P-38 Lightnings in formation
WWII Database/public domain
WHILE REAR ADMIRAL MITSCHER, LIEUTENANT COLONEL VICCELLIO, and others were talking about him at Henderson Field headquarters, Major John Mitchell was not in any of the usual places—his tent, the pilots’ “club,” or the Fighter Two operations dugout. He’d gone off by himself the afternoon of Friday, April 16, to find some privacy up on a hill above the pilots’ tents overlooking the Fighter Two airstrip. There he settled in and began a long letter to Annie Lee in San Antonio, still in the glow of her last letter in which she had seemed calmer and been reassuring about his determination to keep fighting until he felt he’d done his part. The thing was, he said, “It’s awfully quiet here now and not near so much fun.” He didn’t get into specifics, but he was referring to Yamamoto’s Operation I-Go, which was now over—and which, to his chagrin, he’d missed. He wrote instead about this and that—about his good luck at dominoes, winning $435—and about some rearranging he’d done to his tent: “I even chiseled me a mattress and though it’s not too good a one it sure beats nothing and feels good to me.” He rambled on about finances, money orders he’d sent home, and the frustrating fact that he’d been with her only briefly in the sixteen months since their wedding. Marriage by mail was wearing thin. He then tiptoed back to the topic of his return, although prefacing his remarks by acknowledging that to do so was probably risky: “I know darn well I shouldn’t even mention this as you will begin to get ideas at once.” He speculated that he actually might be heading back to the States, suggesting that it might finally be his turn to leave for good. “That doesn’t mean tomorrow or even next month, but I am hoping that I may see you and have a drink with you on my birthday.” His birthday was June 14, and he teased her about the date in a way that was actually another reminder of their long separation. “If you’ve forgotten when that is you won’t know when to expect me home,” he deadpanned.
Then, as if he was worried that he’d said too much and Annie Lee would get worked up about a possible homecoming, he tempered his remarks. “I shouldn’t mention anything,” he repeated. “Every time I have ever planned anything along that line it has fallen through.”
Mitch was right. The next afternoon he found himself in a jeep hurriedly rattling along the rough coral road from Fighter Two to the navy command tent at Henderson Field nearly two miles away. He’d been summoned by Vic Viccellio and been told to bring Tom Lanphier along. “Some mission or other” was about all Vic would say on the telephone, although he added, “You’ll like it.”
It wasn’t the first time Vic had dropped a surprise on Mitch out of the blue. Two years earlier, in April 1941, when Mitch had been a mere second lieutenant training at Hamilton Field outside San Francisco, Vic had ruined Mitch’s Easter plans to visit Annie Lee in Texas with the news he would be heading overseas on a special mission. Mitch had then spent the rest of that spring and the early summer in bombed-out London, part of a small contingent of talented young pilots selected to soak up what they could about combat flying from the Royal Air Force. He’d gotten his first taste of war while there, when German antiaircraft guns had fired on him after he’d flown across the English Channel in a Spitfire. What did Vic have in mind this time?
Mitch and Lanphier arrived at the operations headquarters at Henderson Field, nicknamed “the Opium Den” because of the constant fog of cigarette smoke trapped inside. Entering the tent, they were greeted not just by Viccellio but also by Rear Admiral Mitscher and other senior staff. Mitch hadn’t yet met Mitscher, who was still only two weeks into his new role as Commander of Air Forces in the Solomon Islands, or COMAIRSOLS. He eyed the admiral, who, standing in the dank bunker, looked small, almost emaciated. Steely eyed and leather faced, he wore a sun helmet—a long-billed brown cap—even indoors. And he chain-smoked; when Mitscher went to light a new smoke, Mitch saw what others already knew: that the reserved navy veteran, chin jutting, curled his hand to protect the cigarette, wind or no wind, the way cowboys did in Hollywood westerns.
ADMIRAL ISOROKU YAMAMOTO SPENT MUCH OF SATURDAY IN CONFERENCES with his commanders at naval headquarters at Rabaul. His chief of staff, Matome Ugaki, now discharged from the hospital, was feeling strong enough to preside. The morning session was spent reviewing the unit reports from Operation I-Go’s aerial strikes. Yamamoto, who was unaware how exaggerated they were, expressed his approval. Ugaki seconded the praise while adding a note of caution. Even with the operation’s success, the rear admiral reminded everyone of the “present plight” of the navy’s diminishing airpower. Moreover, he said, given the strain on manufacturers and materials back home, they could not count on “swift reinforcement.” The group took a break for lunch and reconvened for a second session in the afternoon, that one focused on, as Ugaki explained, “policies and principles.” It was essentially a forward-looking discussion about the navy’s operational needs, whether in equipment or the repair and upkeep of the various airfields and bases. Some bickering erupted among several commanders from forward bases over priorities and also about who bore responsibility for the declining morale detected in the squadrons. The tension was troubling, and Ugaki’s discomfort was only made worse when a rash broke out all over his body, related to his debilitating bout of dengue fever. Yamamoto, meanwhile, seemed in fine spirits. He maintained a steady hand and quelled the internal wrangling with reminders that they must all work together to stop the enemy advance up the chain of islands from Guadalcanal.
Throughout, and in between discussion of the main items on the day’s agenda, the officers’ chatter ranged from the humdrum—what to wear on the base inspection—to the weighty—the admiral’s safety. Ugaki raised the topic of attire with Yamamoto and other staff officers. The issue was whether a green khaki outfit, rather than Yamamoto’s formal white uniform, would be suitable and more comfortable, given the tropical heat, for the one-day tour. There was even the suggestion that because of the heat the travelers be allowed to wear open-neck shirts. Though some staffers favored a relaxed sartorial approach, Ugaki did not like the idea. He did not think it would be as hot as some were saying, and, besides, they would be in a plane much of the time. No open-collared shirts, he insisted. “It wouldn’t be proper for the commander in chief of the Combined Fleet and his staff officers to visit officers and men at the front wearing unofficial uniforms,” he said. That seemed to settle the matter. Buttoned-down khaki uniforms would be the dress du jour. But then came disagreement about footwear. Ugaki assumed that they would wear their standard boots with matching leather leggings. But Yamamoto and the others favored airmen’s boots as much lighter and sensible for getting into and out of the planes multiple times. Ugaki did not protest too much, but he was reluctant to wear the airmen’s boots himself.
More significantly, Yamamoto’s staff continued to fret about mission security. One minor adjustment had been made to his itinerary, but the change had been more about logistics than anything else. The original travel plan had called for Yamamoto to fly first to the island of Ballale, then ride a subchaser to island-hop to various bases, and then end up at the airfield at Buin, which was called Kahili, on Bougainville Island. The revised itinerary called for him to fly first to Buin and continue on from there. To his closest aides the last-minute tweaking mattered little; they wanted the mission aborted altogether. Longtime senior aide Yasuji Watanabe, who had overseen the itinerary down to the smallest detail and had been alarmed when it had been sent out by radio rather than delivered by hand, was openly opposed to the admiral’s making the trip. The commander at Shortland Island, Rear Admiral Takoji Joshima, who had been distressed earlier in the week when he’d received the admiral’s schedule by radio, had actually flown to Rabaul on Saturday afternoon to make his case in person. Joshima, insisting that he knew the conditions at the front better than anyone else, argued, “Please, sir, this is dangerous.” Do not go, he implored.
Yamamoto appreciated the concern, but neither he nor Ugaki considered the trip particularly risky; it was a mission that was, as far as they were concerned, a closely held secret. To be sure, enemy planes, particularly the new US P-38 Lightnings, had made an occasional flight as far north as Bougainville. And Yamamoto’s army comrade Lieutenant General Hitoshi Imamura had already tried to dissuade him with his story about a dangerous close encounter with the enemy near Bougainville. But Yamamoto and Ugaki knew that P-38s had never made a full-scale raid to that area, the main obstacle being the extra fuel the gas-guzzling fighters needed to reach Bougainville from Guadalcanal. (Yamamoto did not know that at least one US flier had been eager to attempt such a raid: Major John Mitchell. Following intelligence reports in late winter of increased Japanese shipping activity, Mitch had been asking to lead a fighter sweep up to the southern tip of Bougainville. But his requests had always been denied, he said, “as it was felt the risk of losing some of our precious P-38s was too great.”) Moreover, Yamamoto felt quite comfortable traveling with a cover escort of six Zero fighters, one of which would be flown by one of the navy’s best pilots, Shoichi Sugita, otherwise known as the “Shoot-Down King.” “This is no cause for concern,” Yamamoto reassured Joshima. It would be a quick, one-day trip—departing first thing the next morning, returning late in the afternoon. “You must have dinner with me tomorrow night,” Yamamoto said cheerily.
STANDING INSIDE THE POORLY LIT COMMAND DUGOUT, MITCH took stock of the group assembled with Mitscher. It was a gaggle of high-ranking officers—a clear sign that something big was in the works. Though every US military service was represented, Mitch noticed that the group was top heavy with navy personnel. Besides Mitscher, there was his assistant chief of staff, Vice Admiral William A. Read, as well as Navy Commander Stanhope C. Ring. The Marines had General Field Harris, Colonel Edwin L. Pugh, and Major John P. Condon. Mitch was unfamiliar with most of them, but he knew Condon. The major had been around since the first of the year and was in charge of the Marines’ fighter pilots; interservice rivalry aside, Condon was one who had readily acknowledged the positive impact the Army’s P-38s had made since arriving at Guadalcanal the previous year.
Someone handed Mitch a piece of paper. Mitscher and the others began explaining that a message concerning the whereabouts of Admiral Yamamoto had been intercepted. In short order they told Mitch that he had been chosen to lead a flight of P-38s to go after the Japanese naval commander—and to do so at dawn, meaning in eighteen hours, give or take. There would later be a dispute as to whether Mitscher or anyone else had ever discussed the source of the intelligence—the breaking of Japanese codes. Some insisted not, but even if US code-breaking know-how was not part of the conversation—the decryption being top secret—Mitch came to realize during the briefing that the information had come from intercepted communications. For him, though, the issue was not how they’d come to learn of Yamamoto’s travel plans, it was the fact that there was little time to hammer out logistics for a mission that, at best, seemed a long shot. Moreover, it was clear that no matter how poor the odds, the assignment was of paramount importance—that he and the pilots chosen for the mission were to make every effort to take out Japan’s naval genius, even if it meant, as several of the officers in the dugout asserted, “ramming Yamamoto’s plane.”
The paper he was handed delineated the timetable of Yamamoto’s trip. Mitch took it all in, not saying much at first, mostly listening. He noticed that a lot of people had a lot to say who weren’t going to do anything on the actual mission, and the thought came to him: “As usual, in a crowd like this, there’s always a bunch of big mouths.” No one seemed interested in his perspective, and the way the navy officers were talking, Mitch could tell they had basically decided on a way to get Yamamoto. In their view, the time to attack Yamamoto was after he’d made his first stop at Ballale and boarded a subchaser for the short ride to Shortland Island. Blast him then, when he’s on the boat, they said. It seemed a done deal, and some of the naval staff had even begun studying the ocean currents around Ballale for the next morning. That was when Mitch finally had enough. “I don’t want to do that,” he said. The moment he broke his silence, the tent quieted—albeit briefly. The others began questioning him: Why not? The standoff escalated, as the navy officers persisted, their voices getting loud as they argued with him. But Mitch would have none of it. He told them he was an army fighter pilot and didn’t know a subchaser from a sub, a wisecrack no one thought humorous. The point was, he wouldn’t be able to identify for certain which boat carried Yamamoto. And even if he hit the right one, he continued, Yamamoto could very easily jump into the water and survive. “And that wasn’t what we’re up there for. We’re up there to get him.” The navy contingent gave Mitch hard looks, and the debate went on for precious minutes as they tried to get him to go along. He would not budge. He insisted on getting Yamamoto in the air and refused to consider any other plan.
Mitscher, a former aviator himself, broke the logjam by making a critical observation: that Mitch was the one leading the flight. “Since Mitchell has to do the job,” he said, “I think it should be done his way.” The moment was pivotal. Mitch, by speaking up and asserting himself, had made it clear to all the navy and marine brass in the room that he was in charge—he was the mission leader upon whose shoulders the flight would succeed or not. Moreover, had Mitch stayed silent and had the others devised a plan to attack Yamamoto in the subchaser, an interception would not have been possible. Yamamoto’s itinerary had been slightly modified. He would not be flying first to Ballale, as the code breakers had decrypted. Instead, his first stop would be Buin, on Bougainville Island. The men in Mitscher’s tent did not know that; they were working from the travel plan they’d been given, and if Mitch had headed to Ballale for an attack on a subchaser, the timing would have been way off; Yamamoto would not have been there. In that regard, it was providential that Mitch insisted on a plan to intercept Yamamoto in the sky as he approached Bougainville, no matter the location of his first or even second stop.
Mitscher’s ruling settled matters, and the discussion turned toward the mission’s operational needs. Pilots’ names came up. Mitscher mentioned how impressed he’d been with the recent flying feats of Tom Lanphier’s flight—a reference to the four pilots who’d strafed an enemy ship: Lanphier, Rex Barber, and two others, Joe Moore and Jim McLanahan. Though not an order, Mitscher’s comments carried weight; and it was as if he were reading Mitch’s thoughts, because as he assessed who in the 339th Fighter Squadron had the experience and the ability for a mission like this, Lanphier and Barber, as well as Besby Holmes, along with some others, were the ones who quickly came to mind.
The staff then informed Mitch that auxiliary belly tanks would need to be attached to the planes because of the amount of fuel required for the trip. There were 165-gallon tanks at the base already, which the pilots had used in the past to increase their planes’ fuel capacity, but this trip’s distance would call for even bigger tanks. Mitscher’s staff had therefore ordered that 300-gallon tanks be sent over from a US base on New Guinea as quickly as possible. Mitscher asked Mitch if he could think of anything else, and Mitch considered the P-38s’ flight instruments. He thought of his new Elgin wristwatch and appreciated its precision, but in flight the optimal value of a watch—any watch—came in combination with a compass, and therein lay the problem: the compass in the P-38 cockpit was one of the plane’s few shortcomings. Mitch considered it unreliable, giving erroneous readings. The navy’s fighter planes, meanwhile, had excellent compasses—ones that Mitch had eyed and envied—and so in reply to the rear admiral’s question he said, “A compass—one of those big Navy jobs.” Mitscher nodded, ensuring that the request was as good as fulfilled.
The meeting had now run deep into the afternoon. Mitch began to feel an urgency to get back to Fighter Two to get ready. He began, as well, to feel the magnitude of the mission. He’d flown more than two hundred missions during the eight months he’d spent on Guadalcanal. He’d shot down eight enemy planes and become the Army Air Forces’ first ace on Cactus. But neither he nor anyone else, for that matter, had ever had an assignment like this one. “The longest planned intercept ever,” he realized. Not only the longest but an aerial intervention with huge unknowns. They had Yamamoto’s basic itinerary but not his route or altitude, nor did they know whether he’d be on time. Furthermore, there was no way for them to know his speed—or whether they’d get there at the right time. Everyone in the dugout had concurred on certain constraints to minimize forewarning Yamamoto in any way: radio silence, low-altitude flying, and, to avoid enemy coastal watchers, flying no closer than twenty miles to shore. It meant he’d be leading P-38 Lightnings for more than four hundred miles, hugging the ocean’s surface the entire way and with no land references in sight. No checkpoints at all. None. They’d be dependent on his watch, his compass, and his airspeed calculations. Dating back to his boyhood in Mississippi, Mitch had been comfortable in the wild, finding his way home by relying on the moon and the stars—Johnnie Bill and the moon. But this was way different. The high-stakes mission, he concluded, would rely on dead reckoning: “By guess and by God.”
The danger, too, was self-evident. Although according to the intelligence, six Zero fighter planes were to escort Yamamoto’s Betty bomber, everyone in the tent expected more enemy firepower than that. Much more. On the ground at Bougainville were another seventy-five or so Zeros, and a substantial number of those planes would likely greet Yamamoto and bring him into the airfield. That was what the Americans had done for Navy Secretary Knox in January to protect him during his island-hopping tour. As Mitch recalled, they’d taken all the available fighters on the base and flown them to their extreme range in order to pick up Knox’s aircraft and escort him back to Guadalcanal. With that in mind, they had every reason to think, as Mitch realized, that “the Japanese would come up with possibly as many as 50 of these 75 fighters.” The Army Air Force had eighteen P-38 Lightnings at Fighter Two, which meant Mitch could expect to face three to four times as many Zeros. No one had to say anything. The math was obvious; Mitch and his fliers would be outnumbered. The consequences were just as obvious: there was a high probability that some of them would not return.
“We expected a hell of a battle” was how Vic Viccellio later framed it.
ON RABAUL, WHEN THE ALL-DAY MEETINGS RUN BY CHIEF OF staff Ugaki had concluded, senior aide Watanabe could see that Admiral Yamamoto was worn out. Watanabe accompanied Yamamoto on the ride back to his quarters atop the hill overlooking the harbor. The weather was quiet and clear, and it was cooler on the hilltop than on the sprawling base below. The two men dined alone and afterward moved to another room to resume their long-standing pleasure of opposing each other at shogi. The pastime was a relaxing distraction. Watanabe, still worrying about the trip, wanted to go along, but Yamamoto had a different idea. He interrupted the play in a way that revealed he was always mulling over his naval responsibilities even as he competed in the board game. The tension among his base commanders during the day had nagged at him, and he wanted his trusted aide to address the matter the next day. “I want you to stay here tomorrow and finish the conference,” he told Watanabe. “If we don’t pull them together now, we’re in trouble. You know what to tell them, and make things very clear.” The commander in chief then retired for the night.
WHEN MITCH AND TOM LANPHIER RETURNED TO FIGHTER TWO early that evening, Mitch headed right away to the mess tent, which had a large table he could use as a desk. Given the stakes, part of him wanted to assign himself the task of shooting down Yamamoto. He was an ace, after all, perhaps the best P-38 pilot on hand. But as mission leader he knew he couldn’t let ego and glory guide his thinking; he needed to make selfless, not selfish, decisions, meaning that he would need to devise a plan without favoritism that would give the squadron the best shot at success. He decided that the best use of his own skills would be to protect the pilots targeting Yamamoto. He would assign others to the “killer flight” while he flew over them at 20,000 feet, a high-altitude position to handle the fifty-odd Zeros they expected to come up from Kahili, a large fighter base, to provide an honor escort for the admiral. Neutralizing the escort would hardly be a minor matter and, thought Mitch, provide plenty of action: “I wanted to get after those Zeros.”
Mitch rounded up maps of the Solomon Islands, pencils, and a slide rule and set up in the tent to work on a flight plan. Major Condon had prepared one possible route, but Mitch rejected it. Timing was perhaps the most crucial factor in plotting a path, especially given the flying distances and fuel demands, and Mitch knew that Condon had no firsthand experience flying a P-38. Condon did not know Mitch’s airspeed nor his ground speed, nor did he know where he intended to make the interception, and without knowing those factors, Mitch concluded, there was no way Condon could put him into the right place at the right time. Besides, Mitch was still smarting from the way the officers at the briefing with Mitscher had acted, as if they knew the best course and he should simply fall into line. “It was my squadron, my neck and my responsibility and I think it ludicrous that anyone on the ground would have given me detailed instructions how to make the flight,” he fumed.
Given the many unknowns, the plan would have to be built upon assumptions, and Mitch began by making several: that the punctilious Yamamoto would arrive at his first stop on time; that his Betty bomber’s airspeed would be 180 miles per hour; and that the optimal point of interception would be about thirty miles out from Yamamoto’s destination. The base had antiaircraft guns and aircraft, and Mitch wanted to strike and be gone before the ground personnel knew what was going on. Studying the map, he plotted the best point to be just south of Empress Augusta Bay in central Bougainville. Then, working by lantern and flashlight, he took up the tasks of projecting Yamamoto’s expected route, imagining one for himself and determining how the twain would meet. He did so by backing everything up, meaning he looked at the point of interception over Bougainville and plotted a route working back to the Fighter Two airfield. He drew up five legs that, after takeoff, would take his flight west of Guadalcanal, then north, and then east to Bougainville and the point of interception. In the event that they didn’t see Yamamoto, they’d continue across the island to its east coast in the hope of finding the admiral there. Mitch incorporated estimated wind speeds and weather forecasts, which called for clear, cloudless skies, provided by two intelligence officers so that he could calculate compass settings, distances, and the timing of each of the five legs. In all, it was a looping route covering about 435 miles and avoiding the string of Japanese-held islands between Guadalcanal and Bougainville. He’d also keep his planes flying only about fifty feet above the water. The goal was a low-altitude course that would minimize the chance of being picked up by the Japanese—whether by their coastal watchers, their radar installations, or the ever-present small boats circling off the Japanese islands. For if they were spotted and Yamamoto was notified, not only would the admiral turn back, but Mitch and his men would likely fly headlong into far more than the fifty Zeros they were expecting.
While Mitch worked, curious pilots wandered by, with Doug Canning asking what was up. Mitch quickly explained, and Canning’s jaw practically dropped. Everyone knew about Yamamoto, thought Canning, “How he had planned Pearl Harbor, and was planning to ride up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House to dictate peace terms.” Word began to spread, and Mitch had to wave them off, telling Canning and the others he’d brief them shortly. That everybody wanted to go did not surprise Mitch. “If there was going to be a big show, they all wanted in on it.” It was well after dark before Mitch completed his calculations. He checked and double-checked the numbers with the help of the two intelligence officers, Navy Lieutenant Joseph E. McGuigan and Army Captain William Morrison. He made “strip maps”—strips of paper about a foot long and eight inches wide to rest on a pilot’s knee—marked with headings for the 435-mile course they’d be flying. When he examined the maps and assessed the challenges, he put the odds at “about a thousand to one that we could make a successful intercept at that distance.” But long odds were not something he could dwell on; he had his orders and would need to tackle the job as just another mission. One thing going for him: “I was full of confidence in those days.”
Eighteen P-38 Lightnings were in service, meaning that Mitch could choose seventeen fliers from about forty pilots assigned to the several squadrons that shared the P-38s. He conferred with Major Louis Kittel, the commander of another army air forces squadron, and together they settled on a pilot roster for the mission. In the cover flight were Kittel and lieutenants Roger J. Ames, Everett H. Anglin, Doug Canning, D. C. Goerke, Lawrence A. Graebner, Raymond K. Hine, Besby Holmes, Jack Jacobson, Albert R. Long, William E. Smith, Eldon E. Stratton, and Gordon Whitaker. Mitch designated four pilots as “the hunters” in the attack, or killer, flight, Captain Tom Lanphier and First Lieutenant Rex Barber as one pair; First Lieutenant Jim McLanahan and First Lieutenant Joe Moore as the other. Mitch, as mission leader, would fly the first Lightning in formation and be in charge of the cover group as well.
Close to midnight, the men got the word to gather on the hill behind the pilots’ tents, the same hill where, higher up the prior afternoon, Mitch had written his letter to Annie Lee completely unaware of what was in store for him. The forty-odd fighter pilots, along with some of the mechanics and ground crew from Fighter Two, found Mitch waiting. He’d hauled out a blackboard and on it had written the names of the sixteen pilots he and Kittel had selected. Then, in businesslike fashion, he told them about the order to intercept Admiral Yamamoto and described the dogleg route around some islands to Bougainville Island, a route that was water all the way and not a rock in sight. As Mitch continued talking, he distributed the strip maps so that each pilot had one. He’d lead the formation, he said, and the rest were to follow him—at a low altitude and in radio silence. “No one was to touch that mic button from the time we took off until we engaged the enemy planes.” The outbound route of about 435 miles would take 150 minutes, according to his calculations, and the return—a straight line back to Guadalcanal covering about 300 miles—would go faster. They would need every ounce of fuel to complete the more-than-700-mile round-trip and would have little time at Bougainville to find their target or to linger. It was get in and get out.
Mitch said that Jack Jacobson would be his wingman, meaning that Jacobson would fly his plane slightly behind Mitch’s, guarding Mitch’s flank like a second set of eyes. He read out the names of the fourteen pilots in his cover flight, and he identified the four pilots in the killer unit—Lanphier with Barber as his wingman and Moore with McLanahan on his wing. If something went awry with any of those four, Besby Holmes and Ray Hine were told, they’d be the ones to drop out of the cover group to join the attack unit. Mitch stressed flight discipline repeatedly: follow him, and fly low but not too low. “Watch yourselves,” he cautioned. “If you drop just a few feet lower, you’re in trouble. That drink will hypnotize you and you’ll be in it before you know it.” They were to use hand signals only, no radio, and stick to their assigned roles. He did not want planes from his cover group going after Yamamoto, flying around helter-skelter and possibly shooting at one another. He didn’t want eighteen airplanes trying to knock down one lone bomber. He told his cover group its job was “to watch the attack flight and cover it until the bomber is down. Nothing more.”
When Mitch was done, every pilot on the hill recognized that the mission was a crapshoot, with Mitch shaking the dice and letting them rip. So many things could go wrong, given all the mission’s moving parts: a mechanical breakdown along the way; unexpected winds that would either slow or quicken the flight; unexpected tropical storms they’d have to fly around to avoid; even a last-minute decision by Yamamoto to alter his itinerary or call the trip off altogether. Mitch would have to do a perfect job of navigation and timing over trackless ocean through winds of unknown velocity to reach the appointed spot at the correct second. Even if everything fell into place and Mitch’s timetable held up, they’d be straining to spot a dot in the bright sky upon their arrival at Bougainville. Nonetheless, Lanphier was all for it, appreciative that Mitch had put him and Barber into the attack unit. Barber was likewise afire. Other pilots asked questions, as if looking for ways to allay their skepticism. Why did they think Yamamoto would be on time? What about the weather? There’d been an evening shower; the air was heavy and humid. The two intelligence officers were reassuring: the admiral was notoriously punctual and the forecast was for clear, hot, and windless weather. The briefing ended with Vic Viccellio, who’d commanded nearly every pilot on hand, stepping up to give a brief talk. He stressed the mission’s importance and their instructions “to get the admiral at all cost.”
While the hillside at Fighter Two was a pocket of intensity, elsewhere on the base men were welcoming the return to Henderson Field of a bomber pilot who had gone missing for two months. Captain Thomas J. Classen and his crew had been flying a B-17 Flying Fortress named My Lovin’ Dove in February when they had been attacked by eight Japanese Zeros. During the fight Classen and his eight crewmen had all suffered wounds, and Classen had been forced into crash-landing at sea. Everyone had somehow survived, and for sixteen days they had paddled in inflatable rafts before reaching an island where they were taken in by friendly natives, despite being in Japanese-occupied territory. They had slowly made their way from island to island and eventually, sixty-six days later, had been picked up and taken to Guadalcanal.
Mitch’s pilots were not part of the homecoming; their minds were on Yamamoto as they headed for their tents to try to catch a few hours of sleep. Mitch went to his and fell onto the mattress he’d made, the new creature comfort he’d written about to Annie Lee the day before. He could hear music coming from Doug Canning’s tent—Glenn Miller’s “Serenade in Blue,” with its easy-listening lyrics, “When I hear a serenade in blue/I’m somewhere in another world,/alone with you”—and he actually fell asleep.
MITCH WAS AWAKE BEFORE DAWN, TAKING A SEAT AT THE LONG table in the mess tent he’d converted into an office the prior evening. He ate with his men—powdered scrambled eggs, milk, Spam, and coffee. Members of the Fighter Two ground crew were there, too, having worked through the night attaching 300-gallon belly tanks under one wing of the P-38s and 165-gallon tanks under the other. The auxiliary tanks affected a plane’s maneuverability, which was why the plan called for Mitch’s fliers to drop them upon reaching the Bougainville coast. The ground crew hurried as best it could to get things right, connecting fuel lines and electrical circuits so that the pilots would be able to open, close, and drop the tanks. Crews also loaded ammunition containers for the five guns on each plane: four .50-caliber machine guns and a 20 mm cannon. The machine guns, the nose pointing straight ahead, provided the Lightnings’ “cone of fire” that Japanese pilots had learned to fear in a few short months. The mechanics and armorers worked in a steady rain, but the morning of Palm Sunday, April 18, 1943, was breaking clear and blue—and hot. And the eighteen P-38s were checked and ready. Takeoff time for the more-than-four-hundred-mile trip was set for a little after 7:00 a.m. Their target was scheduled to fly from Rabaul about an hour after they were airborne, at 8:00 a.m. Guadalcanal time.
Mitch hustled down to the airfield and climbed onto the wing of his plane and into the cockpit. He was pleased to see that the navy compass he’d asked for had been installed. He wore a lightweight khaki flying suit and, like most pilots, the snug-fitting rawhide marine boots that, in the event of a parachute drop, would not slip off. He adjusted his helmet, goggles, radio headset, and throat mic. He checked the instrument panel, the fuel mixture control, the prop and rudder settings, and the control yoke. Once settled in, he positioned the strip map he’d drawn on lined white paper securely on his knee. It was his flight plan, written in extreme detail and upon which the Yamamoto mission depended, so if his calculations were off and the pilots failed, that failure would be on him and him alone.
Mitch fired up the twin engines and taxied across the pierced-steel matting that made up the runway’s surface, past the maintenance crew standing by with a truckload of coral. The steel spikes in the matting came loose despite regular inspections, and coral was a ready repair. He was the first to take off at 7:10 a.m., as scheduled. Rear Admiral Pete Mitscher was stationed at the end of the runway to see them off; it was a year to the day since he’d stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier to watch Jimmy Doolittle and his bombers take off for their raid on Tokyo. Mitscher wasn’t the only one on hand, though. Despite repeated reminders about the mission’s secrecy, word had spread, so that navy and marine fliers were gathered in pockets along the runway, rooting for Mitch and his men to take out the United States’ deeply loathed enemy, Isoroku Yamamoto.
Next to take off was Jack Jacobson, Mitch’s wingman. Fighter Two was only 3,500 feet long, meaning that with the heavy fuel load the pilots cut it close and for additional lift had to use their dive flaps. Mitch and Jacobson circled the airfield at an altitude of about 4,000 feet, waiting for the others to join them and form up. Doug Canning and D. C. Goerke followed. Next in line were the four pilots in the killer flight. Tom Lanphier, Rex Barber, and Joe Moore all got off fine, but as Jim McLanahan lumbered down the runway and was about to take off, one tire caught a loose spike and blew. The tire shredded rapidly, and the P-38 veered off the runway to a stop. McLanahan’s plane was disabled, unable to go. McLanahan was out just like that, and for the moment the killer unit was down to three planes.
The remaining ten planes in the cover flight then took off and fell into line without incident. Mitch checked his wristwatch and saw that, just as he had planned, the takeoffs and formation had taken fifteen minutes. It was 7:25 a.m. Everyone was ready to go. Except, suddenly, Joe Moore. Once airborne, all the pilots switched to their external fuel tanks for the trip to Bougainville, saving their internal gas for the interception and flight back. But Moore couldn’t get his cross-feed valves to work, and the belly tanks weren’t feeding. His engines sputtered each time he turned the switch, and no matter how many times he tried, he could not correct the problem. Mitch looked and noticed Moore gesturing at him. It took Mitch a minute to understand that Moore was signaling he couldn’t get his belly tanks to feed. Mitch saw no alternative: Moore was done, and Mitch had to get him out of there. He signaled the bad news, and the dejected Joe Moore banked to the left to turn back.
They were not even twenty minutes into the mission, and already Mitch had had to resort to a contingency; he waved to Besby Holmes and Ray Hine to leave the cover group and join the killer unit. He then turned the flight—now sixteen P-38 Lightnings—in a westerly direction to commence the first leg, which he’d calculated would take fifty-five minutes. He kicked the plane’s rudders so that they fishtailed, his way of signaling the others to spread out. He’d said beforehand that he wanted them strung out on the way up to avoid the strain of flying in close formation all the way. He also took them down to about fifty feet above the water’s surface, where within minutes another design flaw in the otherwise gem of a fighter plane was revealed. The Plexiglas bubble over the cockpit was locked tight. Ordinarily that was a nonissue. The P-38 was a high-altitude twin-engine fighter usually flown at 20,000 feet and above. But now, hugging the ocean, the bubble was like a magnifying glass for the sun’s unfiltered rays, and there was no way to open it. The temperature inside soared. Mitch read the gauge: 95 degrees in the cockpit. Everyone was soon soaked in sweat.
THIRTY MINUTES LATER AND 650 MILES TO THE NORTHEAST, YAMAMOTO and his chief of staff, Matome Ugaki, arrived by car at the east airfield at Rabaul. Ugaki was feeling upbeat: “The sky was quite clear and the early birds sang pleasantly in the trees.” Because Yamamoto and Ugaki were returning by day’s end, they traveled light, taking only items that fit into their pockets: cigarettes, eyeglasses, a small diary, and handkerchiefs. Ugaki had relented on the footwear, deciding after he had awakened to go along with Yamamoto and the others’ choice to wear airman’s boots. He was glad he had, for he found the lighter boots easy to put on and pull off and quite comfortable. He was also satisfied with the group decision to go with a green khaki uniform for the inspection tour. Studying himself, he thought the outfit made him look “gallant.” He could not conceal his surprise, however, when he first saw the admiral dressed in green, Yamamoto’s signature look being a crisp white uniform. “It suited him very well,” Ugaki thought, “but looked a bit strange, perhaps because we were not accustomed to seeing him in such a uniform.”
They were joined at the airfield by various staff officers who were accompanying them. Two Betty bombers were idling and waiting. The Japanese communication about the trip, the one the US code breakers had intercepted, had mentioned only one Betty bomber, but the final travel plan had the two high-ranking officials flying separately for security purposes, just as they had done when they’d flown from Truk down to Rabaul in early April. Wasting no time, Yamamoto and his party boarded the Betty bomber numbered 323, while Ugaki boarded the one numbered 326. Yamamoto was directed to the “skipper’s seat,” the seat directly behind the pilot. Ugaki took the same seat on his plane, removing the awkwardly long sword from his belt and handing it to a staffer to store out of the way.
Yamamoto’s Betty 323 was the first to take off from the crushed coral runway. He was right on time, which, factoring in the two-hour time difference, was 8:00 a.m. on Guadalcanal, while for him on Rabaul, it was 6:00 a.m. Ugaki followed in the second Betty, and then the six escort Zeros took off in pairs. From the sky they looked down upon the volcanoes towering over Rabaul. Yamamoto’s command plane climbed to a cruising altitude of 6,500 feet as it turned southeast. The Zeros climbed even higher, to about 8,500 feet, a perch from which they were to maintain a close eye on their country’s cherished naval leader.
The worry so many of Yamamoto’s aides had expressed about the trip had not changed things. To be sure, basic safekeeping measures were taken: Yamamoto and Ugaki flying separately and the six-plane escort by the prized Zero fighter planes. But a palpable casualness defined the day trip. For one thing, the Zeros were not equipped with radios. The pilots had removed them, as they often did. The standard-issue radios jammed easily, created more static than audible words, and were viewed as deadweight. To lighten the aircrafts, the pilots had tossed them out. The two Bettys carrying Yamamoto and Ugaki, meanwhile, had barely any ammunition on board. Instead of loading extra boxes of cartridges, given the fact that the Imperial Japanese Navy’s commander in chief was a passenger, only one ammunition belt per gun had been allotted. That was because the flight was viewed solely as a transport operation, not an attack mission. Ammunition boxes were heavy, and adding extra boxes for the plane’s three machine guns and single 20 mm cannon was seen as unnecessary. Besides, during their preflight briefing no one had mentioned a word to the pilots about the nearest US bases or the chances of encountering trouble along the way.
Yamamoto and Ugaki did not expect problems, comfortable in the knowledge that between Rabaul and Bougainville the Japanese maintained air superiority and controlled the skies. Ugaki was relaxed as he settled in for the short flight. To pass the time, he pulled out an aviation map to follow the topography below. His plane flew in tandem with Yamamoto’s, so close to its left rear that Ugaki thought his plane’s wingtips might touch Yamamoto’s. He looked out the window and could see people moving about in the first plane. “I could clearly see the profile of the commander in chief in the skipper’s seat.” Yamamoto was sitting erect, his white-gloved hands clasping a sword. Yamamoto had not put his sword aside as Ugaki had, perhaps because his held special meaning; it had been a gift from his older brother. From Ugaki’s point of view, the window was a picture frame, capturing in profile the man embodying Japan’s naval glory: a portrait of perfection.