Battle of the Bismarck Sea

By Lawrence Spinetta | World War II  | one comment  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

Pilots soon hit on a deadly technique: using the rudder to yaw the plane slightly back and forth during a bombing approach to sweep the entire deck of the enemy vessel with machine gun fire. That proved key in making it possible to drop bombs from an altitude that, in Kenney’s words, “rendered a miss unlikely.”

This extreme low-level bombing created new technical problems, however, since the normal bomb fuzes were designed to detonate immediately on impact—which would mean the airplane would be caught in its own bomb blast. Capt. Benjamin Thompson, an officer in the 26th Ordnance Company, altered the inner workings of an M106 fuze and developed a delayed-action version. That version was rushed into production in the field by the men of the 46th Ordnance Company, who had to work continuously for forty-eight hours in order to generate a sufficient quantity.

The rush was ordered because General Kenney knew what was coming: decoded Japanese radio messages had given the Allies almost a full month’s warning of the sailing of another large Japanese convoy to Lae. Aircrews spent weeks carefully rehearsing tactics in preparation for the battle. Kenney canceled a major attack on Rabaul and reduced the number of daily combat sorties, so both maintainers and aircrew would have time to prepare. “Maintenance crews worked like mad getting every airplane in shape so that we could strike with everything we owned when time came,” Kenney said.

Kenney ordered pilots flying the newly modified B-25s to undergo an especially intense training regimen. Most of these pilots were accustomed to medium-altitude bombing with a bombardier. Their new mission involved very low-level attacks in which the pilots themselves controlled the bomb release. Each pilot dropped thirty to forty bombs in practice on a half-submerged ship called the Moresby wreck, learning to use a reference point on the nose of the airplane in place of a bombsight. One bomber and crew were killed when they hit the mast of the wreck and crashed. Despite the loss, Maj. Ed Larner, the commander of the squadron, reported that his B-25C-1 pilots remained a “cocky gang” and promised Kenney that his boys “wouldn’t miss.”

Their training culminated in a series of full-scale rehearsals at the end of February, a last chance to work out any glitches in the split-second timing on which everything depended. Attacking in pairs, B-25s took violent evasive action at full throttle; one plane strafed the vessel from stem to stern, firing continuously from 1,200 yards, while the other plane strafed the vessel as it came in on its beam and bombed it.

The aircrews completed their preparations in time for the convoy’s departure the night of February 28, but one thing the Allies couldn’t control—the weather—almost spoiled everything. Originally, the Japanese planned for the convoy to proceed to Lae along the south side of New Britain, traversing the same route as the January convoy. But at the last minute the convoy was rerouted to the north of the island to take advantage of the cover offered by a storm front that was working its way toward New Guinea along that track. The weather was so bad on March 1 that reconnaissance planes could not locate the convoy for most of the day. At four o’clock in the afternoon, Lt. Walter Higgins, piloting a 321st Bomb Squadron B-24, caught sight of the ships as they attempted to hide under a low cloud deck. Higgins dutifully relayed a report of the convoy’s location to a command post at Port Moresby, New Guinea. It was too late in the day to order sorties for an attack, and the weather favored the Japanese to such an extent that Kenney let the convoy proceed relatively unmolested during the night.

At 8:25 a.m. on March 2, another B-24 reconnaissance plane was able to weave through the clouds and relocate the convoy. Meanwhile, six Royal Australian Air Force A-20s from Port Moresby bombed the airfield at Lae from both medium and “tree-scraping” altitude and liberally strafed the runway and dispersal areas to suppress Japanese fighter protection. They also dropped bombs on planes they found in the open.

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Aerial Combat, Historical Conflicts, Naval Battles, World War II

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