Battle of the Bismarck Sea

Battle of the Bismarck Sea
Part of the New Guinea Campaign of the Pacific Theater (World War II)
Japanese transport under aerial attack in the Bismarck Sea, 3 March 1943
Date 2–4 March 1943 Location Bismarck Sea, in the vicinity of Lae Result Allied victory
Belligerents
United States  Australia	Japan
Commanders and leaders
Ennis Whitehead Joe Hewitt	Gunichi Mikawa Masatomi Kimura
Strength
39 heavy bombers; 41 medium bombers; 34 light bombers; 54 fighters 10 torpedo boats	8 destroyers, 8 troop transports, 100 aircraft
Casualties and losses
2 bombers destroyed, 4 fighters destroyed, 13 killed[1]	8 transports sunk, 4 destroyers sunk, 20 fighters destroyed, 2,890+ dead[2]

The Battle of the Bismarck Sea (2–4 March 1943) took place in the South West Pacific Area (SWPA) during World War II when aircraft of the U.S. Fifth Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) attacked a Japanese convoy carrying troops to Lae, New Guinea. Most of the Japanese task force was destroyed, and Japanese troop losses were heavy.

The Japanese convoy was a result of a Japanese

The ultimate goal of the Allied counter-offensives in New Guinea and the Solomons was to capture the main Japanese base at Rabaul on New Britain, later codified as Operation Cartwheel, and clear the way for the eventual reconquest of the Philippines. Recognising the threat, the Japanese continued to send land, naval, and aerial reinforcements to the area in an attempt to check the Allied advances.^[5]

Japanese plans

Reviewing the progress of the Battle of Guadalcanal and the

On 5 January 1943, the convoy, which consisted of five destroyers and five troop transports carrying Okabe's force, set out for Lae from Rabaul. Forewarned by Ultra, United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) and Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) aircraft spotted, shadowed and attacked the convoy, which was shielded by low clouds and Japanese fighters.^[10] The Allies claimed to have shot down 69 Japanese aircraft for the loss of 10 of their own.^[11] An RAAF Consolidated PBY Catalina sank the transport Nichiryu Maru.^[12] Although destroyers rescued 739 of the 1,100 troops on board, the ship took with it all of Okabe's medical supplies. Another transport, Myoko Maru, was so badly damaged at Lae by USAAF North American B-25 Mitchells that it had to be beached. Nonetheless, the convoy succeeded in reaching Lae on 7 January and landing its troops, but Okabe was defeated in the Battle of Wau.^[13]

Most of the 20th Division was landed at Wewak from naval

Kenney informed Whitehead of the proposed convoy date, and warned him about the usual Japanese pre-convoy air attack. He also urged that flying hours be cut back so as to allow for a large strike on the convoy, and instructed him to move forward as many aircraft as possible so that they could be close to the nearby captured airfields around Dobodura, where they would not be subject to the vagaries of weather over the Owen Stanley Range.^[18] Kenney flew up to Port Moresby on 26 February, where he met with Whitehead. The two generals inspected fighter and bomber units in the area, and agreed to attack the Japanese convoy in the Vitiaz Strait. Kenney returned to Brisbane on 28 February.^[21]

Allied tactics

In the South West Pacific, a conventional strategic bombing campaign was out of the question, as industrial targets in Japan were well beyond the range of even the largest strategic bombers operating from bases in Australia and New Guinea.

The Allied Air Forces adopted some innovative tactics. In February 1942, the RAAF began experimenting with skip bombing, an anti-shipping technique used by the British and Germans.^[25] Flying only a few dozen feet above the sea toward their targets, bombers would release their bombs which would then, ideally, ricochet across the surface of the water and explode at the side of the target ship, under it, or just over it.^[18] A similar technique was mast-height bombing, in which bombers would approach the target at low altitude, 200 to 500 feet (61 to 152 m), at about 265 to 275 miles per hour (426 to 443 km/h), and then drop down to mast height, 10 to 15 feet (3.0 to 4.6 m) at about 600 yards (550 m) from the target. They would release their bombs at around 300 yards (270 m), aiming directly at the side of the ship. The Battle of the Bismarck Sea would demonstrate that this was the more successful of the two tactics.^[26] The two techniques were not mutually exclusive: a bomber could drop two bombs, skipping the first and launching the second at mast height.^[27] In addition, as regular bomb fuses were designed to detonate immediately on impact, which would catch the attacking aircraft in its own bomb blast at low altitude attacks, crews developed a delayed-action fuse.^[10] Practice missions were carried out against the wreck of the SS Pruth, a liner that had run aground in 1923.^[28]

In order for bombers to conduct skip or mast-height bombing, the target ship's antiaircraft artillery would first have to be neutralized by strafing runs.

First attacks

The Japanese convoy – comprising eight destroyers and eight troop transports with an escort of approximately 100 fighters – assembled and departed from Simpson Harbour in Rabaul on 28 February.^[38] During the January operation, a course was followed that hugged the south coast of New Britain. This had made it easy to provide air cover, but being close to the airfields also made it possible for the Allied Air Forces to attack both the convoy and the airfields at the same time. This time, a route was chosen along the north coast, in the hope that the Allies would be deceived into thinking that the convoy's objective was Madang. Allied air attacks on the convoy at this point would have to fly over New Britain, allowing interdiction from Japanese air bases there, but the final leg of the voyage would be particularly dangerous, because the convoy would have to negotiate the restricted waters of the Vitiaz Strait.^[39] The Japanese named the convoy "Operation 81."^[40]

The destroyers carried 958 troops while the transports took 5,954. All the ships were combat loaded to expedite unloading at Lae. The commander of the Japanese XVIII Army – Lieutenant General Hatazō Adachi – travelled on the destroyer Tokitsukaze, while that of the 51st Division – Lieutenant General Hidemitsu Nakano – was on board the destroyer Yukikaze.^[38] The escort commander – Rear Admiral Masatomi Kimura of the 3rd Destroyer Flotilla – flew his flag from the destroyer Shirayuki. The other five destroyers were Arashio, Asashio, Asagumo, Shikinami and Uranami. They escorted seven Army transports: Aiyo Maru (2,716 gross register tons), Kembu Maru (950 tons), Kyokusei Maru (5,493 tons), Oigawa Maru (6,494 tons), Sin-ai Maru (3,793 tons), Taimei Maru (2,883 tons) and Teiyo Maru (6,870 tons). Rounding out the force was the lone Navy transport Nojima Maru (8,125 tons).^[2][42] All the ships carried troops, equipment and ammunition, except for the Kembu Maru, which carried 1,000 drums of avgas and 650 drums of other fuel.^[43]

The convoy, moving at 7 

At dawn on 2 March, a force of six RAAF A-20 Bostons attacked Lae to reduce its ability to provide support. At about 10:00, another Liberator found the convoy. Eight B-17s took off to attack the ships, followed an hour later by another 20.^[46] The B-17s were planned to rendezvous with P-38 fighters from the 9th Fighter Squadron, however the B-17s arrived early and faced the Japanese fighters on their own for the initial air battle until the P-38s arrived. They found the convoy and attacked with 1,000 lb (450 kg) bombs from 5,000 ft (1,500 m). They claimed to have sunk up to three merchant ships. Kyokusei Maru had sunk carrying 1,200 army troops, and two other transports, Teiyo Maru and Nojima, were damaged.^[40][47] Eight Japanese fighters were destroyed and 13 damaged in the day's action, while nine B-17s were damaged.^[48]

The destroyers Yukikaze and Asagumo plucked 950 survivors of Kyokusei Maru from the water. These two destroyers, being faster than the convoy since its speed was dictated by the slower transports, broke away from the group to disembark the survivors at Lae. The destroyers resumed their escort duties the next day.^[47] The convoy – without the troop transport and two destroyers – was attacked again on the evening of 2 March by 11 B-17s, with minor damage to one transport. During the night, PBY Catalina flying boats from No. 11 Squadron RAAF took over the task of shadowing the convoy.^[46]

Further attacks

By 3 March, the convoy was within range of the air base at Milne Bay, and eight Bristol Beaufort torpedo bombers from No. 100 Squadron RAAF took off from there. Because of bad weather only two found the convoy, and neither scored any hits, but the weather cleared after they rounded the Huon Peninsula. A force of 90 Allied aircraft took off from Port Moresby, and headed for Cape Ward Hunt, while 22 A-20 Bostons of No. 22 Squadron RAAF attacked the Japanese fighter base at Lae, reducing the convoy's air cover. Attacks on the base continued throughout the day.^[49][50]

At 10:00, 13 B-17s reached the convoy and bombed from medium altitude of 7,000 feet, causing the ships to maneuver, which dispersed the convoy formation and reduced their concentrated anti-aircraft firepower. The B-17s attracted Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters, which were in turn attacked by the P-38 Lightning escorts. A B-17 broke up in the air, and its crew took to their parachutes. Japanese fighter pilots machine-gunned some of the B-17 crew members as they descended and attacked others in the water after they landed.^[49] Five of the Japanese fighters strafing the B-17 aircrew were promptly engaged and shot down by three P-38s which were also lost.^[10] The Allied fighter pilots claimed 15 Zeros destroyed, while the B-17 crews claimed five more.^[49][50] Actual Japanese fighter losses for the day were seven destroyed and three damaged.^[48] B-25s arrived shortly afterward and released their 500-pound bombs between 3,000 and 6,000 feet, reportedly causing two Japanese vessels to collide. The result of the B-17 and B-25 sorties scored few hits but left the convoy ships separated making them vulnerable to strafers and masthead bombers, and with the Japanese anti-aircraft fire being focused on the medium-altitude bombers this left an opening for minimum altitude attacks.^[10]

The 13 Beaufighters from No. 30 Squadron RAAF approached the convoy at low level to give the impression they were Beauforts making a torpedo attack.

According to the official RAAF release on the Beaufighter attack, "enemy crews were slain beside their guns, deck cargo burst into flame, superstructures toppled and burned".[51] Garrett Middlebrook, a co-pilot in one of the B-25s, described the ferocity of the strafing attacks:

They went in and hit this troop ship. What I saw looked like little sticks, maybe a foot long or something like that, or splinters flying up off the deck of ship; they'd fly all around ... and twist crazily in the air and fall out in the water. Then I realized what I was watching were human beings. I was watching hundreds of those Japanese just blown off the deck by those machine guns. They just splintered around the air like sticks in a whirlwind and they'd fall in the water.^[53]

Shirayuki was the first ship to be hit, by a combination of strafing and bombing attacks. Almost all the men on the bridge became casualties, including Kimura, who was wounded. One bomb hit started a magazine explosion that caused the stern to break off, and the ship to sink. Her crew was transferred to Shikinami, and Shirayuki was scuttled. The destroyer Tokitsukaze was also hit and fatally damaged. Its crew was taken off by Yukikaze. The destroyer Arashio was hit, and collided with the transport Nojima, disabling her. Both the destroyer and the transport were abandoned, and Nojima was later sunk by an air attack.^[54]

Fourteen B-25s returned that afternoon, reportedly claiming 17 hits or near misses. By this time, a third of the transports were sunk or sinking. As the Beaufighters and B-25s had expended their munitions, some USAAF A-20 Havocs of the 3rd Attack Group joined in. Another five hits were claimed by B-17s of the 43rd Bombardment Group from higher altitudes. During the afternoon, further attacks from USAAF B-25s and Bostons of No. 22 Squadron RAAF followed.^[55]

All seven of the transports were hit and most were burning or sinking about 100 km (54 nmi; 62 mi) south east of

Some 2,700 survivors were taken to Rabaul by the destroyers. On 4 March, another 1,000 or so survivors were adrift on rafts.^[54] On the evenings of 3–5 March, PT boats and planes attacked Japanese rescue vessels, as well as the survivors from the sunken vessels on life rafts and swimming or floating in the sea. This was later justified on the grounds that rescued servicemen would have been rapidly landed at their military destination and promptly returned to active service,^[58] as well as being retaliation for the Japanese fighter planes attacking survivors of the downed B-17 bomber.^[10] While many of the Allied aircrew accepted these attacks as being necessary, others were sickened.^[59][51] On 6 March, the Japanese submarines I-17 and I-26 picked up 170 survivors. Two days later, I-26 found another 54 and put them ashore at Lae.^[54] Hundreds made their way to various islands. One band of 18 survivors landed on Kiriwina, where they were captured by PT-114. Another made its way to Guadalcanal, only to be killed by an American patrol.^[60]

On 4 March the Japanese mounted a retaliatory raid on the Buna airfield, the site of a base that the Allies had captured back in January, though the fighters did little damage. Kenney wrote in his memoir that the Japanese reprisal occurred "after the horse had been stolen from the barn. It was a good thing that the Nip air commander was stupid. Those hundred airplanes would have made our job awfully hard if they had taken part in the big fight over the convoy on March 3rd."^[10]

On Goodenough Island, between 8 and 14 March 1943, Australian patrols from the 47th Infantry Battalion found and killed 72 Japanese, captured 42 and found another nine dead on a raft. One patrol killed eight Japanese who had landed in two flat-bottomed boats, in which were found some documents in sealed tins. On translation by the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, one document turned out to be a copy of the Japanese Army List, with the names and postings of every officer in the Japanese Army. It therefore provided a complete order of battle of the Japanese Army, including many units that had never before been reported. A mention of any Japanese officer could now be correlated with his unit. Copies were made available to intelligence units in every theatre of war against Japan.^[61][62]

Aftermath

The battle was a disaster for the Japanese. Out of 6,900 troops who were badly needed in New Guinea, only about 1,200 made it to Lae. Another 2,700 were saved by destroyers and submarines and returned to Rabaul.^[63] About 2,890 Japanese soldiers and sailors were killed. The Allies lost 13 aircrew, 10 of whom were lost in combat while three others died in an accident. There were also eight wounded. Aircraft losses were one B-17 and three P-38s in combat, and one B-25 and one Beaufighter in accidents. MacArthur issued a communiqué on 7 March stating that 22 ships, including twelve transports, three cruisers and seven destroyers, had been sunk along with 12,792 troops.^[1] Army Air Force Headquarters in Washington, D.C., looked into the matter in mid-1943 and concluded that there were only 16 ships involved, but GHQ SWPA considered the original account accurate.^[64][65] The victory was a propaganda boon for the Allies, with one United States newsreel claiming the Japanese had lost 22 ships, 15,000 troops, and 102 aircraft.^[66] The New York Times, on its front page on March 4, 1943, cited the loss by the Japanese of 22 ships, 15,000 troops and 55 aircraft.^[67]

The Allied Air Forces had used 233,847 rounds of ammunition, and dropped two-hundred and sixty-one 500-pound and two-hundred and fifty-three 1,000-pound bombs. They claimed 19 hits and 42 near misses with the former and 59 hits and 39 near misses from the latter. Of the 137 bombs dropped in low level attacks, 48 (35 percent) were claimed to have hit but only 29 (7.5 percent) of the 387 bombs dropped from medium altitude.^[68] This compared favourably with efforts in August and September 1942 when only 3 percent of bombs dropped were claimed to have scored hits.^[69] It was noted that the high and medium altitude attacks scored few hits but dispersed the convoy, while the strafing runs from the Beaufighters had knocked out many of the ships' anti-aircraft defences.^[10] Aircraft attacking from several directions at once had confused and overwhelmed the Japanese defences, resulting in lower casualties and more accurate bombing. The results therefore vindicated not just the tactics of mast height attack but of mounting coordinated attacks from several directions.^[68] The Japanese estimated that at least 29 bombs had hit a ship during the battle.^[70] This was a big improvement over the Battle of Wau back in January, when Allied aircraft attacked a Japanese convoy consisting of five destroyers and five troop transports travelling from Rabaul to Lae, but managed to sink just one transport and beach another.^[10]

Imamura's chief of staff flew to Imperial General Headquarters to report on the disaster. It was decided that there would be no more attempts to land troops at Lae.^[71] The losses incurred in the Bismarck Sea caused grave concern for the security of Lae and Rabaul and resulted in a change of strategy. On 25 March a joint Army-Navy Central Agreement on South West Area Operations gave operations in New Guinea priority over those in the Solomon Islands campaign.^[72] The XVIII Army was allocated additional shipping, ordnance and anti-aircraft units, which were sent to Wewak or Hansa Bay.^[73] Of the defeat, Rabaul staff officer Masatake Okumiya said, "Our losses for this single battle were fantastic. Not during the entire savage fighting at Guadalcanal did we suffer a single comparable blow. We knew we could no longer run cargo ships or even fast destroyer transports to any front on the north coast of New Guinea, east of Wewak".^[53]

The planned movement of the 20th Division to Madang was revised in the light of events in the Bismarck Sea. The operation was postponed for two days, and the destination was altered from Madang to Hansa Bay further west.^[73] To reduce the Allied air threat, the Allied airfield at Wau was bombed on 9 March and that at Dobodura on 11 March. Three Allied aircraft were destroyed on the ground and one P-40 was lost in the air but Allied fighters claimed nine Japanese aircraft.^[74] The transports reached Hansa Bay unscathed on 12 March and the troops made their way down to Madang on foot or in barges. The 20th Division then became involved in an attempt to construct a road from Madang to Lae through the Ramu and Markham Valleys. It toiled on the road for the next few months but its efforts were ultimately frustrated by the New Guinea weather and the rugged terrain of the Finisterre Range.^[73]

Some submarines were made available for supply runs to Lae but they did not have the capacity to support the troops there by themselves. An operation was carried out on 29 March in which four destroyers delivered 800 troops to Finschhafen but the growing threat from Allied aircraft led to the development of routes along the coast of New Guinea from Madang to Finschhafen and along the north and south coasts of New Britain to Finschhafen, thence to Lae using Army landing craft. It was by this means that the remainder of the 51st Division finally made the trip to Lae in May.^[73] The necessity of delivering troops and supplies to the front in this manner caused immense difficulties for the Japanese in their attempts to halt further Allied advances. After the war, Japanese officers at Rabaul estimated that around 20,000 troops were lost in transit to New Guinea from Rabaul, a significant factor in Japan's ultimate defeat in the New Guinea campaign.^[75]

In April, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto used the additional air resources allocated to Rabaul in Operation I-Go, an air offensive designed to redress the situation by destroying Allied ships and aircraft in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.^[76] The operation was indecisive and Yamamoto became a casualty of Allied intelligence and air power in the Solomon Islands on 18 April 1943.^[77]

Game theory

In 1954, O. G. Haywood Jr., wrote an article in the

References

Further reading

• Arbon, J (1979). The Bismarck Sea Ran Red. Marceline, Missouri: Walsworth Press.
  OCLC 7116275
  .
• Birdsall, Steve (1977). Flying Buccaneers: The Illustrated Story of Kenney's Fifth Air Force. New York: Doubleday.
  OCLC 3001974
  .
• Cripps, Jarryd (2023). "The Tipping Point: The Battle of the Bismarck Sea, March 1943". The Aviation Historian (45): 10–20.
  ISSN 2051-1930
  .
• Henebry, John P. (2002). The Grim Reapers at Work in the Pacific Theater: The Third Attack Group of the U.S. Fifth Air Force. Missoula, Montana: Pictorial Histories Publishing Company.
  OCLC 52569977
  .

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Battle of the Bismarck Sea.

• Bismarck Convoy Smashed! Incorporates footage of the battle taken by Damien Parer.

07°15′S 148°15′E / 7.250°S 148.250°E / -7.250; 148.250