhausting and disorientating, and they rapidly became spooked by the noises at night. One regiment took three days to cover just under a mile. Having not yet learned the tricks of jungle fighting, they were easily harassed and terrified by small Japanese raiding parties from their base at Munda on the western tip of the island. Before they had even fought a battle, almost a quarter of the force collapsed from combat fatigue. Halsey had to sack commanders and bring in fresh troops, increasing the ground forces to 40,000 men.
The slowness of the advance had given the Japanese the opportunity to run in reinforcements at night, bringing their strength up to 10,000. Rear Admiral Walden Ainsworth’s first attempt to intercept these nocturnal convoys was initially successful, sinking the Japanese flagship
Jintsu
. But as his ships pursued, one destroyer was sunk and three cruisers were heavily damaged by Japanese warships using their deadly Long Lance torpedoes, which were far more effective than anything in the American arsenal.
During these night battles, the fast torpedo boat
PT 109
, commanded by Lieutenant John F. Kennedy, was run down by a Japanese destroyer. Kennedy managed to get the survivors ashore on to a nearby island. Thanks to an Australian coast-watcher, they were rescued six days later. On 6 August, another naval night ambush by six American destroyers caught on radar four Japanese destroyers loaded with troops. The US Navy warships waited until they were within range, then fired twenty-four torpedoes. Only one got away. The other three sank with 900 soldiers.
The Japanese reinforcements which did reach New Georgia were used in a triple counter-attack, one of which succeeded in surrounding the headquarters of the 43rd Division. Only a superbly targeted barrage from American artillery, dropping their shells all around the perimeter, managed to force the Japanese back.
The drive on Munda proved far harder than the Americans expected. The Japanese had constructed a network of well-concealed bunkers in the jungle. Eventually by using a combination of artillery, mortars, flamethrowers and light tanks, the bunkers were destroyed, and the airfield at Munda was taken on 5 August. The battle for New Georgia was a sobering experience, requiring a numerical superiority of four to one, to say nothing of the massive sea and air support needed to secure the island.
Halsey’s staff, shaken by the time and effort required, re-examined their strategy. They decided that, instead of taking every island step by step
along the Solomons, they could leapfrog heavily defended islands, then construct airfields ahead, and by using air and sea power cut off the stay-behind garrisons. As a result, the next target would not be Kolombangara, but the lightly defended island of Vella Lavella. This forced the Japanese to evacuate Kolombangara, which they had just reinforced.
The first priority on almost all newly secured islands was to build an airfield. Naval construction battalions, or CBs, who became known as ‘Seabees’, dynamited jungle, graded the ground with bulldozers, laid perforated steel strips called Marston mat and covered it with crushed coral. Sometimes landing just behind the first wave of marines, they could have a new landing ground ready for action in under ten days. One officer said of these incredibly tough and ingenious gangs that they ‘
smelled like goats
, lived like dogs and worked like horses’. Their contribution to the war in the Pacific was considerable.
On New Guinea, meanwhile, MacArthur’s American and Australian troops converged on the Japanese base of Lae prior to seizing the Huon Peninsula. The US 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment dropped on the airfield of Dadzab just to the west of Lae, and the next day C-47 transports began landing the 7th Australian Division. With the 9th Australian Division coming from the east, the town was doomed and fell to the Allies in mid-September. The Huon Peninsula, however, proved a far harder task. The Japanese, determined to hold on as long as possible to protect Rabaul across the Vitiaz Strait, were not dislodged from the coast until October, and it took another two months to clear them from the mountains above.
In November Halsey’s forces landed on Bougainville, the last large island before Rabaul. The mangrove swamps, jungle and mountain range represented an even more formidable obstacle than the terrain on New Georgia. In addition, the Japanese garrison of 40,000 men was supported by four airfields. Halsey began with some diversionary attacks against nearby islands, then made a landing with two divisions on the west coast at a lightly defended spot and followed on with massive air attacks against Rabaul itself, destroying more than a hundred Japanese aircraft. The fast new F4U Corsair fighter was proving its worth. The Japanese were losing most of their experienced pilots, and their Zero fighter, which had proved such a war-winner in 1941, was now obsolete. After two days of raids, the new commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet, Admiral Koga Mineichi, ordered the withdrawal of all warships from Rabaul to Truk, their main Pacific base, 1,300 kilometres to the north.
General Hyakutake, the commander of the 17th Army on Bougainville, assumed that the landing on the west coast was another diversion and made no counter-attack. This gave the Americans the chance to establish a
large and well-defended perimeter before Hyakutake realized that he had made a grave mistake.