Grand Allied strategy would shape General MacArthur’s plans for operations against Lae. From 14 to 24 January 1943 the Casablanca conference in North Africa put in place the Allied priorities for the war. A decision was made at the conference not to go ahead with the cross-channel invasion of France in 1943 but instead to invade Sicily and then the Italian mainland. This would have a positive impact on the availability of landing craft for the Pacific in 1943.
What happened in New Guinea then depended upon what the US Joint Chiefs of Staff decided were the priorities for the South and South West Pacific theatres, the latter under General MacArthur’s command. On 28 March 1943 a series of directives was issued known as the Cartwheel plan. Cartwheel had three stages, with stage one calling for the occupation and establishment of airfields on Kiriwina and Woodlark Island. The stage two objectives were to seize the Lae–Salamaua–Finschhafen–Madang area and occupy and establish airfields on Western New Britain. Stage three involved the seizure of the Solomon Islands including the southern end of Bougainville and the establishment of airfields there. This third stage would come under Admiral William ‘Bull’ Halsey’s South Pacific Area of command, though General MacArthur would be responsible for ensuring proper coordination with his own forces.1 General George Kenney, who was in Washington for the meeting, wrote ‘Looks like it will be late summer before we can figure on take out of Lae.’2 Late summer in the United States was six months away.
For MacArthur, the key to the Cartwheel plan was the occupation of areas capable of development into forward airbases and the subsequent capture of established enemy airfields.3 Planning took place at advanced land headquarters in Brisbane under the direction of Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Major General Frank Berryman, assisted by Deputy Adjutant and Quartermaster General, Major General John Chapman. Other details were worked out at New Guinea Force headquarters in Port Moresby, firstly under Lieutenant General Iven Mackay and then from 23 May under Lieutenant General Edmund Herring. At this stage the operation to capture Lae, Salamaua, Finschhafen and Madang was given the code name Operation Postern.4 General Berryman would be the key man in the extensive planning process that lay ahead. Berryman’s biographer later characterised him as ‘the architect of victory’. His planning and personal skills, particularly his relationships with the key American commanders, would prove critical in the months ahead.5
The original target date for Operation Postern was 1 August 1943 and would be in two stages: an amphibious landing on the coast near Lae and an air–ground operation against Nadzab airfield, 30 kilometres west of Lae. For the amphibious operation an Australian division would move to Milne Bay and then move in three brigade groups from north of Buna to land near Lae utilising small landing craft. On 21 May General Blamey met with MacArthur and it was decided that, for the amphibious phase, sufficient landing craft had to be available to carry a division of up to 10,000 men.6
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It is doubtful that any army general other than MacArthur could have convinced the powers that be that he should have his own navy in the face of fierce opposition from the US Navy. The rationale for it was certainly there, paid for in blood by both American and Australian infantrymen fighting to reduce the stubbornly defended Papuan beachheads without the benefit of amphibious support. That experience convinced MacArthur that if the war continued in that vein then it was going to be a long and costly one and his troops would struggle to move beyond New Guinea, let alone reach the Philippines, to where he was determined to return.
Vice-Admiral Arthur Carpender was the commander of naval forces in the South West Pacific Area. In January 1943 he had a handful of cruisers and destroyers under his command, including Australian ships, but he was loath to deploy them among the treacherous shoals along the poorly charted Papuan coastline. They were mainly being used in Australian waters to protect convoys. However, the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) had taken a lead role in facilitating naval operations along the New Guinea coast. Three RAN survey ships had marked out a channel through the shoals around the eastern end of the New Guinea mainland and three Australian corvettes had used this route to bring the Australian 18th Brigade from Milne Bay to Oro Bay in December 1942. By late August 1943 the RAN had charted the New Guinea coast as far as Morobe and this would prove crucial for any naval operations against Lae.
The US Navy’s Admiral Chester Nimitz was in command of the Central Pacific Area and the vast majority of naval assets in the Pacific were assigned to him. Nimitz’s naval forces had given great support to the South West Pacific and South Pacific areas in 1942 when they were the critical areas of operations, but by 1943 Nimitz’s eyes were on the Central Pacific, the most direct route to Japan. In the opinion of the US naval commander, Fleet Admiral Ernest King, that was where any naval resources available in the Pacific theatre should be sent.
Rear Admiral Daniel Barbey had been involved with trialling a new concept in the US Navy: seagoing landing craft. His understanding of their capabilities made him an ideal appointment to MacArthur’s command. When Barbey had left for his new assignment, King had told him, ‘You have the enviable opportunity to take into combat the ships you helped create.’7 MacArthur’s Assistant Chief of Staff, Brigadier General Stephen Chamberlin, briefed Barbey on how the US Navy must take a leading role in the Cartwheel plan, telling him that ‘The general expects you and your amphibious force to do just that.’ It was a difficult position for Barbey who, having met with Nimitz in Hawaii on the way to Australia, knew full well that the US Navy’s focus was on the Central Pacific.8
On 10 January 1943, when Barbey reported to General MacArthur in Brisbane, ‘MacArthur’s navy’ was born. Starting from scratch, it was a difficult birth for Barbey’s 7th Amphibious Force but by the end of the war MacArthur’s navy had carried out over 25 separate amphibious operations from New Guinea to the Philippines. MacArthur’s emphasis was on recapturing the Philippines, a task that would require an oceangoing amphibious capability. ‘Your job is to develop an amphibious force that can carry my troops in those campaigns,’ MacArthur told him.9 As one of the few naval officers familiar with amphibious warfare, Barbey was the right choice for the job but the key factor was MacArthur’s willingness to let Barbey get on with his task and not interfere in the details of his work. MacArthur’s strength was finding the right people for a job and delegating the necessary authority for them to do it.
At the start of the Pacific War the US Navy had no dedicated amphibious capability. Even in Europe, amphibious warfare had hardly developed since the use of rowing boats at Gallipoli in the First World War. It was not until the fall of France in mid-1940 that serious moves were made to improve that capability in Britain and, with the start of the Pacific War, the need for an amphibious capability became vital to the Allied cause. However, such a capability was useless unless it could be effectively employed for operations, and Barbey’s immediate focus was to develop a blue-water (oceangoing) amphibious doctrine suitable for proposed moves along the New Guinea coast to Lae and beyond.
The US Marine Corps had developed a doctrine based on using large troop transports to carry smaller amphibious craft, the same technique used by the Japanese. The advantage of this approach was that it could be rapidly implemented using converted passenger ships to carry the troops. Smaller ship-to-shore craft could be loaded aboard and then lowered by davits (cranes) for the troops to embark via scramble nets. The craft adopted for use in these operations was the Higgins Boat, developed in New Orleans from a pre-war design by the brilliant Andrew Higgins. Two types of Higgins Boats were produced, both with a hinged bow. The 11-metre-long landing craft, vehicle personnel (LCVP) could carry 36 troops while the 15-metre landing craft, mechanised (LCM), could carry either one tank or 60 troops. General Dwight D. Eisenhower later said Higgins was ‘the man who won the war for us’.10
In concert with a British delegation, larger oceangoing landing craft capable of carrying and landing tanks, vehicles and supplies directly onto beaches were developed for European operations. The British proposed building a landing ship, tank (LST), landing craft, tank (LCT), landing craft, infantry (LCI) and landing ship, dock (LSD). Initially rejected due to the competing demand for naval and merchant ships from the major shipyards, the program was given the go-ahead following the outbreak of war in the Pacific. With the major American shipyards busy, the work went to smaller yards, and new ship-building facilities were constructed on inland waterways. The LSTs and LCIs for MacArthur’s navy had to be sailed from the United States to Australia by their crews and, given their flat hulls, they were not the most comfortable of vessels for such a journey. An LST could carry 500 tonnes (either as eighteen tanks, 27 heavy vehicles or equivalent stores) plus 160 troops. For operations such as at Lae, where very few vehicles would be landed, an LST could carry 400 men. The smaller LCI could carry 120 tonnes, usually in the form of about 180 troops and their equipment.
Landing craft could be adapted to requirements. Due to ‘the most crying need’, Barbey had LST 464 converted to a 78-bed hospital ship at the shipyards in Sydney and nine months later notice came through from the US Navy denying his request to do so. One LCT was converted into a much-needed water barge and Barbey also made good use of small wooden-hulled luggers, coastal transport vessels known as APcs or the more familiar ‘apple carts’. These served many purposes including tenders and flagships for LCT flotillas and one ended up as a floating post office.11
Auxiliary personnel destroyers (APDs) were First World War–era destroyers converted to carry troops. Equipped with four LCVPs, they could carry a company of troops and had been used in operations in the Aleutian Islands earlier in the war. The LCVPs could be offloaded and recovered using davits and the troops would embark and disembark between the destroyer and the LCVP via scramble nets. Barbey had four APDs allocated to his command: Brooks, Gilmer, Sands and Humphreys.
Given the ships available and the limitations imposed by the lack of naval power, particularly aircraft carrier cover, Barbey’s doctrine for amphibious landings specified that the landing should be made at dawn, about two hours before high tide, and that all vessels should be gone within about four hours. The landing beaches also had to be carefully selected to be free of natural and man-made obstacles including significant numbers of enemy defenders. The approach to the beach should be at a time when there was no moonlight or otherwise under the protection of overcast weather.12
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The US Army Engineer Corps operated its own amphibious force, the Engineer Amphibian Command. This had been set up in early 1942 when a means to cross the English Channel and make a contested landing on French shores had been recognised. The US Army amphibian force was confined to coastal operations within a 100-kilometre range of a land base.
Six US Engineer Special Brigades would be formed during the war, three of which would be assigned to the European theatre and three to the South West Pacific Area. The first brigade assigned to MacArthur was the Second Engineer Special Brigade (2nd ESB), which had been activated on 20 June 1942 and consisted of three regiments: the 532nd, the 542nd and the 592nd Engineer Boat and Shore Regiment (EBSR), plus the 562nd Engineer Boat Maintenance Battalion, a company of which was attached to each regiment during operations. Medical, signals, ordnance and quartermaster services were also incorporated into the brigade. Each regiment consisted of one boat and one shore battalion and was responsible for the operation and maintenance of the landing craft and for the loading and unloading of personnel and supplies. Colonel William Heavey took command of the 400 officers and 7000 men of the 2nd ESB in August 1942. On 24 January 1943 the personnel from the first regiment of Heavey’s brigade, the 532nd, left San Francisco for Australia and the rest of the brigade soon followed. The 532nd landed at Townsville and then moved to its base 25 kilometres north of Cairns while the other two regiments were based on the coast north of Rockhampton.13
The main landing craft used by the ESB was the LCVP, one of the Higgins Boats. Colonel Arthur Trudeau, chief of staff of the Engineer Amphibian Command, knew the brigade’s landing craft would take months to ship out to Australia, so organised to prefabricate the LCVPs and LCTs in sections that were easier to ship. The sections would then be assembled in Australia.14 A boat assembly unit, the 411th Engineer Base Shop Battalion, arrived in Cairns in December 1942 and the first reassembled LCVP was launched in April 1943. Three assembly lines were built and, within a short time, seven boats a day were being launched.15
On 28 May a provisional battalion of the 532nd Regiment moved to Milne Bay and then to Oro Bay on 13 June. Five days later the unit suffered its first casualties of the war during a Japanese bombing raid on the port. The battalion then moved up the coast to Morobe where, on 25 June, Barbey’s 7th Amphibious Force had taken over command of the 2nd ESB for the upcoming operations. This unified the amphibious command, though Heavey’s brigade came under Lieutenant General Walter Krueger’s US Sixth Army for administration purposes.16
The final point of departure for an amphibious operation against Lae, at that stage limited to the 2nd ESB’s smaller amphibious craft, needed to be within 100 kilometres of the landing beach. The base at Morobe was too far away so an intermediate staging point south of Salamaua needed to be secured.17 The first major operation for the 2nd ESB thus eventuated on the night of 30 June when units of the 162nd Infantry Regiment were landed at Nassau Bay, 30 kilometres south of Salamaua. Although the troops got ashore, the operation was a disaster for the landing craft with all but one of the 24 LCVPs being lost in the wild surf. Onshore, an Australian scout observed that ‘those 12-foot breakers … hurtled the big square-snouted barges into the beach like so many match boxes, sideways and backwards and almost upside down’.18 It was this operation that convinced General MacArthur that he would need to use the larger and longer ranged LCIs and LSTs for the Lae operation.
Nonetheless, the smaller landing craft would still be a vital component of the landing plan and beyond. So for the Lae operation about 65 LCVPs and LCTs from the 532nd EBSR were placed under Barbey’s command for the landing, after which the unit would come under Australian control until the operation was complete. In early August part of the 532nd moved to Milne Bay to carry out further training with Australian 9th Division troops while the remainder concentrated at Morobe in time for the assault on Lae.19 Meanwhile the rest of the 2nd ESB was also on the move.
In mid-July General Chamberlin said that the 2nd ESB was ‘not worth a god damn at Cairns, but can be used in New Guinea’. Chamberlin added that, ‘The whole thing is simple. Is brigade needed in Australia? No. Why not get it over to New Guinea. We cannot get ships unloaded there … I am going to order it forward now less training elements.’20 However, only two of the three 2nd ESB regiments could be moved to New Guinea due to shipping constraints.21
When it had been initially proposed that the Lae amphibious operation only use the 2nd ESB, the requirement was for 420 LCVPs and 54 LCMs including a 50 per cent reserve. However, only 280 LCVPs and 30 LCMs would have been available, significantly short of the requirement and further reinforcing the need for the larger oceangoing landing craft to be used in the Lae landing.22 On 25 May Chamberlin sent a memo to the Chief of Staff requesting that twelve LCIs, twelve LCTs and four LSTs should be made available by 1 September. They would allow the landing of 7000 to 10,000 troops east of Lae in successive movements. ‘The Australians have requested them,’ Chamberlin noted. ‘It appears extremely risky to believe that the Engineer Brigade can accomplish the mission assigned without assistance. It is unanimously believed that substantial elements of the Amphibious Force must be employed.’23 To enable the heavier landing craft to be assembled and the troops trained to operate from them, D-Day for Lae would have to be delayed by one month.
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Rear Admiral Barbey left Brisbane for New Guinea in late June 1943. His first challenge was to organise Operation Chronicle, the unopposed landings on Woodlark and Kiriwina Islands, which commenced on 30 June 1943. Barbey was able to borrow four APDs and six LSTs from Admiral Halsey’s Third Fleet for the operation to add to his own nine LSTs, eighteen LCIs and eighteen LCTs. Ten destroyers, eight submarine chasers and four minesweepers escorted the landing craft.24 The convoy for Woodlark left from Milne Bay while the convoy for Kiriwina went directly from Townsville. Although both Woodlark and Kiriwina were unoccupied by the Japanese, they were surrounded by coral reefs through which entrances had to be blown for the landing craft. At Woodlark Island, Commander Richard Scruggs, who had carried out the initial reconnaissance, piloted each of the first six LSTs through the coral reefs and onto the landing beach. At Kiriwina no ships larger than LCIs were used due to the difficult reefs.25 Because the landings were unopposed, shore parties of 200 men equipped with tools and beach matting had been put ashore a week before the landing. At Woodlark six beaching points, three beach exits plus dispersal areas and connecting roadways were constructed, enabling vehicles to readily move off the landing craft and the beach during the landing. This enabled the first LST echelons to carry supplies and equipment in vehicles which could rapidly unload, an advantage that would not be available to the Lae planners.26 Operation Chronicle benefited greatly from Admiral Halsey’s landings at Rendova and New Georgia in the Solomon Islands, which attracted heavy Japanese air and naval attention.
Deception would also play a part in Operation Postern. On 11 May General Blamey’s director of military intelligence, Brigadier John Rogers, proposed a plan to convince the Japanese that an operation from Darwin was being planned. Rogers suggested that Blamey visit the Darwin area along with an increase in troop and air movement. A landing craft would be sent there and other dummy landing craft and aircraft would be constructed.27 On 30 May Rogers’ Darwin plan came unstuck due to a lack of shipping activity and because some politicians were giving publicity to the boredom of the troops based there. The deception was also considered unconvincing due to heavy shipping at Port Moresby and Milne Bay. However, it was still proposed that increasing wireless traffic to India, moving troops around at Darwin and getting high-ranking officers to visit the town would help. However, this was still not considered convincing and on 16 June the Darwin deception plan was dropped.28
Although no specific deception plan was agreed upon, a very effective deception had been underway for many months. The Allied attack on Salamaua had drawn most of the Japanese combat troops from Lae. Ignoring the threats from air and sea, General Nakano saw Salamaua as the defensive shield for Lae and believed that as long as it was held then Lae was safe. General Blamey had identified this as a major flaw in the enemy strategy and had ordered that Salamaua not be captured at this stage. Blamey stuck to the Salamaua feint strategy despite considerable pressure from General Kenney to capture the town for a forward airbase. General Berryman noted in his diary on 23 July that ‘Original plan to be followed and NOT capture SAL but to continue present scale of ops there.’29 Only days before the start of the Lae operation, Kenney was ‘Arguing with Blamey about taking Salamaua and giving me a fighter field there … Blamey only wants to bleed Nips out of Lae to Salamaua.’30
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The initial Postern plan had called for General Vasey’s 7th Division to make the amphibious landing and some training had been undertaken by the division in Melbourne with the US marines. By early 1943 there were two main amphibious training centres in Australia, at Port Stephens near Newcastle and at Toorbul Point, on Moreton Bay near Brisbane. Intensive training of 7th Division troops began at Port Stephens before another training centre was established at Trinity Beach near Cairns to train for Operation Postern. However, due to the problem of malaria recurrence among previously exposed 7th Division troops in the tropical climate of Cairns, it was considered that the division could not be used ‘without endangering the civilian population’.31 Major General George Wootten’s 9th Division, not yet exposed to New Guinea conditions and free from malaria, took over the amphibious role.
Under the command of Major General Leslie Morshead, the 9th Division had achieved great fame during the North Africa campaign fighting the German Afrika Korps. At Tobruk the division had made up a large part of the defenders and, by the time it was relieved, the 9th had held off the Axis troops for nine months. After a period in Syria, Morshead’s division had moved to El Alamein where it had played a key role in the victory, though at great cost, with some 5800 casualties between July and November 1942.32
In March 1943 Morshead had been promoted to corps commander and Wootten, who had commanded the 7th Division’s 18th Brigade with distinction at Milne Bay, Buna and Sanananda, took over. On its return to Australia the division had gone to the Atherton Tablelands inland from Cairns alongside 6th and 7th Division units already experienced in jungle fighting during the Papuan campaigns. Experienced training teams were allocated to each of the three 9th Division brigades for training and 9th Division officers were temporarily attached to 6th and 7th Division units to learn about jungle fighting.33
Brigadier David Whitehead observed that the 6th Division troops were experienced in ‘high mountainous jungle country with narrow ridges’ while the 7th Division trainers passed on their experience fighting through the swampy Papuan coastal plains. However, Whitehead found it more beneficial for his brigade ‘to develop its own theories from first principles’. One of Whitehead’s former battalion commanders, Brigadier Heathcote Hammer, who had been promoted to a brigade command in New Guinea, suggested training in higher country with steeper hills.34 ‘We train in jungle, wade mountain rivers, and at night debate where we’ll go next,’ Captain Ken Esau from the 2/3rd Pioneer Battalion, wrote.35
Starting at the end of June each brigade group went to Cairns for two weeks of amphibious training with the LCVPs of the 2nd ESB.36 ‘Crawling down scramble-nets draped over the side of destroyers into the LCVPs tossing back and forth,’ Harry Wells wrote, the men ‘resembled prawns being shaken from a net.’37 The men also carried out the same exercise by night using landing lights and torches. ‘Wicked nights of rolling and pitching in rough seas,’ Ken Esau wrote of this experience.38
The loads of stores, ammunition, jeeps and guns had to be weighed and then correctly placed in the landing craft. ‘It was like some geometrical problem, and we realised that faulty organisation would ruin everything,’ Corporal Patrick Bourke wrote. The greatest concern was what would lie ahead once the ramps dropped on the enemy shore. ‘We feared the worst,’ he observed.39
Initial plans were for Oro Bay to be used as the staging base for the Lae landing; however, it could only handle 60,000 tonnes a month and most of that was needed to supply the Dobodura airfields. Milne Bay was the nearest port that could handle the estimated requirement for August of 135,000 to 140,000 tonnes.40 The 9th Division would therefore be shipped directly from Australia to Milne Bay and began the move north from Cairns on 26 July. The men of the 2/13th Battalion embarked on the 4600-tonne Dutch transport Maatsuyker. ‘It was almost daylight as we staggered up the gangplank,’ Patrick Bourke wrote, ‘and were guided into hot, stuffy, over-crowded holds, overflowing with that nauseating odour that only those who have travelled on troopships know.’41 The 9th Division, now under command of General Herring’s I Corps, had completed the move to New Guinea by 12 August.
The day of the 9th Division amphibious landing would be designated D-Day and the start of the 7th Division operation against Nadzab would be Z-Day. For planning purposes D-Day was tentatively scheduled for 1 September with Z-Day on the following day. All over-water operations for Postern would come under Rear Admiral Barbey’s command and the landing would be made entirely by his 7th Amphibious Force.42 The smaller landing craft would only be used to land the EBSR shore battalion and for resupply along the coast. Buna would need to be developed as a staging port and a wharf was under construction and scheduled to be available by mid-July with an estimated capacity of 500 tonnes per day. However, loaded Liberty ships with their eight-metre draft couldn’t get closer than 900 metres to the Buna shore so 25 DUKWs (amphibious wheeled vehicles) were allocated to help with unloading. Referring to the difficulties involved in unloading the Liberty ships with landing craft, it was said, ‘If you don’t use Libertys it is just like dumping a bucket out with a teaspoon.’ With enemy submarine activity considered low, two ships were allocated to supply Buna, one Liberty ship from Sydney and a vessel of half that capacity from Brisbane.43 With Buna as a staging port it would allow the loaded troops to disembark for a much-needed break on the journey between Milne Bay and Lae.
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It was not until 27 July, following the completion of their work with Operation Chronicle, that Rear Admiral Barbey’s amphibious force-planning staff became available to General Wootten at Milne Bay. As it was not possible to get a firm allocation of landing craft until a fortnight before the operation, the schedules for the allocation of troops and stores had to be continually changed.44 After Wootten said he was happy with seven days of supplies, it was agreed that 7000 personnel and 2590 tonnes of stores would be landed on D-Day with another 2400 men and 1010 tonnes of stores to be landed on the following day, D+1. On D+2 another 3600 men would be taken from Buna to Lae.45 Wootten wanted two hours of moonlight for the landing plus three brigade groups landed while Barbey wanted no moonlight and did not have the capacity to move and supply three brigades. On 25 July Barbey said he would be ready to go by 27 August and Wootten, despite his reserve brigade not yet fully trained on the large landing craft, said he would also be prepared.46
The 2nd ESB would provide amphibian scouts to go in on the first wave to establish red and yellow markers on both Red and Yellow beaches and to make a beach reconnaissance. Major Howard Lea, the Brigade Operations Officer, arranged the scout detail which he ultimately led during the landing.47 The staff to organise beach operations came from Wootten’s division and, although none of his officers had any training in this sort of work, the amenities officer, education officer and legal officer among others were all drafted in to do the job. Unfortunately no US Navy liaison officer was allocated to the division ashore during the operation and this would lead to frustrations and delays when landing craft needed to be diverted to beaches closer to the front line.48
From 20 to 22 August a full-scale landing rehearsal was carried out at beaches on the south coast of Normanby Island.49 The construction of beach exits and dispersal roadways inland showed that the surfacing of tracks with steel mesh was too slow to allow the vehicles to clear the beach so it was decided that more stores would be loaded as bulk cargo and more labour provided to clear the landing craft.50 On 29 August the 2/13th Battalion was taken up to Normanby Island on APDs where the men disembarked from the LCVPs up to their necks in the water. The difference between training conditions in Australia and New Guinea was stark: ‘the country fringing the beach was the worst we had been in,’ Patrick Bourke observed. ‘Almost impenetrable jungle grew in waist deep swamps, crisscrossed by much deeper creeks.’51
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A beach east of Lae out of range of the Japanese gun batteries needed to be selected by General Wootten’s planning team for the Lae landing.52 At least one Japanese 150 mm gun, which had a range of 20 kilometres, had been identified in Lae so the landing beaches needed to be beyond that range. The beach gradient also needed to be greater than 1 in 25 for LST operations and preferably on the steeper side to ensure that there was enough water under the stern when the landing craft were beached to make retraction easier.53 Low-altitude photos were taken of possible beaches in late July to identify any underwater obstacles, beach defences and access to suitable beach exits.54
The beaches at Bulu Plantation and Singaua Plantation were considered the most suitable for the landing. Lieutenant Alastair Stewart, the 51-year-old former manager of Singaua Plantation, was able to provide a map and information on the area around the beaches. No enemy defence positions were evident east of the Busu River and the greatest hindrance to the advance would be the five rivers and numerous smaller streams between the landing beaches and Lae. All except the daunting Busu River were considered fordable if not in flood. The normal Busu crossing was at the river mouth and here the water depth was still one metre but any flooding from heavy rain would double this depth, making the Busu ‘impassable for loaded men’. With maximum monthly rainfall expected in August and September (the average for September was 520 mm but had been up to 840 mm), it was obvious that the Busu River would be the problem.55
Two beaches were chosen for the landings. Red Beach was 22 kilometres to the east of Lae and was 720 metres long, stretching east from the mouth of the Buso River. Yellow Beach was 5 kilometres further east of Red Beach and was 540 metres long. It would protect the eastern flank of the main beachhead. The Bulu River and the adjacent Bulu coconut plantation separated the two landing beaches, which were approximately 20 metres deep and consisted of firm black sand with swamps behind.56
During initial planning, the time of landing (H-Hour) was scheduled to be between 0300 and 0400 in line with Wootten’s request for two hours of moonlight before dawn.57 Allowing nine to ten hours for unloading, the LSTs would then retract at 1300. However, once the landing date was postponed to 4 September, when there would be no morning moon, H-Hour could not be scheduled until after sunrise to allow time for the navy to identify the correct beach on a coast covered by low-lying swampy jungle devoid of prominent landmarks. This delayed the landing until 0630, 18 minutes after sunrise, resulting in the loss of about three hours’ unloading time. This loss was compounded by a decision to retract the LSTs by 1100 as continuous air cover could not be guaranteed beyond that time. Unloading time was therefore reduced to four and a half hours. As it was thought that the troops would take one and a half hours to disembark, this would leave only three hours for unloading stores.58
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Rear Admiral Barbey would use all the shipping he had for Operation Postern. For the landing he had four APDs, eighteen LCIs with two in reserve, sixteen LCTs with two in reserve and twelve LSTs with another in reserve.59 The LCIs had proven to be the best troop transports during the Woodlark landings, with a carrying capacity of at least 150 men. However, they needed careful handling as the design of their propellers meant that any damage to them required docking back at Townsville for repair. The twelve LSTs had been used in Chronicle and all needed two weeks overhaul after being ‘worked to death banging themselves out on the coral’.60 For the Lae landing the LCTs would need to be better balanced than during the Chronicle landings where the bulk stores were loaded aft. Due to the bulk weight, particularly ammunition boxes, the craft had become unbalanced and in one case this resulted in the engine flooding via the submerged exhaust pipes.61 Each LST was loaded with 84 tonnes of bulk freight, the amount that could be unloaded in two and a half hours. Bulk loaded 3-ton trucks and unit vehicles, 35 vehicles in all, took up the rest of the space aboard the LST tank deck. The 24 Bofors guns of the 2/4th Light Anti Aircraft Regiment were loaded onto the top deck and deployed for use against air attack while in transit. Each LST also carried 400 men.62
Morobe would be used as the operational base for the 532nd EBSR. However, the Japanese air threat was significant and on 3 September nine Rabaul-based Betty bombers, escorted by 27 fighters, carried out a high-altitude bomb raid, though without causing significant damage.63 Brigadier General Heavey and his staff were in Morobe at the time having lunch when a red alert was sounded, but when the all-clear signal was given within ten minutes the alert was dismissed. When the sound of approaching aircraft was heard soon thereafter it was assumed the planes were friendly. ‘Suddenly the harbor was filled with the sound of exploding bombs and it was realized belatedly that the planes were Japanese.’ The bombs missed their mark, but with so many landing craft in the harbour the concern was ‘What do the Japs know?’64 That night PT boats from Morobe moved out on a sweep across the Huon Gulf to ensure that there were no enemy naval vessels lying in wait for the invasion convoy.65
With reports of enemy troops and supplies being moved down the coast from Finschhafen by night, Vice-Admiral Carpender ordered Captain Jesse Carter to make a sweep of the Huon Gulf by night and bombard Finschhafen. ‘It will be worthwhile to prove the Navy is willing to pitch in, even if we get nothing but coconuts,’ one of Carpender’s staff noted. On 22 August four destroyers left Milne Bay and headed for the Huon Gulf, the furthest that Allied naval vessels larger than PT boats had ventured along the New Guinea coast since the start of the war. Early the next morning they opened fire on Finschhafen, firing 540 rounds of 5-inch shells within ten minutes before returning to Milne Bay. It was the first naval bombardment of Japanese forces in New Guinea.66
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Two battalions from 20th Brigade were to land on Red Beach, the 2/15th Battalion on the right or eastern flank and the 2/17th Battalion on the left closest to Lae. A third battalion, the 2/13th, would land on Yellow Beach. The 2/23rd Battalion plus a company of engineers, a field ambulance, a troop of artillery and a light anti-aircraft section would also be attached to 20th Brigade for the landing phase. The 26th Brigade would follow-up the initial landings and move through the beachhead. With concern over Japanese naval action against the beachheads at night, as had happened at Guadalcanal and Milne Bay, the defence of Red Beach would be coordinated by the 2/2nd Machine Gun Battalion.67
Loading of stores, equipment and vehicles at Milne Bay was completed by 1 September. Patrick Bourke reflected the opinion of many of the 9th Division men waiting to board, who ‘were anxious to prove that we would perform as well against jungle and Jap as we had against desert and German’.68