5 Along the Turkey’s Back
From the time that American planes stopped the Japanese onrush at the Coral Sea and at Midway, it was a two-year job for the Allies to batter down the Japanese gate at Rabaul and at the Huon Gulf. Once the gate was down, it took MacArthur’s forces only four months to make the 1,200-mile trip down the turkey’s back to a perch on the turkey’s head, just across from the East Indies and the Philippines.
The swift trip was made possible, however, by a leap-frogging technique that left behind a monumental job for the PT navy. General MacArthur made almost all of his New Guinea landings where the Japanese weren’t, by-passing tens of thousands of tough jungle fighters and leaving the job of starving them out to the blockading navy. Except for the brief loan of ships from the battle-line for special missions, the blockading navy was the PT fleet.
The New Guinea PT force was beefed up for the blockade by many new boats and officers. MacArthur had been deeply impressed by the torpedo boats during his escape from Corregidor and used all his influence—which was considerable in those days—to impress every PT possible into his force.
The PTs in New Guinea lost almost all use for their torpedoes, except when they chanced to catch a blockade-running supply submarine on the surface. The boat skippers wanted more guns, more auto-cannon and machine guns for shooting up the Number One blockade-runner, the armored daihatsu—and they got them.
Early in November 1943, Squadron Twenty-One arrived at Morobe base armed with 40-mm. auto-cannon, a tremendously effective weapon for all-around mischief. It was the first New Guinea squadron armed with the newer and deadlier weapon.
More than the size of the new cannon, however, the size of the new officers astonished the veteran PT sailors. Commander Selman S. Bowling, who had replaced Commander Mumma as chief of PTs in the Southwest Pacific, had voluntarily ridden on the Tulagi boats before his new assignment, and he had decided then that PT officers should be tough and athletic. When he went to the States to organize new squadrons, he had recruited the biggest, toughest athletes he could find.
Among the newcomers were Ensign Ernest W. Pannell, All-American tackle from Texas A. and M. and professional football player for the Green Bay Packers; Ensign Alex Schibanoff of Franklin and Marshall College and the Detroit Lions; Ensign Steven L. Levanitis of Boston College and the Philadelphia Eagles; Ensign Bernard A. Crimmins, All-American from Notre Dame; Lieut. (jg) Paul B. Lillis, captain of the Notre Dame team; Ensign Louis E. Smith, University of California halfback; Ensign Kermit W. Montz, Franklin and Marshall; Ensign John M. Eastham, Jr., Texas A. and M.; Ensign Stuart A. Lewis, University of California; Ensign Cedric J. Janien, Harvard; and Ensign William P. Hall, Wabash.
Also bulging with muscle were Ensign Joseph W. Burk, holding the world’s record as single-sculls champion; Ensign Kenneth D. Molloy, All-American lacrosse player from Syracuse University; Lieut. John B. Williams, Olympic swimmer from Oregon State; and Ensign James F. Foran, swimmer from Princeton.
Commander Bowling was right. PT crews had to be tough for the kind of warfare they were waging. Shallow-draft daihatsus clung to the shore, and the PTs had to come in as close as 100 yards from the beach to find their prey. For 1,200 miles the shoreline was lined with ten of thousands of blockaded Japanese soldiers, every one of them itching to get a crack at the patrol boats that were starving them to death. The Japanese set up shore batteries and baited traps with helpless-looking daihatsus to lure the PT marauders within range. In this deadly cat-and-mouse game, the PT did not always win.
About 2 A.M. on March 7th, PTs 337 and 338 slipped into Hansa Bay, a powerfully garrisoned Japanese base by-passed early in the Allied forward movement. The PTs poked about the enemy harbor and picked up a radar target close to shore. From 400 yards away, the two skippers saw that their radar pip came from two heavily camouflaged luggers moored together, a prime bit of business for PTs. Before they could open fire, however, they discovered that they had been baited into an ambush.
Machine guns opened up on the beach, and the PTs returned the fire, but the best they could do was to strafe the bush at random, because the Japanese gun positions were well concealed.
The machine guns at close range were bad enough, but the PT crews “pulled 20 Gs” when a heavy battery began firing from the mouth of the bay. The PTs, already deep inside the bay, would have to pass close to the heavy guns to escape from the harbor. The worst was that the gunners were obviously crack artillerymen, for the first shell hit so close to the port bow of the 337 that water from the spout sluiced down the decks and shrapnel whizzed overhead.
The sharpshooting gunners of the shore battery put a shell from the next salvo into the tank compartment below the port turret. All engines went dead and the boat burst into flame. The skipper, Ensign Henry W. Cutter, pulled the CO₂ release valve but it was too late—the boat was doomed.
Francis C. Watson, Motor Machinist Mate, Third Class, who had been blown from the port turret by the shell blast, got to his feet and started forward, away from the searing flames, but he turned back into the fire to help William Daley, Jr., who was crawling painfully out of the burning engine room. Daley had been badly wounded in the neck and jaw. Watson pulled Daley from the flames and with Morgan J. Canterbury, Torpedomen’s Mate, Second Class, carried him forward. Ensign Cutter put a life raft into the water on the side away from the big guns, and Daley, dazed but obedient, tried to get into the raft, but slipped overboard. The skipper and Ensign Robert W. Hyde jumped after him and towed him to the raft.
The crew paddled and pushed the raft away from the burning boat and out to sea, but a strong current worked against them and in two hours they made only 700 yards. When their boat exploded, the concussion hurt.
Searchlights swept the bay and guns fired all night at the 338, which had escaped behind smoke and was now trying to get back into the death-trap to find out what had happened to their comrades of the 337. The crack gunners ashore were too good, however, and repeated brackets from heavy salvos kept the 338 outside until the rising sun drove the worried sailors home.
Daley died before sunrise, and—in the formal language of the Navy report—“was committed to the sea.”
Survivors clinging to the three-by-seven-foot balsa oval were the skipper and Ensign Hyde, Watson, Canterbury; Ensign Bruce S. Bales; Allen B. Gregory, QM2c; Harry E. Barnett, RM2c; Henry S. Timmons, Y2c; Edgar L. Schmidt, TM3c; Evo A. Fucili, MoMM3c; and James P. Mitchell, SC3c.
The raft was not built for an 11-man load, so the sailors took turns riding in the slat-bottom craft and swimming alongside. Currents nagged them, and at dawn the raft was still less than a mile off the entrance to the bay, within easy reach of Japanese patrol boats.
During the morning the currents set the boat toward Manam Island, six miles away, and Ensign Cutter decided to make for the island, with the idea that he and his crew would hide in the woods. Maybe they would find food, water, shelter—who knows, just possibly a native canoe or sailboat.
All afternoon the sailors paddled for the island, but the devilish currents were not through with them. Every time they came close to the beach a current would sweep them out to sea again.
Floating on the same currents were two logs which the sailors tied to the raft. After dark the skipper, still hopeful of finding a boat on the island, set out with Ensign Bales to swim to the beach, using the logs as a crude substitute for water wings. For three hours the two young officers swam, only to bump gently against their own raft again. The currents had carried them in a giant circle, back to their starting point.
Hyde and Gregory, tired of inaction, set out for the beach. They were never seen again.
That night the sailors watched the flash of gunfire at Hansa Bay, where their squadron mates shot up the beach in revenge for their loss. No PTs came close enough for the shipwrecked sailors to hail.
By their very nature, PT sailors were men of action. Their solution to any problem was, “Don’t just sit there, do something.” The inactivity of waiting passively for rescue was too much for some of them.
Just before dawn Mitchell set out for the island, and just after dawn Ensign Bales, Fucili, Watson, and Schmidt followed. The others would have gone, too, but they were too weak.
Watson returned to the raft in the middle of the morning. He had swum to within 75 yards of the shore, he said, and he had seen Ensign Bales walking around on dry land, but he had also seen Japanese workmen building boats in a shipyard, so he came back to the raft. All hands abandoned the idea of going to the island. After the war, captured documents showed that the Japanese on Manam Island had captured one officer and two enlisted men of the sailors who had swum ashore, but these three luckless sailors were never heard of after this brief mention.
That night, their third in the water, the sailors were exposed to a nerve-racking and mysterious inspection. A small boat pulled out from shore and circled the raft at 200 yards. Two Japanese trained a brace of machine guns on the Americans, but held their fire. The shivering sailors looked down the muzzles of those two machine guns until four o’clock in the morning, when a squall with six-foot waves drove the patrol craft back to the beach. After the squall passed, the PT sailors were alone again—more alone than ever, for the delirious Canterbury had swum away during the storm. Barnett, a first-rate swimmer, had chased after Canterbury to bring him back, but had lost him in the heavy seas.
That morning the five surviving sailors spied an overturned Japanese boat. It was fifteen feet long and a luxurious yacht compared to their flimsy raft, so they righted the boat and bailed it out. A crab was running about the bottom, and during the chase for this tasty tidbit the sailors let their life raft drift away. Nobody really cared; they had no fond memories of the balsa boat.
The sailors suffered horribly from thirst and they eagerly pulled in a drifting coconut, but it was dry. They were badly sunburned and covered with salt-water sores. Another chilly night and another blazing morning passed without relief.
At noon on March 10th, three Army B 25s flew over. The planes circled the frantically waving sailors, and Ensign Cutter sent a message by semaphore, a dubious method of communication with Army pilots, but better than nothing.
One bomber dropped a box which collapsed and sank. On his next pass, he dropped two more boxes and a small package fixed to a life preserver. They plunked into the sea not ten feet from the boat. The sailors eagerly tore open the packages and found food, water, cigarettes, and medicine. A marked chart showed them their position, and a message said a Catalina flying boat was on its way to pick them up.
The Catalina took its time, however, for the sailors had one more trying night to endure before the Cat, screened by two P 47s, landed on the water and picked up the five exhausted survivors.
The old problem of bad communications between the different services bothered the PTs worse than ever in New Guinea waters.
On the morning of March 27th, Lieut. Crowell C. Hall, on Ensign George H. Guckert’s PT 353, accompanied by Ensign Richard B. Secrest’s 121, went into Bangula Bay to investigate a reported enemy schooner.
That morning, at Australian fighter squadron headquarters on Kiriwina Island, a careless clerk put the report of the PT patrol in the wrong file basket, so fighter pilots flew over Bangula Bay, with the information that no friendly PTs would be out. This was the same setup that had already caused repeated tragedies and near-tragedies in other waters.
At 7:45 in the morning, admittedly an unusual hour for the night-prowling PTs to be abroad, four P 40s of the Australian squadron flew over the boats. Lieut. Hall asked them, by radio, to investigate the schooner, which was beyond a dangerous reef from the PT boats. The plane pilots looked it over and told the PT skipper that it had already been badly strafed and wasn’t worth attacking further.
The boats turned to go home. Four other P 40s and two Beaufighters of the same squadron came down out of the sun in a strafing run on the PTs. One of the Beaufighter pilots recognized the boats and frantically tried to call his mates off the attack, but nobody listened. The gallant Australian pilot even put his fighter between the strafing planes and the boats, trying to block the attack with his own body. No luck.
The PT officers held their men under tight discipline for several punishing runs, but the nerves of the gunners finally gave way, and each boat fired a short burst from 37- and 40-mm. cannon and the 50-caliber machine guns. The officers sharply ordered a cease-fire, and for the rest of the attack the PT crews suffered helplessly while the planes riddled their craft and killed their shipmates. Both boats exploded and sank.
The first quartet of P 40s, the planes that had chatted with Lieut. Hall, rushed back to the scene when they heard the radio traffic between the attacking fighters and suspected what was happening. They dropped a life raft to the swimming survivors and radioed headquarters the story of the disaster. Two PTs were dispatched to the rescue.
Four officers and four enlisted men were killed, four officers and eight enlisted men were wounded, two PT boats were lost to the deadly fire of the friendly fighters—all because one slipshod clerk had put a piece of paper in a wrong file basket.
Even worse was coming.
The combat zone in the Pacific was divided into the Southwest and the South Pacific commands. Communication between the two commands at the junior officer level was almost nonexistent. Everybody was supposed to stay in his own backyard and not cross the dividing line.
On the night of April 28th, Lieut. (jg) Robert J. Williams’ 347 was patrolling with Lieut. (jg) Stanley L. Manning’s 350. The 347 went hard aground on a reef at Cape Pomas, only five miles from the dividing line between the south and southwest zones. Lieut. Manning passed a line to the stranded boat, and the two crews set about the all-too-familiar job of freeing a PT from an uncharted rock.
At 7 A.M. two Marine Corps Corsairs from the South Pacific zone, through faulty navigation, crossed the dividing line without knowing it. Naturally they had no word of these PTs patrolling in their area, because they weren’t in their area. They attacked.
The PTs did not recognize the Corsairs as friendly, and shot one of them down. (This is an extraordinary mistake, also, for the gull-winged Corsair was probably the easiest of all warplanes on both sides to identify, especially from the head-on view presented during a strafing run.)
Three men were killed in the first attack on the 350, and both boats were badly damaged. The skippers called for help. The tender Hilo, at Talasea, asked for air cover from Cape Gloucester (in the Southwest Pacific zone and hence out of communications with the South Pacific base of the Corsair pilots). The tender sent Lieut. (jg) James B. Burk to the rescue in PT 346.
The pilot of the surviving Corsair reported to his base at Green Island, in the South Pacific zone, that he had attacked two Japanese gunboats 125 feet long in Lassul Bay. (The PTs were slightly more than half that long. Lassul Bay was actually 20 miles from Cape Pomas, the true scene of the attack, and hence fifteen miles inside the South Pacific zone and not in the Southwest Pacific zone.)
Green Island scrambled four Corsairs, six Avengers, four Hellcats, and eight Dauntless dive bombers to finish off the stricken PTs. The powerful striking force, enough air-power to take on a cruiser division, found no boats in Lassul Bay, but they, too, wandered across the dividing line and found the PTs at Cape Pomas.
By then the 346 had arrived. The skipper saw the approaching planes, but recognized them as friendly types and thought they were the air cover from Cape Gloucester, so the PT crews ignored the planes and continued with the salvage and rescue work.
First hint that something had gone wrong was a shower of bombs that burst among the PT boats. The PT officers frantically tried every trick in the catalogue to identify themselves, and in despair finally turned loose their gunners, who shot down one of the planes. The loss of one of their mates angered the pilots and they pressed their attacks harder. Two of the three PTs went down.
The plane flight commander called for a Catalina rescue boat to pick up the downed pilot. The Cat never found the pilot, but instead picked up thirteen survivors of the torpedo boats. Their arrival at Green Island was the first word the horrified pilots there had that their targets had been friendly.
Three PT officers and 11 men were killed, two plane pilots were lost, four officers and nine men were wounded, two PTs and two planes were destroyed, in this useless and tragic encounter.
Most pt patrols were not as disastrous, of course, but it was a rare night that did not provide some adventure. Lieut. (jg) James Cunningham kept a diary during 1944, and a few extracts from this journal show the nature of a typical PT’s blockade duty:
March 12, 1944: PTs 149 (The Night Hawk) and 194 patrol the north coast of New Britain. At 2300 we picked up a target on radar—closed in and saw a small Jap surface craft. We made a run on it and found out it was aground and apparently destroyed. We destroyed it some more.
We moved to the other side of Garove Island, where we saw a craft under way heading across the mouth of the harbor. Over one part of the harbor were very high cliffs, an excellent spot for gun emplacements. We blindly chased the craft and closed in on it for a run. Just then the guns—six-inchers—opened up from the cliffs on us, and it seemed for a while that they would blow us out of the water. We left the decoy and headed out to sea, laying a smoke screen. The concussion of the exploding shells was terrific. I still believe the craft was a decoy to pull us into the harbor, and we readily took the bait. The thing that saved us was that the Japs were too eager. They fired too soon before we were really far into the harbor. On the way home, about 10 miles offshore from New Britain, we picked up three large radar pips and figured they were enemy destroyers, because they were in enemy waters and we were authorized to destroy anything in this grid sector. We chased within one mile, tracking them with radar, and got set to make our run. We could see them by eye at that range and identified them as a destroyer and two large landing craft.
We radioed for airplanes to help us with this valuable prize. Just as we started our torpedo run from about 500 yards away, the destroyer shot a recognition flare and identified themselves as friendly. It was a close call. We were within seconds of firing our fish. The task unit was off course and had wandered into a forbidden zone.
June 23, 1944: PTs 144 (The Southern Cross) and 189 departed Aitape Base, New Guinea, for patrol to the west.
We closed the beach at Sowam after noticing lots of lights moving. They appeared to be trucks, moving very slow. Muffled down, hidden by a black, moonless night, we sneaked to within 150 yards off the beach and waited for a truck to come around the bend and onto the short stretch of road that ran along the beach. Here came one, lights blazing. Both boats blasted away. The truck burst into flames and stopped, lights still burning. The last we saw of the truck (shore batteries fired on us immediately, so we got out) it was still standing there with headlights burning and flames leaping up in the New Guinea night. It has become quite a sport, by the way, shooting enemy trucks moving along the beach with lights on. The Japs never seem to learn. We fire at them night after night. They turn off the lights briefly, then they turn them back on again when they think we have gone. But we haven’t gone. We shoot them up some more, and they turn off the lights again. And so on all night long.
The Japanese apparently smarted under these truck-busting attacks, for Lieut. Cunningham’s entry three nights later tells a different story:
June 26, 1944: PTs 144 and 149 left Aitape Base, New Guinea, to patrol toward Sowam Village, where the road comes down to the beach. We were after trucks. We closed cautiously to three-quarters of a mile off the beach, then it seemed that everything opened up on us, 50 and 30 calibers, 40 mms and three-inchers. At the time they fired on us we were dead in the water, with all three engines in neutral. To get the engines into gear, the drill is to signal the engine room where the motor mack of the watch puts the engine in gear by hand. There is no way to do it from the cockpit. Then, when the gears are engaged, the skipper can control the speed by three throttles.
I was at the helm in the cockpit when the batteries opened fire, and I shoved all three throttles wide open, forgetting that the gears weren’t engaged. Of course, the boat almost shook apart from the wildly racing engines, but we didn’t move. The motor mack in the engine room below wrestled against me to push the throttles back. He was stronger than I was and finally got the engines slowed down enough to put them into gear. Then we got moving fast. We made it out to sea OK without being hit, but I sure pulled a boo boo that time.
August 28, 1944: PTs 188 and 144 west toward Hollandia, with a squad of Army radio-men aboard to contact a land patrol. This is enemy-held territory and the patrol was in hopes of taking a few prisoners.
Just after sunrise we received a radio message to pick up Jap prisoners at Ulau Mission. We proceeded to the mission and I asked some P 39s that were strafing the beach to cover us while we made the landing.
Lieut. (jg) Harry Suttenfield, skipper of the 188, and I launched a life raft and headed in to pick up prisoners from the Army patrol.
We made it OK until we got into the surf, then the breakers swamped us. There were many dead Japs lying around, and the soldiers were burning the village. The natives took the prisoners out to the boats and then swam us through the surf, pushing the raft.
We turned the prisoners over to the Army at Aitape.
More and more as the by-passed Japanese became progressively demoralized by lack of food and rest, the PTs were pressed into service as Black Marias, police vans for carrying Japanese captives from the front lines, or even from behind the lines, to Army headquarters where Intelligence officers interrogated the prisoners.
Most Japanese simply would not be captured, and killed themselves rather than surrender. Many of them made dangerous prisoners, for they surrendered only to get close enough to their captors to kill them with concealed weapons.
On the night of July 7, 1944, Lieut. (jg) William P. Hall, on the 329, dropped a fatal depth charge under a 130-foot lugger south of Cape Oransbari. The crew snagged four prisoners, one of them a lieutenant colonel, one of the highest ranking officers taken prisoner in New Guinea.
One of the prisoners attacked Lieut. Hall, who flattened him with a right to the mouth. Hall sprained his thumb and badly gashed his hand on the prisoner’s teeth. He was awarded the Purple Heart for being wounded “in the face of the enemy.”
Oddly enough, what few Japanese did let themselves be taken made docile, even eagerly cooperative, prisoners. PT crewmen could never tell what was coming on a Black Maria mission. Either the captives tried to kill themselves or their guards—or they tried to help the guards kill their former comrades.
On the night between March 16th and 17th, Lieut. H. M. S. Swift (the Lieut. Swift of the great air battle at Aitape) was out with Lieut. (jg) Eugene E. Klecan’s 367 and 325. Off Pak Island, the two boats caught nine Japanese in a canoe. As the PTs approached, one Japanese killed himself and three others with a grenade. Another was shot by PT sailors when he resisted capture. The others came aboard willingly.
One of the captives asked for a pencil and wrote: “My name is Kamingaga. After finished Ota High School, I worked in a Yokohama army factory as an American spy. I set fire to Yokohama’s arsenal. Later, I was conscripted into the Japanese army, unfortunately. I was very unhappy, but now I am very happy because I was saved by American Army. To repay your kindness I will work as a spy for your American Army.”
He was turned over to skeptical Army officers, who did not make a deal with the traitorous captive.
Another Japanese canary, however, sang a most profitable song to his captors.
On the night between April 28th and 29th, Ensign Francis L. Cappaert, in 370, and Ensign Louis A. Fanget, in 388, sank three barges in Nightingale Bay, east of Wewak.
One of the barges had been loaded with two 75-mm. cannon and 45 soldiers. The PT crews tried to pull prisoners from the water, but all but two deliberately drowned themselves.
One of the two captives said to Ensign Cappaert, “Me officer,” and eagerly volunteered the advice that more barges were coming into Nightingale Bay in a few minutes. The PT skippers didn’t know what kind of trap their prisoner might be baiting for them, but they stayed around anyhow. Three more barges came around the bend on schedule, however, and the PT’s riddled them from ambush as “Me Officer” looked on.
The only surviving Japanese from the last three barges was a courier with a consignment of secret documents. The first lesson drilled into American sailors was that all secret documents, code books, maps, and combat instruction, were to go to the bottom if capture was imminent. The Japanese courier clung to his package, at some risk to himself, for it would have been easier to swim without it. He willingly turned over the secret papers to the PT officers.
At headquarters in Aitape, officers questioned the prisoners in their own language, and to the astonishment of the Navy, the Japanese officer dictated a barge movement timetable that helped PTs knock off fifteen barges and a picket boat in the next five nights.
Commander Robert J. Bulkley, Jr., a PT veteran who later became the official naval historian of the PT fleet (not to be confused with John Bulkeley of the MacArthur rescue mission), said of the Japanese conduct as prisoners:
“Most of them preferred death to capture, but once taken prisoner they were usually docile and willing, almost eager, to give information. And while their information might be limited, it was generally reliable. They seldom attempted deception.
“The big job was to capture them, and PT crews became fairly adept at it. One method was to crack a man over the head with a boathook and haul him up on deck. Another technique, more certain, was to drop a cargo net over the bow. Two men climbed down on the net. Other members of the crew held them by lines around their waist so that their hands were free.
“They would blackjack the floating Japanese and put a line on him so that he could be hauled aboard. Those were rough methods, but the gentle ones didn’t work. The Japanese almost never took a line willingly, and as long as they were conscious would fight to free themselves from a boathook.”
As a nice contrast to this careless betrayal of secret information by the Japanese, consider an American PT officer’s reaction to the loss of a secret code book.
On the night of April 2nd, the 114 went aground 400 yards off Yarin, on Kairiru Island. The crew jettisoned torpedoes and depth charges and the boat was pulled off the rock by The Southern Cross (144). The propellers were so badly damaged, however, that the 114 was abandoned. Confidential publications, including a code book, were put into a raft, but the crew carelessly let it drift to the Japanese-held beach.
When the boats returned to the tender, the skipper reported the loss of the codes to Lieut. Commander Robert Leeson, who jumped into 129, commanded by his brother Ensign A. D. Leeson, and took off for Yarin. Ensign Edmund F. Wakelin tagged along in 134.
The two PTs hove to off the beach at Yarin, and the officers studied the situation. They could see the raft on the shore, but it was in full view of a Japanese military hut, 600 yards away, and Yarin was the site of a known powerful shore battery.
Commander Leeson wanted those books, though, and he wanted them badly, so he jumped over the side and in full daylight swam the 400 yards across the reef to the beach. While crews of the two boats watched the beach with fingers crossed, dreading the sight of the first puff of flame from the hidden shore battery, Commander Leeson pushed the raft into the water and towed it back to the boat. The secret publications were taken aboard intact.
The Japanese chose that moment—the moment just after their last chance—to wake up and plunk a salvo of shells around the boats.
Commander Leeson, not satisfied with having saved the PT code in one of the most daring exploits of the Pacific war, decided to hang around until after nightfall. After all, the PTs had come all that long way from the tender and had not yet worked any mischief.
After dark the boats slipped in close to the beach and sank two out of three heavily loaded barges. The third barge blew a 14-inch hole in the exhaust stack of the 196, knocked out the starboard engine, and started a fire.
Clarence L. Nelson, MoMM2c, put out the fire, but he and A. F. Hall, MoMM3c, passed out from the fumes. Ensign Richard Holt dropped his battle duties long enough to give the two sailors artificial respiration, and very probably saved Hall’s life. The 129’s engine was definitely dead, however, and nothing would bring it back to life, so Commander Leeson went on fighting with two-thirds power.
After airing out the 129’s engine room, the redoubtable Leeson, with his crippled boat, led a limping charge straight into the mouth of the Japanese cannon. The two boats launched a ripple of twenty-four rockets at close range, and nothing more was heard from the beach.
When the sky turned light in the east, Commander Leeson took his sailors home.
The spearhead of the Allied advance left New Guinea for Morotai Island in September 1944. The landings there were supported by navy planes from six escort carriers. On D-Day plus one, Ensign Harold Allen Thompson took off from the deck of the carrier Santee in his fighter plane to strafe Japanese positions around Wasile Bay on nearby Halmahera. His sortie touched off one of the most heroic adventures of the Pacific war.
According to the report of the carrier division commander: “Success of the landings on Morotai depended upon keeping the Japanese continually on the defensive... thus making it impossible for them to launch counteroffensives until American forces were established in strength on the smaller island [Morotai].”
Ensign Thompson’s job was to beat up Japanese barges in Wasile Bay. While he was in a steep dive on his fourth strafing run, the Japanese made a direct hit with a heavy shell on Ensign Thompson’s plane.
The carrier division commander reports:
“The next thing he knows he was being blown upward with such force that his emergency gear was even blown out of his pockets. He pulled the ripcord and on the way down he found himself literally looking down the barrels of almost every gun in the Japanese positions about 300 yards away.
“On hitting the water, he discovered that his left hand had been badly torn, presumably by shrapnel. His life jacket had been torn in front and would only half inflate. His main idea was to get away from the beach and out into the bay, but progress was difficult.”
His comrades stayed with the downed pilot and strafed the beach until a PBY patrol plane came, but the rescue Cat could not land. The pilot dropped a life raft instead, and Ensign Thompson climbed aboard. He put a tourniquet on his bleeding hand and then paddled to a pier to hide in the shelter of a camouflaged lugger.
“These pilots heroically covered all the beach area with a devastating attack so that little or no fire could be directed at the pilot in the raft,” says the division report. “The attacks drove the Japanese gunners to shelter, but after the attacks they returned to their guns.”
Ensign Thompson said it was a wonderful show to watch, but it was a tragically expensive show. Ensign William P. Bannister was hit and crashed 150 yards from Ensign Thompson, gallantly giving his life to save his fellow pilot.
Ensign Paul W. Lindskog was also hit, but flew his wobbly plane safely to a crash landing outside the Japanese lines. Almost all the planes were holed, but they continued the strafing runs until Thompson had worked his way behind the armored lugger.
When fuel ran low, another flight of fighters came up to strafe, and the carrier set up a system of shuttle flights to keep the beach under constant attack.
So far, so good. But how to get Ensign Thompson out of Wasile Bay if a Catalina couldn’t land there? After all, the fighters couldn’t cover the wounded pilot till the war was over. Somebody thought about the PT fleet, and so the carrier division commander called the PT tender Oyster Bay and asked if there was anything the PTs could do.
Certainly there was something the PTs could do; they could rescue the pilot.
Lieut. Arthur Murray Preston, commander of Squadron Thirty-Three, picked two all-volunteer crews, and they put to sea in Lieut. Wilfred Tatro’s 489 and Lieut. (jg) Hershel F. Boyd’s 363.
The boat arrived off the mouth of Wasile Bay in the middle of the afternoon. Lieut. Preston knew there was a minefield, backed up by a light shore battery, at the eastern side of the entrance. A powerful and hitherto unsuspected battery opened fire on the western shore, however, and Preston chose the lesser danger of the minefield and the lighter battery.
Shorefire from both beaches was so heavy that the PTs had to fall back. The fighter pilots spotted their difficulty and made strafing runs on the shore batteries. The Japanese guns still fired on the PTs, but at a slower rate, and Lieut. Preston decided to risk a run through the narrow straits.
“Strafing by the planes unquestionably reduced the rate of fire to make a safe passage through the straits possible,” said Lieut. Preston. “Safe” passage, indeed!
The inside was no improvement on the entrance, for the bay was small and ringed with guns, all of which could reach the PTs. The shooting was steadily improving also as Japanese gunners found the range.
Lieut. (jg) George O. Stouffer called from his torpedo bomber to ask Lieut. Preston if he would like to have a little smoke between the PTs and the shore gunners.
Would he like a little smoke? Just all there is. Stouffer flew between the PTs and the beach, laying a dense curtain of smoke to blind the gunners. He dropped one smoke pot squarely over a particularly dangerous gun battery, blanking off its view in all directions. The plane also dropped a smoke float to mark the location of the downed pilot’s raft.
During the approach of the two PTs to the armored lugger, they added their guns to those of the planes lashing the beach, but lookouts kept a nervous watch on the Japanese boat—nobody could be sure that the lugger was not manned by enemy sailors waiting to shoot up the rescue craft at the moment they were most occupied with the downed pilot. The closer the boats came to the lugger, the more the planes concentrated their fire on the nearby beach.
“This strafing was maintained at an almost unbelievable intensity during the entire time the boats were in the vicinity of the downed pilot. This was the ultimate factor in the success of the mission,” reads Lieut. Preston’s report, which makes no mention of another factor—the incredible tenaciousness of the two PT crews.
The first smoke screen was beginning to thin dangerously when the 363 hove to beyond the lugger and raked the beach with its guns.
The 489 went alongside the lugger.
“Immediately and on their own initiative, Lieut. D. F. Seaman and C. D. Day, MoMM1c, dove overboard and towed the pilot in his boat to the stern of 489. The pilot was in no condition to do this for himself and appeared to be only partly conscious of his circumstances and surroundings,” wrote Preston. The rescue took ten minutes.
The PTs were not through fighting yet. Lieut. Heston remembered that the primary mission of PTs in those waters was destruction of Japanese coastal shipping, so he ordered the two PTs to put a few holes in the lugger and set it afire before leaving.
The fighter cover ran low on fuel, and there was a near-disastrous breakdown in the shuttle timetable.
Preston reports what happened:
“While we were hove-to picking up Thompson there was a group of planes giving us the closest possible cover and support. As we left the scene the planes did not remain quite as close to us as they had previously.... It was shortly after this that we learned that the fighters were critically low on fuel and some of them out of ammunition. Nevertheless, they were still answering our calls to quiet one gun or another, sometimes having to dive on the gun positions without firing, because their own magazines were empty.... They were magnificent.”
The PTs zigzagged across the minefield with heavy shells bursting within ten yards on all sides. When they finally broke into the open sea and roared away from the enemy beach, Ensign Thompson had been in the water for seven hours, the PTs had been under continuous close-range fire from weapons of all calibers for two and one-half hours. The boats were peppered with shrapnel, but, miraculously, none of the PT sailors had been scratched.
Dr. Eben Stoddard had a job, though, trying to save the pilot’s left hand, which was so badly mangled by shrapnel that three fingers dangled loosely.
The seven hours of protective strafing had blown up an ammunition dump, destroyed a fuel dump, wrecked stores, silenced four heavy gun positions at least temporarily, and certainly prevented the Japanese from getting to the downed pilot.
Lieut. Preston was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for this action, one of the two Congressional Medals of Honor awarded to PT sailors. (The other was given to Lieut. John Bulkeley for his exploits during the fall of the Philippines.) The two swimmers and the two skippers won the Navy Cross. Every other member of the two crews won a Silver Star.
Ironically, the day after incredible escape of all PT hands without injury, Lieut. Tatro, skipper of the 489, while working on a 20-mm gun, let a wrench slip and a trunnion spring threw the heavy tool into his forehead, injuring him seriously.
By November 1944, there was no more work for the PTs in New Guinea, and the last patrol was made just twenty-three months after the first one, 1,500 miles to the east. The PT navy in New Guinea had grown from one small tender and six boats to eight tenders and 14 squadrons.
Almost nightly action had taken a terrible toll of the Japanese. The shore was littered with the wreckage of daihatsus and the jungle was littered with the skeletons of thousands of Japanese soldiers who had died for lack of supplies.
Major General F. H. Berryman, Commander of the Second Australian Corps, wrote the PT commander:
The following evidence emerging from the recent operations will illustrate the cumulative effect of the activities of your command:
A. The small degree to which the enemy has used artillery indicates a shortage of ammunition.
B. The enemy, in an endeavor to protect his barges, has been forced to dispose his normal field artillery over miles of coast when those guns might well have been used in the coastal sector against our land troops.
C. Many Japanese diary entries describe the shortage of rations and the regular fatigues of foraging parties to collect native food, which is beginning to be increasingly difficult to obtain.
D. A Japanese prisoner of war stated that three days’ rice, augmented by native food, now has to last nine days. This is supported by the absence of food and the presence of native roots on enemy dead.
E. There is definite evidence that the enemy has slaughtered and eaten his pack-carrying animals.
From the above you will see how effective has been the work of your squadrons and how it has contributed to the recent defeat of the enemy.
The war in New Guinea was over, but the Allies were still a long way from Tokyo. Across the water were the Philippine Islands, garrisoned with tens of thousands of Japanese. There was hard fighting ahead for the PTs.