Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
radar-equipped B-24 low-altitude bombers to the task of searching out and
destroying this shipping.55
Late in 1943, a series of coordinated air strikes made by South and
Southwest Pacific bombers and fighters hit Rabaul in an effort to close or
greatly reduce this most threatening Japanese position. Daily Allied radio and
teletype exchanges, meetings of the theaters’ senior staff members, and
communications between Halsey and MacArthur ensured that target information
and attack plans were coordinated, with little conflict between the air groups
sent on the raids. Especially toward year’s end, defense of Rabaul became a
battle of attrition for the Japanese naval air force. Allied intelligence judged
quantitatively and type of aircraft at Rabaul’s airdromes and the flow of
reinforcements by air and sea. Kenney, Twining, Whitehead, and Rear Adm.
Aubrey Fitch, Halsey’s air commander, contemplated the abilities of the new
Japanese pilots relative to those of the pilots who had been in the region earlier
in an effort to determine the true state of Japanese combat capability. The
leaders concluded that across the board the new Japanese flyers could not match
those of early 1942, the result of heavy losses incurred by a small group of elite
pilots. In October, Admiral Halsey mounted an amphibious assault on
Bougainville Island, landing at Empress Augusta Bay on November 1. A
smaller landing in the Treasury Islands on October 27, 1943, had preceded the
Bougainville operation. MacArthur had agreed with Halsey that SWPA air
forces would reduce the threat of Japanese air reaction from Rabaul, Kavieng,
Buka Island, and other associated airfields, while Halsey’s airmen, including
those from the Thirteenth, protected the landing sites and troops going ashore.
Progressively harder attacks on the Japanese positions began on October 15. On
November 2, fighters and bombers from both SPA and SWPA staged the
heaviest strike to date on Rabaul’s airfields and harbor?6
In preparing their plans for Bougainville and Rabaul, the Allies had access
to considerable information on newly developed Japanese aircraft and the
organization and operating locations of Japan’s air forces. The recent Allied
capture of Lae, Salamaua, and Finschhafen had driven the Japanese Army Air
Force in New Guinea to the west. Successful AAF efforts to render useless the
Japanese airfield at Cape Gloucester on New Britain’s western tip (lying
between Rabaul and the Allies’ New Guinea airfields) had largely succeeded.
Kenney, on November 2, summed up Japan’s projected air strength in a letter
to Whitehead at Port Moresby. Kenney surmised, based on air OB estimates
(derived largely from ULTRA) and Y intercepts, that as of November 3, Japan
would have 200 to 215 operational fighters and 60 to 70 bombers, most
stationed at Rabaul but a substantial number also located at Kavieng on nearby
New Ireland. Kenney added, “There is constant evidence picked up by Y
Intelligence and by DF [direction finding] that heavy reinforcements are on the
way or projected for an early date to move into the area from the Empire.” To
keep the Japanese on the defensive, Admiral Fitch used Thirteenth Air Force
274