Free Target: Rabaul by Bruce Gamble Page A

fuel and ammunition warehouses being blown up with a terrific explosion.
Nippon losses in this raid were five planes.
    Compiling reports from the attacks against Guadalcanal and New Guinea, the Combined Fleet staff believed the Allies had suffered tremendous damage. The bomber units supposedly sank a cruiser, two destroyers, six large cargo ships, and ten medium cargo ships. Japanese airmen claimed to have shot down 134 Allied planes and damaged 56 others. Thinking that I-Go Sakusen was a victory, Yamamoto concluded the offensive. His outlook was shared by Emperor Hirohito, who stated: “Please convey my satisfaction to the commander-in-chief, Combined Fleet, and tell him to enlarge the war result more than ever.”
    George Kenney had a much different perspective:
The Nip just did not know how to handle air power. Just because he knocked us off on the ground at the beginning of the war, when we were asleep at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, he got a reputation for being smart; but the way he had failed to take advantage of his superiority in numbers and position since the first couple of months of the war was a disgrace to the airman’s profession.
    Written after the war, Kenney’s assessment might be regarded as a victor’s scornful musings, but there were many instances of poor judgment by the Japanese to justify his disdain. The most obvious examples were Yamamoto’s decisions not only to end I-Go Sakusen , but to schedule the trip that led to his own demise. On April 13, after witnessing the emotional lift that his formal sendoffs gave the troops at Rabaul, Yamamoto decided to boost morale by visiting the Eleventh Air Fleet’s forward bases. That afternoon, his headquarters transmitted a detailed message to the appropriate commands outlining the admiral’s itinerary. His first stop, on the morning of April 18, would be the airdrome at Ballale, a tiny island a few miles off the southern tip of Bougainville.
    At least one recipient considered the trip “a damn fool thing to do.” Admiral Ozawa begged Yamamoto to arrange for more escorts than six Zeros, but Yamamoto refused. As a result, the staff who boarded the two Bettys on April 18 flew into a deathtrap. Yamamoto’s detailed itinerary had been intercepted and decrypted by Ultra, enabling SOPAC Fighter Command to stage an ambush over southern Bougainville. Sixteen P-38s flew a low-level attack profile with remarkable precision and succeeded in downing both Bettys. Most of the occupants were killed, including Yamamoto.
    No other dedicated fighter mission achieved a more important outcome than the interception of the Yamamoto entourage. Fearing a national panic, the Johokyoku withheld the news of Yamamoto’s death for weeks. When the information was finally released in late May, the government-controlled news provided only scant details of the late admiral’s “heroic death in battle,” but urged the people to “exemplify the spirit of Yamamoto.”
    The newspapers also introduced the new commander in chief, Adm. Miniechi Koga, who moved the Combined Fleet headquarters back to Truk Lagoon aboard the flagship Musashi . A 1906 naval academy graduate, the fifty-seven-year-old Koga had ambitious plans. His operations, however, would be hamstrung by setbacks and attrition over his ten months of leadership.
    WELL RESTED AFTER two weeks of leave in Australia, Brig. Gen. Whitehead arrived in Port Moresby on April 26 and resumed his duties as commander of ADVON. By that time, Kenney had decided that Colonel Ramey would take over V Bomber Command, with Colonel Davies as his chief of staff. The selection, according to Kenney, proved “very popular with the kids.” Although the choice was ultimately Kenney’s, day-to-day decisions in the forward area remained in the hands of Whitehead, who had authority to employ the Allied air units in New Guinea as he saw fit.
    Confident that he was leaving “the show” in good hands, Kenney departed from New Guinea on April 27.