War Stories II (42 page)

In mid-November, U.S. Marine Raiders from the 3rd Infantry Division finally landed at Bougainville, where the Japanese least expected. They were followed by 34,000 Marines and Army troops, who, having bypassed the enemy garrisons on the south coast, sailed halfway up the western side of the island before going ashore just north of Empress Augusta Bay at Cape Torokina.

The bulk of the Japanese forces in Rabaul, far to the south, needed time to move troops and equipment across the island to hold back the Americans. By that time, the Seabees—with the help of an engineer brigade from New Zealand—had finished two airstrips while the infantry established a
secure beachhead. The Allies were actually making some headway when the Japanese finally came up from the south.

 

The Black Sheep Squadron in front of a Corsair on Vella Lavella.

Combat on Bougainville was terrible, with the jungle and terrain even worse and more unforgiving than those on Guadalcanal.

By the time Bougainville was partially secured, Major Boyington and the squadron had returned from R & R to the forward base at Vella Lavella. There, Boyington learned that he had nineteen new men to train. But Pappy wanted a more challenging target than Bougainville and suggested the fortified Japanese base at Rabaul. His old friend General “Nuts” Moore gave him the go-ahead.

On 17 December 1943, Boyington led the first single-engine fighter sweep across Rabaul. The Japanese forces at Rabaul had been steadily worn down by Allied bombing and strafing attacks, by both MacArthur's air force and the Black Sheep Squadron. This day Pappy Boyington's pilots would be up against more than two hundred Zeros and their pilots, who knew how to fight the Marine Corsairs.

The Japanese shot down six Black Sheep pilots on their first two runs on Rabaul. But at the end of the day Boyington alone had a total of twenty kills to his credit—just six fewer than the American record held by Joe Foss and Eddie Rickenbacker. On 23 December he knocked down four more, closing the gap even more.

A press corps interviewer asked Pappy if any Japanese planes showed up to attack the Black Sheep Squadron. He replied, “Yes, there were a number of Japanese planes that came up over there . . . and we got all we could in dogfights. And I saw eight other planes destroyed besides the four I destroyed myself.”

The next night, at a base Christmas party, he boasted, “They can't kill me. If you ever see me with thirty Zeros on my tail, don't worry. I'll be all right. I'll meet you six months after the war in a bar in San Diego and we'll all have a drink for old time's sake.”

Ten days later, Major Gregory “Pappy” Boyington was shot down in a running gun battle in the skies just off the coast of Rabaul. But he didn't go quietly. Before his plane disappeared into the sea, he was seen burning another enemy Zero—his twenty-fifth—one short of the all-time record.

Boyington's disappearance created a press and public relations frenzy. Rumors were rampant. The
New York Times
reported that Major Boyington was alive on an island, hidden by natives and waiting to rejoin the squadron. There were other guesses as to what happened. None of the stories about his disappearance were true.

No one but the Japanese knew that Pappy Boyington had been shot down and picked up in the water by a Japanese sub. He was taken to Japan and only resurfaced at the war's end, when his name showed up on a list of American POWs.

The Marine Black Sheep Squadron fell apart after its leader had been missing in action for several months. VMF-214 was officially disbanded in March 1944. The men of the formerly tight-knit squadron went their separate ways. Some returned home to the U.S. for duty while others were reassigned to other units in the Pacific.

MacArthur and Halsey—with the help of the Black Sheep—had effectively isolated the Japanese on Rabaul. Cut off from supplies or evacuation and virtually abandoned by their leaders, Rabaul's garrison of more than 100,000 Imperial troops were allowed—in the words of Admiral Halsey—to “wither on the vine.” From early 1944 to the end of the war in August 1945 the garrison received no food, supplies, or reinforcements.

When Japanese commanders surrendered Rabaul after the war, among the 101,000 troops still on the island fortress were five divisions commanded by nineteen army generals and eleven admirals of the Imperial Navy contingent.

A
s Rear Admiral Harry Hill watched from the bridge of his flagship, the largest amphibious assault yet tried in the Pacific was finally under way. Called Operation Galvanic, it aimed to capture the Gilbert Islands in the first phase of a new central Pacific offensive—a strategy long advocated by Admiral Chester Nimitz and bitterly opposed by General Douglas MacArthur.

The long struggle to isolate and neutralize Rabaul had built support in Washington for Nimitz's plan. And though MacArthur believed that the road to Tokyo had to go through the Philippines, everyone else was looking for a way to avoid more of the long, bloody battles like those fought in the steaming, mountainous jungles of New Guinea and Guadalcanal.

Operation Cartwheel, the two-pronged Allied approach toward Rabaul launched in the aftermath of Yamamoto's demise, had been a difficult but
resounding success. By the end of October 1943, troops from MacArthur's southwest Pacific command had moved well up the northeast coast of New Guinea and were preparing to land at Cape Gloucester on New Britain. Halsey's South Pacific forces had made parallel progress up through the Russell Islands, Munda, Vella Lavella and Choiseul. On 1 November, the 3rd Marine Division and the Army's 37th Division landed on Bougainville.