The Battle of the Bismarck Sea by Michael Veitch

Author:Michael Veitch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Australia
Published: 2021-07-14T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

THE ENEMY SHOWS HIS HAND

There was still one missing piece of the puzzle being assembled in the final week of February by General Kenney and his commander in New Guinea, General Ennis Whitehead. The intended route of the Japanese convoy – possibly convoys – was a question which, they knew, could well decide the battle. There would be little point in sending out Kenney’s recently retrained airmen to attack empty ocean, so in locked conference rooms in Townsville and Brisbane three scenarios were played out.

‘Whitehead and I went over all the information at hand and tried to guess how we would run the convoy if we were Japs,’ Kenney wrote. The generals believed they were being presented with a trio of possible scenarios: a) a direct route to Lae along either the north or south coast of New Britain; b) splitting the formation in two to reinforce both Lae and Madang and/or Wewak; c) the entire force being sent up the New Guinea coastline towards Madang or Wewak.

Kenney’s main problem was the range of his aircraft. If Madang or Wewak was the intended destination, only his heavy B-17s and B-24s would be capable of reaching them, and with reduced fighter cover. His medium bombers would in this case be reserved for attacks on Japanese airstrips. If the convoy headed for Lae, however, every one of his aircraft would be able to be deployed, including the squadrons of the RAAF.

The north–south question was also vital.

If the Japanese followed the pattern of January’s Operation 18, it would turn right out of Rabaul and proceed around the tip of New Britain then along its long southern shore, indicating that its destination was Lae. Should the shorter and more direct northern route be taken, it would not be known for some days if the Japanese intended to split north to Madang/Wewak, or head south to Lae. The question, believed Kenney, lay in the weather, and for the next week the meteorological reports would be studied with particular intensity.

From whichever direction, and in whatever strength the Japanese convoy eventually presented itself, Kenney and Whitehead, with their new and brilliantly conceived weapons and tactics, were confident of being able to meet them and stop them.

However, one man who had already had a good deal to do with deploying aircraft against ships failed to share their enthusiasm. In fact, the deputy commander of the seven squadrons of the RAAF’s 9 Operational Group, Group Captain William ‘Bull’ Garing, believed the Americans could be facing a disaster. Despite the Americans’ confidence, the Japanese convoy had every chance of making it unscathed to Lae.

Bull Garing’s 1942 had been eventful. Having helped establish the control rooms of the RAAF’s Northern Area Command just in time for the sleepy backwater of Townsville to be transformed into the front-line city of a nation at war, his hopelessly inadequate air force withered in the face of the experienced and ruthless Japanese in Malaya, Singapore and Rabaul. By March, stunned into virtual stupefaction, Australia could only watch as Japan’s blitz descended towards them from the north.

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