Michael Veitch - The Battle of the Bismarck Sea

Published in Australia and New Zealand in 2021

by Hachette Australia

(an imprint of Hachette Australia Pty Limited)

Level 17, 207 Kent Street, Sydney NSW 2000

www.hachette.com.au

Copyright Michael Veitch 2021

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be stored or reproduced by any process without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

978 0 7336 4589 1

978 0 7336 4590 7 (ebook edition)

Cover design by Luke Causby, Blue Cork Designs

Cover photographs courtesy of the Australian War Memorial (plane image 128005, ship image 141996)

Author photograph courtesy Gina Milicia

Michael Veitch is well known as an author, actor and former ABC television and radio presenter. His books include the critically acclaimed accounts of Australian pilots in World War II, Heroes of the Skies, Fly, Flak, 44 Days, Barney Greatrex and Turning Point. The Battle of the Bismarck Sea is his tenth book. He lives in the Yarra Valley, outside Melbourne.

44 Days: 75 Squadron and the fight for Australia

Barney Greatrex: From Bomber Command to the French Resistance the stirring story of an Australian hero

Turning Point: The Battle for Milne Bay 1942 Japans first land defeat in World War II

Finally, the weak grey light began to edge its way across the featureless tropical sky. Soaking wet, the men huddled behind their haphazard defences, strung along the creek.

Take a look, everyone, said a quiet voice a sergeant, perhaps, or just one among this hotchpotch few dozen who last night were told to find a rifle and make their way down to the perimeter of the base, quick smart.

Taking their eyes for a moment off the rows of dark green foliage stretching out in front, a couple of the men checked to see who had joined them during this night of rain and fear and confusion. The most senior officer present seemed to be some bloke from the transport section. Then there were clerks, batmen, drivers, even the cook, wide-eyed and clutching a .303 a little too tightly, licking the sweat off his top lip.

So whats for breakfast? someone snorted in his direction.

A few men laughed. The cook didnt seem to hear it.

They could start to make it out now, this coffee plantation, with its neat lines of wet, serrated leaves and berries turning red. A few days before, you could walk right through it, easy as you like. Not now.

Now, lurking somewhere out there, were the Japanese.

Careful, fellas, muttered another voice.

Maybe the enemy was still up in the hills, on one of those impossible ridges which flew like green buttresses across the interlocking mountain spurs, all now obscured by this thick wet curtain of grey mist which clung to everything it touched.

Worryingly, it also obscured that long, clear strip of green up behind them the airfield.

No planes would be landing at Wau today.

The night before last, a few miles away, the Imperial Japanese Armys forward units had burst like crazed chimeras out of the jungle into a small crossing above a village called Wandumi. That had shocked everyone. For a week or so now the Allies had known the Japanese had pushed out from Salamaua, their base on the coast nearly 40 miles away as the crow flies, and were reportedly heading to Wau to grab its precious high-altitude airstrip.

But where were they now?

The commando boys had sent patrols up the Black Cat and Crystal Creek tracks that wound their tortuous way through the jungle to Mubo but had found nothing. Too late, the Australians realised theyd been outfoxed. Somehow the Japanese had discovered a third track, unmarked on any map, partially hacked out by the Germans the Germans, for Christs sake thirty years before. And now here they were, just a few miles away, tantalisingly close to their prize.

If it wasnt for the fog you could see the runway standing out up behind the men, the only levelled patch of this part of the Bulolo Valley: surely one of the most peculiar airstrips in the world.

One hundred and fifty miles to the northwest of Port Moresby, the old gold-mining village of Wau sits some 3000 feet above sea level at the end of a vast valley cupped on three sides by vertiginous mountains. Weird, fantastic country, as a wartime newsreel film described it.

Built by half-crazed miners back in the twenties, the two-thirds of a milelong airstrip features a tricky 300-foot height differential from one end to the other, south being the only possible direction of approach.

In order to land, pilots have to bank steeply to avoid hitting one of the dozens of surrounding mountain tops rocks in clouds, they called them then level out before touching down on the uphill runway, all while maintaining sufficient engine power to pull the plane up the slope, but not so much as to slam into the huts and houses at the far end, not to mention any other parked aircraft which had been lucky enough to make it into this impossible airstrip in one piece.

Even before the war, landing at Wau had been hard enough for the tough bush pilots with thousands of flying hours in their logbooks, flying their old Dornier transports, bringing in the miners and their dredging equipment to harvest this gold-rich alluvial valley. Now it was the turn of the Americans and Australians teenagers, some of them straight out of flying school, pushing their brand new Dakota transports above the 14 000-foot Owen Stanley Range, knowing there was no chance of a turnaround if they got it wrong.

When they finally reached Wau all they could do was line up, lower their flaps, and hold their breath.

It was the sound of just such an approaching aircraft that the men waiting in the creek bed on this January dawn in 1943 longed to hear. Looking up at the thick wet sky, however, they knew there was bugger-all chance of that.

Kanga Force theyd called them, this ad hoc collection of soldiers sent to defend the Wau base. So named, as some wit explained, because the only way to get up there was to hop in a bloody aeroplane. These couple of thousand misfits were grouped into two independent commando companies and joined by the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles, who had been there for years as civilians before the war. Hardly the most military of outfits, but they knew the place backwards. Try telling them anything about this place, or any part of New Guinea, they didnt already know.

Reconnaissance had been Kanga Forces initial brief: just keep an eye on the Japanese to the north at Lae, 40 miles away. This soon evolved into guerrilla hit-and-run missions, slithering up through the jungle to surprise the enemy.