On the American side, the carriers’ success at fighting off an all-out land-based air attack and the overall attrition inflicted on Japanese air power more than made up for the disappointingly modest results of the attacks on enemy shipping. By the end of an hour, the Americans were claiming at least 50 enemy planes destroyed. The carriers lost a total of six TBFs and eight F6Fs, and none of the ships suffered any damage.

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As Task Group 50.3 retired from Rabaul, intelligence officers tallied up the pilots’ claims and recorded an unprecedented total of 137. VF-9 alone was credited with 55, an all-time high for any U.S. Navy squadron. VF-18 claimed 38, and the torpedo and dive bombers were credited with 12.

The Americans’ claims were grossly exaggerated, but the damage they did inflict was significant enough as it was. Two days after the raid, Koga ordered the riddled Shokaku and Zuikaku air groups withdrawn from Rabaul to Truk, while fresh units were transferred from the Marshall Islands to relieve them. The absence of those air groups from the Marshalls would prove to be a fortuitous break for the Americans when they landed at Tarawa and Makin on November 20.

Aboard Essex, a VF-9 member composed a bit of doggerel that expressed both pride and fatigue at the end of a very busy day:

Now that Rabaul is over, none of them got away
Fifty-five Japs is a record, shot down in a single day!
Now that Rabaul is over, I want to spend my days
Back in the States just reading Army communiques!

That was not to be, for the main event was yet to come. At Pearl Harbor, while Admiral Nimitz was making final preparations to launch the Gilbert Islands offensive, code-named Operation Galvanic, he gave his own epilogue to the November 1943 Rabaul raids: ‘Henceforth, we propose to give the Jap no rest.’

This article was written by Jon Guttman and originally appeared in the November 1999 issue of World War II magazine.

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