World Battlefronts: The Road to Rabaul

In the bitterest days on Guadalcanal a year ago, Marines used to refer to the frequent runs of Jap destroyers carrying men and supplies down the Solomons as the “Bougainville Express.” Last week the Express was running again—but it was a U.S. Express and it ran the other way. Toward the end of the week the Japanese began coming out to meet the Express. The results were rough.

The invasion of Bougainville by the U.S. Navy and Marines under Admiral William F. Halsey and Lieut. General Alexander Archer Vandegrift was a big step forward (see map). It represented an advance of 200 miles from the nearest big Allied establishment at Munda. It bypassed important Japanese positions at Buin on the southernmost tip of Bougainville, and in the Shortland Islands, 30 miles south of Buin. In those positions there were estimated to be at least 20,000 Japanese. But the real importances of the Bougainville blow were two: 1) it was a necessary preliminary to a necessity—the taking of Rabaul; and 2) it goaded the Japanese into risking serious naval and aerial attrition.

Naval Drain. The Japanese reacted sharply to the invasion, but still did not commit anything like a battlefleet or a carrier task force. Even the limited reaction cost them dearly.

Just after the first landings on Bougainville, a task force apparently consisting of four cruisers and eight destroyers swept down toward the beachhead. About 40 miles from the landing point, the Japs met a roughly equal U.S. force. The Japanese kept the U.S. force at arm’s length by clever use of flares and torpedoes. But the fire control and aiming devices of the U.S. ships were superior. At extreme range, they were able to sink one cruiser and two destroyers for sure (admitted by Japan) and probably two more destroyers (claimed by the U.S.). Announced U.S. loss: one ship “disabled.”

Then the Japanese began pouring reinforcements down from Truk, their South Pacific naval center. General Douglas Mac-Arthur’s announcements indicated that a total of 53 warships and eleven supply ships might be on the way. Identification of enemy naval types by U.S. aviators occasionally leaves something to be desired; and last week’s communiques on the reconnaissance reports may very well have duplicated each other. But it was clear that the commander of Japan’s Combined Fleet, Mineichi Koga, had been stung into action. He sent forward to Rabaul substantial cruiser forces in support of troop and supply ships, still did not commit battleships or carriers so far as U.S. reconnaissance could determine.

When the Japanese ships reached Rabaul, a U.S. Navy carrier force of 100 planes hit them. Torpedo planes and dive-bombers reported hits on five heavy cruisers and a light cruiser. Torpedoes alone hit two destroyers and a sixth heavy cruiser. Dive-bombers hit a second light cruiser. Later, Army planes bombed port, installations at Rabaul, claimed hits on a merchant ship.

Air Siphon. The Japanese took the deep, hook-shaped harbor of Rabaul just 45 days after their attack on Pearl Harbor. They immediately began developing it as their main forward base in the South Pacific. Rooting it out will mean the end of the holding phase and the beginning of the really offensive phases of Pacific warfare. The past month has pretty well proved that Rabaul has to be rooted out, that bombing alone will not remove its threat. For in the past month an aerial campaign without precedent in the Pacific has pounded Rabaul—without deadening it.

General MacArthur’s headquarters, reporting the work of the aviators under his command, made some exciting claims. On Oct. 12, the greatest Pacific raid of the war—1,000 pilots, 350 tons of bombs—knocked out 177 planes in the air and on the ground, H.Q. announced. On Oct. 18, according to H.Q., Mitchells destroyed 60 planes; on Oct. 23-24, 123 planes were destroyed; on Oct. 25, 58 planes; on Oct. 29, Liberators and Lightnings knocked out 45

These raids were characterized as “crushing” and “decisive.” And yet more & more Jap planes came up to fight. On Oct. 31, General MacArthur said that his air strikes “had neutralized Rabaul but had not prevented the Japanese from siphoning in reinforcements.” Last week a heavy raid which was said to have sunk 50,000 tons of shipping and damaged 44,000 tons was met by no less than 150 interceptors. Of these 67 were claimed destroyed. The interceptors were described as “frantic,” but they shot down 19 U.S. bombers—the greatest loss for any single raid of the theater. And the Japanese were able to throw nearly 70 planes at the Bougainville invasion escort. Real security in the area will come only with the fall of Rabaul, which cannot be accomplished until Bougainville on the eastern approach is cleared, New Guinea on the west.