Anthony Cooper - Kokoda Air Strikes: Allied air forces in New Guinea, 1942

ANTHONY COOPER is a Brisbane schoolteacher. He is a former glider pilot instructor, has a PhD in German aviation history and is the author of HMAS Bataan, 1952 and Darwin Spitfires: The real battle for Australia, which won the Northern Territory Chief Ministers NT History Book Award.

Second Lieutenant Ivan A Humphrey on 24 July 1942. The photo is probably taken at Townsville, judging by his cool-weather USAAF leather flight jacket. He wears Australian-sourced RAF flying boots, a prized item among US pilots in Australia, a USAAF headset over his baseball cap, and no life preserver indicating a non-operational flight. Visible above the parachute pack is the RAF K-Type dinghy pack, resembling a cushion. The Airacobra was unique among operational World War II fighters in its combination of rear-mounted engine and side-opening car-type door. SOURCE AWM 012963A

ALLIED AIR FORCES IN NEW GUINEA, 1942

ANTHONY COOPER

This book is dedicated to the flyers of the US 19th Bomb Group, who were in combat from the beginning, who were a lot better than Kenney said they were, and who carried the can for the mistakes and omissions of their superiors.

A NewSouth book

Published by

NewSouth Publishing

University of New South Wales Press Ltd

University of New South Wales

Sydney NSW 2052

AUSTRALIA

newsouthpublishing.com

Anthony Cooper 2014

First published 2014

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Author: Cooper, Anthony James, 1961 author.

Title: Kokoda air strikes: Allied air forces in New Guinea, 1942/Anthony Cooper.

ISBN: 9781742233833 (paperback)

9781742241746 (ePub)

9781742246796 (ePDF)

Subjects: Combined operations (Military science)

World War, 19391945 Campaigns Oceania.

World War, 19391945 Papua New Guinea Kokoda Trail Aerial operations.

Bombing, Aerial Papua New Guinea Kokoda Trail.

Kokoda Trail (Papua New Guinea) History Bombardment, 1942.

Dewey Number: 940.5426

Design Josephine Pajor-Markus

Cover images No.75 Squadron pilots at Moresby en route to Milne Bay, July 1942: AWM 150494; A B-25 bomber of the US 3rd Attack Group taking off from 7-Mile, August 1942: AWM 026239.

All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book, but in some cases copyright could not be traced. The author welcomes information in this regard.

CONTENTS

Glossary and full references can be accessed at the authors website:
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INTRODUCTION

Although Britains war against Hitlers Germany encompassed maritime operations as far removed from Europe as the Indian Ocean, the war of 193941 had remained essentially a European affair, waged across the European continent itself, the Mediterranean Basin and the Atlantic Ocean. It was only when Japan launched its twin offensives against Malaya and the Philippines on 8 December 1941 that World War II assumed a truly global character, forcing the United States into war alongside its maritime partner, Britain, and presenting the Allied powers with a set of challenges for which they had prepared, but only inadequately. Both the United States and the British Empire had built up respectable forces to defend their respective colonies, but the aggressor had prepared more thoroughly still. Japanese operational superiority soon pitched the combined forces of the United States, Britain, the Netherlands East Indies and Australia into ignominious defeats, delivering up the Western powers South-East Asian colonial possessions for Japanese economic exploitation, and allowing Japanese forces to penetrate the island barrier protecting Australias northern coastline. Since before the turn of the century, Japans main objective had been the military-political-economic subjugation of China. However, once she launched her Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Japan was set on a collision course with the United States; and by 1941, Japans aggressive China policy could be maintained only if new resources were found to free the nation from dependency upon American oil, to circumvent President Roosevelts escalating economic sanctions. The new war that Japan launched upon South-East Asia on 8 December 1941 was therefore primarily an oil war, to seize the Dutch-controlled oilfields of Sumatra and Borneo.

The very success of the resultant Japanese offensives in the new Pacific Theatre brought them into collision with Australian military outposts defending the Australian colonies of Papua and New Guinea. This book provides a narrative of the air operations in support of the ensuing campaign, culminating in the battles along the Kokoda Track which connected Port Moresby on the southern coast with the northern coast opposite. Although this story has usually been told from the perspective of the army, the New Guinea ground campaign was fought for airfields: it was the presence of airfields that gave places their significance and it was the possession or loss of airfields that determined each sides tactical options. In the context of New Guineas challenging geography, these airfield localities were effectively islands reachable only by sea or air. Both sides armies fought to seize or hold these isolated enclaves in order to extend the reach of their own air power and to prevent the enemy from doing so. To that extent, the battle for New Guinea in 1942 was primarily an air war, with the ground fighting subordinated to that end.

Many books have appeared on various aspects of the air fighting over New Guinea in 1942, but there has been no single volume that represents it as a connected campaign as this book sets out to do. Authors have written about particular units, particular people, particular nationalities, particular services, particular places, or particular battles. The literature has largely existed in silos army, air force, navy; Australian, American, Japanese; Rabaul, Coral Sea, Milne Bay, Guadalcanal, Kokoda. This book seeks to interconnect these hitherto largely discrete strands and perspectives by locating Allied air operations within the context of the wider campaign.

Although the Kokoda campaign itself only commenced in late July 1942, it was the product of a long process of escalation by which the Japanese approached ever more closely to Moresby via a series of tactical bounds: in January seizing Rabaul on New Britain; in March seizing Lae and Salamaua on the northern coast of New Guinea; in May attempting a direct seaborne assault through the Coral Sea; in July landing at Buna to commence the overland advance to Moresby; and in August landing in Milne Bay to provide flanking support for that same operation. All these bounds were aimed at gaining control of key airfield sites and all required air superiority to succeed. The Kokoda ground campaign was nothing more or less than an attempt to seize Moresbys airfields and thus win the air war on the Japanese south-eastern flank.