CHAPTER 10
(AUGUST 1943–JANUARY 1944)
MARINE FIGHTER SQUADRON VMF-214
ESPIRITU SANTO, NEW HEBRIDES
22 JULY 1943
1130 HOURS LOCAL
The failure of the Japanese efforts to retake Guadalcanal was paralleled by their collapse on New Guinea’s Papuan Peninsula. By mid-January, MacArthur had more than 30,000 Australian and American troops committed to overrunning 12,000 Japanese in the “Buna Pocket.” At the end of the month, just before Guadalcanal was finally secured, the last surviving Japanese defender was killed or captured—at a cost of more than 3,000 Allied lives—nearly double the U.S. losses to take Guadalcanal.
In Washington, the Joint Chiefs seized on the moment to establish priorities for the next offensive steps against Japan. Recognizing that the European theater was still the main war effort, they nonetheless developed what they called the “Strategic Plan for the Defeat of Japan.” It called for:
Nimitz wasted no time in implementing his part of the grand design. On 26 March, before the Strategic Plan even received its final approval, he launched an attack aimed at ejecting the Japanese from Attu and Kiska—the two Aleutian islands seized in June 1942 during the Battle of Midway. By 30 May 1943, the U.S. Army’s 7th Infantry Division had retaken Attu—but not before the Japanese killed scores of wounded American soldiers in a final banzai charge on the hospital. Before the Americans could invade Kiska in August, the Japanese succeeded in evacuating their garrison—undetected by the Americans—who unwittingly proceeded to conduct an uncontested full-scale amphibious assault against the island.
While the warlords in Tokyo were willing to write off the territory in the Aleutians, that was certainly not the case in the South Pacific. While Nimitz and MacArthur paused to build up their forces for their dual drives on Rabaul, Yamamoto was busy shoring up its outer defenses. But despite his best efforts, the tide had turned.
In early March, during the three-day Battle of the Bismarck Sea, his once vaunted fleet lost seven of eight transports and four of eight destroyers—along with 3,650 men and twenty-five aircraft—during an attempt to reinforce the Japanese garrison at Lea on the north coast of New Guinea. A subsequent bombing raid in late March against Guadalcanal—already becoming a major American and Allied naval and air base—by more than 300 aircraftcost him forty aircraft and their experienced pilots. Now, increasingly concerned about the state of readiness for an anticipated American offensive against Bougainville, Yamamoto decided to see for himself how prepared his forces really were. It was a deadly mistake.
The coded radio message with Yamamoto’s detailed itinerary was intercepted and passed to Station Hypo code-breakers. With President Roosevelt’s personal authorization, U.S. Army Air Force P-38s launched from Henderson Field to intercept and kill the mastermind of Japan’s naval strategy. At 0935 on 18 April 1943, one year to the day since Jimmy Doolittle’s daring raid on Tokyo, the man who planned the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was himself surprised. As the “Betty” bomber in which he was a passenger approached Bougainville at 4,500 feet, sixteen P-38s pounced out of the sun. According to postwar reports, Yamamoto was dead before his flaming plane hit the ground.
Yamamoto’s successor as head of the Combined Fleet, Admiral Mineichi Koga, quickly devoted himself to the same task as his deceased predecessor: protecting Rabaul. He clearly understood that the heavily defended base on the north coast of New Britain—with its 100,000 battle-tested Japanese troops and 600 aircraft spread over five different airfields and naval facilities—was the primary American objective in the South Pacific. He set out to do everything in his power to keep the Americans from realizing their goal—or failing that, to make it as costly as possible.
His first steps were to continue reinforcing the islands between Guadalcanal and Rabaul—and to slow MacArthur’s advance to the east on New Guinea as much as possible. He reinvigorated nighttime deliveries by the Tokyo Express, even relying on submarines to deliver supplies and reinforcements when necessary. By mid-June Koga convinced his reluctant staff to try a major air raid against Guadalcanal—even though the once-contested island now had five air bases, more than 300 aircraft, scores of anti-aircraft batteries, and a major port operation with U.S., Australian, and New Zealand combatants in the roadstead, all with alert anti-aircraft gunners.
The raid by seventy Zekes—the latest version of the infamous Zero—and twenty-four heavy bombers was a disaster. All but one of Koga’s planes was downed—at a cost of four American and two New Zealand fighters.
The disastrous June air raid on Guadalcanal had another unanticipated adverse consequence for Admiral Koga besides the loss of his planes and pilots. It convinced Halsey that it was time to get moving north—up the Solomons—to wrest the fortress of Bougainville from Japanese control. But first he had to eliminate two enemy air bases that threatened his advance: one at Munda on New Georgia Island and the other at Vila on nearby Kolombangara Island.
On 30 June, Admiral Turner, commanding the 3rd Amphibious Force, landed 6,000 Marines and soldiers on New Georgia and promptly seized the Munda airstrip. The Seabees followed immediately to patch the runway, and the first American aircraft prepared to land on the captured airstrip within seventy-two hours of the landing. But it didn’t go as planned.
The plan called for a quick clearing operation and then an attack to seize the airstrip at Vila, on Kolombangara, less than ten miles away across the Kula Gulf. But just as on Guadalcanal, the bottom fell out of Turner’s timetable.
The 4,500 well-entrenched Japanese troops on New Georgia might have lost their airstrip, but they weren’t about to give up. The dogged defenders held on for more than a month—requiring the commitment of 32,000 soldiers and 1,700 Marines. And, as was becoming the custom, those Japanese troops who couldn’t be evacuated by the Tokyo Express fought to the last man.
That was enough to convince Halsey that he should skip the heavily defended Vila airdrome and seize the lightly held Japanese island of Vella Lavella, fifty miles to the north. On 14 August, 6,000 troops from New Georgia were backloaded onto waiting amphibious ships and landed the following morning on the southwest coast of Vella Lavella. Once again the Seabees rushed ashore and in a matter of forty-eight hours constructed a rough but functional fighter strip. As soon as they finished, Marine, Army and Navy aircraft came winging in to protect the troops ashore and the ships of the amphibious force.
The Americans were finally on the move toward Rabaul. Though Nimitz, MacArthur, and Halsey realized that there were long and difficult battles ahead, there was no longer any doubt that U.S. superiority on the sea and in the air were essential ingredients for successful operations on the ground.
By the summer of 1943, U.S. air superiority could be measured in both quantity and quality. Army, Navy, and Marine air training commands had quadrupled the output of pilots, navigators, gunners, bombardiers, mechanics, and air crewmen from the levels achieved in 1942. In that same time frame, the production of new and better aircraft had increased seven-fold. The quantitative and qualitative edge the Japanese had enjoyed the previous year was now gone.
For the first months of the war, the Mitsubishi A6M Reisen, or “Zero,” ruled the skies over the Pacific. These planes were light, fast, and were also equipped with heavy armament—two 20 mm cannons and a pair of 7.7 mm nose-mounted machine guns.
The Zero was a proven plane, having been battle-tested in China for more than a year before the first ones appeared in the skies over Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. It had proven itself superior to any other aircraft in China, Burma, the Philippines, and the Dutch East Indies.
So too had most of the Japanese pilots, many of whom had ten years of combat experience. The age of the average American pilot was nineteen.
A typical Zero pilot wore a parachute and a harness and carried a small pistol—not for personal protection but as a “suicide weapon.” In the Japanese warrior tradition it was dishonorable to be captured or to surrender—suicide was preferable to the dishonor of defeat or surrender.
But the Japanese no longer ruled the skies. By the spring of 1943 Army P-38s and Marine Chance-Vought F4U Corsairs were being delivered in significant numbers. The Marines inherited the powerful, gull-winged fighters from the Navy when a landing gear problem caused the F4U to fail its aircraft carrier qualification. Though the Corsair was not as maneuverable as the Zero, the Marines loved it for its powerful rate of climb and firepower. Corsair pilots called it “Hog Nose” for its massive front cowling. It was powered by a 2,000-horsepower supercharged radial engine—nearly twice the horsepower of the Zero. And with six .50-caliber machine guns in the wings, the Corsair was also better armed.
The Reisen or “Zero.”
As Halsey started island-hopping up the Solomons in the summer of 1943, Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-214—flying their new Corsairs— became a key component in the successful drive. The squadron was commanded by a scrappy, thirty-one-year-old Marine combat pilot named Gregory Boyington. Born in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Boyington had received his commission and as an aviation cadet served in the Marines. But in August of 1941 he resigned his commission to join Claire Chennault’s Air Volunteer Group in China, the Flying Tigers. The pay was good and the pilots got a $500 bonus for every confirmed kill.
In his autobiography, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Boyington claimed to have shot down six aircraft while with the Flying Tigers. But the official records state that he had only two aerial victories that could be documented. Boyington argued that he should have been paid for the four enemy planes he had destroyed while they were sitting on the tarmac at a Japanese-held air base in China.
Pappy Boyington led the Black Sheep Squadron.
It may have been after his stint with the Flying Tigers that someone came up with the nickname “Pappy.” At thirty-one, he was one of the “old” men of the unit. But he also had another nickname—“Black Sheep”—which he earned with the Flying Tigers. General John Alison said, “He was a liability. He lost airplanes; he got lost, landed wheels up . . . and, well, you know what Pappy’s problem was? He drank too much. Chennault sent him back to the United States. He got a commission as a Marine major in the reserves, and was sent overseas in January of 1943.”
The decision on who should command the newly constituted VMF-214 Marine squadron fell to the assistant commanding general of the 1st Marine Air Wing, Brigadier General James “Nuts” Moore. Major Boyington landed on Espiritu Santo about when General Moore was trying to make that decision. Perhaps more on the basis of his tenure as a combat pilot than for his spotty record with the Flying Tigers, Major Boyington was picked as CO of VMF-214.
Now the squadron needed a new name. The men in the squadron submitted all kinds of names, including a few that were outright profane. The Marine public information office did their best to discourage those, reminding the men that it would prevent them from sending news releases to hometown newspapers publicizing their exploits. How could they do that with a squadron name they couldn’t print in a family newspaper?
Eventually common sense took over and the name of VMF-214 became the “Black Sheep Squadron.” The pilots of VMF-214 were combat-trained by Pappy Boyington. What his green pilots lacked in seat time they made up in strategies, taught to them by their leader in colorful sessions on the ground. In earthy, blunt terms, he preached to them, “Whenever you see a Japanese plane, kill it. That’s our mission. Pick one out and kill it.”
The Black Sheep Squadron did just as they were ordered. Their first mission was to fly escort for twelve B-24s on a bombing run to Kahili.
The flight turned into a pitched battle with Japanese Zeros, covering some 200 miles of sea and airspace during a brief forty-five minutes. When it was over, sixteen of the twenty-four Black Sheep fighter pilots had seen combat action for the very first time.
The squadron claimed eleven Japanese planes downed in the battle that day, with Pappy getting the credit for five of those kills. In their first month of combat, the Black Sheep Squadron was credited with fifty-seven kills and nineteen “probables,” and their fame grew. And so did the pressure on Pappy Boyington to get even more victories. During the next three months under Boyington, the unit claimed ninety-four enemy aircraft shot down.
On 15 August, Halsey’s amphibious forces, aided by the Black Sheep Squadron flying cover, landed on small Vella Lavella Island, where the Seabees immediately went to work building the airstrip that would become the newest forward air base for VMF-214.
Lieutenant John “Jack” Bolt, a twenty-three-year-old aviator and instructor from Florida, had been flying combat missions over the Solomons since May. Two Marine aviators, Lieutenants Henry “Hank” McCartney and Henry “Boo” Bourgeois, just a year younger than Bolt, arrived about the same time.
LIEUTENANT HENRY MCCARTNEY, USMC
Solomon Islands
18 September 1943
1530 Hours Local
Guadalcanal was no fun. Munda was no fun either. Living on Munda was miserable. There was no place to take a shower or a bath. The guys would go down to a creek close by. The only tour in which I thought we had halfway decent living conditions was the tour I spent on the Russell Islands.
Our friends in the Marine artillery had a 105 right up in back of my tent. And they’d do harassing fire against the Japs. Of course, every time they’d fire that thing off, we’d come up out of the sack. And it was difficult to get a good night’s sleep.
So one of the very first mutinies at Guadalcanal was the fighter pilots going down to Operations. They said, “Get that artillery gun out, or you won’t have any fighter pilots.” They moved it.
I came into the squadron January of ’43, with four kills to my credit. I may have had more than Pappy at that time. All together, I’m credited with five and a half, and three probables.
Our first combat tour with 214 was relatively quiet. When they came back from the second tour, that’s when they developed the concept of the fighter sweeps and there were more enemy aircraft challenging us. That’s when our scores went up.
LIEUTENANT HENRY BOURGEOIS, USMC
Vella Lavella Island
21 September 1943
1500 Hours Local
I always wanted to be an aviator. And when a recruiting bunch came through, they got me. I’d already made up my mind I wanted to be a Marine.
I got to Guadalcanal in January 1943. I was assigned to VMF-122, flew two combat missions with them, and went with Boyington when he organized 214.
Since some of the other guys and I had combat experience, he selected eight of us as division leaders. The rest from the fighter pool would be new pilots. I flew my first mission with 214 out of the Russell Islands.
On this one mission, I remember the bombers were to go after the shipping in the harbor. And, they were probably at 9,000 or 10,000 feet.
We had sixteen Corsairs, closely covering the bombers, and above that some P-38s beyond sight, high up. We got up there, and saw that the whole harbor was covered with a thunderstorm.
And the bombers pushed over early because they had to get down below. By the time they pushed over, a whole sky full of Japanese airplanes appeared, going after everybody.
It quickly broke into an air-to-air dogfight. And, pretty soon, they’re all over the sky. I had somebody shooting at me. I’d go into a cloud, mill around a little, come out, and shoot at a Japanese airplane, get shot at again, go into a cloud, and come out and still try to stick with the bombers if we could.
That was the typical type of gunfight. We lost two SBDs and two Corsairs that time. One of our SBD rear gunners claimed one Zero kill. And I think we claimed five or six.
So I decided to head back to base, and I’m not paying too much attention to what I’m doing. I’m just flying along at about 5,000 to 7,000 feet and see tracers coming by. I look in the rearview mirror, and there’s a Zero back there, shooting at me. So, I two-blocked the throttle, and headed downhill as fast as I could. But the Zero was sticking with me.
And this guy kept sneaking up and firing, sneaking up and firing—getting closer. Then I discovered I was headed in the wrong direction and running low on fuel. So I’m going to have to turn and fight this guy.
I knew he was going out-turn me unless I did it first. I was just about ready to do that when he turned back to his base.
We did a lot of escort missions for B-24s, dive-bombers and torpedo bombers, and did a lot of strafing missions. Or we’d be protecting destroyers that had been hit, backing down a slot.
Pappy Boyington was thirty-one years old then, at least seven years older than the rest of us. Major Boyington, in the air as a pilot, was a superior leader.
If you talk about his accomplishments in the air as a flight leader, you can’t fault him. He was excellent. In two combat tours, we lost eleven pilots out of a total of fifty-four. And Pappy Boyington asked Bailey, Case, Beggart, and me to stay for a fourth combat tour. I said, “Pappy, I think my time’s running out. I’d better go back home.”
FIRST LIEUTENANT
JOHN F. “JACK” BOLT, USMC
Vella Lavella Island
28 September 1943
0730 Hours Local
From the beginning, we were facing pilots who had been in the Zero for several years. They probably had 500 or 600 flight hours. Our typical pilot in Joe Foss’s squadron or my squadron would have had maybe 150 or 200 flight hours.
But we were finally getting experienced pilots who had been fighting the Zeros for three combat tours. Joe Foss was one of them. They were instructing us on the advantages and the disadvantages of fighting them.
Boyington had acquired a tremendous amount of knowledge in his experiences in China, far more than anybody else had. And he could rev up the guys to do the best they could. He was a scoundrel, and charming, but we had a real good esprit de corps by the time we went into combat.
I got my first kill on 16 September. It was my first escort mission to Bougainville. The Zeros were probably about 10,000 or 12,000 feet, and I’d come down from maybe twenty and gotten in behind them, trying to remain in their blind spot. I got two on that flight.
I got back at the base at Turtle Bay and went to the scrap heap for some parts of wrecked planes, and got a .50-caliber machine gun and shot different rounds into this debris. The common belting for our machine guns was one armor-piercing shell, one incendiary, and a tracer.
The armor-piercing shell was something you didn’t need on the Zero. The Zero didn’t have armor. And you just need tracers initially to see where your guns are hitting. The thing that would torch off the Zero was the incendiary. It would scatter phosphorous around the small area [inside the cockpit] so that it was almost solid phosphorous for maybe a foot in diameter where the incendiary went off.
So, I got Boyington out to the scrap heap and showed him what the rounds were capable of. After that we immediately went to a belting of a much larger number of incendiaries. And we got real good results from it, too. The Zeros were blowing up noticeably faster.
MARINE FIGHTER SQUADRON VMF-214 READY TENT
MUNDA POINT, NEW GEORGIA
17 OCTOBER 1943
0400 HOURS LOCAL
Like the rest of the Allied air bases springing up on the Solomon Island chain and the others to the northwest, Munda Point, on the island of New Georgia, was a terrible place with a reputation as a “malarial hell-hole.”
Each night the Black Sheep Squadron had visitors who made life miserable for them. Their first night at Munda, the Japanese welcomed them with a bombing raid at one o’clock in the morning. They kept up that routine, visiting the base up to three times a night, making it impossible for the pilots to get a full night’s sleep.
When the air raid alarm went off, the men found cover, waited for the Japanese bombers to leave, then went back to bed, only to be awakened a few hours later with the same routine. By 0400 the pilots were roused again—but on 17 October 1943 the last call wasn’t the air raid alarm. It was the duty officer getting them to the flight line for another day’s mission. This day, the Black Sheep Squadron was on another bombing run against the Japanese air base at Kahili.
Spurred on by his sense of competition, Major Boyington tried a new tactic with his pilots. Now, instead of waiting for Japanese aircraft to attack, he began flying over their bases and taunting them to respond. He even used his radio to let them know he was coming and told them that he was the guy who shot down all their planes. The tactic worked—the enemy picked up the gauntlet and fought back with a vengeance. And as the Black Sheep moved ever closer to the Japanese stronghold of Rabaul, those fights over enemy airspace got increasingly hotter.
It’s always riskier getting into a dogfight over an enemy’s airspace. If your plane got hit and you had to bail out, there was a good chance you would survive if you were in your own airspace. But over enemy territory, the odds were in favor of your dying there. If you bailed, there was every chance that a Zero pilot would try to gun you down in your parachute. If you were lucky enough to survive the parachute drop, chances were that enemy soldiers on the ground would kill you when you landed.
Boyington had first challenged the Japanese to aerial battles when they were dogfighting over Bougainville. With its strong Japanese presence, sweeps over Bougainville were always high-risk.
Boyington continued to goad the enemy until he received a cable from Admiral Halsey. It read: YOUR STEEPLECHASE IS OVER. YOU ARE RETIRED TO STUD.
Actually, Halsey was saying that their first tour of air combat duty was over and he was granting the squadron some well-deserved R & R in Australia.
Two other members of the Black Sheep Squadron who went with Boyington to Australia were just twenty-two when they landed in the South Pacific.
LIEUTENANT ED HARPER, USMC
Vella Lavella Island
29 October 1943
1100 Hours Local
The first time I saw an F4U Corsair was on an air station before I went overseas, before I got to the South Pacific. Espiritu Santo is the first time I saw one up close. At Espiritu Santo we got assigned to 214 as part of the replacement pool.
I wasn’t even aware who Boyington was for the first few days. We only knew he’d been in the Flying Tigers when we started training as a squadron.
Initially I was very aggressive, and had no fear at all, until suddenly I was on the receiving end instead of the delivering end. And that’s very sobering. It never got easier, when you were on the receiving end. Zeros were hard to shoot down. I fired a whole load of ammunition into one, almost point-blank, as he dove away. And he barely burned. But he obviously was done for. He was no longer fighting and was crashing into the sea. But he didn’t blow up for me. In fact, he didn’t burn easily at all.
Zeros were flown by very skilled pilots and were hard to shoot down. Most Zeros that were shot down were targeted by pilots that didn’t let the Zeros see them coming.
I got hit a couple of times with Zeros that I never saw, too. And that was pretty typical. I was just a kid trying to do some good. I only got one confirmed, and a couple of probables, and a few more I just shot up.
The intelligence officer took your word for it. If I’d have been inclined to exaggerate, I could’ve been an ace. I really shot that guy down that went in the ocean and I shot up a couple more until they were riddled with holes, but I didn’t see them burn or crash. So you didn’t count them.
Boyington gave me the nickname “the sleeve” after I got shot up the first time. A “sleeve” is the target sleeve that’s towed behind another plane to offer fighters gunnery practice.
It was my first tour and I hadn’t shot down anything. Other guys were having a little luck. But I was trailing and I was getting anxious.
I got off by myself and found a Zero down below me. I started making runs on him. That’s when I discovered how maneuverable they were. Every time I got close to him, he’d do a split S underneath me. I’d do a wing over, and come back. And he’d do another split S. We were working ourselves down over the harbor, right off the end of their runway. And my thought was, that little bugger can’t split S forever. He’ll do a split S into the ocean. But what I didn’t realize, all the way down, he must have been hollering for help on his radio.
Suddenly I had a lot of extra company. And instead of being on the offense, I suddenly was on the defense, trying to stay alive. There was a small cumulus cloud, a mile or so away. I jinked left and right, and up and down, and I finally made it into the clouds. And of course you felt like you were playing tag. I popped in and out, ended up getting some pretty good shots at several Zeros.
After playing that game for a while, I dove out the bottom of the cloud and headed home. Nothing fatal was hit—the engine wasn’t hit. I wasn’t hit. The landing gear wouldn’t come down so I had to make a belly landing. But, otherwise it was a non-event.
It didn’t seem to be a big deal, except I had over a hundred holes in my airplane when I got back. Boyington took a look at the airplane and said, “You were a target sleeve today.”
We had no idea we were setting records. And we were having reasonable success. But we didn’t expect the attention that we received along the way. You didn’t want to think about it.
3 January 1944, Boyington was shot down. We were coming out of Bougainville, and when he didn’t come home, we asked to go on a search party. And they wouldn’t let us. The following morning, they let four of us take off and go look for him, providing we got back in time for our regular mission. If the Japanese sub hadn’t come along and picked him up early that morning, we would’ve found him.
I said then, and I still say sixty years later, Pappy made me feel secure. He made me feel aggressive. He gave me confidence. He was a leader. Sure, he got in trouble on the ground from time to time, and liked to drink and fight. But he was terrific in the air. And he made us young fighter pilots brave. And that’s leadership.
LIEUTENANT W. THOMAS EMRICH, USMC
Vella Lavella Island
29 October 1943
1315 Hours Local
I remember vividly that first time. We didn’t see any enemy airplanes at first, on my first mission. And suddenly about sixty Zeros appear. There’s probably thirty or so of us from various squadrons. So airplanes are all around. You look off to the left, there’s airplanes going down in flames. There are airplanes crossing twenty feet in front of you. And I think, what am I doing here? I’m scared to death. My mouth was so dry, if you’d have called me on the radio, I couldn’t have answered you. That’s how scared I was.
On October 17 I shot down two Zeros—two on the same day. You have to remember that the Zero had no armor plate and no self-sealing fuel tanks. Their fuel tank was behind the cockpit. And both the airplanes I shot down, I came in from behind. They never saw me. And when I fired, the Zero just exploded because my bullets were incendiary and the gas tank behind the pilot blew up. You never saw them again. It’s obvious when they’re on fire that they’re finished.
In such fights, you’re not only flying the airplane, you’re shooting six guns. It isn’t just flying skill that counts. It was also marksmanship.
The next tour after that, we were flying along in an overcast of 800 feet after we’d come back from an aborted mission. We were flying at about 500 feet and you can imagine what these Japanese thought, with eight Corsairs, passing 300 to 400 feet over them.
About a minute or two later, my engine quit. I tried to turn on the other fuel pump and check the tanks. Before that time, I’d always thought, If something happens, do I want to make a water landing or bail out? Well, at 500 feet I didn’t have any choice about bailing out. So it was going to be a water landing. But the engine quit and the airplane slowed down, and when I hit the ocean, water gets right up to my windshield. Naturally I try to get out. I climb onto the wing, jump off into the water, and the airplane disappears. That’s how fast it was.
And my friend Ed Harper starts circling to see that his buddy was okay, and calls for some assistance. In about an hour a boat came out, picked me up, and took me to shore. There was an auxiliary field there, and another Army plane came and flew me back to base.
MARINE FIGHTER SQUADRON VMF-214
CAPE TOROKINA BEACHHEAD
EMPRESS AUGUSTA BAY, BOUGAINVILLE
27 DECEMBER 1943
0940 HOURS LOCAL
In mid-November, U.S. Marine Raiders from the 3rd Infantry Division finally landed at Bougainville, where the Japanese least expected. They were followed by 34,000 Marines and Army troops, who, having bypassed the enemy garrisons on the south coast, sailed halfway up the western side of the island before going ashore just north of Empress Augusta Bay at Cape Torokina.
The bulk of the Japanese forces in Rabaul, far to the south, needed time to move troops and equipment across the island to hold back the Americans. By that time, the Seabees—with the help of an engineer brigade from New Zealand—had finished two airstrips while the infantry established a secure beachhead. The Allies were actually making some headway when the Japanese finally came up from the south.
The Black Sheep Squadron in front of a Corsair on Vella Lavella.
Combat on Bougainville was terrible, with the jungle and terrain even worse and more unforgiving than those on Guadalcanal.
By the time Bougainville was partially secured, Major Boyington and the squadron had returned from R & R to the forward base at Vella Lavella. There, Boyington learned that he had nineteen new men to train. But Pappy wanted a more challenging target than Bougainville and suggested the fortified Japanese base at Rabaul. His old friend General “Nuts” Moore gave him the go-ahead.
On 17 December 1943, Boyington led the first single-engine fighter sweep across Rabaul. The Japanese forces at Rabaul had been steadily worn down by Allied bombing and strafing attacks, by both MacArthur’s air force and the Black Sheep Squadron. This day Pappy Boyington’s pilots would be up against more than two hundred Zeros and their pilots, who knew how to fight the Marine Corsairs.
The Japanese shot down six Black Sheep pilots on their first two runs on Rabaul. But at the end of the day Boyington alone had a total of twenty kills to his credit—just six fewer than the American record held by Joe Foss and Eddie Rickenbacker. On 23 December he knocked down four more, closing the gap even more.
A press corps interviewer asked Pappy if any Japanese planes showed up to attack the Black Sheep Squadron. He replied, “Yes, there were a number of Japanese planes that came up over there . . . and we got all we could in dogfights. And I saw eight other planes destroyed besides the four I destroyed myself.”
The next night, at a base Christmas party, he boasted, “They can’t kill me. If you ever see me with thirty Zeros on my tail, don’t worry. I’ll be all right. I’ll meet you six months after the war in a bar in San Diego and we’ll all have a drink for old time’s sake.”
Ten days later, Major Gregory “Pappy” Boyington was shot down in a running gun battle in the skies just off the coast of Rabaul. But he didn’t go quietly. Before his plane disappeared into the sea, he was seen burning another enemy Zero—his twenty-fifth—one short of the all-time record.
Boyington’s disappearance created a press and public relations frenzy. Rumors were rampant. The New York Times reported that Major Boyington was alive on an island, hidden by natives and waiting to rejoin the squadron. There were other guesses as to what happened. None of the stories about his disappearance were true.
No one but the Japanese knew that Pappy Boyington had been shot down and picked up in the water by a Japanese sub. He was taken to Japan and only resurfaced at the war’s end, when his name showed up on a list of American POWs.
The Marine Black Sheep Squadron fell apart after its leader had been missing in action for several months. VMF-214 was officially disbanded in March 1944. The men of the formerly tight-knit squadron went their separate ways. Some returned home to the U.S. for duty while others were reassigned to other units in the Pacific.
MacArthur and Halsey—with the help of the Black Sheep—had effectively isolated the Japanese on Rabaul. Cut off from supplies or evacuation and virtually abandoned by their leaders, Rabaul’s garrison of more than 100,000 Imperial troops were allowed—in the words of Admiral Halsey—to “wither on the vine.” From early 1944 to the end of the war in August 1945 the garrison received no food, supplies, or reinforcements.
When Japanese commanders surrendered Rabaul after the war, among the 101,000 troops still on the island fortress were five divisions commanded by nineteen army generals and eleven admirals of the Imperial Navy contingent.