The Papuan campaigns had seen some of the fiercest infantry fighting of the Pacific war. To minimise such losses of ground troops, the New Guinea campaigns that followed would concentrate on securing airfield sites to extend Allied air power. ‘There are three enemies out here from the air point of view and the Jap is the least of the three,’ the Allied air commander Lieutenant General Kenney told the ABC journalist Dudley Leggett. ‘There’s the tropical climate and the diseases associated with it, and the weather, and these two things are worse than the Jap.’1
As 1942 progressed, Allied air attacks on Lae had ramped up. A good example of their effectiveness came on 31 August 1942 when nine B-26 Marauders bombed Lae airfield before ten A-20 Havocs flying at minimum altitude strafed everything in sight on and around it. Living up to their name, two of the Havocs shot up a house overlooking the airfield apparently crowded with enemy troops relaxing over lunch, leaving the house burning. ‘That night Tokyo Rose called us murderers,’ General Kenney wrote.2
On 25 November 1942 the new P-38 Lightning fighters were over Lae and, with a lot of rivalry among the pilots over who would get the first victory, the pilots boldly announced their presence to the Japanese over a common radio frequency. ‘We are the P-38s. We are taking over patrol of the Lae airdrome,’ the radio squawked, ‘come on up and we’ll accommodate you.’ One Japanese pilot was sufficiently insulted to take off, but did so as two 500-pound bombs from Captain Robert Faurot’s Lightning hit the water off the end of the runway. The resultant water splash brought the Japanese plane down, prompting General Kenney to later tell Faurot, ‘I want you to shoot them down, not splash water on them.’3
For the Japanese, Lae airfield became unusable until early February 1943 when repairs were made in order to concentrate planes for an air attack on Wau. On 4 February, after A-20 Havocs and B-25 Mitchells had again bombed the airfield, Kenney wrote, ‘Japs had been working on it for several days. Now they can start over again.’ But the Japanese persisted and managed to stage air attacks on Wau on 6 February using Lae as a refuelling base. When Kenney’s bombers next returned to Lae a lone B-24 Liberator left two massive 2000-pound bomb craters on the runway.4
The Japanese command also understood that air power was the vital factor in the battle to hold onto New Guinea. In January 1943, even before the loss of Lae as a forward airbase, it was decided to build three new airfields on the north-western coast of New Guinea at But, Dagua and Boram Plantation and upgrade the current airfield at Wewak. On 14 February Kenney noted that aerial photos over Wewak ‘show 77 aircraft dispersal bays built or building’.5 The two Japanese infantry divisions that had landed at Wewak in February 1943 provided most of the labour to construct the new airfields.
As Lieutenant General Kane Yoshihara observed, the airfield work was not without its difficulties for the Japanese. ‘As we were about to land at Madang airfield the first thing that met my eyes was the sight of officers and men scattered all over the airfield, backs bent, doing something incessantly,’ he wrote. ‘When I looked closer, it seemed that they were plucking grass with their hands.’ Deprived of all their equipment after an Allied air raid just after it had been landed, the Japanese airfield engineers had been reduced to maintaining the airfield by hand. The contrast with the capabilities of the Allied airborne engineers was stark. ‘This was the special characteristic of the New Guinea fighting,’ Yoshihara observed. ‘The enemy had the latest equipment and fighting methods, while we had primitive equipment and fighting methods.’6
With the advent of the new airfields around Wewak, the responsibility for Japanese air operations on the New Guinea mainland now switched from the navy to the army with aircraft flown in from Dutch New Guinea and Rabaul and also directly from Japan via the islands to the north. The navy would retain responsibility for air operations in the Solomon Islands and at Rabaul. The Japanese 4th Air Army, comprising the 6th and 7th Air Divisions, was ordered to Wewak on 27 July. This had a major impact on Allied plans to carry out any air landing or amphibious operations at Lae and beyond. Japanese air power would have to be neutralised before any such operation could take place.
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At this stage the main Allied forward airbase was at Dobodura on the coastal plain behind the Papuan beachheads on the northern side of the Owen Stanley Range. The heavy bombers still operated from Port Moresby while most of the shorter-ranged medium bombers and fighters were based at Dobodura. However, the new Japanese airbases at Wewak were out of range for most of Kenney’s air arm. ‘It will become our primary target as soon as we can get close enough to hit it,’ Kenney wrote on 14 February.7 He desperately wanted an airfield closer to Wewak.
Salamaua was Kenney’s first choice for a forward airfield. On 23 February he had asked Lieutenant General Iven Mackay, who was to temporarily take over New Guinea Force from Lieutenant General Edmund Herring, whether the Australians could capture Salamaua. ‘He said he would need a lot more troops to even start that campaign,’ Kenney wrote.8 Kenney got the same response from General Blamey, who preferred to leave Salamaua in Japanese hands as its seizure would be a definite signal for the assembly of additional enemy strength at Lae.9 Four months later, on 20 June, Kenney approached General Herring about capturing Salamaua and ‘offered to slug the place to death and lay a carpet of bombs all the way to the place … I believe the Aussies could do the job in about three days and that would squeeze the Japs out of Lae way ahead of schedule.’10 But General Blamey had already told Herring that ‘Salamaua should not be seized; it should be bypassed.’11 Right up to the start of the Lae operation Kenney was still ‘arguing with Blamey about taking Salamaua and giving me a fighter field there’.12
It was clear that General Kenney would have to look elsewhere for an airbase closer to Wewak. In early May 1943 a reconnaissance party went searching for suitable airfield sites south of the Markham River, and an overgrown 600-metre runway at Marilinan, a pre-war supply strip, was chosen as a likely location. A patrol led by Lieutenant Edward Robinson from the 24th Battalion, with Major Charles Duchatel from ANGAU as the guide, reconnoitred the area in mid-May. Photos taken from ground level by Sergeant Donald Langford confirmed that the Marilinan area was a suitable location and Robinson estimated that 30 men could make the overgrown strip suitable for transport aircraft within a week.13
On 29 May Kenney wrote that ‘Marilinan is the place for the advanced base to cover the assault on Lae and the preliminary take-out of the Jap air at Wewak. I don’t dare mention it to Gen MacA’s staff yet. They would throw a fit at the idea of building a field by air 40 miles in behind the Jap front.’ Yet how else would Kenney get a base that would give his fighters and medium bombers the range to strike the enemy airbases at Wewak, a prerequisite for any attack on Lae? On 1 June he wrote, ‘As soon as I can get a forward airdrome at Marilinan or somewhere we can take care of Wewak. That place will have to be knocked out and kept out if we are to capture Lae and develop the Nadzab area for airdromes.’14
When Lieutenant Robinson returned to the area with the US engineer Lieutenant Everette ‘Tex’ Frazier in late May, it was confirmed that the strip at Marilinan could be used.15 Peter Ryan wrote of Frazier that ‘He was about thirty, with red hair, and a face brick-red from sunburn. Blue eyes smiled a little nervously from behind gold rimless glasses.’16 Frazier flew into Bulolo and then trekked into the Watut Valley to Marilinan where native labour was used to carry out some initial clearance under his direction, ensuring the edges of the landing strip were cut unevenly so the airfield would not be obvious from the air. Trees on the runway approaches also had to be lopped or cleared. ‘This was a better airfield location than could possibly be hoped for in such rugged country,’ Frazier declared.17 From then on, in answer to queries regarding the suitability of the Marilinan area for a major airbase, Kenney would reply conclusively, ‘Well, Lieutenant Frazier has been there.’18
Frazier returned to Port Moresby on 13 June to meet with General Kenney and General Wurtsmith. ‘Hell, Tex, if it is as good as you say it is, I’ll fly a P-40 there myself tomorrow,’ Wurtsmith told him.19 Wurtsmith did fly a Kittyhawk in the next day, following Frazier who had been flown back in an A-24 Dauntless. The two men then selected a better airfield site at Tsili Tsili, 6 kilometres along the Watut River directly north of Marilinan. The new site had enough space to build a double 2100-metre runway with dispersal areas. Kenney had already given orders to go ahead and develop Tsili Tsili as an advanced fighter base and refuelling point.20 Knowing that heavy rains starting in September would flood the area, it was important to have the airfield ready for the planned attack on Lae, at that stage scheduled for late August 1943.
On 7 June Kenney commented in relation to Japanese attempts to build a route from Wewak to Lae, ‘If I can build Marilinan up soon enough I can stop this business but right now I can’t afford unsupported day bomber attacks.’21 The following day General Blamey added his support for Kenney’s airfield at Tsili Tsili by allocating ground troops to protect it. Major General Frank Berryman was at the meeting. ‘GOC decided to put Bn into Watut to assist Kenney to develop a fighter airfield,’ he wrote. On 12 June, Berryman met with Kenney to discuss the forward airfields at Bena Bena and Marilinan and later wrote in his diary, ‘Kenney going full steam ahead with the latter.’22
On 17 June Kenney briefed General MacArthur on Marilinan and how he planned to base a fighter group and some strafer squadrons there rather than just use it as a refuelling base. MacArthur asked him, ‘Say, George, have you told my staff about all this?’ ‘Hell no,’ Kenney replied. ‘Don’t tell them just yet,’ MacArthur added. ‘I don’t want them scared to death.’23 After further work on Marilinan and the connecting road, work on Tsili Tsili began on 20 June.
Meanwhile General Whitehead had told General Herring, ‘you give us some troops to guard strips at Tsili Tsili and Bena Bena and we’ll knock the Jap airforce out of the sky’.24 Following General Blamey’s approval on 8 June, Herring also agreed and Lieutenant Colonel Robert Marston’s 57/60th Battalion was given the task of guarding the airbase development, coming under the direct command of New Guinea Force as the main component of Tsili Tsili Force.25 Also attached were detachments of service corps personnel, engineers, signallers and field ambulance personnel. A platoon from the Papuan Infantry Battalion under Lieutenant Doug Stuart would provide a forward reconnaissance capability.
On 16 June Lieutenant Les Talbot’s 17 Platoon was the first unit from Marston’s battalion to arrive. Talbot’s account of the landing gave a good indication of the rough nature of the Marilinan airfield. ‘We were warned to hang on, and did and landed in what looked like an overgrown wheat field, with a cut grass cricket pitch about 500 yards long … The pilots were anxious to get back before the mountains clouded in again, and we helped as we could. They finally charged full pelt at the end of the short strip, just cleared the trees, and swung left back to Moresby, leaving a haze of clipped leaves and twigs from the tops of the taller trees.’26 By mid-August Tsili Tsili Force had been built up to two infantry companies plus the mortar and machine-gun platoons. The entire battalion was not assembled at Tsili Tsili until mid-September.27
Major General Stan Savige, the Australian 3rd Division commander, had wanted Marston’s battalion in the front line near Salamaua rather than at Tsili Tsili. ‘Their alleged use to protect the Americans in building the airstrip in the valley was ludicrous,’ he later wrote, and criticised General Herring for supplying the Americans with more than a company for the task.28 Herring saw the bigger picture and knew the strategic importance of Tsili Tsili for the air war and told Savige on 25 June, ‘I decided to put the whole Bn there because the threat to this valley may come down the Ramu and it makes your flank there secure against anything that may come down that way.’29 The continuing spectre of another secret track, as used by the Japanese during the attack on Wau, clearly preyed on Herring’s mind.
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Lieutenant Colonel Harry Woodbury’s US 871st Airborne Engineers Battalion, the first complete unit of its type to leave the continental United States, had arrived in New Guinea on 5 June 1943. Woodbury, a 27-year-old civil engineer, was ‘the heart and soul of the Airborne Engineers’ who had helped design the unit’s equipment, each piece of which could fit into a C-47 transport or a glider and was limited in weight to about 2000 kilograms. Woodbury’s battalion consisted of 29 officers and 501 enlisted men and on 10 July the first company was flown into Marilinan in 30 C-47s. The entire unit was not in place until 5 August.30 The first thing the 871st engineers did was to mow a fake airstrip out of the nearby kunai grass to fool any Japanese aerial reconnaissance.31
Kenney gave Woodbury a month to build the airbase at Tsili Tsili so Woodbury worked his men day and night, making use of as much native labour as he could get. Kenney wanted space for a fighter group to be based at Tsili Tsili plus parking space for a medium-bomber group of strafers. Rather than build revetments from scratch it was proposed to ‘scoop hard stands out of the side of hills’ to save time. Storage space for 5000 drums of gasoline and 1000 tonnes of bombs was also required. Using light-gauge disposable fuel drums, the C-47s could carry fifteen drums per load and were already bringing them in.32
With fighter escort time over Marilinan limited to one hour, it was imperative to turn around as many transports as possible in that time. The key would be the loading and unloading procedures. Air Freight Forwarding Units were set up for the task and they used an old C-47 wreck at Port Moresby to train on. Prior to the training it would take about 40 minutes to load or unload a jeep from the transport, but after developing new procedures the men could do it in two and a half minutes. Using such techniques, some 30 to 35 transports could be unloaded each hour at Marilinan.33 General Herring’s staff complained about the amount of air transport allocated to Tsili Tsili in comparison to that provided to support Savige’s 3rd Division in front of Salamaua. ‘The Yanks are flying in hundreds of transports to Tsili Tsili and only five to 3 Div,’ Savige told Herring. ‘For goodness’ sake what do you expect,’ Herring countered. ‘You ought to know better. It is all part of the big plan.’34
Vast quantities of equipment were flown to Tsili Tsili, not to mention fresh eggs and milk that came up from Townsville via Port Moresby on most days. This was despite a parlous ration state among the Australians. ‘The Americans’, according to Colonel Marston, ‘were too busy flying in cinema outfits, refrigerators and padded stainless steel furniture to concern themselves with even Australian rations for Australian troops.’ The Americans also had a liberal supply of machine guns. Aside from the authorised eight .50 calibre guns, they had flown in another twenty twin .50 calibre mounts and twenty water-cooled .30 calibre guns. Marston coordinated their use with a fire plan to prevent ‘a proper hellzapoppin’. This came at a time when intelligence warnings had been issued that a Japanese paratroop landing was possible.35 If the Japanese were to launch a ground or air attack on Tsili Tsili they would certainly get a hot reception.
The engineers of the 871st spent 24 hours a day building the new airbase, ‘working at night under a Hollywood arc light set up’.36 A rough dirt runway was quickly completed so that any stray or crippled aircraft could make emergency landings. As Bud Seale observed, ‘We got P-40s, B-25s and P-39s that had been hit or had fuel problems and the air corps mechanics would fix them up so that they could get back to their home base.’37 With a need for vehicles larger than jeeps, two and half ton trucks were cut in half and flown into Marilinan in separate aircraft before being bolted and welded back together. ‘It worked like a charm,’ Kenney wrote.38
A detachment of Australian engineers from the 2/8th Field Company had been sent in to help grade the first airstrip. Sapper Vern Tuskin said ‘we just cut a strip big enough for the Dougs to come in’. The initial task was to cut the kunai, but it had to be done correctly as ‘the dirt underneath was that soft and … it was better to try and leave the roots in to hold the dirt together … Of course, when the Yanks come in they had these little miniature dozers things … if they’d seen a hump they’d just take that off but they went down to dirt level and of course theirs was too soft, so they bought these big steel strips in, they interlinked with one another.’ This was Marston matting, interlocking perforated steel strips vital to prevent aircraft wheels, particularly those of fighters, from ploughing into the soft ground or mud. As Tuskin observed, ‘When they landed you’d hear them clanker, clanker, clanker. Sounded like a train going past.’ Tuskin noted that ‘in about four weeks they put up five strips.’39 By the start of September the 871st had constructed three dry-weather runways, about 150 hard standings (reinforced parking areas) and 19 revetments (for protection from bomb blast).40
On 14 August two squadrons of P-39 Airacobras from Lieutenant Colonel Malcolm Moore’s 35th Fighter Group flew into Tsili Tsili. They were just in time as Japanese aircraft had finally spotted the airfield during a reconnaissance flight on 11 August.41 The Japanese intelligence report noted that ‘An airfield is being constructed at a point several kilometres north-east of Marilinan. There is a considerable number of men, and they appear to be gradually increasing in number, their plan being to attack the Nadzab and Chivasing areas.’42 By the clever use of camouflage and careful timing of flights, the existence of the airfield at Tsili Tsili had been kept hidden from the enemy for around two months. As Peter Ryan observed, ‘a major operational base had sprung from the earth just at the back door of Lae, the enemy’s main stronghold’.43
Sergeant Major Akira Bomura was a wireless operator and machine-gunner in one of the Kawasaki Ki-48 Lily bombers of 3rd Hiko Chutai (Air Squadron) based at Wewak airfield. The 3rd was one of three chutais that made up Lieutenant Colonel Akimitsu Oda’s 208th Hiko Sentai (Air Group) which had flown from Truk to Rabaul on 9 May 1943 and then on to Wewak on 11 May. At full strength Oda’s sentai had 45 Lily bombers but, due to a severe pilot shortage, no more than nine of the fifteen aircraft in each chutai were operational at any one time. Another Lily sentai, the 45th, was based at Boram airfield. The Lily only carried an 800-kilogram bomb load, had poor manoeuvrability, a slow rate of climb and was very vulnerable to enemy gunfire. Unsurprisingly, it was disliked by the Japanese airmen who nicknamed it the Satsujinki, the suicide plane.44
On the morning of 15 August seven Lily bombers from the 3rd Hiko Chutai led by Lieutenant Hidemitsu Imai left Wewak at 0600 and were joined over Madang by 36 escorting Oscar fighters.45 The force targeted Fuaba airfield, the Japanese name for Tsili Tsili, each bomber only carrying six 50-kilogram bombs due to the distance involved, a three hour and twenty minute flight from Wewak. On arrival over Tsili Tsili at about 1000, the bombers were attacked by an estimated 30 US fighters and Bomura’s Lily was shot down. Three of the four aircrew were killed in the crash but somehow Bomura survived. ‘When I regained consciousness,’ he wrote, ‘my plane was burning and I was thrown to the ground.’ Severely burned and unable to walk, Bomura rested the next day before deciding he must try to get to Lae. Three days after the crash he tried to walk out but was blocked at a river junction, still only about 200 metres from the airfield. He was captured on the following day, 20 August. Akira Bomura would prove to be one of the most valuable Japanese prisoners captured in New Guinea. He was extensively interrogated and the diary he carried gave a rare insight into Japanese air operations in New Guinea.46
Despite the loss of their bombers, the Japanese Oscar fighters shot down two C-47s from the 21st Troop Carrier Squadron and forced the remainder back to Port Moresby, making their getaway by some skilful flying at treetop level. Ernie Ford’s C-47 was carrying fresh vegetables to Tsili Tsili when an enemy fighter jumped his flight from above and behind. ‘On the first pass he shot down both of my trailing wingmen,’ Ford wrote. Despite also coming under attack, Ford, one of the most experienced transport pilots in New Guinea, was able to avoid the same fate by throttling back to almost stall speed as an enemy fighter closed in. ‘As the fighter overshot and passed overhead, the “Meatball” of the Rising Sun insignia never was so big or so close,’ Ford wrote. He also had to dodge a head-on pass by another Oscar before the escorting Airacobras came to his aid.47
‘The Japanese fighters—Oscars—bounced our guys and bore down on our transports,’ one of the escorting Airacobra pilots wrote, ‘So there was a big soiree up there in the wild hills.’48 The 26 Airacobras and three Lightnings soon engaged the attention of the Japanese fighters and, when the fight was over, four of the Airacobras had been lost, although three of the four pilots survived. All seven Lily bombers had been shot down along with three of the Oscars.49 One of the Australian infantrymen, Max Hillberg, watched the fighting from below: ‘13 Japs down in 30 seconds,’ he wrote.50
Damage on the ground had been slight although the 871st chaplain, Captain Keith Munro, was killed and three Australian infantrymen were wounded when one of the shot-down Japanese bombers crashed next to a church parade. One of the wounded men, Corporal Ray Taylor, later died. Colonel Marston’s batman, Private William ‘Herb’ Doney, was one of the wounded, in shock with his right temple cut open. The American doctor, Captain Joseph Strauss, gave Doney a dose of plasma but expected him to die. However, a few hours later Doney was still alive. ‘If a man wants to live that much,’ Strauss thought, ‘the least we can do is to try’. Operating on a raised stretcher with light bulbs hung from the trees overhead, Strauss went to work cleaning out the shrapnel and dirt from the wound, cutting and tying off blood vessels before packing the wound with sulfa and sealing it. Three of Strauss’s men stayed with Doney all night, holding him when he got restless, before he was sent back to hospital in Port Moresby.51
The Japanese made another air raid on the following day, but Thunderbolt and Lightning fighters knocked down about fifteen of the strafing fighters. Thereafter, the Japanese aircraft kept away and it became evident that the Japanese air commanders at Wewak had decided to conserve their strength. That strength was about to be severely depleted by a devastating blow against the Wewak airfields.
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The 6th Air Division of the Japanese Army had moved its headquarters from Rabaul to Wewak on 9 July 1943. The air division comprised five fighter and three bomber squadrons (sentais), 324 aircraft in all. The 7th Air Division, comprising three bomber squadrons and a fighter squadron, had also deployed to New Guinea in July and had a further 156 aircraft based at But airfield. Between them, these two air divisions had flown 1308 sorties in July 1943, 494 as convoy escort, 84 as intercepts and 190 as ground support.52 However, up until a resupply convoy arrived in early August there were serious supply difficulties at Wewak. Aviation fuel was in short supply with fighter aircraft given preference while food rations were cut in half, even for the aircrew.53
General Kenney knew that the two Japanese air divisions had arrived and, with his reconnaissance aircraft now able to refuel at Tsili Tsili, he could keep a close eye on them.54 The Japanese did not believe that the Allied medium bombers had the range to reach Wewak while the long-range heavy bombers presented less of a threat, particularly when out of range of escorting fighters. Two factors would change that situation. One was the construction of the Tsili Tsili airbase, which enabled escorting fighters to refuel and thus have the range to get to Wewak, and the second related to modifications made to the Mitchell medium bombers to increase their range and effectiveness.
When they had first arrived in Australia the Mitchells were equipped with a lower turret but, because the planes did most of their work in New Guinea at low altitude, this turret was removed and replaced with forward-firing guns in the nose. General Kenney’s air depot at Townsville worked around the clock making this modification to 172 Mitchells during the period from July to September 1943.55 Removing the turret also allowed an additional square-shaped 11,500-litre metal fuel tank to be installed, suspended by hooks from a bomb shackle and held in place by guide rails. Fabricated in Australia, these fuel tanks provided an extra two hours’ flying time, enough to increase the range of the Mitchells to Wewak. However, these tanks were very vulnerable to catching fire in combat or on crash landing so would need to be used up during the first two hours of the flight. ‘The auxiliary tank would be the first to empty,’ John Henebry noted, ‘and once empty, discarded.’56
Kenney’s bombers would also enter the Wewak air campaign with a new weapon against enemy aircraft on the ground. The first parachute-retarded fragmentation bombs or parafrags had been developed from standard 10-kilogram fragmentation bombs which were carried in a honeycomb rack in the bomb bay. A small parachute slowed and straightened the bomb, allowing the bomber to get out of the blast range before they exploded. On Kenney’s instigation, a new vertically suspended parafrag had been developed in the USA and would be used in the coming air offensive. Work was also proceeding on developing daisy-cutter bombs, which involved wrapping bombs with wire or strapping iron rods onto them to produce a ground-level fragmentation effect when used with a ground-proximity fuse.57
Kenney’s bombers stayed away from the Wewak area until Tsili Tsili had been sufficiently developed and stocked with fuel to provide a base for escort fighters and an emergency landing field for the medium bombers. It was also hoped that time would encourage the Japanese to build up a juicy target at Wewak. By 13 August aerial photographs showed that this was certainly the case, with eight medium bombers, 31 light bombers and 69 fighters identified at Wewak and Boram, plus 34 medium bombers, 34 light bombers and 23 fighters at Dagua and But.58
General Kenney now had at his disposal two heavy bomber groups (the 43rd and 90th) with 64 bombers and two medium groups (the 3rd and 38th) with 58 modified Mitchells available to strike Wewak. The plan was for eight squadrons of heavy bombers to open the assault with night attacks on the four Wewak airfields followed by five squadrons of Mitchell strafers at minimum altitude to bomb and strafe every plane still on the ground. Fighter planes, which could refuel at Tsili Tsili, would escort the Mitchells.59
Before midnight on 16 August, twelve B-17 Flying Fortress bombers and 38 Liberators took off in good weather from Port Moresby and all but two reached Wewak. For three hours from shortly after midnight the heavy bombers dropped their deadly loads on the four Wewak airfields. Three bombers did not return.60 The next day, 17 August, two squadrons of Mitchell bombers from the 38th Bomber Group left Port Moresby for the 800-kilometre flight to Wewak. However, only three of these 26 aircraft, all from the 405th Bomb Squadron, reached their target of Dagua airfield, west of Wewak. None of them reached But airfield. Most of the Mitchells had great difficulty in jettisoning the new auxiliary fuel tanks and had to abort the mission. The three Mitchells that did reach Dagua strafed the airfield at low level, with their combined 24 machine guns firing at once. ‘To my mind’s eye, thousands of lightning bolts were pouring forth from my plane in a steady stream of reddish-white color,’ Lieutenant Garrett Middlebrook wrote. ‘The entire area erupted in dust, fires and explosions … I caught a glimpse of a fuel truck racing toward the jungle with its refuelling hoses dragging along behind.’61 The three Mitchells fired over 5000 machine-gun rounds and scattered 105 ten-kilogram parafrags across the airfield, destroying or damaging at least seventeen aircraft on the ground. One of fifteen Oscar fighters sent up to intercept them was also shot down.62
Although based at Dobodura, the 3rd Bomb Group Mitchells flew out of Port Moresby to avoid the enemy airfields at Salamaua, Lae and Madang on the route to Wewak. Despite having eight Mitchells turn back, Colonel Donald Hall, the 3rd Group commander, led 29 Mitchell strafers across Wewak and Boram airfields, catching the newly arrived Japanese aircraft lined up on each side of the runways. The Mitchells also dropped 786 ten-kilogram parafrag bombs over the runways. The 3rd Bomb Group attack claimed some 60 aircraft destroyed or damaged at Wewak and Boram.63
According to 18th Army headquarters the Japanese 4th Air Army lost 60 to 70 planes on the ground during the 17 August attacks, leaving only 40 operational aircraft. A convoy due to arrive at Wewak on 25 August was postponed for two weeks due to the loss of air cover.64 With the opportunity to refuel at Tsili Tsili, 99 fighters took part in these raids as escorts and 85 of those reached the target. Although there were no interceptions, it was an unprecedented level of fighter support for the 5th Air Force in New Guinea.65
Kenney’s airmen were back over Wewak on the following day, 18 August, but poor weather meant that only half the 49 heavy bombers reached the target, and their bombing was inaccurate. Although most of the 62 Mitchells reached the target this time, the Japanese were waiting for them with heavy anti-aircraft fire and fighter cover. A flight led by Major Ralph Cheli, the commander of the 405th Bomb Squadron, was jumped by about a dozen Oscar fighters and Cheli’s plane was badly hit, the right engine and wing catching fire. Despite that, Cheli led his flight across Dagua airfield before crashing into the ocean. Captured and sent to Rabaul, Cheli was later executed by the Japanese. For his brave action that day, Cheli was awarded his country’s highest honour, the Medal of Honor. The escorting Lightning fighters, which had refuelled at Tsili Tsili, shot down fifteen Japanese fighters, for the loss of two.66 One of the Australians at Tsili Tsili observed, ‘fighters galore refuelling’.67
The offensive continued through to the end of August. Liberators carried out 102 additional sorties, and the Mitchells continued to attack land targets in the Wewak area. Other heavy strikes were carried out against important supply centres at Hansa Bay and Alexishafen. By neutralising Japanese air strength at Wewak, General Kenney’s airmen had opened the way for the assault on Lae. His bombers and fighters had done their job over Wewak; next it would be the turn of his transport aircraft over Lae.
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On 28 July Kenney had written to the head of the USAAF, General Henry ‘Hap’ Arnold, protesting at the low level of troop carrier crew replacements for the 5th Air Force. The level had been set at 7.5 per cent per month as against a 15 per cent figure for bomber and fighter units whereas Kenney wanted 25 per cent. ‘The figures show that between weather and Nips a man lives longer in a P-39 than he does in a C-47 flying the troop carrier supply runs in New Guinea,’ Kenney wrote. Despite the shortage of crews, Kenney was getting more transport aircraft with four new troop carrier squadrons reaching Port Moresby in the first week of July and two more soon thereafter. By September another troop carrier group had arrived giving the 54th Troop Carrier Wing a total of fourteen troop carrier squadrons. This force would provide the wherewithal to carry out an airborne operation at Nadzab and support the offensive to capture Lae.68
In the last week of August the C-47s made over 700 landings at Tsili Tsili.69 Sergeant Alan Gray flew into Tsili Tsili on 29 August as part of the ground support crew for a flight of Wirraways from RAAF No. 4 Squadron. The flight of C-47s he was in had escorting fighters flying at three levels above and more fighters below. The transports crossed the main range at 3000 metres and after reaching the Watut River valley ‘formed into line astern, made a wide circle and approached over the Watut’.70
What was later referred to as the secret airbase of Tsili Tsili had enabled the USAAF to largely eliminate the air threat at Wewak, which could have derailed the Lae operation. Now the secret airbase would provide a major staging post for that operation.