2
‘Whacco’

Port Moresby and Salamaua
March to August 1942

It was Squadron Leader John Jackson’s last flight. As he took off to help defend the airspace above Port Moresby, Jackson may well have known it. He had fought with distinction in the Middle East before his Kittyhawk fighter squadron arrived in New Guinea six weeks earlier. After the heady early days of shooting up Japanese aircraft on the ground at Lae, he had been shot down by Zeros over the coast near Salamaua. Now, after swimming and trekking to safety, he was taking to the air again. The odds were not good: five Kittyhawks against eight Japanese Betty bombers with around a dozen Zero escorts. Jackson could see the Zeros closing in as he heaved his aircraft across the sky.

Less than a week after he arrived at Salamaua from New Britain, Captain Allan Cameron was again involved in an invasion. Before dawn on 8 March, Japanese forces landed on the New Guinea mainland. Naval troops hit the beaches at Lae, while Major Tadashi Horie’s II/144th Battalion, from the South Seas Force, came ashore at Salamaua. Cameron was the senior officer present, stationed at the airfield. Once he received word of the landing, Cameron told Flying Officer Alfred Hermes, the pilot of a RAAF Hudson bomber, to take off. Kerosene-soaked rags were used to light the flare path. Hermes ‘put lights on and soared off while Japs were landing,’ Cameron recalled.¹ He ordered the petrol dumps blown, and a RAAF sergeant took to the radio with an axe. As the NGVR rifleman Horace Harris ran across the airfield, he noticed that the fuel drums were still intact, so he bayoneted some of them and lit the fuel. A banker by day, Harris was having more excitement by night.²

The lights had been left on along the far side of the airfield, but the Japanese troops came down the nearer side in the dark and drizzling rain. Seeing them approach, Cameron whispered a warning to Tom Brannelly, who replied loudly, ‘What did you say?’ The Japanese opened fire. The leading enemy soldier was only five metres away when Brannelly shot him. It was the only aimed shot fired in the defence of Salamaua. Cameron then went to detonate the airfield demolitions, but the charges were damp. The result was only a dull thud. In a final gesture of defiance, he fired his revolver towards the pursuing enemy and headed over the suspension bridge across the Francisco River. With the Japanese only 20 metres from the far bank the bridge was felled and the men headed inland.³

On 10 March, there was a more serious response to the Japanese landing from the United States Navy. The aircraft carriers Yorktown and Lexington launched 104 planes from the southern side of the New Guinea mainland across the Owen Stanley Range to strike at Salamaua and Lae. Commander William Ault positioned his scout plane over the gap in the range to confirm that it was free of cloud, but the heavily laden Devastator torpedo bombers had great difficulty flying high enough to pass through. Lieutenant Commander Jimmy Brett, a former glider pilot, picked out an area clear of jungle and, circling above it, found a thermal updraft that gave his plane enough lift to get through; his squadron followed.⁴

The Dauntless dive bombers struck three ships at Lae, sinking the Kongo Maru and Tama Maru No. 2 and forcing the Tenyo Maru to run aground. Off Salamaua, the Devastators from Lexington attacked two transports at anchor, and Dauntless dive bombers made follow-up attacks. The transport Yokohama Maru was sunk, probably by bombs, as the American Mk 13 torpedos were notoriously unreliable at this stage of the war. Another seven vessels were damaged in the raids. Of the 389 Japanese casualties, 132 were killed.⁵ Moving back along the track to Wau, the men withdrawing from Salamaua could hear the sounds of the bombing raid. Jim Currie later wrote, ‘Although we must be [30 kilometres] away by direct line, we can feel the ground vibrate with the explosions.’⁶

The carrier raid was a success on two levels. First, it caused the Japanese their most serious loss of ships and men since the start of the war. Second, and of greater strategic importance, was the delay this action imposed on the planned Japanese invasion of Port Moresby. Forced to increase air defence over the proposed invasion fleet, Imperial Headquarters assigned the high-speed anti-aircraft ship Asakayama Maru to the South Seas Force, and transferred an additional aircraft carrier, , to the Fourth Fleet.⁷ These deployments, plus the need to replace the transports lost at Lae and Salamaua, delayed the Port Moresby operation until May.

From the ridges above Salamaua, Allan Cameron watched the carrier raid. ‘Our own planes gave Salamaua a pasting,’ he wrote, ‘and from where we were appeared to get at least one ship.’ The next morning Cameron twisted his knee, making the trek to Skindiwai, midway between Mubo and Wau, even more difficult. He wrote, ‘Rest of [30 kilometre] mountain climbing was agony.’ But he was still able to admire the ‘marvellous views, mountain mists, towering trees, birds and frosty air.’ Reaching Wau, the group found a ‘terrible mess after bombing, water on drome, town completely deserted.’ They then began the long walk out to the south coast via the Bulldog Track. This was the harshest of country, where even the native carriers took weapons for protection from hostile tribes. Cameron would sleep on the weapons at night to prevent the carriers from fleeing. The greater enemy was the terrain. ‘The going has been very stiff,’ he wrote, ‘the track being hardly discernible at times and most of the morning spent on all fours.’ The descent from the range ‘was more like climbing down cliffs than descending hills.’ Then it got worse. ‘Camped in terrible conditions in a swamp. Mosquitoes, sandflies and leeches and no sleep.’ After ‘a steaming day in pitiless sun’ canoeing downriver, more mosquitoes descended on Cameron’s party. ‘Apart from hundreds of bites, the noise of them would have made sleep impossible.’ When Cameron’s party finally reached the coast, they caught a ride on a lugger back to Port Moresby, arriving at the end of March.⁸ In two months, he had trekked across New Britain, sailed the Bismarck Sea to the mainland, then walked across New Guinea from north to south. An officer of his fortitude and experience was rare in Port Moresby, and Cameron was soon appointed brigade major of 30th Brigade, the only Australian infantry unit in New Guinea at that stage.

In the skies above Port Moresby, the gleaming silver crosses of the Japanese bombers were evident on most days and the sound of their exploding bombs reverberated across the town. The first Japanese air raid on Port Moresby, by eight flying boats, took place on 3 February, and many more raids followed.⁹ The first Australian fighter aircraft, seventeen P-40 Kittyhawks from RAAF No. 75 Squadron, had arrived on 21 March, having flown up from Townsville via Cairns and Horn Island. These Kittyhawks had been expected for some time and had come to be known as the tomorrow-hawks or never-hawks. Despite being shot at by over-anxious gunners, all the planes that were sent made it through, though one irate pilot commented, ‘I’ve been shot down by Italians and shot down by fucking Germans, but I had to go to New Guinea to be shot down by fucking Chockos [chocolate soldiers, or conscripts].’¹⁰ An hour after the Kittyhawks landed, two of them shot down an enemy plane making a routine recon flight over Port Moresby. Peter Hayman watched as ‘Up in the clouds a flash of flame is seen and then a plane is seen falling to land with a huge splash into the sea.’¹¹ ‘Too easy,’ the elated war correspondent George Johnston wrote. ‘First real evidence of aggression in this war. Whacco!’¹²

Squadron Leader John Jackson led nine Kittyhawks on a dawn strafing attack to Lae the following day, catching the Japanese aircraft lined up on the runway. Three bombers and nine fighters were left burning on the ground and another two fighters that had got airborne were shot down.¹³ For one of Jackson’s pilots, Flying Officer Bruce Anderson, it was his first chance to take on the Japanese Zeros since his last outing, piloting a Wirraway over Rabaul. Tragically, he was shot down by ground fire and killed. On 4 April, the Kittyhawks returned to Lae airfield and left seven enemy aircraft blazing and another ten damaged in their wake.¹⁴ However, when Jackson made an early-morning recon flight over Lae on 10 April, the Zeros were waiting for him and he was shot down. He managed to swim to shore, and with help from local natives made it to Wau, from where he was flown back to Moresby. On 28 April Jackson led the last five serviceable Kittyhawks against an enemy air raid. ‘It’s on!’ one pilot said, and the fighters were on their way, climbing out over the ocean and then turning for the ranges. When the eight Betty bombers were seen, they were above the Kittyhawks. Jackson took his plane out wide to climb for a side-on attack. He, Barry Cox and Peter Masters targeted one plane each. Masters’ aircraft stalled as he fired, almost standing up on its tail before spinning towards the ground. Masters was out of the fight, but over the radio he could hear Jackson cursing his attackers, fighting for his life. As Masters put it, ‘He was making one hell of a fight of it.’ Jumped by eleven Zeros from the crack Tainan Kokutai air group, the gallant Jackson and Cox were shot down and killed. In Jackson’s honour, Seven Mile Strip, the main aerodrome at Port Moresby, was renamed Jackson’s, a name it retains to this day.¹⁵

The Japanese planned one more major landing on the main island of New Guinea: Operation MO, the invasion of Port Moresby. The Japanese commander, Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inouye, had three carriers, thirteen cruisers and thirty-two destroyers available for the operation, but he would need to use some of that force to protect the fourteen vessels of two invasion convoys, one headed to Moresby and the other to Tulagi, in the Solomon Islands. The merchant vessels heading to Moresby contained the infantry of Japan’s I/144th Battalion and the marines of the 3rd Kure Naval Landing Force. Inouye would use his two largest carriers, Zuikaku and Shôkaku, to bring the Allied naval forces to battle in the Coral Sea, in hopes of clearing the way for the invasion convoy.

Though American naval intelligence had broken the Japanese naval codes and knew the details of the Japanese plan, the US naval commander, Rear Admiral ‘Jack’ Fletcher, was hamstrung by also having to split his naval force. Fletcher had to send one of his two aircraft carriers, Yorktown, to oppose the Japanese landing at Tulagi. Then, on the morning of 7 May, he divided his remaining force. He sent Rear Admiral Jack Crace’s task group—comprising the three cruisers HMAS Australia, HMAS Hobart and USS Chicago and three US destroyers—to find the Port Moresby invasion convoy. Captain Harold Farncomb skilfully brought Australia unscathed through air attacks, first by twelve torpedo bombers and then from higher-altitude bombers, some of which were US B-26 Marauders out of Townsville!¹⁶ However, it was the carriers that would win this battle. Fletcher struck the first blow when aircraft from Lexington sunk the Japanese escort carrier . It was a critical loss. had provided direct air cover to the invasion convoy, which was now at the mercy of Crace’s cruisers.

Inouye struck next, air attacks crippling the US fleet oiler Neosho and sinking the destroyer escort Sims. On the morning of 8 May, with the main battle fleets only 250 kilometres apart, the heaviest air attacks began. Shôkaku was the first casualty. Struck by six bombs and with her flight deck disabled, she was ordered back to Truk. The other fleet carrier, Zuikaku, though undamaged, also fled north. Yorktown was hit by a bomb, and Lexington, blasted by five torpedoes, was abandoned and sunk by a US destroyer. But with the Japanese carrier fleet in disarray, depriving the invasion convoy of air cover, Inouye abandoned the operation and the convoy returned to Rabaul.

The Battle of the Coral Sea saved Port Moresby. The subsequent naval battle at Midway from 4 to 6 June, when four Japanese aircraft carriers were sunk, crushed the Japanese naval air arm and ensured it was no longer a threat to Moresby or to the Australian mainland. If both of those naval battles had gone the Japanese way, the Imperial Japanese Navy would have been in a position both militarily and politically to carry out direct operations against Australia, including invasion. The circumstances would have been favourable, and plans always reflect circumstance. Thanks to these naval victories, however, on 11 June General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of Allied forces in the South West Pacific Area, was able to tell Australian Prime Minister John Curtin that Australia’s security was now assured.¹⁷ It was further enhanced on 11 July, when Japanese Imperial Headquarters, adapting to the changed circumstances, cancelled planned operations against Samoa, Fiji and New Caledonia.

Despite the Coral Sea repulse, the Japanese kept the pressure on Port Moresby. Packed with troops and supplies, the Burns Philp motor vessel Macdhui arrived in Moresby from Townsville late in the afternoon of 15 June. Next morning, it moved out into the harbour, where unloading continued using lighters. It was still there on 17 June when Japanese high-altitude bombers flew in. They damaged the ship and killed six men. The following morning, eighteen bombers targeted the Macdhui, dropping sixty-eight bombs; four hit home. One bomb smashed into the poop deck, wiping out the gun crew and disabling the steering. The five gunners who were killed were the first battle casualties from 39th Battalion. Two more bombs landed in the holds of the ship and fires broke out. A fourth bomb then hit on the starboard side, the explosions tossing Captain James Campbell from his bridge. The dazed captain realised the ship was doomed and ordered the men off. Burton Graham watched from the shoreline. ‘I stood and watched the drifting ship. There was still a lot of smoke rising above her. Flying in and out of it, weaving slowly through the still air of the harbour, were two large birds. They looked like vultures.’¹⁸

Up on Tuaguba Hill, the Australian photographer Damien Parer filmed the attack. Peter Ryan, who was at the bottom of a slit trench holding the legs of Parer’s camera tripod, looked up and asked, ‘Didn’t you hear the bombs?’ Parer, who earlier in the war had filmed German bombers in the Middle East, said, ‘I don’t hear anything when I’m working.’¹⁹ Until he resigned in August 1943, Parer would continue to photograph the war in New Guinea, conveying its stark realities to Australians back home.

With the threat of a seaborne invasion of Port Moresby now removed, Major Paul Kneen’s 2/5th Independent Company was airlifted to Wau as the main component of the newly formed Kanga Force, which had been allocated to the Wau–Salamaua area. Kneen’s men were all volunteers who had trained at the Guerrilla Warfare School at Wilson’s Promontory, on the south coast of Victoria. The training was unique, focusing on physical fitness and skill with weapons and explosives, including demolitions.²⁰ Stronger and better equipped than a regular infantry company, an independent company comprised three fifty-man platoons, each made up of three sixteen-man sections commanded by an officer and well equipped with automatic weapons. Each man wore the unit’s new insignia of two overlapping black diamonds: commando double black.

On 1 May General MacArthur had told General Thomas Blamey, Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Army and commander of Allied land forces under MacArthur’s aegis, of his desire to see offensive action taken against the Japanese in New Guinea. That meant operations at Lae and Salamaua, the only part of New Guinea where Allied ground troops were in contact with the enemy.²¹ On 12 May, Major Norman Fleay was appointed to command Kanga Force. The task was a difficult one, and the rationale for giving it to Fleay was not readily apparent. His inexperience in working outside the normal Army support structure with what could be termed irregular forces, and his total lack of experience in the unique terrain and climate of New Guinea, would prove severe handicaps.

The transport pilots had a considerable challenge to overcome in flying to Wau, as their planes were unable to fly high enough to clear the Owen Stanley Range. They had to fly through a gap in the range that was easily closed by cloud. Then, at Wau, the transport pilots faced the immense challenge of landing on a sloping airstrip whose elevation rose 100 metres along its 1000-metre length. With mountains hemming in the southwest end of the airstrip, planes had to land uphill and take off downhill. Flying Officer Alex Miller-Randle later wrote: ‘The first time I saw the Wau landing strip, I was astounded. If one did not make it the first try, there was no going around again; you made it or else!’²²

On 23 May, the first of Kneen’s men were taken across to Wau and Bulolo. Ken ‘Andy’ Knox was on a flight on 26 May which passed through the gap in the Owen Stanleys. As the plane came in to land, only a matter of minutes flying time from the Japanese airfield at Lae, the American pilot had just one thing in mind: to make it into the air again. ‘Get out, get out, get out!’ he yelled to his passengers. ‘We’ve got to get off.’²³ Lieutenant Max Piggott was on the last plane down; by the time it landed, enemy aircraft were in the area. The men were told to ‘get ready to stick your guns out the door and smash the windows if the Zeros come at us.’²⁴

While Major Kneen would be in charge of the commandos in the Bulolo Valley, Captain Norm Winning would be responsible for those men now stationed at Mubo, deep in the hinterland behind Salamaua. By 15 June, Winning had fifty-one of his own men there, together with the NGVR detachment. Winning was a red-headed Scot, nicknamed ‘Red Steer,’ who had worked on a plantation on Java, in the Netherlands East Indies, before the war. Damien Parer later portrayed him as having ‘all his courage, leadership and outspokenness in his fine-looking Scottish face.’²⁵ Sergeant Jim McAdam’s NGVR scouts, whom Parer called the ‘the patriarchs of this jungle warfare,’ made reconnaissance patrols to Salamaua to determine which buildings were occupied and define the approach tracks for the raiding parties.²⁶ Sergeant Bill O’Neill later observed, ‘They did a fantastic job—they made our job easy. They led us right in . . . they pointed out everything for us. You know—this is where the Japs are—this is where they’re not.’²⁷

A sand-table map was constructed at the forward camp at Butu, and the raiders spent two days going over the details of a plan that called for seven simultaneous attacks at Salamaua. The seven raiding parties were coded A to G from north to south, and one of McAdam’s scouts was attached to each. Parties A to F would make direct attacks, while Party G, which comprised a 3-inch mortar and crew, would bombard the main enemy positions at the isthmus. As the eight parties prepared to leave camp on 28 June, a signaller told Winning that Kanga Force headquarters wanted to know at once the results of the raid, which had originally been scheduled for earlier that morning. ‘You never got the message,’ Winning told him as he led his men out of the camp.²⁸ After a night approach, the raid was scheduled to begin at 0315 on the morning of 29 June.

Salamaua: 29 June 1942

The commandos of Corporal Bill Hunter’s Party B took up their positions adjacent to the bakery at Kela Point before a thunderstorm sent them running to shelter under an empty house. Hunter then went forward to check underneath a target building. An enemy soldier came out of the building for a piss. As he headed back inside, he saw Hunter, who immediately opened fire and screamed to his men to get moving. It was now 0314 and the game was on. One of Hunter’s men rushed to the door and pulled it open, while another took the pin from a demolition charge and hurled it inside. These charges were made up of a sticky bomb with a slab of TNT on either side; the explosion rocked the night and blew the two men and the door several metres. Half-dressed enemy soldiers staggered out in confusion, to be met by a wave of automatic fire from the raiders. Hunter then led his men out onto the road to confront some enemy troops who were forming up there. An enemy machine gun on the isthmus vainly searched for Hunter’s raiders, but as the other parties began their work, it switched fire elsewhere and Hunter’s men returned to the jungle whence they had come.²⁹ The only casualty was their NGVR guide, Jim Currie, who was shot through the wrist.

To Hunter’s north, Lieutenant Col O’Loghlen’s Party A was waiting for the start signal behind the seawall, only 20 metres or so from a row of houses. About ten Japanese soldiers were sitting outdoors with some native women. When O’Loghlen’s men heard the burst of fire from Hunter’s group at Kela village, three men ran forward with their demolition charges. The enemy soldiers tried to get back inside through doors that opened outwards, while the terrified women ran off down the road screaming. Mal Bishop went forward with a bomb in his left hand and his revolver in his right, firing as he approached the door of his target house. He pulled the door open, threw in the bomb, slammed the door shut and turned back for the seawall. As an adjacent building went up, Bishop was shot in the right shoulder. Then his bomb went off, blowing him out into the road. When he got back over the seawall, one of the native guides handed him a Tommy gun. The young man’s eyes were bright as he told Bishop, ‘You shoot him Japan, shoot him Japan, kill him Japan, masta.’ Back at the houses, other commandos moved through the ruined buildings shooting or bayoneting anyone who moved. They threw flares into eight or nine other houses, though most were damp, and only three houses caught fire.³⁰

Just after 0300, Winning moved the men of Party C into the backyard of the police master’s house and told them, ‘You boys go around and watch all the doors and windows and shoot anyone who comes out, and I will slip in the back door and flush them out.’ When firing broke out at the nearby hospital, Winning went inside, then shouted, ‘There’s nobody at home.’ His men torched two houses as they followed the road down to the sentry house.³¹

Lieutenant Johnny Leitch’s Party D went into action as soon as they heard the gunfire from Hunter’s group. The men had been waiting in the scrub, faces blackened with charcoal; some had khaki cloth tied around their heads. Their targets were the medical assistant’s house and the adjacent barracks house in Kela. Bernie Davies raced up to the main entrance of one of the buildings and threw in his bomb, saying, ‘Share that for breakfast, you bastards.’ He slammed the door shut and leaned against it to hold it closed. The blast blew the door off its hinges and threw Davies down the steps. Davies looked back to see enemy troops exiting via a trapdoor near the back of the building and dropping two metres to the ground. One member of Leitch’s party was standing nearby, picking them off one by one with his Tommy gun as they jumped through the trapdoor.³² Wilf English thought the Japanese might have been deafened by the bomb blast and unable to hear their comrades being shot. English also watched others run from the hut as if they thought an air raid was taking place. They were cut down by crossfire from the Tommy gunners on either side of the door.³³

Roy Burbury was providing covering fire for Bernard ‘Curly’ Moylan, who lay down beside him with one of the demolition bombs. Hearing the first gunfire, he said, ‘Righto, Curl,’ and Moylan ran up to the door and hurled the bomb inside. As he returned, the bomb blast threw Moylan through the air into a ditch down by the creek. Burbury then opened fire, shooting down three enemy soldiers who were trying to escape through a window. As Burbury changed his magazine, a recovered Moylan asked, ‘Roy, did the bomb go off all right?’ Burbury could only reply, ‘Did the bomb go off!’ The men kept firing on the house until Johnny Leitch told them, ‘Let’s move on.’ They headed across to their second target, the radio towers, destroying some cars along the way. When they reached the ocean shore they met up with Bill O’Neill’s Party E.³⁴

O’Neill’s men had set their charges on the radio masts and then moved to the bridge to cover any Japanese movement from the isthmus. They fired a burst into the sentry box at the bridge and tossed a grenade into the air-raid shelter across the road. O’Neill covered the approach from Kela, aware that one of the attached medical orderlies would be making his way to the bridge at some time to treat any wounded in O’Neill’s party. At 0400, O’Neill heard Australian voices approaching, then shouts and machinegun fire. When the approaching group stopped not far from the bridge, two men who had tagged on at the rear kept going. ‘Hey, you two!’ Bernie Davies called out. ‘Don’t go any further. Stop here!’ When they continued walking, Davies yelled, ‘Those two are Japs!’ The enemy soldiers took off into the thick scrub down near the bridge. Winning fired at them, his bullets whistling past O’Neill, who was standing on the bridge.³⁵

Soon afterwards, O’Neill heard footsteps heading his way. In the moonlight, he made out a man carrying a bag. The man froze as O’Neill called, ‘Halt!’ Still expecting the medical orderly, O’Neill asked, ‘Who are you?’ There was no answer, and when the man moved back and made a dash for the scrub, O’Neill opened fire with his Tommy gun. ‘I just squeezed the trigger—and down he went,’ he later recalled. When Jim McAdam arrived, they discovered that the man O’Neill had shot was a Japanese pilot, Flight Sergeant Kumesaku Nemoto, complete with helmet and goggles. Though they did not know it, he was heading for a float plane moored out in the bay. After Winning arrived, they found Nemoto’s bag. By the light of the burning buildings, they had a quick look through the wad of documents inside.³⁶ Garth Rayner was immediately sent back to Mubo with them. Then, while a Bren gunner covered any approach from the isthmus, charges were set to blow the bridge. Winning conferred with Captain Douglas Umphelby, the NGVR commander, and with McAdam’s scouts about attacking the isthmus area, but it was decided not to do so.³⁷ A Japanese mortar had started firing on Kela and one of the shells landed on the bridge, igniting the demolition charges. When heavy enemy machinegun fire also broke out, the Australians retired.³⁸

Down at the airstrip, Lieutenant John Kerr’s Party F had had trouble getting into position on time after the guide, Gordon Kinsey, had got lost in the maze of local tracks.³⁹ Once the action started, Kerr watched Kinsey throw one of the bombs, which blew out the side of a house, and then got busy with his Tommy gun. He rapidly fired off a fifty-round drum magazine before realising that the flame from the end of his gun was attracting return fire. He threw a grenade and got out of the area.⁴⁰ Andy Knox was the Bren gunner in Kerr’s group down at the hangars, covering the airstrip. He heard the explosions and began firing towards the isthmus, expecting enemy reinforcements. Return fire soon forced Knox to change his position. He tripped and was burned by the red-hot gun barrel. Then a grenade burst nearby and shrapnel caught him in the leg.⁴¹ The heavy enemy fire persuaded Kerr to pull his men out. They placed the last bomb beside the aircraft hangar, but it failed to go off.⁴²

Party G was in position behind the church at Logui when the firing began at Kela. On hearing the first shots, Lieutenant Bill Drysdale, hunkered behind a village hut, fired the first mortar round over its roof. He fired thirty-eight bombs at the Salamaua isthmus. One of his first hit an important Japanese strongpoint. Return fire snapped overhead. When Drysdale saw two red flares go up from the aerodrome area at about 0400, he thought it was the signal to withdraw and did so. But it was the Japanese who had fired the flares, presumably requesting help. Before they withdrew, the Australians hid the 3-inch mortar; the barrel was too hot to carry and the mortar base had buried itself into the sandy ground as it fired. They covered it with banana leaves, and it was brought back by Logui villagers the next day.⁴³

As the parties withdrew, the men passed through a Vickers machinegun position, which covered them from any enemy pursuit. When the first raiders came back through the position, one of the Vickers gunners said, ‘The bloody noise down there made me believe you would all be killed.’⁴⁴ The first parties arrived back at Butu camp by 0600; Drysdale’s group came in last, at 1030. They then retired to Mubo, where Kerr’s group, which had got lost, joined them the following day.⁴⁵ Back at Mubo, Winning had a closer look at the documents captured from the pilot and then sent Bill Harris, a former Australian skiing champion, back to Wau with them so they could be translated and assessed. Harris reached Wau in two days, having survived on only a single tin of bully beef. The documents included marked maps, sketches, a diary, copies of orders, and aerial code signs.⁴⁶ They were put on a plane to Port Moresby on the morning of 2 July.

It was later estimated that somewhere between fifty-seven and 113 Japanese soldiers had been killed in the raid; the Japanese admitted to losing thirty-eight. A number of buildings, the bridge at Kela, and three enemy vehicles had been destroyed.⁴⁷ The greater impact of the raid was that two crack Special Naval Landing Parties were sent to reinforce Salamaua.⁴⁸ The deployment of more men and resources at Salamaua prevented their being used in subsequent battles in Papua and at Guadalcanal. Winning’s men had carried out the first offensive action on land against the Japanese invasion of New Guinea, and just three Australians had been wounded, none seriously.

On the night after the Salamaua raid, Major Kneen led a second raid on Heath’s Plantation, west of Lae, to destroy a bridge and a gun position. The raid achieved surprise, but in the confusion of night fighting Kneen was killed. Captain Pat Lang took over command of the unit, though Winning would remain in command of the men at Mubo.

A Japanese response was not long in coming: Wau, Bulolo and Skindiwai were bombed on 2 and 3 July.⁴⁹ On the 3rd, Winning sent a message to Fleay setting out the strength of his force at Mubo—just forty-nine men. Despite the attached NGVR men, it was hardly an adequate force to contest any serious Japanese move on Mubo and Wau.⁵⁰ In mid-July, two more commando sections were sent to Mubo, but the Japanese reinforcements at Salamaua were more significant. From his treetop observation post, Jim McAdam estimated that another 200 Japanese troops had arrived since the raid, bringing the garrison to between 400 and 500 men. Strong enemy patrols of up to seventy soldiers had been observed searching the tracks around Salamaua for signs of further Australian activity.⁵¹

On the morning of 21 July a lightly equipped Japanese force, later confirmed as numbering 136 marines from the 5th Sasebo SNLP, headed to Mubo. They were guided by four villagers and had the support of three seaplanes flying overhead. Approaching Mubo at around 1700, the Japanese guides saw boot tracks and sent out a scouting group. When these scouts came out onto the open landing-ground area at Mubo, the Australians opened fire, scattering them.⁵² The Japanese had seemingly blundered into Mubo, but the Australians were also caught on the hop: they had sat down to eat without posting sentries, and had to race to their positions.⁵³ One alert NGVR man was by the Vickers gun up on Mat Mat Hill when the enemy troops were spotted, and once he opened fire they were trapped in the river valley. Though the gunner was unable to lower the Vickers sufficiently to fire on the lead men, the Lewis guns up on Vickers Ridge were able to fire down onto the enemy left flank, and they proved to be very effective. Tom Lega watched as two or three enemy soldiers at a time would run out onto the airstrip to draw the Australians’ fire before racing back under cover. Grenades from the enemy ‘knee mortars’ were lobbed at the Vickers position, but without effect. The Japanese pulled back, carrying their dead and wounded, including the officer in charge, who had been shot in the head. At least twelve enemy soldiers were killed; the Australians had no casualties. Local people later said that every Japanese soldier heading back to Salamaua helped carry a dead or wounded comrade.⁵⁴

One dead and two wounded native guides were found the next morning. Lieutenant Bill Ridley’s commando section, which had arrived as the battle was in progress, also found evidence that saplings had been cut down to make stretchers.⁵⁵ Damien Parer had now reached Mubo, along with the journalist Osmar White. Both had walked overland from Bulldog to Wau and thence to Mubo; quite a feat. White described the aftermath of the Mubo fighting. ‘A patch of open kunai, trampled, scattered with the obscene yellow-white of discarded field dressings,’ he wrote. ‘There were little yellow candy wrappings, too; packs, rifles, letters, a notebook. Pools of rusty-coloured blood were soaking into the churned earth.’⁵⁶

On 22 July the relative importance of operations in the Salamaua–Wau area receded when the first Japanese landings took place on the northern Papuan coast. This threat meant that the already limited Australian infantry and supply resources would be directed to Port Moresby; Kanga Force would have to make do with what it had. Making do proved beyond the recently promoted Lieutenant Colonel Norman Fleay’s abilities. When Mubo was abandoned on 30 August, at the height of the Japanese offensives in Papua, he ordered a withdrawal back to Kudjeru, about 20 kilometres south of Wau. He then ordered the destruction of everything above ground in Wau and the Bulolo Valley. Mal Bishop was given responsibility for demolitions in the valley. He was at Sunshine when told to ‘Bash and burn everything that’s standing from where you are back to Wau.’ When Bishop asked, ‘What do you mean by everything?’ he was told, ‘You are not even to leave a shithouse standing.’⁵⁷ At that stage, the Japanese had not advanced beyond Mubo.