Jon Diamond - New Guinea: The Allied Jungle Campaign in World War II

Copyright 2015 by Jon Diamond

Published by
STACKPOLE BOOKS
5067 Ritter Road
Mechanicsburg, PA 17055
www.stackpolebooks.com

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Stackpole Books, 5067 Ritter Road, Mechanicsburg, PA 17055.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Cover design by Caroline Stover

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Diamond, Jon (Jonathan Russell)

New Guinea : the Allied jungle campaign in World War II / Jon Diamond.

pages cm (Stackpole military photo series)

ISBN 978-0-8117-1556-0

eISBN 978-0-8117-6216-8

1. World War, 19391945CampaignsNew Guinea. 2. World War, 19391945Jungle warfare. I. Title.

D767.95.D53 2015

940.54'265dc23

2014049996

CONTENTS

A fter the carrier attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) conducted offensive operations across a broad front of 7,000 miles, from Singapore to Midway Island. The success of Adm. Chuichi Nagumos aerial assault on the anchorage of the United States Pacific Fleet that fateful morning assured the Japanese complete naval supremacy in the Pacific Ocean. Early war-planning sessions set Malaya and Singapore as targets for the IJAs major thrust, while additional supporting operations were mounted to seize the Philippines, Guam, Hong Kong, and parts of British Borneo in the Western Pacific. Guam was occupied easily by December 8, 1941, and Wake Island fell on December 23 after a spirited fight from its Marine Defense Battalion.

The Japanese High Command had planned that once Malaya and Singapore were captured, these British bastions would serve as springboards to seize southern Sumatra and invade the Netherlands East Indies (NEI), where there were vast resources to supply Japan and its war effort. This had been occurring on the Asian mainland for almost a decade. Adding to the Japanese hegemony in the Pacific was the sinking of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse in the South China Sea. Dispatched by British prime minister Winston Churchill to serve as a deterrent to Japanese expansion, the pair were hit on December 10, 1941, by land-based Mitsubishi G4M Betty and Mitsubishi G3M Nell medium horizontal and torpedo-bearing bombers. Malaya and Singapore fell to a numerically inferior Japanese Twenty-Fifth Army, commanded by Lt. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, on February 15, 1942, after only seventy days of resistance to the Japanese juggernaut down the Malay Peninsula and across the Strait of Johore to Singapore Island.

Australia had sent two brigades of its 8th Division to Malaya. After considerable fighting toward the end of the campaign, the 15,000-man contingent was forced to surrender in mid-February with the rest of Singapores garrison. The three remaining battalions of the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) 8th Division were sent to reinforce the Dutch at Amboina, Timor, and Rabaul; however, these units were overrun by the Japanese.

After nearly a decade of military action in China, the Japanese Empire embarked on its bold mission to establish hegemony over the countries and island chains shown here, which were mostly under the control or influence of Britain, the United States, Australia, and the Netherlands government-in-exile. This map depicts the massive extent of Japans conquest and ultimate ambitions at the high-water mark through the summer of 1942. With the exceptions of battles at the Coral Sea, Midway, and Milne Bay, the overland Port Moresby assault, and the failure to quickly defeat an isolated American 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal, almost all of Imperial Japans initial strategic goals were achieved. PHILIP SCHWARTZBERG, MERIDIAN MAPPING

Even before the collapse of Malaya, the first Japanese air attack against Rabaul, in northern New Britain, occurred on January 21, 1942, with over 100 Japanese fighters and bombers attacking the main Australian air base in the Bismarck Archipelago, northeast of New Guinea. Eight out of ten RAAF Wirraway fighters (essentially American AT-6 Texan trainers) and three Lockheed Hudson bombers were annihilated. On the night of January 2223, Maj. Gen. Tomitaro Horiis 5,300-strong South Seas Detachment steamed into Rabaul Harbor on the northern tip of New Britain. The Australian defenders put up a brave fight but eventually withdrew. As the Japanese overran northern New Britain in the ensuing days, most of the Australians were brutally massacred or died as prisoners. The RAAF chief at Rabaul evacuated the remainder of his air detachmenttwo surviving Wirraways and one Lockheed Hudson bomberback to Australia. Now all that was left separating Australia from the Japanese offensive were a few Australian troops in the Bulolo Valley and the garrison at Port Moresby on the southern coast of Papua New Guinea. Rabaul would become the headquarters for the Japanese Eighth Area Army, with five airfields and a harbor that could serve as anchorage for a large part of the IJN.

Across the Arafura Sea from Papua lay the arid Northern Territories of the Australian continent. Since it was prevailing American military wisdom that the Philippines could not be held if the Japanese mounted a full-scale attack on them, extensive preparations were not made prior to Gen. Douglas MacArthurs arrival in 1935 to command the Philippine forces. Over the next six years, the buildup of forces under his leadership was quite tardy, and U.S. and Philippine army strength was far below what was necessary when the Japanese struck the archipelago. MacArthurs air strength was destroyed mostly on the ground at Clark Field near Manila by Japanese bombers based in Formosa within hours of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and its remnants quickly succumbed to attrition by a superior aerial foe. Although the Japanese expected a quick victory in the Philippines, largely due to their air and naval dominance, MacArthurs American and Filipino troops retreated into the Bataan Peninsula and held out there until April 9, 1942. The neighboring island fortress of Corregidor in Manila Bay finally capitulated on May 6 after a Japanese invasion.

New Guinea, the worlds second largest island, is divided into three main parts: Papua to the southeast, Northeast New Guinea, and Netherlands New Guinea to the west. This map also shows the surrounding islands of the Dutch East Indies, the northern Solomon Islands, the Bismarck Archipelago, New Ireland, and the Admiralty Islands. The northern coast of New Guinea, including adjacent islands and the Vogelkop Peninsula, would comprise the remainder of General MacArthurs 1944 campaign to capture and build airfields after leapfrogging over Japanese strongholds in his drive to get into position for finally launching his return to the Philippine Islands. PHILIP SCHWARTZBERG, MERIDIAN MAPPING

In early January 1942, Field Marshal Sir Archibald Wavell was appointed Supreme Commander of ABDACOMthe cumbersome new combined American, British, Dutch, and Australian command, to be headquartered on Javaafter Churchill designated him Commander in Chief (CIC) Far East on December 30, 1941. This command was ludicrous since it encompassed all Allied forces in Burma, Singapore, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines (which Wavell never assumed control of), and North West Australia. However, American Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshalls operational goal was to have a single supreme commander in each war theater. In order to persuade a reluctant Churchill of his command structure concept, Marshall offered that Wavell should be the supreme commander for the whole of the Far East theater, i.e. ABDA. Churchill sent Wavell a long, coded telegram outlining the job: The President and his military and naval advisers have impressed on me the urgent need for a unified command in South West Pacific. Fortunately, the onerous ABDA command was disbanded on February 22, 1942, since by that time Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and other possessions were already lost.