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Akin’s secret unit

At the army headquarters overlooking Humboldt Bay, General Spencer Akin called in Major Geoff Ballard, the Central Bureau liaison officer, for a chat. Like everyone else at Hollandia, Ballard was frantically busy with the preparations for the upcoming invasion of Leyte, an island in the Philippines. This was to be an all-American affair.

MacArthur, when he made good on his promise, ‘I shall return’, didn’t want the fanfare of his arrival in the Philippines to be spoiled or complicated by the participation of international forces. It would be him returning, and he would be leading an American force. Australian warships were certainly going to be involved, but they would not be sending Australian soldiers to make landfall.

Akin explained his problem to Ballard. It was to do with the United States interception units, now known as Radio Squadrons Mobile. Their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Howard Brown, was not being exactly cooperative.

Since MacArthur wanted the invasion to be all-American, they needed to use their radio squadrons, but they were not under Akin’s control any more, and refused to take orders from Central Bureau or even Akin himself. Brown wasn’t even prepared to negotiate about what frequencies his units would monitor. The bottom line was that they weren’t prepared to work for Central Bureau, and so Akin needed to create a new unit that was. He told Ballard to make arrangements for a new wireless unit, Number 6, to accompany him on the invasion.

Akin told him, ‘Get them on an assault ship and make sure they are fully equipped for operations for the journey. A detachment from Biak will be the nucleus of the unit, and they’ll be back here tomorrow. Their OC will be Flight Lieutenant Foster.’1

Ballard immediately made arrangements to find space on one of the ships. The logistics section laughed at his request, telling him that there was no extra space anywhere, forcing him to invoke Akin himself as the source of the request.

As for this mysterious new unit, it was to be composed of the forgotten personnel of 1 Wireless Unit and 53 Wireless Section on Biak.

Twenty-three wireless personnel on Biak were given orders to leave Biak that day. These orders came from the Americans on the island, not through Australian command. They were instructed to hand over their Australian rifles, and were issued with United States army weapons, including Thompson submachine guns, carbines, .45 revolvers, and American jungle knives. They then boarded a US Dakota and were flown to Hollandia.2

On the aircraft’s approach, they could see hundreds of ships in Humboldt Bay. This fleet had been assembled to transport an invasion force from Hollandia to the Philippines. Once on the ground, the wireless personnel were driven to their campsite — not with the local Central Bureau wireless units, but with a unit of elite US Rangers. There they were provided new, spacious tents, already assembled with comfortable stretchers and mosquito nets, and they dined not on the meagre rations of Nadzab and Biak but on plentiful servings of fresh meat, vegetables, ice cream, and bread.

They reported to General Akin, who introduced them to senior officers from naval intelligence. The 24 of them — they had had an officer added — were told that they were the nucleus of a new group, 6 Wireless Unit. Their mission was to accompany the invasion convoy, and as the voyage proceeded, to scan the airwaves for any clues that the convoy had been discovered. They were, in effect, to provide signals cover for the convoy, just as they had done for the invasion of Hollandia. But this time, rather than doing so from a distant land base, they would be aboard one of the ships in the invasion fleet.

The convoy included 470 ships, more than twice the number used in the invasion of Hollandia earlier that year — although not as many as the nearly 7000 vessels used in D-Day at Normandy.3 Based in part on Ultra information from Central Bureau, MacArthur intended to bypass the southernmost islands of the Philippines and instead invade Leyte.

Leyte sat right in the middle of the archipelago between the major southern island of Mindoro and the Philippines’ most populous and most heavily defended island, Luzon — the home of the capital, Manila, and MacArthur’s previous base at Corregidor, from where he had escaped three years earlier.

The Americans had lost the Philippines to the Japanese, and they wanted it back. For this reason, the landings were going to be ‘American-only’, but with support from Australian ships such as the heavy cruiser HMAS Australia. But in the supposedly all-American landing party were the 24 Australians — hand-picked, experienced members of 6 Wireless Unit, chosen by General Akin himself. Six of them were on his own communications craft, and they sailed with the invasion force.4 Their job was to monitor Japanese air-to-air and air-to-ground frequencies, so that the fleet would not be ambushed by enemy attack. The invasion force left Hollandia on 13 October 1944 for the eight-day voyage by sea.

The Kana operators were split into three groups, covering all frequencies that were likely to indicate that the fleet had been discovered.5 Two days before they arrived at Leyte, they intercepted a signal from an aircraft frantically sending messages about the massive fleet off the east coast of the island, However, no defensive air raid resulted.

Another ship in the invasion force, the Wasatch, was carrying a signals team from FRUMEL, which had the specific task of protecting the vessel they were travelling on.6

While 1 Wireless Unit had the run of their vessel and dined with General Kenney himself, the first FRUMEL team had a harder time of it. From the outset, things went wrong. They were flown to Hollandia to join the Princeton before she set sail for Leyte, but arrived too late. The ship had already departed, so they were assigned to the Wasatch instead.

The Wasatch was dominated by its US army-communications functions, so the wireless unit had to work in with the standard operation of the ship, and even had trouble getting access to antennas. They would be instructed when they could connect, and when they had to disconnect.

On 20 October, the American fleet arrived at Leyte, pouring from the transport ships onto the east coast of the island. The Kana operators were not combat troops, and Kenney did not want them on the front line, so they were ordered to stay aboard on the first night, out of harm’s way from any hand-to-hand fighting on the land. They continued their shifts throughout the night, monitoring Japanese radio frequencies, and picking up many messages about Japanese aircraft within bombing range of Leyte.7

At eight o’clock the following morning, on 21 October, the Kana operators witnessed a new kind of warfare: a kamikaze attack. One of the Kana teams was working on a ship near the HMAS Australia when a Japanese Aichi D3A ‘Val’ dive bomber appeared, flying directly toward the ship. The gunners fired at it, but failed to bring it down, and the bomber crashed into the Australia.8 Alfred Bobin, one of the Central Bureau Kana operators in the fleet at the time, recounted, ‘When the plane hit it burst into pieces and was like a fire ball as it scattered along one side of the ship.’9

Thirty Australian sailors were killed by the dive bomber, and 60 more were wounded. The attack caused confusion and panic among Allied ranks. At noon, it was decided that the fleet was not as safe as thought, and that the Kana operators should go ashore after all.10

They set up a listening base about three miles south of the town of Tacloban, camping out in the open, with their radio receivers in the back of trucks.

Four days later, a typhoon hit Leyte, flattening their campsite and destroying their intelligence set-up. Much of the direction-finding equipment was lost.11 The radio receivers, being on the back of the trucks, were spared, but flooding now cut them off from the rest of the invasion force, and they had to hike back through deep water to retrieve their supplies.12

MacArthur waded ashore through the waves of the beach, a cameraman in front of him, filming his arrival.13 He travelled immediately to Tacloban and declared the reinstitution of civil government, and delivered a speech that was recorded and broadcast.

MacArthur declared, ‘People of the Philippines, I have returned. By the grace of almighty God, our forces stand again on Philippine soil. Soil consecrated in the blood of our two peoples. We have come dedicated and committed to the task destroying every vestige of enemy control over your people. The hour of your redemption is here.’

As Jack Brown of 6 Wireless Unit noted, this triumphant announcement was somewhat premature, since most of the Philippines — including the capital, Manila — was still under Japanese control.

While the US army fought a land battle against the Japanese army on Leyte, American and Australian warships became engaged with Japanese ships in a naval battle in Leyte Gulf.

On 24 October, a single Japanese Judy bomber strafed the deck of the Princeton and dropped a bomb on it, which landed in the centre of the deck. The bomb ignited a petrol fire that eventually spread throughout the vessel, sinking it. Explosions rent the Princeton as it went down, damaging the nearby ships that had come to assist, and killing an additional 200 sailors.14

It had been purely bad luck — a plane arriving late — that had resulted in the FRUMEL intercept team being reassigned from the Princeton to another ship. That bad luck now appeared in hindsight to have been good luck.

Not long after the invasion, more Kana operators from 1 Wireless Unit were also posted to Leyte. They set up a listening station nearby at Tolosa, a small town about 40 miles south of Tacloban.

Now that the wireless units were established, their work got back to normal: three shifts of Kana operators worked around the clock, monitoring the movements of Japanese aircraft, warships, and troops, and passing the information back to Central Bureau and on to local commanders.15

In November, a United States army unit discovered Japanese documents, left behind by Japanese army forces, which were provided to Pappy Clark at the new Central Bureau headquarters on Leyte. The documents turned out to be air-to-ground additive sheets. This code had been broken some time before by Eric Nave and Thomas Room in Brisbane, but additive-sheet discoveries were always welcome.

The Japanese army issued new additive sheets quite frequently, and each time a new one came into use the code-breakers had to solve it all over again. The newly found sheets were copied and issued to wireless field units, who immediately put it to use decrypting traffic.

The win was short-lived, however. The Japanese army air force must have suspected their codes were compromised, because they issued a special order to all units to begin using the next month’s additive sheet immediately, and to burn all copies of the November sheet.16

During the Leyte landings and the Battle of Leyte Gulf, three aircraft had crashed into American and Australian warships, including the first suicidal attack on the Australia, causing massive damage and loss of life. Disturbingly, soon after these events, the interceptors heard a broadcast from Tokyo praising the pilots of the crashed planes, naming each in turn as if they were heroes. They were being glorified.

A new word started soon appearing in Japanese radio messages: kamikaze.17 It was a reference to a Japanese legend, in which Japan was under attack from invaders but a strong wind — the kamikaze — came and blew the invaders away. The metaphor was clear.

Using a kamikaze pilot was a new tactic. A smaller or older plane, of limited military value, would be loaded up with explosives, turning it into a flying bomb. An inexperienced pilot would take control, and would fly it into an American ship or land base on a suicide mission. The reward was honour, and the chance to defend the homeland.

The Japanese historian Shunsuke Tsurumi has called this fervour for death in battle ‘the mass mania for glorious self-destruction’,18 noting that there were precursors during the progression of the war. When the island of Saipan was invaded by the Allies in mid-1944, most of the 25,000 Japanese there committed suicide. And as the Allied soldiers had discovered, taking control of small, relatively insignificant outposts such as Biak or Manus Island would end up as a gruelling, drawn-out fight against defenders who preferred to fight rather than surrender, even in the face of almost certain defeat.

An American journalist on Leyte discovered 6 Wireless Unit, referring to it in an American newspaper report. This was how the Royal Australian Air Force commanders learned of the existence of 6 Wireless Unit and its role in the invasion. They were furious.

They contacted Wing Commander H. Roy Booth, the air force’s representative at Central Bureau, for an explanation. To his great embarrassment, Booth had to admit that he knew as much as they did, but promised to find out what had happened. He asked the other two assistant directors what the story was. Mic Sandford was similarly in the dark, but Abe Sinkov had been informed about the secret plan by General Akin in October. The wireless units were outside Sinkov’s jurisdiction, and he had not thought to tell the others.

Booth, still furious, wanted to get to the bottom of it. He ordered Major W.E. ‘Nobby’ Clarke, head of the air-to-ground solution, to investigate what had happened and report back.

Clarke’s report gave Booth and Sandford little joy. General Akin himself was responsible for the mess. But if heads had to roll, there was somebody else to blame: Geoffrey Ballard, the Central Bureau representative at Hollandia headquarters. Apparently, Ballard was in it up to his neck. Booth and Sandford were itching to give Ballard a verbal lashing next time they saw him.

That opportunity came quite soon. Ballard and Sandford engaged in a dispute via a series of messages between Leyte and Brisbane. Some of Ballard’s messages were very long, explaining how miserable he was and insisting that he be given leave. He got it. Captain Neil Evans arrived on Leyte in early December to relieve Ballard of his duties as liaison officer, and he returned to Brisbane a few days later on a Douglas C-47 Skytrain.

It was Sandford, as his commanding officer, who gave Ballard the dressing down.19

‘Well, Geoff, you seem to think that this war is being fought for your convenience,’ Sandford said to him.

Ballard quipped in response, ‘Really? I can’t say I’ve noticed the convenience.’

Ballard was put on leave for six months, after which he was sent to Colombo to take up the position of Central Bureau liaison officer with the British code-breaking unit there.20