Chapter V: First Offensives: The Solomons and Papua
The war in the Pacific had reached a critical juncture by the summer of Rip. A still formidable enemy threatened the line of communication between Australia and the United States. The Japanese had suffered two reverses at sea, but they remained undefeated on land and in the air. Their invasion of Papua and their advance through the Solomons, if unchecked, might yet develop into a major setback for the defenders in the South and Southwest Pacific. By launching a limited offensive, the Allies hoped to halt the Japanese and begin pushing them back on a broad front stretching across New Guinea and extending eastward for hundreds of miles. While containing the enemy, the Allies would gather strength for future large-scale assaults against the Japanese stronghold at Rabaul. The task of carrying out a stopgap offensive while continuing to prepare for an all-out drive would fall with special weight on the engineers, who would have to support the combat forces in the field and at the same time build the bases from which future sustained offensives could be launched.
Strengthening the South Pacific
The South Pacific was hardly less important in the Allied strategy than Australia itself. Through this immense ocean area ran the lines of communication from the United States to the southern continent—lines which would have to be kept open. The South Pacific could do little in its own defense. The widely scattered and more or less isolated islands of the region had, for the most part, sparse populations, primitive industries, and few natural resources. Only New Zealand had a modern industrial system, but with a population of some 1,600,000 and limited resources, that dominion was unable to make substantial contributions to the defense of the area. Having sent one division to the Near East in 1941, New Zealand had few troops left for home defense, and of these one brigade had already been dispatched to Fiji. Australia had agreed to reinforce New Caledonia, but was able to send only one company of troops to the island. In the first weeks after the outbreak of war with Japan, the strengthening of the South Pacific was not immediately urgent. That area did not appear so directly threatened as Australia was. Insofar as the United States was concerned, primary responsibility for defense of the region rested with the Navy. Only with the fall of the East Indies and the emergence of Australia as a great Allied base did the South Pacific become of vital interest to the Army.1
The South Pacific Ferry Route
The engineers, at work on the ferry route when war began, were the first American troops in the South Pacific. At the time of Pearl Harbor, engineer officers were reporting good progress on the airfields. On Christmas and Canton, troops and civilian workmen were clearing and grading runways. On Fiji, natives were lengthening the airstrips, and New Zealand was sending in more men, materials, and equipment. On New Caledonia, the Free French were making headway on the fields at Tontouta and Plaines des Gaiacs. Just before the attack on Pearl Harbor, General Short had assured Washington that the route would be open by 15 January. Events of the following weeks rendered completion more urgent than ever. Heavy bombers were desperately needed to stem the Japanese tide in the Philippines. The Central Pacific route through Midway and Wake was lost in the first days of the war. The only alternate besides that through the South Pacific was the long, roundabout way across the Atlantic, Africa, and the Indian Ocean—two-thirds of the distance around the globe.2
In Hawaii Colonel Wyman ordered work on the ferry route pushed with all possible speed. In carrying out his instructions, the engineers in the South Pacific islands were confronted with mounting difficulties. The islands were almost completely isolated. Peacetime sailing schedules were disrupted, and there were few vessels to carry cargo to the South Pacific. Even the project’s A–i–a priority was of little help. Wyman complained that, while he assumed the rating to be in effect, it had proven virtually useless for getting materials and equipment to places where they were needed. Shipping was not to be had for the stocks piled up in the San Francisco port. On Christmas and Canton even supplies of food and water ran low. Poor communications complicated matters.3 “[The] greatest obstacle ... toward the proper direction of the jobs down here,” one of the civilian employees on the ferry route wrote Wyman from New Caledonia, “is the lack of communication whereby detailed information can be transmitted between jobs. Cables and radios are fine, but you cannot say enough, and we always have a certain amount of garbling which sometimes is not recognized as such.”4 General Short’s efforts to get a Navy or Pan American plane to fly couriers back and forth among the Pacific islands were unavailing, as were those of his successor, Lt. Gen. Delos C. Emmons, who assumed command of the Hawaiian Department on 17 December. The situation was alleviated to some extent when Wyman
obtained a yacht and put it into service early in January.
The enemy’s swift advance toward the South Pacific greatly increased the tension under which work had to be carried on. The islands were practically defenseless. Initially the small detachments of engineers on Canton and Christmas had been equipped only with carbines, rifles, and a few machine guns. Late in November, Short had sent to Christmas two 75-mm. guns with 800 rounds of ammunition and a sergeant to train men from the 804th Aviation Battalion as artillerymen. Neither the New Zealanders on Fiji nor the Australians on New Caledonia had any illusions about their ability to hold the islands against determined assaults. On Fiji, the New Zealand troops were expending great efforts fortifying the capital city of Suva, meanwhile leaving the airfields on the opposite side of the island extremely vulnerable to attack. So weak were the forces on New Caledonia that preparation even of minimal defenses was out of the question.5
There was near panic on Christmas. When news of the attack on Pearl Harbor reached the island, fantastic rumors began to spread. Three days after the outbreak of war, reports were circulating that a Japanese submarine was based on the shores of the lagoon. The general consternation heightened when an engineer officer was quoted as having told workmen that they would all end up before a Japanese firing squad. Many of the civilians began clamoring for passage to Honolulu. On 19 December Major Shield, the engineer officer in charge, put Christmas Island under martial law, declaring that no one would be permitted to leave. He ordered the men to work seven days a week, with no time off. In an effort to keep work moving, he endeavored personally to run the Hawaiian Constructors’ organization, which had been hastily pulled together and was not functioning well. Displaying what appeared to be little respect for the company’s foremen, he countermanded their orders so frequently that the men did not know whose instructions to follow. In the words of one of the supervisors, “orders were given indiscriminately to anyone and everyone.” The Hawaiian Constructors became less a contracting organization than a gang of hired laborers. When the War Department imposed radio silence on the island and deliveries of mail were delayed, discontent increased. The men promptly blamed Shield for their inability to get in touch with their families. The military as well as the civilians were becoming more and more difficult to deal with. A lieutenant from Wyman’s office, inspecting the island in mid-December, noted a “complete lack of cooperation” between Shield and the officers and men of the 804th. Work proceeded, but at a very slow pace.6
A calmer atmosphere prevailed on Canton and Fiji, although these islands were more directly in the enemy’s path. Convinced that Canton could not be successfully
defended, General Short ordered the civilians evacuated. On 14 December the ship to take them off the island arrived, bringing with it ten artillerymen, two 75s, and a dozen machine guns. After the civilians departed, the engineer troops, under Captain Baker’s direction, continued work on the airfield, and not without success, since they had plenty of equipment for what they were trying to do. On Fiji, natives, helped by increasing numbers of skilled workmen from New Zealand, continued improving and enlarging Nandi Field. Urged by Short to strengthen the garrison and to step up construction of the airfield, New Zealand replied on 20 December that additional reinforcements were being rushed to the Crown Colony. Within a short time thereafter, the Dominion had 3 infantry battalions on Fiji and had increased the number of skilled workmen to 1,200.7
New Caledonia, the most westerly island of the route in the South Pacific, was almost completely cut off from Wyman’s office. On 7 December the engineers were represented on the island by Lieutenant Sauer. He was shortly joined by Captain MacCasland, who henceforth served as area engineer. As the. only American officers in the French colony, their responsibilities were heavy. When Pan American Airways evacuated its employees soon after hostilities began, MacCasland and Sauer took over the company’s property and kept the important seaplane base in operation. When an outbreak of bubonic plague on New Caledonia prevented the firm of Sverdrup and Parcel from sending in civilian engineers and draftsmen from the States, the officers in New Caledonia undertook to do the work of the architect-engineers. When Rear Adm. Thierry d’Argenlieu, the new Free French High Commissioner for the Pacific, announced that he would negotiate only with representatives of the U.S. Army with regard to the airfield program, the engineers had to take a turn at diplomacy. The French were most cooperative. They diverted the bulk of their scant stock of dilapidated equipment to airfield work and hired every man who could be recruited in New Caledonia and nearby islands, even going as far afield as Australia to get skilled labor. The New Caledonia Bureau of Public Works assumed the complicated task of administering a motley force of some 400 men at work on the airfields—Frenchmen, Australians, Javanese, Tonkinese, Indochinese, and Kanakas. Efforts centered on Tontouta. Though the engineers knew this field was poorly located and part of it would probably be under water during the rainy season, construction there was considerably further along than at Plaines des Gaiacs. The outbreak of war rendered imperative the completion of an emergency runway that could serve until Plaines des Gaiacs was ready. Urged on by MacCasland and Sauer, the French set themselves the task of finishing Tontouta before the deadline of 15 January.8
On 28 December Wyman announced
that the South Pacific ferry route was open. Canton, Tontouta, and Nandi were far enough along to take heavy bombers. Runways were 5,000 feet in length at the first two fields, 4,200 at the third. On 12 January the first flight of B-17’s completed its trip over the route, landing at Canton, Nandi, Tontouta, and Townsville. The pilots pronounced the runways excellent. The strip at Christmas, which lagged behind the rest, was reported ready on 20 January, and the next day a flight of B-17’s landed there. From this time on, increasing numbers of planes flew over the route. The work of providing adequate gasoline storage and other facilities still remained to be done. There remained, too, the problem of defense.9
Arrival of Task Forces
By late December top-ranking Allied strategists were considering means of reinforcing the South Pacific. The danger here had become apparent a few weeks after Pearl Harbor, when the Japanese occupied the Gilbert Islands. At the ARCADIA Conference, the Americans voiced fears that Australia might be isolated, while the British expressed apprehension over the growing threat to New Zealand as well. The Americans promised to strengthen Canton and Christmas and to aid New Caledonia and Fiji if it appeared that Australia and New Zealand could not adequately protect those islands. Steps were soon under way to send 2,000 men to Christmas, 1,500 to Canton, and a pursuit group (700 men) to Fiji. New Caledonia also stood in need of reinforcements, but Australia could spare nothing more for the island. Reports had reached Washington that Admiral D’Argenlieu was threatening to stop work on Plaines des Gaiacs unless more troops and weapons were forthcoming. The War Department assembled a task force of some 16,000 men under Brig. Gen. Alexander M. Patch for shipment to New Caledonia late in January.10
Reinforcements reached Christmas and Canton in February. On the loth, a task force under Col. Paul W. Rutledge landed at Christmas, and three days later another under Col. Herbert D. Gibson arrived at Canton. Soon after going ashore, Colonel Rutledge inspected the air base and was shocked by what he found. There was bickering among the engineer officers and “much friction” between Shield and the workmen. So complete was the demoralization of the civilians that, in Rutledge’s opinion, they could not be expected to accomplish anything worthwhile. One runway was completed and another half-finished, but there was “no evidence of any other satisfactory work.” Indications of inept planning and weak administration were numerous. Building materials were strewn around and equipment was rusting. Sanitary conditions were intolerable; garbage and filth littered the
camp area and formed breeding grounds for swarms of flies. Rutledge asked Emmons to relieve Shield immediately. The situation on Canton, while not so bad as on Christmas, left room for considerable improvement. Colonel Gibson found that much construction remained to be done, that morale was low, and that living conditions were deplorable.
Steps were shortly taken to set matters right on the islands. The disgruntled civilians on Christmas were returned to Honolulu. Shield and Baker were replaced. Both officers had had difficult assignments, starting out as they had with pioneer expeditions to build on remote and undefended islands.11 Colonel Wyman supported both officers, stating that he found little fault with their performance. They had, he maintained, “accomplished their missions ... with remarkable speed” and in accordance with directions.12 Nevertheless, conditions improved noticeably after the construction forces on the islands were placed under the task force commanders.13
Meanwhile, on New Caledonia, Sauer, who succeeded MacCasland as area engineer in January, was making strenuous efforts to get Plaines des Gaiacs finished. Upon completion of the emergency strip at Tontouta, he transferred every available man and piece of equipment to the new project. He received an unlooked for addition to his slender labor force when the 125 civilians taken off Canton unexpectedly appeared at Noumea on to January and 100 remained. These men built a camp at Plaines des Gaiacs, while the French, who insisted on retaining direct supervision of their workers, concentrated on the runways. Initial specifications had called for strips of asphaltic concrete, but since there was now small chance of importing this material into New Caledonia, a substitute had to be found. About four miles from the field was a bed of gravel composed of about 50 percent iron ore. The gravel proved to be satisfactory for surfacing. The French made rapid progress; one reason, undoubtedly, being their method of working. It consisted in placing the surfacing material on the ground with little if any grading and no compaction of the soil. As a result, the runways, from which roots and snags protruded, had many bumps and dips. But the iron ore made an exceptionally hard surface, and planes were able to land. On 15 February one strip was complete and two days later the first heavy bomber put down at Plaines des Gaiacs. Work on a second runway began immediately.14
The first ships carrying General Patch’s task force steamed into Noumea harbor on 12 March. Only days before, the Japanese had established a foothold in the northern Solomons, and New Caledonia now appeared to be directly in the enemy’s path. Patch’s tersely worded orders read, “Hold New Caledonia
Noumea, New Caledonia
against attack.” Making plans for carrying out this directive was the first order of business for the task force commander, his engineer, Col. Joseph D. Arthur, Jr., and other members of his staff. It was obvious that 16,000 men could not garrison the whole island. A mobile defense would have to be ruled out until communications were improved. Almost all of New Caledonia was mountainous. There was but one main highway, a narrow, twisting road running parallel to the western shore line. The only railroad, a line extending a short distance northward from the capital, had been abandoned in 1940. Noumea was the one port worth mentioning. In the
light of these conditions, Patch concluded that he must first of all protect Noumea. That being the case, the Allied forces could not be stretched to Plaines des Gaiacs, 158 miles away. Patch therefore selected Tontouta as the principal airfield for defense. The work of maintaining Tontouta and completing Plaines des Gaiacs could for a time be left to Sauer. Patch’s engineers must at once begin improving the island’s system of communications.15
Three engineer units had come with the task force, the 57th Combat Battalion, commanded by Maj. George H. Lenox, and two aviation battalions, the 8 loth, commanded by Maj. R. P. Burt, Jr., and the 811th, under Maj. Charles H. McNutt. Except for a detachment of the 57th which remained near Noumea to rehabilitate the railway, all engineers were put to work on roads. Most were assigned to the coastal highway, which was crumbling under heavy traffic. By early April the engineers were fully occupied in patching and widening this main artery. Though the bulk of their equipment had yet to arrive, the men built several new sections of road. One such project was a detour, eighteen miles long, around a mountain pass, at a place where a direct hit would have isolated the northern half of the island. But even with these improvements, the road was inadequate. Moving heavy construction machinery up to the airfields was no easy feat, as the engineers learned when most of their equipment finally reached New Caledonia in April. To eliminate the need for trucking all supplies from Noumea, Colonel Arthur started construction of piers near Tontouta and Plaines des Gaiacs.16
Dispatching engineer troops to the airfields could not be long deferred. Under heavy use, the emergency strip at Tontouta was beginning to break up. A second runway completed by the Australians on 17 March was too short for heavy bombers to use safely. Plaines des Gaiacs was operational but needed much more work. In April, General Patch began giving special attention to the fields. He ordered one company of the 811th Battalion to Tontouta to repair the runway and build dispersals, which pilots who had been in the Philippine and Java campaigns insisted were necessary. Construction of a pursuit field at Bourake, a short distance north of Tontouta, was undertaken by another company of the 811th. Since the site had good natural drainage, sandy soil, and only scrub vegetation, the task was comparatively easy. In eight days the men were able to clear a 3,000-foot runway. The job at Plaines des Gaiacs was gaining momentum. The Australian crew. their work at Tontouta done, moved with a considerable stock of equipment to this project late in March. On 24 April the entire 8 oth went to Plaines des Gaiacs and began operations on a three-shift basis. On to May, Major Burt assumed direction of all work. When Sauer relinquished control of the project to the commander of the 8 loth, a second runway was usable, dispersals were almost complete, thirteen miles of access roads were in, and housing and utilities were well along. The job of the Sloth was to lengthen the runways, install gasoline storage, provide lighting, and maintain a base from which heavy bombers could attack enemy forces moving south.17
The danger to the South Pacific line of communications was becoming acute. On 3 May the Japanese occupied Tulagi, an island of the southern Solomons, some Boo miles north of New Caledonia, just as their task force at Rabaul was preparing to leave for Port Moresby. Shortly after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the enemy prepared to strike again as a mighty task force assembled in home waters. The islands of the South Pacific seemed a probable objective. Among the most likely targets were the ferry bases. Although the islands had been reinforced, their defenses were still pitifully weak, and reports from the bases were uniformly pessimistic. After inspecting the three easternmost islands in April, Maj. Robert J. Fleming, Jr., of Emmon’s G-4 section, confirmed the findings of earlier official visitors. Although he observed that the engineers were making good progress toward completing facilities, he considered the efforts to strengthen the islands against attack largely ineffectual. Needed were ammunition, guns, barbed wire, and, above all, troops. Even camouflage was lacking. The installations on Christmas could be clearly seen from the air, and the acres of brilliant red drums used for storing gasoline on Canton were visible for many miles. Weakly fortified and lightly held, the islands of the ferry route, except possibly New Caledonia, could have been taken with very little effort.18
The Alternate Ferry Route
As early as January, Wyman had anticipated the need for a second ferry route—one less in danger of being overrun. On the 25th, he had recommended to General Emmons that a series of airfields be developed in the Marquesas, Society, and Tonga Islands. Late in February, after receiving permission from Washington, Emmons ordered a survey of the proposed route. Wyman picked Sverdrup, at that time still working as a civilian on the ferry route, as the man for the job, and recalled him from Suva to Honolulu for instructions. The district engineer wished to make sure that lessons learned on the first route would be taken into account and that the peculiarities of the weather in the region would be considered.19 Experiences on Christmas and Canton had demonstrated that American workmen were “not temperamentally suited for construction work on these islands, largely due to the foreign environment, danger of enemy action, and the confinement in a small area without ... amusement and recreation.”20 Wyman insisted that Sverdrup select islands “with a native population engaged in agriculture or mining.”21 Because the unloading of supplies at Christmas and Canton had been complicated by reefs and shoals, he also instructed Sverdrup to find good natural harbors or lagoons.
The violent storms that swept the area just south of the equator would present an added problem. Since the many low atolls of the region were frequently awash in rough weather, Sverdrup was cautioned to pay particular attention to elevation. Early in March, after signing a contract with the Honolulu District, Sverdrup boarded a Navy plane for Tahiti to begin his reconnaissance.22
During the latter part of March, he visited some thirteen islands and found a number of good sites. One was on Penrhyn, a possession of New Zealand, 770 miles south of Christmas. Most of this atoll was awash during high seas, as only one of the many islets was more than two feet above sea level. But this one, 4 miles long arid a quarter mile wide, offered ample room for a runway, and planes could be dispersed under the numerous coconut trees. All the land was native owned. It was passed down from generation to generation within the family and for a native to dispose of any was illegal. The local representative of New Zealand assured Sverdrup that he did not believe there would be any trouble in arranging for its use. He also estimated that at least 75 of the 500 natives could probably be recruited for work on the runway. Some 800 miles south of Penrhyn, Sverdrup found another promising site on Aitutaki, an island in the Middle Cook Group, also a possession of New Zealand. Of volcanic origin, Aitutaki was rugged, but there was one fairly flat area where two runways could be readily graded and compacted. With a population of 2,000, the island could provide all the common labor needed. The Government of New Zealand would undoubtedly be able to send in a few skilled equipment operators. About 1,000 miles to the southwest, Sverdrup found a third desirable site on Tongatabu in the Tonga group, a protectorate of Great Britain that he had visited before in the fall of 1941. Tongatabu had one great advantage—it already had an airfield. Sverdrup believed little effort would be required to develop three 6,000-foot runways. On 1 April he sent word to the Honolulu District that Penrhyn, Nitutaki, and Tongatabu met Wyman’s specifications. Shortly thereafter Emmons informed Washington that an alternate ferry route was feasible. On 11 May authority was given to go ahead with construction.23
Further Strengthening of the South Pacific
While the Army had been reluctant to commit itself heavily in the South Pacific during the first months of 1942, the Navy had strongly urged a build-up of forces there. Admiral Ernest J. King, who in March became Chief of Naval Operations, wanted to garrison additional islands, especially Efate in the New Hebrides, an archipelago to the
north of New Caledonia, and Tongatabu. General Marshall was at first hesitant to adopt King’s views but finally agreed to go along with them. The Joint Chiefs in May issued two basic plans: one for the occupation and defense of Tongatabu and another for Efate. Tongatabu was to be primarily a Naval base, while Efate was first to be an “outpost for supporting both New Caledonia and Fiji and later was to serve as a minor advance air and naval base for future offensive operations.” On 17 March General Patch, following instructions from Marshall, sent a battalion of infantry and a platoon of the 57th engineers to Efate. A small beginning had been made toward strengthening the New Hebrides.24
With the formal delimitation of the Pacific theaters on 30 March, responsibility for the South Pacific was more sharply defined. The Pacific Ocean Area was divided into three subordinate areas—the North, Central, and South Pacific. The first included all the region above 42 degrees north. The second was bounded by the 42nd parallel and the equator. The third took in the area south of the equator, west of longitude 110 degrees west, and east of the Southwest Pacific Area. Except for the forces responsible for the land defense of New Zealand, which were controlled by the New Zealand Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Nimitz was commander in chief of all Allied forces in POA. His missions were similar to MacArthur’s. The two commanders were to hold the lines of communications between the United States and Australia, contain the enemy in the western Pacific, and prepare for major amphibious offensives. Each was to support his neighbor’s undertakings. Nimitz was to command the Central and North Pacific Areas directly but was to appoint a subordinate to command the South Pacific. In April he selected Vice Adm. Robert L. Ghormley for the post.25
Strenuous efforts were made to strengthen the New Hebrides. On 8 April the small force of infantry and engineers on Efate was joined by a marine defense battalion. Sauer, now a captain, going to the island later that month to line up sites for airfields, found that the engineers, the marines, and some 200 natives had already cleared 2,000 feet for a fighter strip and had begun the arduous task of providing roads. Most of the island was a jungle wilderness. The only roads to speak of were the 15-odd miles of track near the town of Vila. In order to penetrate into the interior, even on the existing trails, it was necessary to have native cutting parties out in front.26 “[The] ... roads,” wrote one engineer who explored the island by jeep in May, “[were] ... absolutely the worst in the world—it took us 2½ hours to go about 10 miles. ...”27 On 4 May, the day after the
enemy moved into Tulagi, the Efate Task Force arrived from the States, bringing with it Company B of the 116th Engineer Combat Battalion and two companies of Seabees. The newcomers at once buckled down to extend the airstrip to 6,000 feet. With the Japanese about 700 miles to the northwest, pressure for completion of a runway for bombers was intense. By prodigious efforts, the engineers, seabees, marines, and natives completed the field on 28 May. That same day, a small party of infantry and engineers moved 200 miles northwest to Espiritu Santo, the largest island of the group, where extensive defense works would soon be needed.28
Efforts to bolster other islands of the South Pacific were intensified. In May the 37th Infantry Division, then being readied for shipment to New Zealand, was ordered to Fiji instead. The unit, which included the 117th Engineer Combat Battalion, reached its destination in June. Later that month steps were taken to enlarge an old French runway at Koumac, near the northern tip of New Caledonia, to enable it to take heavy bombers. The 810th engineers, assisted by Australian workmen, had the field operational by the end of the month. Construction of the alternate ferry route got under way when natives began clearing runway sites on Aitutaki and Tongatabu in June and on Penrhyn in July. The construction program on Fiji received a boost on 8 July with the landing of 687 officers and men of the 821st Aviation Battalion. Work commenced the same day on an airfield at Espiritu Santo. The men on this project were involved in a race against Japanese construction forces who had only recently begun building an airfield on the northern shore of Guadalcanal in the Solomons, within easy bombing distance of the advanced Allied bases.29
By June problems of administration and supply had assumed formidable proportions. A well-knit Army organization had yet to be evolved. Each base handled its own affairs. The War Department, the San Francisco Port of Embarkation, the Hawaiian Department, and USAFIA all had a part in supplying the area. Local procurement was not regulated in any way. When Ghormley took command of the South Pacific Area on 19 June, one of his first acts was to set up the Joint Purchasing Board at Wellington, New Zealand. Composed of three officers, representing the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps, the board was to control the procurement of all supplies except those obtained from the United States. The War Department was also taking steps to rectify the situation. On 25 June Emmons was relieved of responsibility for directing and supplying Army forces in the South Pacific, except those working on the alternate ferry route. The War Department would henceforth administer the Army forces in the South Pacific, while
the San Francisco Port of Embarkation and the Joint Purchasing Board would see to their supply.30
Preparations for the Offensive
Admiral Ghormley had no sooner set up his headquarters at Noumea than he was plunged into preparations for the coming offensive. With the Japanese making frantic efforts to complete the airstrip on Guadalcanal, it appeared that another, perhaps final, blow would soon be directed at the South Pacific. In their directive for the offensive issued on 2 July, the Joint Chiefs of Staff took cognizance of the acute danger. They combined the plans of Nimitz and Ghormley for a campaign in the southern Solomons with those of MacArthur for an offensive against Rabaul. The joint operation was to be carried out in three phases: first, the taking of Tulagi and adjacent islands; second, the seizure of the northern Solomons, northeastern New Guinea, and western New Britain; and third, the capture of Rabaul. Ghormley was to command the first phase; MacArthur, the second and third. The target date for the invasion of Tulagi was 1 August.31
The imminence of the campaign in the Solomons led the War Department to establish an over-all command, United States Army Forces in the South Pacific (USAFISPA)—with Maj. Gen. Millard F. Harmon in command. As Ghormley’s subordinate, he was to have direct responsibility for administering and supplying the 52,000 Army troops now in the area and, although he was to have no part in directing tactical operations, he was to make plans for employing Army units in combat. On 21 July Harmon left the United States, accompanied by members of his staff, including his engineer, Col. Frank I,. Beadle. Eight days later, the party arrived in Noumea. Six engineer units had preceded Beadle to the South Pacific—three aviation battalions, two combat battalions, and one combat company, about 3,500 men in all. There was little Beadle could do in the way of building an effective engineer organization or planning for the coming campaign, now only a few days away.32
On 7 August the marines landed on the northern coast of Guadalcanal near the airfield. The landing apparently caught the enemy by surprise. The next day the field was in American hands. In the course of violent sea, land, and air battles in the ensuing weeks, the Americans not only held but expanded their positions. But the advance was slow. Guadalcanal was well suited for defensive warfare, and the Japanese poured in reinforcements. The marines, in their efforts to compress the enemy into the northwestern tip of the island, were to have months of fighting ahead of them. While Marine engineers and Navy construction battalions had initial missions on the island, Army engineers contributed by helping with the development
Map 9: Papua
of bases and airfields on islands to the rear. Since the Marine Corps and Navy carried full responsibility for fighting the Japanese on Guadalcanal during the first two months of combat on that island, the story of the engineers in the first offensives in the South and Southwest Pacific is largely one of their operations in New Guinea.
Preparing To Fight in New Guinea
When the marines landed on Guadalcanal, the enemy forces in New Guinea advancing along the Kokoda Trail had reached Isurava, sixty miles from Port Moresby. (Map 9) Intercepts of radio messages indicated the Japanese were planning to land troops on the island of Samarai, at the mouth of Milne Bay. From this vantage point, the enemy could control the waters near the southeast tip of New Guinea and would be in a better position to strike along the island’s southern coast. Early in August, MacArthur moved to meet the growing danger. In order to have a unified command in the combat area, he placed all
Allied troops in Australian New Guinea under New Guinea Force, henceforth commanded by Australian Maj. Gen. Sydney F. Rowell. Rowell was given a large assignment. He was to stop the enemy advance toward Port Moresby, recapture Kokoda and Buna, and eventually drive the Japanese from Salamaua and Lae. The 7th Australian Division was being readied in Australia for movement forward; advance elements were already on their way. MacArthur placed one limitation on Rowell’s authority: While he had complete command over combat forces, he was to exercise no control over American service troops engaged in base construction unless an attack was under way or imminent.33
The sending of so much Allied strength to the forward areas increased enormously the task of the engineers. Though base development had come a long way, much remained to be done. Of the seven fields planned for Moresby, two all-weather airfields and two dry-weather strips were operational. They could not accommodate the great numbers of planes that would have to operate continuously against the advancing enemy. The sole deep-water dock of the city’s harbor was so inadequate that only one vessel could discharge cargo at a time. Key installations, some of them many miles inland, were connected to the port by dirt roads. Milne Bay, with its single operational airstrip and its primitive piers and jetties, could not serve as an adequate base for strikes to the north.34
With an ever-growing construction program in prospect, a better organization of the Engineer effort in New Guinea was imperative. Visiting Port Moresby early in August, Colonel Sverdrup, now head of construction in Casey’s office, concluded that “all construction work under US supervision should be reorganized from top to bottom.” Believing that engineer output could be stepped up 30 percent if the work were properly organized and directed, he recommended that a “senior officer well qualified in construction and planning” be sent to the New Guinea port at once.35 Sverdrup was not alone in this opinion. GHQ SWPA was already preparing plans to set up a more adequate supply and construction organization in New Guinea. On I i August General Richard Marshall, the commanding general of USASOS, established U.S. Advanced Base at Port Moresby.36 Naming Matthews base commander, Marshall made him responsible for construction and supply for American forces in the Port Moresby and Milne Bay areas. The next day Matthews arrived by plane at his new headquarters, and was hardly settled before an avalanche of demands descended on him. General Kenney was calling for two additional fields at Moresby to bring the total number there to nine; at Milne Bay he wanted not two but three strips, and by late August, he was asking for the construction of 227 revetments at Moresby alone. Meanwhile, USASOS could not
ignore the fact that, in view of the shortage of ships in the theater, the ports at Moresby and Milne Bay would have to be enlarged to permit faster unloading and quicker turn around. These demands were only the beginning of many additional requirements the engineers would have to meet. Taking stock of his resources—the few engineer troops and the meager stocks of supplies and equipment—and viewing the task ahead, Matthews could only conclude that the job would not be completed before November and that it could be finished by then only with “weather permitting and God helping.”37
Battle of Milne Bay
While preparations for the offensive were going ahead in Papua, the enemy struck again. Having learned in mid-August of the airfields at the head of Milne Bay, the Japanese decided to land there rather than on Samarai. On the morning of 25 August reports reached the forces at the bay that nine enemy ships were approaching. Three engineer companies—D and F of the 43rd and E of the 46th—were in the threatened area, battling mud and almost incessant rains to complete the airstrips. (Map 10) All of Company F and part of D were working on Strip No. 3, recently begun at the northwest tip of the bay. They had just finished clearing a site 6,000 feet long and 300 feet wide. Three miles to the west, detachments of Company D were working on Strip No. 1, which, despite its poor foundation, was being regularly used by planes. Company E of the 46th was preparing Strip No. 2, some four miles southwest of No. 1 and five miles from the bay. There were 9,458 Allied troops in the area—the Americans, including the engineers and an airborne antiaircraft battery, numbered 1,365; Australian strength totaled 8,093. On 22 August, Australian Maj. Gen. Cyril A. Clowes had assumed command of all forces at Milne Bay. The engineers and antiaircraft gunners of Clowes’ command were to be the first American ground troops to meet the Japanese in combat in New Guinea.38
On learning of the enemy’s approach, General Clowes began at once to deploy his forces. The Australian infantrymen were readied, and the RAAF pilots at Strip No. 1 were briefed for a strike at the enemy convoy. The engineers were likewise ordered to prepare for combat. On the 22nd Company D was taken off the airfields and directed to fortify its bivouac area. Later that day, Company F stopped work on Strip No. 3, and the men were issued rifles and 128 rounds of ammunition each. Farther west, at Strip No. 2, Company E of the 46th was in no immediate danger. General Clowes assigned that unit to the rear sector, about
Map 10: Milne Bay, August 1942
four miles square, where it was to construct fortifications and patrol jungle trails. One platoon was to defend the airstrip, about 75 percent cleared, and smash any paratroop landing the enemy might attempt to make. Protected against air attack by overcast skies, 1,171 Japanese landed that night on the northern shore near Waga Waga, about 6 miles east of Strip No. 3, and began advancing westward along the swampy, mile wide, coastal shelf. Since the jungle track skirting the northern shore crossed the center of the runway site, the enemy was expected shortly. The airfield clearing was an ideal location for a defensive stand. It was improbable that the enemy could successfully carry out an encircling movement. Just to the north were the rugged foothills of the Stirling Range. Between the foothills and the northwestern edge of the clearing flowed Wehuria Creek, which continued on behind the airstrip in a southerly direction. The southeastern end of the clearing was only 500 feet from an inlet of Milne Bay. At 0200 on 26 August most of the men of Company F were sent to join the Australians and the antiaircraft troops already in position
along the southwestern edge of the clearing. Most of the engineers were assigned to the center of the line. Company D, meanwhile, continued digging trenches and foxholes around its bivouac area to the rear and prepared its 37-mm. gun and half-track for action.
The first night was a quiet one for the defenders along the airstrip. No attack materialized. The next day Japanese warships shelled Strip No. 3 and planes raided Strip No. 1. There was no serious damage to either field, but many engineers had narrow escapes. Slowed by soggy terrain and the Australians, enemy ground troops doggedly continued their advance westward. On the 26th some 1,200 more Japanese were landed, and on the night of the 27th the enemy approached the clearing. By early morning they stood at the northern edge, directly opposite the positions occupied by Company F. After exchanging fire with the defenders for about half an hour, the Japanese withdrew. During the daylight hours of the 28th there was no further activity, except for occasional enemy rifle fire on the clearing. Since Allied air superiority had forced the Japanese to restrict themselves to night attacks, the defenders, aware that additional troops had landed, looked for a more determined assault that night. They were not mistaken. Under cover of darkness, the enemy made what appeared to be several haphazard attempts, to cross the strip. All ended in failure. Two or three riflemen got through the defenders’ line and penetrated into Company F’s bivouac area but did not inflict any damage.
Ashore for three days, the Japanese had still made no determined effort to seize the airstrip. On the 29th more reinforcements landed, raising the number of enemy troops to some 3,100 men. Convinced an attack was not far off, the defenders again strengthened their line on the 29th and 30th. Three officers and 132 men of Company F, flanked on both sides by Australian infantry, were already fully committed to the defense of the clearing. The remaining 27 men of the company had moved miles to the rear with the company’s heavy construction equipment and supplies. Members of Company D who could be spared from their work on Strip No. 1 and on the roads leading from the wharf to the airfields were sent to help man the defenses along the clearing. The company’s half-track and 37-mm. gun were moved up to the line alongside those of Company F.
At 0330 on 31 August the attack came. The Japanese laid down heavy rifle and machine gun fire as 300 men prepared to storm across the clearing. Strong counterfire disrupted the enemy’s plans, a hail of bullets stopping the advance before it got started. The Japanese failed even to set foot on the clearing. Nor did they break through along the beach or at Wehuria Creek. At dawn they withdrew, pursued by the Australians. The attack had failed completely. Later that day the engineers counted 160 bodies, most of them in the wooded area opposite the position held by Company F. As the surviving Japanese made their way back to Waga Waga, the engineers bulldozed shallow graves for the enemy dead. Although the enemy had been repulsed, General Clowes did not believe the danger of surprise attack had passed. During the first week in September, Companies D
and F exchanged defensive positions daily. Air attacks continued, and on the 8th, Japanese planes bombed Company F’s bivouac area, killing 4 men and wounding 7. But ground fighting was over. By the second week of September Japanese warships had evacuated most of the enemy troops. The battle of Milne Bay, which was soon to assume legendary aspects for the engineers of the Southwest Pacific, had ended in a complete victory for the Allies.
Allied Preparations Continue
The beaten invaders withdrew from Milne Bay, but the enemy force on the Kokoda Trail continued to advance through the Owen Stanley Range. Outnumbered and poorly supplied, General Rowell’s Australians fell back from one ridge to another. In early September Australian reinforcements were rushed to the front to contain the Japanese advance. MacArthur and Rowell believed the Japanese, overextended as they were, could now be contained. In order to put additional pressure on the enemy, MacArthur planned to execute a flanking movement by sending an American regimental combat team (RCT) from the 32nd Division on foot over the mountains to attack the enemy from the rear. Of the trails that led north through the Owen Stanleys, two seemed most practicable. One, starting from Kapa Kapa, a few miles southeast of Port Moresby, wound through the mountains to Jaure on the eastern slopes. But it presented difficult obstacles since it crossed innumerable hogbacks and at the divide reached an elevation of 5,000 feet. The second track, leading northward from Abau to Jaure, crossed what was believed to be gentler terrain; its highest elevation was about 5,000 feet. On 15 September, a reconnaissance party organized by MacArthur’s G-4, Brig. Gen. Lester J. Whitlock, began to explore the Kapa Kapa Trail. The day before, a company of the gist Engineers had begun improving the dirt track from Moresby to Kapa Kapa. On the 16th, Casey and Sverdrup, who were in Moresby at the time, took charge of investigating the Abau Trail. The march through the mountains would have to wait until the reconnaissance reports were in.39
Casey and Sverdrup reached Abau on the morning of 18 September. They wanted the answers to two questions: could the harbor be made to serve as a base of supply for a regimental combat team and would it be possible to send jeeps and mule trains up over the trail?40 Casey took on the job of exploring the harbor. For “hours that stretched into days” the chief engineer lay off shore in a native canoe sounding the depths of the waters.41 Meanwhile, Sverdrup had started out for Jaure with a party of one American, 2 Australians, 10 native policemen, and 26 carriers. The first day’s march was easy and the party covered 13 miles. But the following morning when they reached the foothills
of the Owen Stanleys, the going got rougher. “Some of the hills we climbed are over 45 degrees—would like to see a mule climb that,” Sverdrup wrote in a letter he sent back to Casey by native bearer. At noon of the fourth day, he noted in his log, “elevation 3,380 and still going up.” After scaling heights of almost 5,000 feet and toiling up precipitous grades of 80 percent, Sverdrup and the members of his party began to suspect that they were “on a wild goose chase,” and would never be able to “build a motor transport road in here and probably not a mule track either.” By the time the group reached Jaure on 25 September, after eight days on the trail, Sverdrup doubted whether it would be possible even to march troops over the route. On the 27th the party began its trek back to Abau, arriving there on 3 October. By this time, Casey, having concluded that the harbor was too shallow even for lightering, much less for use by cargo vessels, had returned to Moresby.42
The day Casey and Sverdrup went to Abau the Japanese had reached the native village of Ioribaiwa on the southwestern slopes of the mountains overlooking Moresby and the coastal plain. The Allied position was less precarious than it seemed. The enemy column had overreached itself, and Kenney’s airmen had been knocking out the enemy’s supply line along the Kokoda Trail most effectively. Nor was the war going well for the Japanese elsewhere. The setback at Milne Bay and serious reverses on Guadalcanal induced Imperial General Headquarters to change its strategy temporarily. It planned to withdraw the troops on the Kokoda Trail and concentrate them for the time being on the coastal flats at Buna. Operations in New Guinea were to be held to a minimum until Guadalcanal was secured. In Allied eyes, however, the Japanese were still a powerful adversary. On 23 September, General Blamey assumed direct command of New Guinea Force and two days later launched the Allied counter-drive. Soon the Japanese were in full retreat along the Kokoda Trail.43
As the enemy withdrew, MacArthur adopted a more aggressive plan of action. He envisioned a three-pronged advance on Buna. The Australians were to pursue the Japanese along the Kokoda Trail. One American force was to cross the Owen Stanleys on either the Kapa Kapa or the Abau Trail. A second was to move in small boats from Milne Bay up the northeastern coast. When all these forces were sufficiently close to Buna, MacArthur would order a concerted attack. The success of such tactics hinged largely on getting the troops across the mountains. Casey’s report on the Abau Trail, which he gave to Sutherland on 5 October, indicated a tremendous effort would have to be made to convert the track into a practicable route. The Kapa Kapa Trail appeared to be the more feasible way. By late September, a regimental combat team had been readied for the march. On 6 October, one company of infantry with a platoon of twenty-three engineers set out across the mountains as the advance
detachment. On their backs the engineers carried axes, saws, machetes, and shovels to clear the trail for the troops who would follow. The expedition would be supplied by airdrop. None doubted the march would be difficult, but there seemed to be no other way of getting the men to Buna.44
While on the Abau Trail, Sverdrup had chanced upon a plateau in the northern foothills of the Owen Stanleys which appeared to offer a good site for an airstrip. On returning to Abau he discussed the possibility of building landing fields beyond the mountains and flying the troops across. The practicality of such a scheme was confirmed by Cecil Abel, a missionary who owned a plantation near Abau and knew well the territory north of the divide. The possibility of flying troops and supplies across Papua had been considered before. As far back as July, air and engineer officers had suggested that a field at Wanigela Mission, sixty-five miles southeast of Buna, on the eastern Papuan coast be developed to make possible ferrying troops and supplies from Moresby. At various times during August and September, Kenney had urged that troops be flown to Wanigela and then be moved up the coast to Buna. MacArthur had held back, waiting to see if the Australians could stop the Japanese on the Kokoda Trail. When the enemy began retreating toward Buna, he accepted the plan. On 6 October, Australians were flown from Milne Bay to Wanigela. Under their direction, natives began cutting the grass and readying the landing strip. But Wanigela was many miles from Buna and surrounded by almost impenetrable swamp and jungle. Sverdrup, as a result of his reconnaissances north of the Owen Stanleys, believed that fields could be constructed rapidly in terrain from which Buna would be easier to get to. Early in October, Mr. Abel, who was flown to Port Moresby to talk to Allied commanders, assured them that a landing field could be readily developed near Fasari in the upper valley of the Musa River. From there the troops could make their way on foot along trails over relatively flat, though heavily jungled, terrain. The idea was enthusiastically received all around and MacArthur approved the project. Sverdrup was to round up natives, hand tools, and supplies and march north from Abau to carry out this mission. On 11 October, Abel was flown to Wanigela, where he recruited over a score of natives and set out with them for Fasari. Sverdrup, after laying in a store of tobacco, calico, boy scout knives, garden seeds, and other trade goods, left Abau on 14 October with 185 natives and 5 white men, among them Flight Lt. Michael J. Leahy, who had spent most of his life in New Guinea and knew personally many of the tribal chieftains.45
Reaching Fasari on the afternoon of 18 October, Sverdrup found that Mr. Abel “had made a fine start on the strip.” The site had been burned over and all that remained to be done was to remove some stumps and widen and smooth the clearing. The next morning Sverdrup’s natives joined Abel’s in finishing up the work. Later that day a DC-3 put down at the field, henceforth known as Abel’s Landing. On the loth Sverdrup and Leahy headed north over jungle trails, leaving an Australian officer and the Papuans to put in refinements at Fasari. Near the native villages of Embessa and Kinjaki Barige, they located two fairly level sites, overgrown with kunai grass some eight to twelve feet high. Lured by the prospect of getting trade goods, entire villages turned out to help with the cutting. Soon the work force numbered in the thousands. By pitting villages “against one another as teams,” Sverdrup got the natives to put forth a tremendous effort. At Embessa, “the Musa boys won hands down and got an extra one-half stick of tobacco each as a reward and damn near killed themselves earning it,” he wrote. As the natives were rapidly exhausting the expedition’s stores, Sverdrup appealed frantically to Moresby for additional supplies. The first airdrop, made on 24 October at Kinjaki, disrupted the work there for some time. “At 9:45,” Sverdrup noted in his log, “a B-25 came ... roaring down ... with bomb doors open, and then it rained rice and corned beef. ... When we started to pick up [the] stuff, we found forty percent of [the] corned beef tins smashed and opened. No holding [the] boys after that. Had to go to camp and eat themselves out of shape.” The plane having dropped a note instructing him to go to Pongani, Sverdrup on 25 October hiked to that coastal village. Fifty men of Company C of the 14th Combat Battalion were already there, having been part of a group flown from Moresby to Wanigela in mid-October and moved up the coast by boat. Since the troops seemed to be making little progress, Sverdrup went back to Kinjaki to bring up several hundred natives, and returned to Pongani with them on 28 October. Working twelve hours a day in oppressive heat, the natives and engineers completed the Pongani airstrip in two and one half days. By the end of October planes could land there, at Kinjaki, and at Abel’s Landing. Sverdrup was proud of his “Papuan Aviation Battalion,” defying anyone to beat its performance at Pongani. “One thing has been definitely proven,” he wrote. “If strips are to be built by hand in this country, native labor competently led is the only answer.”46
Meanwhile, the engineers at Port Moresby and Milne Bay were struggling against almost insurmountable odds. Colonel Matthews was hard put to find the wherewithal to push construction at these advance bases. His staff was too small. His engineer, Yoder, was borrowed from the 96th Engineers. He had almost no personnel to help him organize and direct the work, and the troops at his disposal were too few to carry the load. He had the 808th, the
96th, one battalion of the 91st, and Company E of the 43rd at Moresby and two companies of the 43rd and one of the 46th at Milne Bay—a total of some 3,200 men.47 But more annoying than the shortage of troops and personnel was the absence of even a general statement of what he was to build. “No one at GHQ, at Hq, Fifth Air Force, or at Hq, USASOS, ever revealed, to me at least,” Matthews later wrote, “the probable plan and garrison to be supported.”48 The Australian commanders, asserting the authority granted them of exercising operational control when an enemy attack threatened, took the engineers off important construction projects. When the Japanese were approaching Moresby, General Rowell had ordered the 808th to stop work on airfields and sent them into combat reserve along the Goldie River northeast of Moresby. There they remained until the arrival of the 114th in mid-September. After the Japanese withdrew from Milne Bay, General Clowes refused to let the engineers resume work on Strips No. 2 and No. 3, despite the fact that Matthews had ordered this work expedited. Casey, inspecting Milne on 15 September, discovered that Clowes had overruled Matthews’ instructions and had diverted the engineers to repairing strip No. 1, building a dock, and standing guard. It took a direct order from MacArthur to Blarney to get the men back on airfield construction. Marshall, the commanding general of USASOS, meanwhile tried unsuccessfully to get the 11 6th Combat Battalion to stop training in Queensland and go to Moresby, where under USASOS direction it would help improve port facilities. At the same time, the Allied Air Forces opposed taking engineers off airfields to improve ports and to build such things as the road to Kapa Kapa.49
MacArthur, visiting Moresby in late September, quickly concluded that centralized co-ordination of all service activities in New Guinea was urgently needed. On 5 October he established the Combined Operational Service Command (COSC) for New Guinea under the direction of New Guinea Force. This was to be a joint Australian-American logistical organization; its function was to co-ordinate all service activities in the forward areas. General Johns, now Chief of Staff, USASOS, was designated commander both of Advance Base and of COSC. Each of the sections in Headquarters, COSC, had two chiefs, one an American and the other an Australian. Matthews was henceforth Engineer, Advance Base, and together with an Australian lieutenant colonel, head of COSC’s Engineer Construction Section. Operating under priorities laid down by Blarney, Johns was to be responsible for all engineer work in the advance bases. He was to prepare a coordinated plan for building airdromes, roads, ports, and other installations. Under him were all Australian and American engineer
units in the service areas. He was to allot them to the various projects in such a way as to carry out most expeditiously Blarney’s wishes. This was an attempt, insofar as construction was concerned, Johns wrote later, “to provide the maximum utilization of the meager means available. ...” But bringing about an integration of effort would take considerable time.50
As Johns took over his new duties, more and more of the engineer effort was going into port development. On 11 September MacArthur had sent Casey to New Guinea to find out what could be done to increase the capacity of the ports at Moresby and Milne Bay. Casey had seen that it would not be easy to enlarge the Moresby port. Shoal water ran out to about 1,500 feet from shore. With from 11 to 18 feet of water at low tide, the harbor was too shallow for large ships and too deep for construction of a causeway. A piling approach dock seemed to be the only answer, but there was no piling at Moresby and little prospect of getting any from Australia. A deep-water dock had existed at Bootless Inlet, a few miles to the east, but the Australians had destroyed this and mined the harbor without plotting the mines. Matthews had learned that oceangoing vessels could come to within 50 to 100 feet of Tatana Island, about 4 miles northwest of Moresby. The island was separated from the mainland by half a mile of water from 6 to 12 feet deep at high tide. One of Matthews’ officers had waded from the mainland to Tatana at low tide and was never in water above his chest. Matthews suggested that a causeway be constructed across this shallow water and that a floating pier be built on the island first and permanent docks later as labor and materials became available. Casey readily accepted this plan. Visiting Milne Bay, he found that docking facilities could be easily expanded. Two crib piers already in could be extended with the addition of pile piers into deeper water 250 feet from shore to provide berths for large vessels. Casey sent word back to USASOS that launches, pontons, lumber decking, and piling would have to be sent to Moresby and Milne Bay immediately.51
Once construction started, the engineers made rapid progress. On 6 October Matthews reported the new pier at Milne could take a ship up to 430 feet long and with a 22-foot draft. Two days later he began construction of the causeway to Tatana Island. Part of the 2nd Battalion of the 96th Engineers opened borrow pits on the island and on the mainland from which to take rock and dirt. The men loaded their trucks, drove them out on the lengthening causeway, and dumped the loads into the shallows. The gap was gradually closed and the roadway packed by the traffic of the trucks. The floating pier was built concurrently on the north side of the
The Port Moresby causeway, looking toward Tatana Island (General Johns in the foreground, third from left)
island. On 30 October the causeway was opened to traffic, and on 3 November, the floating pier took its first ship.52
Work was proceeding on airfields but far too slowly to satisfy Kenney and his generals. As the tempo of the air war quickened, their discontent with the engineers’ progress grew. At Port Moresby increasing numbers of planes were being based on the dusty fields, which had neither camouflage nor adequate revetments. The airmen, among them Brig. Gen. Ennis C. Whitehead, Kenney’s deputy and commander of the advance echelon of the Fifth Air Force at Port Moresby, were obsessed with the fear that the Moresby dromes might not be ready for all-weather operations when the rainy season began in late November. Their appeals for the assignment of more engineers to Air Force projects were coupled with predictions that fields would be washed out and planes grounded if the “wet” commenced before runways, taxiways, dispersals, and access roads were hard surfaced. But
concern over the progress of the fields did not deter the air force from heaping new demands on the engineers. Among the items they requested were steel huts, electric lighting, and screened mess halls with concrete floors.53 “As long as we were the only ones doing any fighting in the American forces,” Kenney later explained, “I was going to see that if any gravy was passed around, we got first crack at it.”54 One of the Fifth Air Force’s frequent protests against the slowness of airfield work was made at the same time that Colonel Matthews was being asked to construct “water-borne sanitary facilities [and] install wash bowls and other china fixtures” at air force installations near Port Moresby. The engineers of Advance Base refused to sanction such departures from theater of operations plans. Unable to get what he wanted through the usual channels, Kenney began procuring materials for air force projects himself and shipping them from Australia to Moresby. Matthews, learning what was afoot, invoked the authority of General Johns as base commander to control construction supplies and confiscated the cargoes. In order to bypass such control, Kenney began flying materials directly to his units in New Guinea. Relations between air and engineer officers were rapidly deteriorating. The air force kept up an almost constant complaint that the engineers were devoting too much effort to projects which, in the eyes of the airmen, were of relatively small importance. The engineers made no secret of the fact that they believed the airmen were too demanding. When, on 8 October, General Whitehead issued a stinging indictment of Colonel Matthews, stating, in effect, that Advance Base was going back on its commitments to the Fifth Air Force, Casey felt obliged to intervene.55
Writing to Kenney on 14 October, Casey pointed out that the construction program at Moresby consisted of a good deal besides jobs for the Army Air Forces. “The Air Corps,” he reminded Kenney, “is vitally concerned in the program as a whole, as airdromes without access roads will not be usable during the wet season nor will air operations be effective unless unloading facilities and transport facilities in the harbor area are materially improved.” The engineers were putting first things first. Not having enough manpower to undertake all the projects requested of them at once, Casey explained, they had to split the program into two parts—jobs which were “absolutely essential” and jobs which were “useful but which can be postponed.” In the first category were all-weather dromes, improved ports, minimum shelter and utilities, and hard surfacing for key roads; in the second were blast-proof revetments, additional roads, more ample water supplies, and more comfortable quarters. Since the essential projects must be usable before the others were tackled, the Fifth Air Force would have to wait for much of the construction
it wanted. But they could rest assured, Casey said, that the Moresby fields would be ready for the rains. Apparently mollified, Kenney sent to his airmen at Moresby a radio prepared for him by Casey’s office. The chief engineer, the message read, was “fully cognizant of the situation” and would have the dromes “in shape to operate from” when the rains began.56
During October the engineers made great strides toward completing the New Guinea dromes. The “roller coaster” runway at Three-Mile was torn up, regraded, and hard surfaced. The field at Rorona was lengthened to take heavy bombers. New strips were begun at Bomana and Ward’s Drome. Dispersals were provided for twenty-six planes, revetments for twelve. At Milne Bay, Strip No. 3 was graveled and covered with mat. Still, much essential work remained. The gravel runways at Laloki and Seven-Mile Drome had yet to be sealed or surfaced with mat. Most access roads had to be paved, and nearly half of the three hundred dispersals and plane pens provided so far were suitable only for use in dry weather, and many more were needed. Drainage systems left much to be desired, and taxiways, hardstands, and warm-up areas were far from adequate. Believing that the engineers at Moresby were doing all that was humanly possible to hasten construction, Casey was trying hard to move the units that remained in Australia to New Guinea, but without success. Because of the acute shortage of ships, USASOS could spare no vessels for the engineers. The units already in New Guinea continued to carry the load alone.57
The strain of constant operations was beginning to tell. Men and machines were wearing out. Sverdrup, stopping at Moresby on his way back to Brisbane from Pongani, found the situation alarming. The engineer troops were tired and large numbers were reporting for sick call. Many were suffering from malaria, dengue, dysentery, and disease of the skin. Accidents were frequent. “I am much worried,” he wrote to Casey, “about how these same Engineer troops will be able to perform when we advance, as we hope to do. ...” The condition of the units’ equipment was just as discouraging. A large part of it was sidelined for repairs. Mechanics were scarce. Spare parts were almost nonexistent. Such cargoes of equipment and parts as were reaching Australia seldom found their way to New Guinea. USASOS could not arrange for shipping space, and cargo space on planes was at a premium.58
As the rainy season approached, the airmen grew increasingly impatient. An unseasonable downpour on the night of 21 October seemed to confirm their forebodings. Seven-Mile, Three-Mile, and Rorona were unserviceable for a time. The road to Waigani was barely passable, and the bridge to Laloki was washed out. Greatly perturbed, Kenney again brought pressure to bear on the engineers. In a
letter to MacArthur on 26 October he predicted that with the onset of the rains at least two squadrons would have to be returned to Australia. He conceded that the strips themselves were nearly finished but stressed the fact that dispersals, hardstands, and access roads were not. Stating that he could not operate effectively without the missing facilities, he insisted that they be supplied at once. “Otherwise,” he warned, “reliance on aviation operations is not well founded.” Both Sutherland and Casey hastened to reassure him. Casey again pointed out that there was a big job to be done at Moresby and few engineers to do it, but he promised that “all work necessary to provide maximum use of the New Guinea airdromes during the wet weather season [would] be pushed to the maximum within the limitations of plant and men.”59
At this juncture Kenney again began to press for operational control of the 808th Aviation Battalion. Early in November he raised the question as to what authority there was for having the unit under USASOS. Protesting to Sutherland that aviation engineers were being taken off the airfields to work on the Tatana causeway and to operate cranes on the docks, he asked that the battalion be placed under him. Casey, as before, strongly opposed placing the aviation engineers under Air Forces’ control. Given the tremendous scope of the construction program and the small size of the engineer force, he believed the existing arrangement to be the most efficient. The pooling of construction units and resources had, he felt, worked to the advantage of all concerned. Actually, only twenty-five men had been diverted from the 808th to other jobs, whereas the bulk of the service engineers had been employed in building airdromes. “If it is regarded that the aviation Engineers are an Air Corps unit and the only engineers [intended] primarily for airdrome construction,” he told Sutherland, “the counter view may be taken that all other engineer units had been diverted from other assignments to work for the Air Corps. ...” Engineer dump truck companies and details from general service regiments had worked for long periods hauling gasoline and bombs for the air force and loading planes. This work, Casey said, had been undertaken in the knowledge “that the job had to be done by whatever means were available.” As the chief engineer saw it, nothing would be gained by setting up two independent construction organizations to compete for materials and equipment, duplicate each other’s planning, and get in each other’s way. Casey’s views prevailed. The 808th remained under the control of USASOS.60
The stir created by the Fifth Air Force had served to emphasize the need for sending more engineers to New Guinea, and Casey was now able to persuade Marshall to make shipping available. By 8 November the 576th Dump Truck Company and elements of
the 43rd and 46th General Service Regiments were loading to ship out within a week, and USASOS was promising to transport more units to New Guinea at an early date. Meanwhile, at Moresby additional engineers were being pulled off nonair-force projects and sent to work on the dromes. Australians took over operation of the quarry and construction of docks and dumps as the Americans moved in with their equipment to finish up access roads, hardstands, and dispersals. By mid-November, the first reinforcements from Australia were unloading their gear on the Moresby docks. On 18 November the chief engineer sent word to Kenny that “every effort [was] being made to get and hold all airfields here to wet weather operational condition.”61
Maps
The days before the attack on Buna were scarcely less hectic for the topographic engineers than for the engineers engaged in construction. The coming offensive was generating a brisk demand for maps. Top commanders and their staffs had to be furnished with strategic maps of the combat zones. Ranging in scale from 1:500,000 to 1:1,200,000 and depicting large areas with such salient features as mountains, large bodies of water, important lines of communications, and major centers of population, maps of this type were indispensable to men who were planning campaigns. Commanders in the field were calling for tactical maps with scales varying from 1:62,500 to 1:300,000. The scale 1:63,360 was especially popular because it was one inch to the mile. Necessary in moving large bodies of men across unfamiliar terrain, these maps supplied much the same information as strategic maps but in far greater detail. For artillery batteries and small infantry units, the engineers had to provide battle or terrain maps with a scale of 1:20,000. Since these large-scale projections were used in firing on unseen targets, their delineation of distance, direction, and elevation had to be very precise. All these varieties of maps had to be supplied quickly, some of them by the thousands; and because Ghormley had no military mapping units, MacArthur’s topographers not only had to cover New Guinea but the Solomons as well.62
Among the least explored areas of the world, the islands north and northeast of Australia had been mapped haphazardly or not at all. In months of searching, the engineers of USAFIA had failed to turn up much information of value on the now vital parts of Melanesia. The Army Map Service at Washington, an agency of the Corps of Engineers responsible for providing maps to the Armed Services, could supply but few of the far Pacific. Nor could the Australians do much better. Their topographical surveys had been confined primarily to the continent itself—in fact, almost entirely to the southeastern coastal region. Good maps of Papua and the
mandated territories were simply not to be had. The only military maps of the Buna area—Australian sketches drawn to a scale of four miles to the inch—were so seriously in error that they showed some rivers flowing up over mountains. Just as disheartening was the situation with regard to the South Pacific. Although sketches had been made of some of the Solomons, no comprehensive effort to map the islands had ever been made. Data on the topography of Guadalcanal, now the scene of desperate fighting, was both incomplete and unreliable. In mapping the combat zone, a vast land and water area much larger than the United States, the engineers had to start virtually from scratch.63
To map the forward areas by the time-honored method of surveying the ground was impossible. Much of the contested territory was occupied by the enemy, and even where the ground was accessible, there was no time for painstaking measurements with transits, tapes, and levels. Chief reliance had to be placed on aerial photography. New techniques, just coming into use, enabled cartographers to make maps from photographs of the terrain furnished them by airmen. Mapping, once the exclusive province of the engineers, was now a joint responsibility of the Corps of Engineers and the Air Forces. A recent development was trimetrogon photography, which involved mounting three cameras in a plane with one pointing straight down and the others pointing sideways. Three cameras arranged in this manner could, of course, photograph a much wider area than could one camera aimed directly down. But aerial photographs had their limitations. Unless the elevation of some point in the picture were known, there was no way of determining the elevation of any of the terrain features. Because the photographs were taken from an altitude of 20,000 feet or more, many objects appearing on the prints, each about nine inches square, were hard to make out. Photo interpreters had to try to identify an object mainly from its outline and its shade of gray. It was not easy to deduce what might lie beneath the heavy jungle growth directly below the camera or behind the mountain off to one side. Shots taken from oblique angles presented an added difficulty—that of determining the elevation of the terrain features and their distance from one another.64
The men of the Australian Survey Corps, the only topographers in Mac-Arthur’s command at the outset, were surveyors of the ground with little or no experience in photomapping. Although the 8th Photo Squadron, an Air Forces unit trained in trimetrogon photography, began arriving in Australia in April, few, if any, engineers were yet available to transform photographs into maps. Johns, soon after becoming Chief Engineer, USAFIA, had requested two mapping units from the United States—an army topographic battalion and a corps topographic company, but some time was to elapse before these units
would reach the Southwest Pacific. Casey, who assumed over-all direction of the mapping effort on becoming chief engineer of SWPA, was meanwhile planning to co-ordinate the work of Australian and American topographers. Shortly after the signing in Washington on 12 May of the Loper-Hotine Agreement, a convention between the British and the Americans that gave the latter primary responsibility for mapping in the Pacific, Casey reserved for the American topographic units a dominant role in SWPA’s mapping program. The Americans, under USAFIA, were to concentrate mainly on mapping the forward areas; the Survey Corps, operating under General Blamey, on mapping Australia. While the Allies would cooperate fully in all they did, the Australians would, as a rule, be the surveyors, the Americans the photo-mappers of the Southwest Pacific.65
The units that Johns had sent for arrived at Brisbane late in June. One, the 648th Engineer Topographic Battalion (less Company A), commanded by Maj. Emil F. Kumpe, was set up to map limited areas and reproduce existing maps while moving with an army in the field. The other, the 69th Engineer Topographic Company, under Capt. Orris A. Carnegie, was prepared to serve near the front, where it would print maps for immediate distribution and carry out such short-term, emergency assignments as running quick surveys, making hasty sketches, and helping the artillery coordinate its fire. Soon after debarking, the 69th was scattered, as detachments were sent north to begin field surveys in Queensland. The 648th moved to Melbourne, where it was to establish and operate a fixed base printing plant, a mission normally reserved for the larger and better equipped GHQ topographic battalions. The unit had, moreover, to accomplish under pressure of war what would ordinarily have been a long-term, peacetime program and to pioneer in making maps from trimetrogon photographs. Lacking sketchmasters and angulators—the devices used in producing planimetric maps from such photographs—the battalion gave its water purification units to the 8th Photo Squadron in exchange for a set of these instruments. Seventeen men of the battalion who had had training in working with trimetrogon undertook to teach the new mapping technique to others. The engineers located a large Harris offset press in Melbourne which, with the three smaller presses they had brought with them, enabled them to print all required sizes of maps in quantity. The battalion had barely moved into its new headquarters, a 5-story warehouse in downtown Melbourne belonging to Australia’s largest department store, when it was put to work. Even before the building was cleared of merchandise, the photo-mappers were tackling their first job, which was to produce maps of Guadalcanal “with the utmost speed.” No sooner had nine halftone photo-mosaics and nine planimetric drawings of the island been reproduced and shipped out than the battalion turned to compiling maps of eastern New Guinea. But it was immediately apparent that provision of anything like adequate
coverage of that area must await receipt of quantities of aerial photos.66
Photographs came in slowly. The 8th Photo Squadron had difficulty in getting even a fraction of the shots the engineers needed. Until August 1942, it had only three single-seater planes which could be used for taking photographs. That month it got a number of additional aircraft, but it still had far too few. These planes, “rickety crates ... little better than flying coffins,” had to operate under extremely difficult conditions. In the first place, the Air Forces insisted on using them primarily for reconnaissance and permitted only occasional photographic flights. In the coastal and mountainous areas of New Guinea there were often only fifteen minutes of good, clear weather a day. Time and again missions had to be abandoned because of enemy interference. Even when conditions were best, good aerial photographs were still not easy to come by. The pilots had to make painstaking efforts to interlock the cameras at the exact angle and set them correctly in the plane. Once aloft, the pilots found it difficult to maintain a constant altitude, to fly straight lines without tipping and tilting, and to make sure they got pictures of all the area assigned to them. By late September, the 8th Photo Squadron had accomplished but 5 percent of its photography missions, largely because of the diversion of its planes to reconnaissance.67
Getting pictures was only half the battle. Trimetrogon theory was still in its infancy, and the engineers had to learn by trial and error how best to interpret the photographs. To supplement information deduced from the pictures, they gathered as much data as they could from other sources. Australian libraries were ransacked for books on islands to the north. People who fled before the advancing Japanese were interviewed. Many supplies had to be obtained in the Commonwealth. While high-grade inks were satisfactory and some types of paper were scarcely inferior to American brands, a number of products of local manufacture produced unpredictable results. Most of the highly complex technical equipment, so important for map making, had to be gotten from the United States. The men worked long and hard during the chill Australian spring to produce maps of the critical areas of New Guinea as quickly as possible. “This Buna business was ... miserable because at night the temperature was down to about freezing ... ,” the chronicler of the 648th reported. The men worked on the maps in overcoats and hats and continued work until their fingers got numb. By mid-November, the engineers were distributing strategic and tactical maps of the combat area. To be sure, these maps had inaccuracies, but as one of the topographic engineers pointed out, “any map, based on any photographs, is better than no map at all.”68
Approaching Buna
By early November, Allied troops were converging on Buna by air, land, and sea. As far back as mid-October, a combat team of the 32nd Division together with Company C of the 114th engineers had been flown to Wanigela. From there a party of infantry and engineers had attempted to march overland to Buna. About fifteen miles west of Wanigela, their way was blocked by the swift waters of the Musa. The engineers built a raft to ferry the infantry across, only to find that the trails on the far bank, some under seven feet of water, were impassable. The troops were then ordered to follow the river to its mouth. From there they were taken to Pongani in small boats, completing the movement on the 31st. While the Americans were moving up the coast, the Australians were securing nearby Goodenough Island. On the night of 22-23 October an Australian battalion landed and within twenty-four hours had driven off the Japanese. Americans and Australians were also approaching Buna overland from the southwest and southeast. On 8 and 9 November a battalion of infantry was flown to ,Abel’s Landing, while another went on to Pongani. The day after the infantry put down at Abel’s Landing, Company A of the 114th, less one platoon, arrived. Using native rafts and an assault boat, the engineers helped the troops cross the Musa three miles west of Fasari. The men then continued overland along jungle trails toward Buna. Meanwhile, the battalion, which, with its platoon of engineers, was slogging its way across the Owen Stanleys, had reached Jaure by 28 October. That same day advance elements continued their march through the northeastern foothills of the mountains. On 2 November the Australians recaptured Kokoda. The Allies would soon be in a position to attack.69
Among the Americans there was widespread optimism. The troops were cocky and their commanders seemed assured of an early victory. The men of the 32nd Division had a high regard for their own ability as fighters, an opinion shared by their commander, Maj. Gen. Edwin F. Harding, whose “confidence in the fighting qualities of the American Soldier” prompted him to write on 31 October, “I am not at all pessimistic about the outcome of this scrap.” The completion by the engineers of the landing strips north of the Owen Stanleys had greatly raised hopes for an easy campaign. On 20 October, the day after Abel’s Landing was completed, Harding sent word to MacArthur that “what promised to be a long, dull, plodding campaign against inhospitable nature is beginning to look more like Marengo than Hannibal crossing the Alps.” Nor was Harding greatly perturbed by the terrain around Buna. He reported “considerable open country in the area over which we will operate,” rated one native track leading into Buna as “a broad highway for this part of the world,” and pronounced a number of trails as suitable for motor traffic. He foresaw the need for rather extensive bridging but was prepared to deal with this contingency. Two weeks before
the scheduled assault, he stated his intention of having plenty of engineers on hand.70
Engineers in Combat
The enemy forces in Papua had withdrawn into three small pockets on the northeastern coast, one at Buna, another three miles to the northwest at Sanananda, and a third some five miles still farther west at Gona.71 The largest was the one at Buna. There the enemy held an area three-quarters of a mile wide, which extended from Buna Village eastward three miles to Cape Endaiadere, where the coast line turned abruptly southward. (Map II) Just to the east of the village was Musita Island and, beyond it, Entrance Creek. On the other side of the creek was the Government Station, usually called Buna Mission, consisting of three European houses and several dozen native huts at the edge of a coconut plantation. Beyond the plantation lay the major Allied objective, the airfield. Between the southeastern tip of this field and the shore to the south of Cape Endaiadere, the Japanese had cleared a dummy runway, which the Allied troops called the New Strip. Simemi Creek, flowing in a northerly direction, passed between the two airstrips. The Japanese occupied practically all the dry ground in the area. South of the enemy perimeter were jungle and boundless, impenetrable swamps, broken here and there by patches of kunai grass. Three native tracks led through this nearly impassable terrain to the enemy positions. One, extending northward from Dobodura, ran along the east bank of Entrance Creek to a point about a mile from its mouth, and then branched, with one fork leading westward across the creek to the village and the other continuing on to the mission. Another track from Dobodura ran northeastward to the native settlement of Simemi and from there continued on along the east bank of Siniemi Creek. Crossing the stream between the two airstrips over a low wooden bridge, it curved northwestward to Buna Mission. A third followed the coast to Cape Endaiadere. Since treacherous coral reefs offshore made an attack from the sea well-nigh impossible, the assault would have to be channeled along these three trails.
The attack was set for 16 November. The 7th Australian Division, under Maj. Gen. George A. Vasey, was to take Gona and Sanananda; the 32nd Division, under General Harding, was to capture Buna. The Australian and American forces would be separated by the Girua River, which emptied into the sea just west of Buna Village. Harding’s men
Map 11: Buna
were to converge on Buna along the three trails. The troops near the coast would be supplied by small boats moving up the coast from Milne Bay; those in the interior, mainly by airdrop. These makeshift arrangements would have to be relied upon until the engineers could clear fields for transports at Dobodura and open a port for ocean-going freighters at the deep-water harbor of Oro Bay, about fifteen miles south of Cape Endaiadere. The Allied commanders also planned to have the engineers put in a road from Oro Bay to Dobodura. As soon as possible the engineers were to transform the landing strips at Dobodura into a major Allied base for fighters and bombers—the first one north of the Owen Stanleys.
Trails, ports, and airfields figured large in Harding’s plans, but only two companies of the 114th Combat Battalion were assigned to the campaign. The makeup of this engineer force was, moreover, decided without the advice of Col. John J. Carew, the battalion’s commanding officer and Harding’s engineer. Carew knew little of Harding’s plans until 28 October, when he received orders to proceed to Moresby with one
member of his staff. On arriving in eastern Papua he found his units, Companies A and C, in poor shape. The men had almost no equipment or supplies. A small number of hand tools, a few coils of rope, and an assault boat or two made up almost their entire stock of engineer items. Carew learned that Harding was planning to bring heavy machinery, tools, and materials by boat from Milne Bay. The engineer units were no better trained than they were equipped. Prepared like the rest of the 32nd Division primarily to defend Australia, they had little knowledge of jungle warfare and almost none of night fighting, in which the Japanese excelled. Weary from their hard march to the Buna area, the men had to go into combat carrying on their backs such tools as they had in addition to their usual packs and arms.
First Contacts With the Enemy
At dawn on 16 November one battalion of infantry crossed the Samboga River and began its advance toward Cape Endaiadere, five miles to the north. Another moved inland from the coastal village of Embogo to Dobodura, its destination the eastern edge of the new strip. A third advanced along the trail toward Dobodura on its way to Ango and Buna. A platoon of thirty-five engineers, reinforced by a pioneer platoon of one officer and twenty-two infantrymen and a group of native carriers, accompanied each battalion. Hope ran high for a quick and easy victory. During the morning the three groups pushed ahead without seeing any signs of the enemy. The greatest annoyance was the heat, which was so oppressive that some of the men threw away their tools to lighten their load. As the pioneers hacked away at the underbrush, the engineers put the troops over the streams that crossed the trails every half mile or so. At some of the crossings they built footbridges; at others they constructed rafts to ferry the men over; at still others natives paddled the troops across in dugout canoes, sometimes pulling their craft by hand along a rope the engineers had stretched from shore to shore.
First contact with the enemy came that afternoon. At 1210, Japanese machine gunners near Cape Endaiadere opened fire on the column advancing along the coast but inflicted no damage. At 1300 forward elements on the inland trail routed an enemy patrol near Dobodura. The first big attack came at 1900, when enemy dive bombers strafed the column moving along the coast. Little thought had been given to the possibility of air attack. Now, in a mad scramble for shelter, the men dug slit trenches with whatever tools they could find. Shovels, bayonets, mess kits, and bare hands were brought into play. The main target of the Japanese was not the column of troops, but the luggers offshore bringing up supplies and ammunition. All the small craft were hit. Several sank immediately; the rest caught fire and exploded. Colonel Carew helped to rescue many of the survivors. On the beach when a lifeboat carrying the crew from one of the luggers reached shore, he called for volunteers to help him row the boat back toward the burning ships. Bombed and strafed, the rescuers neared one of the craft as its exploding ammunition was throwing
flaming debris in all directions. Carew and his men pulled a number of survivors from the water and took them safely to shore. The luggers and cargoes could not be saved. Their loss was a severe blow to Harding’s forces and the forward movement had to be postponed.72
The advance along the coast was resumed on the 19th. As the troops neared the Japanese positions south of Cape Endaiadere, the enemy opened up with murderous fire, pinning the men to the ground. The troops marching along the trail from Simemi to the airfields fared no better. They were stopped in their tracks by machine gun and rifle fire from positions near the bridge over Simemi Creek. To the west, the situation was equally serious. The area where the track from Dobodura branched to Buna Mission and Buna Village—the Triangle as it was called—bristled with defenses. When some of the men tried to flank the enemy positions, they sank into seemingly bottomless swamps.
It was now clear that the Allies had greatly underestimated the strength of the enemy’s position and his will to resist. Only about 2,200 troops were entrenched at Buna, but the excellence of their defenses was astonishing. The Japanese engineers had done a masterful job. Maj. David B. Parker, sent to Buna as engineer liaison officer with the First Australian Army, described the enemy’s defenses as “well planned,” his field fortifications as “comparatively impervious,” and his camouflage as “perfect.” The area was lavishly provided with bunkers, dugouts, and gun positions, many of them prepared long before the assault began. Bunkers were sturdily built of dirt, logs, and sandbags, topped with thick roofs, and connected by trenches. Gun positions were well sited and mutually supporting. The Japanese had made expert use of leaves and grass for camouflage. Many bunkers and pillboxes were completely concealed by the lush jungle growth which had sprung quickly from their covering of earth. Some were so hard to spot that the attacking troops unwittingly passed them by, only to be shot at from behind.
The attackers were handicapped by a dearth of information on the area they were trying to take. Troops in the jungle swamps and grass flats before Buna could neither see the enemy nor learn much about his positions.73 The Australian maps to the scale of one inch to four miles, on hand when the campaign began, were so inaccurate as to be almost worthless. The small number of hastily prepared photomaps that shortly began to reach the front were of some help, especially to the artillery, but lacked much essential data. No enemy positions and few jungle trails appeared on them, and many place names were missing. Lt. Gen. Robert L. Eichelberger, commanding general of I Corps, who had under him all American combat forces in the Southwest Pacific, was highly critical of the mapping effort, condemning not only the shortage of maps but also the poor quality of those
Aerial view of the Buna area adjacent to Simemi Creek
furnished. “[In] a dense jungle where a bunker or entrenchment cannot be seen from thirty yards away,” he later wrote, “aerial photography must be swallowed with a full shaker of salt.”74 Since aerial observation was so ineffective, reconnaissance on the ground seemed the only answer. But it proved to be hazardous and difficult. The Japanese held all the high ground, and riflemen who seemed to be everywhere were so well concealed that it was nearly impossible to spot them. Infantry commanders had great difficulty getting their men to volunteer for patrol duty, and Colonel Carew had no engineers to spare. Most of what little information was obtained came from natives who lived near Buna.
On the Buna perimeter, the engineers were fully occupied with roads and bridges. Besides having to maintain twenty-eight miles of existing trails, they had many miles of new construction to do. With the start of the rains in late November, jobs multiplied and became more arduous. Roads were transformed into seas of mud, and flash floods swept bridges away. If routes were to be kept open, bridges had to be repaired quickly and long stretches of corduroy put in.
There was almost no machinery, and the shortage of hand tools remained acute. Machetes, now the most useful of tools, were especially scarce. The small stock of rope originally brought in had long since been exhausted. Between 15 and 24 November no building supplies were delivered to the front. The handful of engineers were limited to pioneer construction. Not properly trained in such work, they sometimes bungled. In laying corduroy, they repeatedly put down logs without first providing bottom stringers, with the result that the corduroy soon sank out of sight in the mud.
The plight of the engineers would have been much worse had it not been for the Papuans. Familiar with the local flora, the natives pointed out the kinds of timber best suited for construction. They demonstrated how to sink poles into sandy stream beds by hand and how to use lashings of bark to hold bridge timbers in place. The size of the native work force available to the engineers fluctuated widely. Although the Australians had recruited well over a thousand Papuan helpers, none were at first attached permanently to any unit. Blamey’s headquarters parceled the natives out to the various commands on a day-to-day basis. Of the 400 allotted to Colonel Carew at the start of the campaign, none continued, uninterrupted, on construction. From time to time, large groups were taken off engineer projects to act as stretcher bearers. After especially severe rains, when the roads were impassable to vehicles, all were used to carry supplies. The engineers might have several hundred natives one day and none the next. Papuans were not the only ones to be diverted from construction. When the 1st Platoon of Company A of the 114th reached the front on 21 November, after marching over the Owen Stanleys, it was assigned to carrying rations and ammunition for the infantry, a chore it had for over a month. Since the natives would not go near the front, there was nothing left to do but use the troops to carry supplies.
Because the loss of the luggers had crippled supply up the coast, completion of an airstrip at Dobodura was all the more urgent. By 20 November the 2nd Platoon of Company C of the 114th had reached Dobodura, where, together with 22 infantrymen and a group of natives, they began work on the first runway. Clearing away kunai grass and scrub trees with brushhooks, machetes, and bayonets, they completed the first temporary strip in a day. On the 21st, Company A, less one platoon, arrived to help enlarge the field. Next morning the engineers were ordered north to support the infantry trying to get to Buna Mission and Buna Village. Since no quartermaster units had yet arrived, 25 men stayed behind to stake out a cemetery and unload the supplies already being flown in from Moresby. On 25 November, 210 men of the 43rd General Service Regiment were flown to Dobodura to build more runways. They brought with them part of their equipment—five mowing machines, two tractors, one sheepsfoot roller, and one grader, all of which they had cut up with torches at Moresby in order to get them aboard the planes. As soon as the machines were welded together again, the engineers, with a force of natives,
43rd Engineers mow Kunai grass on the old Dobodura Strip No. 1
began clearing the kunai grass for additional strips.
The Fall of Buna
By the end of November little progress had been made against the enemy. On the front near Buna Village and Buna Mission, the troops, now known as Urbana Force, were stymied. Warren Force, fighting near the airfields, was likewise unable to advance. Alarmed by the way the campaign was going, MacArthur prepared to take action. On 1 December he gave General Eichelberger direct command of the bogged down forces. When the new commander reached the front, a number of top officers were relieved, and units which had become jumbled together were unscrambled and assigned to other parts of the line. As Eichelberger took over, things were already taking a turn for the better. Tanks were being brought from Milne Bay, and fresh Australian and American troops were scheduled to arrive soon. The airlift from Moresby to Dobodura was becoming more effective. Efforts of the engineers on the trails were showing results. Supplies could be carried to the front more rapidly, and jeeps could travel the road from Dobodura to Simemi. More accurate maps, though still too few, were being provided. The survey platoon of the 69th Topographic Company was on
its way to Moresby, where it was to help members of the Australian Survey Corps bring maps of Buna up to date.75 A map depot was being set up at Moresby to speed distribution to the troops. In nearly every respect, the outlook was more favorable than when the campaign began two weeks before.
Five days after Eichelberger assumed command, the offensive was renewed. During the next few days, the troops of Warren Force, at the eastern end of the New Strip, made slight gains. But the progress of those advancing towards the bridge over Simemi Creek was negligible. The span remained in enemy hands. On Urbana front, events took a more favorable turn. The troops worked their way up the west bank of Entrance Creek and then followed the trail to Buna Village. They broke through to the sea just east of the village. The objective now was to clear the entire area west of the Triangle, and then seize the heavily fortified Triangle itself. One noncommissioned officer and twenty men of Company A of the 114th engineers were assigned to Urbana Force as a “roving detachment” to destroy captured bunkers, dispose of duds, and build bridges. Everywhere the enemy’s resistance was fanatical. Nevertheless, his defenses began to crack. On 14 December, the Americans entered Buna Village, already abandoned by the Japanese. Gona had fallen to the Australians five days before.
Eichelberger scheduled an all-out attack for 18 December. On Warren front, the American troops, recently reinforced by Australians, were to advance up the coast to Cape Endaiadere, turn westward, and push on to Simemi Creek near its mouth, thus getting behind the enemy’s line at the airstrips. One American battalion, supported by the tanks which had recently arrived, was to move over the bridge between the strips and drive on to Buna Mission. At the same time, Urbana Force was to reduce the Triangle and capture Musita Island. The outcome of these operations would depend in considerable degree on the engineers’ success in bridging Simemi and Entrance Creeks.
On Warren front, the drive along the coast was a complete success. The Japanese positions on Cape Endaiadere were overrun. But when the troops turned westward and began to push into the area behind the new strip, they were again held back by intense fire from enemy bunkers. Meanwhile, the advance through the swamps towards the bridge over Simemi Creek was painfully slow. When, on the loth, the troops at last converged on the span, they were fired on by about fifty riflemen and several machine gunners near the old strip. The vitally important bridge, a low, wooden structure, 125 feet long and 10 feet wide, was found to be in fair shape, but the flooring was poor and a 12-foot section had been blown out of the far end. Unable to cross the bridge, the troops tried to ford the creek at several places, but found the water over 6 feet deep. A smoke screen was put down under cover of which infantrymen tried to span the gap with a catwalk, which turned out to be too short. Meanwhile, the Australians discovered a ford some distance to the north and began crossing over. Since tanks were
Improvised Bridge Over Entrance Creek
slated to support the combat troops, repair of the bridge was imperative. At dawn of the 23rd, while the infantry strove to clear out the Japanese who were placing fire on the structure, engineers of Company C moved in to repair the bridge. Soon after the work began, the enemy opened up with machine guns and mortars. When the men took cover, the Japanese stopped firing. Staying out of sight for a time, the troops returned to their job and continued working until the enemy fire again became intolerable, when they once more took cover. This round of operations was repeated four times before the bridge was ready. That afternoon, the remaining infantry and four tanks crossed over. By the 27th, the enemy positions around the airstrip were crumbling.
After a faltering start, Urbana Force also scored some decisive gains. Additional troops which had begun arriving in the Buna area were sent into the line to reinforce the weary veterans. A two-pronged attack on Musita Island and the Triangle was launched on 18 December. Attempts to capture Musita were repulsed, and the troops withdrew that evening. To the south, the infantry
made repeated thrusts at the Triangle, all of which failed. Eichelberger then changed his plans. Orders were issued for the infantry to cross Entrance Creek to the north of the Triangle, bypass that heavily fortified area, and push on to Buna Mission. To get the troops over the creek, engineers of the roving detachment lashed coconut logs together and laid them across two captured boats which they had anchored in the middle of the stream. On 22 December one company of infantry crossed this bridge safely. Several hundred yards downstream, the other company, with no bridge, was forced to swim to the opposite bank and a number of men were drowned. That same day the attack on Musita was renewed. The engineers had by this time completed a makeshift footbridge to the island. The infantry swarmed over and, meeting little opposition, pressed on to the bridge near the mouth of Entrance Creek, which they would have to cross to get to the mission. There the men ran into such heavy fire that they could get no farther. By this time the troops who had crossed upstream were driving eastward through the plantation south of the mission. After overrunning the Japanese defenses, they reached the sea on the 29th.
Meanwhile, construction of logistic facilities was not being neglected. An Australian field company had made a start on docking facilities at Oro Bay, some twenty miles southeast of Buna. Part of the unit began work on an urgently needed road from Oro Bay to Dobodura. The Australian engineers had selected a rather difficult route, much of it through hilly country, in preference to an alternate “low level” way which paralleled the coast and then passed through extensive swamplands along the Embogo River. Progress on the air base, port, and road was understandably slow. Though they generally employed several hundred Papuans, the Australians had less equipment than the 43rd. On 18 December Company B of the 43rd, with a large stock of equipment, left Milne Bay under orders to unload at Oro Bay, make arrangements for forwarding the machinery to Dobodura, and then march inland to work on the airfields. These engineers were not able to carry out their instructions. When Sverdrup visited the front at the end of December, he found part of Company B at work near the bay, building a stretch of road through a swamp where the water sometimes reached a depth of four feet. Noting that the road was so poorly located it might never be completed, he set out to find the rest of the unit. He discovered the men unloading ships and doing odd jobs at Oro Bay. Part of the equipment, he was told, was in the hands of the Australians. Inquiries revealed that one of Blamey’s officers, mistakenly thinking the unit had been assigned to New Guinea Force, had taken charge of it. Only after Sverdrup had made it clear that the 43rd was under USASOS was Company B permitted to go on to Dobodura. The mix-up, Sverdrup wrote, “had resulted in loss of valuable time which will adversely affect construction of the airstrips. ...”76
By the time the struggle for Buna moved into its final phases, engineer strength was greatly depleted. The heat, the weeks of unceasing labor, the
lack of equipment and supplies had taken their toll. Torrential downpours were a regular occurrence. “It was common practice to leave the M helmet outside the tents ... at night in order the next morning to estimate the amount of rain which had fallen,” Major Parker reported. “... if the helmet was completely full of water, the rainfall was considered ... normally severe.77 Many of the men were exhausted. Disease had cut the ranks severely. When the two companies of the 114th arrived at the front, they totaled 304 men. Six weeks later they were down to 140. At Dobodura, where the engineers had a comparatively easy time of it, 12 percent were suffering from fever or malaria at the end of the year.
Reliance on the Papuans became increasingly heavy. By late December 400 had been permanently assigned to the 114th, and attempts were being made to get too to assist the 43rd. As a rule, the natives camped in groups of too, with each group supervised by an Australian officer. Through discussions with the Australians as well as through experience, the engineers learned how best to handle the Papuans. Men from the same village were kept together, since the natives were suspicious of anyone not from their own tribe. Since each tribe had its own specialty—for example, the coastal natives excelled in bridging streams and the hill people in hacking out trails—it was advantageous to keep the Papuans on the jobs they could do best. Here, again, competition between villages was an incentive to speed.
Quick to learn and proud of the part they were playing in the war, the Papuans made a substantial contribution to the Allied cause. “The success of engineer operations in this campaign,” wrote Colonel Carew, “was due, in no small way, to the loyal, whole hearted, and tireless efforts of the natives. ...”78
On 28 December, Eichelberger alerted the troops on Musita for the final assault on Buna Mission. Entrance Creek still barred the way. Spanning the stream near its mouth was a ramshackle, native-built bridge, about 125 feet long, with a large hole in the flooring. Enemy bunkers on a spit of land jutting into the mouth of the creek from the mission side could rake the bridge with machine gun fire. A plan of attack was worked out. A group of infantry was to cross the creek in assault boats and charge the bunkers. While the enemy was busy beating off this attack, several men would carry planks to the gap in the bridge and drop them in place. Then the infantry would race across. When a call was made for volunteers to fix the bridge, 4 engineers of the roving detachment and 2 infantrymen offered to take on the perilous job. Shortly after 1700 on the 29th, the boats shoved off, but on nearing the opposite bank, they came under such heavy fire they had to turn back. Meanwhile, the volunteers ran out on the bridge and hastily threw three timbers over the gap in the flooring. One of the engineers was shot dead. The 5 other men returned unhurt. Two infantrymen succeeded in crossing over, but before the rest could follow, the
Chow time at a native labor camp, New Caledonia
planks toppled into the water. The way to the mission remained closed.
Visiting Musita Island the next day and hearing of the attempt to repair the bridge, Sverdrup persuaded Cpl. Charles H. Gray, one of the engineer volunteers of the night before, to take him to see the structure. Gray and the two surviving engineers of his party had offered to make another try at repairing the bridge. Since the Japanese were now on the alert, Sverdrup believed that a second attempt, if made while the bunkers were still intact, would be suicidal. While going over the ground with Gray, he noted that a spit of land extending eastward from Buna Village came close to the one jutting into the creek from the opposite bank. On returning to the infantry command post, he suggested that assault troops ford the narrows and make a flank attack on the pillboxes. The infantry commanders had apparently been thinking along the same lines. A reconnaissance made the night before had disclosed that the water between the two spits of land was only ankle deep at low tide, which occurred at four in the morning. That night two companies set out to wade the narrows. In a confused action the men got across but were unable to knock out the bunkers. Repair
of the bridge had to wait once again.
On New Year’s Day Urbana Force launched its final assault. The troops who had cut across the coconut plantation to the sea attacked the mission from the southeast. The men who had crossed the shallows again advanced along the spit, and by late afternoon of 2 January had wiped out the bunkers commanding the bridge. The engineers thereupon repaired the span and within an hour the infantry were streaming across. By the evening of the 2nd, organized resistance had ended. The enemy survivors were mopped up during the next few days.
Sanananda
Between the capture of Gona on 9 December and the fall of Buna Mission, the Australians had made little headway west of the Girua. General Vasey’s forces, consisting initially of Australian troops and one battalion of American infantry, had been unable to do much more than maintain roadblocks inside the Japanese outpost area and keep the enemy bottled up. In late December MacArthur sped reinforcements. A regimental combat team of the 41st Division was ordered north from Queensland. In the van went the 1st Platoon of Company B, 116th Engineer Combat Battalion.79 On 31 December the platoon flew into Dobodura and from there marched to Ango and on across the Girua to the Sanananda front. The engineers relieved the Australians at one of the roadblocks. The first element of the 41st Division to go into combat, the platoon suffered its first casualties when two men were wounded while laying corduroy beyond the American lines. Meantime, the Buna campaign over, an American battalion set out with a number of tanks to reinforce the Australians. Ahead of them went Company B of the 114th, clearing the trail and putting down corduroy so that the armor could pass. In early January the remainder of the regimental combat team of the 41st Division reached the front. The 2nd Platoon of Company B of the 116th was committed to combat; the 3rd was held in reserve. Though they encountered the same swampy, jungled terrain that the 114th had found at Buna, the 116th engineers were somewhat better equipped, for each man carried along with his field equipment a machete, a shovel or pick, and a coil of rope or wire. The men were kept busy digging trenches, building bridges, corduroying roads, guarding positions, and carrying supplies—often under fire. Gradually the enemy strongholds were reduced, and by 22 January all organized resistance at Sanananda had been wiped out.
Guadalcanal
When the Papua Campaign ended, fighting was still in progress on Guadalcanal. The first phase of the battle, during which the marines struggled to consolidate their foothold and the Japanese tried vainly to dislodge them, had lasted for more than three months. While the Americans strove to hold their beachhead and to gain air and naval superiority, the enemy tried repeatedly
to reinforce the defending garrison. Sometimes the Japanese convoys moving down from the north were intercepted by Allied ships and planes; more frequently they got through. As the enemy strength increased, Ghormley dispatched more units to the island. In late September, the first regiment of an additional Marine division was sent in, and early in October the first Army ground troops arrived—the 164th Infantry of the Americal Division. In the middle of the month an estimated 16,000 Japanese were put ashore. Shortly thereafter, Admiral William F. Halsey replaced Ghormley as commander of the South Pacific Area. Late in October the Japanese made repeated efforts to retake the airfield, launching five strong, but unsuccessful, attacks from the 23rd to the 25th alone. From to 15 November, when a big enemy task force sought to land reinforcements, the contest for Guadalcanal reached its climax. In furious air and sea battles the Japanese power in the area was broken. The campaign now entered a second phase during which the enemy’s position deteriorated steadily as his men were pushed into the northwestern corner of the island. Fresh American troops, among them the 25th Infantry Division and the remainder of the Americal, were brought in to relieve the tired marines. General Patch, who assumed command of the Guadalcanal forces on 9 December, got the final offensive under way. By January the enemy was being crushed in a giant pincers, one jaw of which extended westward along the northern coast, the other southwestward through the interior. The issue was no longer in doubt. Destruction of the Japanese on Guadalcanal was merely a matter of time.80
During the early months of the struggle, the engineers did their chief work on Espiritu Santo. Since the unfinished Japanese airstrip on Guadalcanal had been damaged in the preinvasion bombardment, Espiritu Santo was for a time the most advanced place from which land-based planes could operate. Even after the runway on Guadalcanal—Henderson Field, the Americans named it—became usable late in August, Espiritu continued to serve as a major base for bombers and reconnaissance planes and as a staging point for transports. Barely finished on 7 August, the Espiritu runway had almost no facilities. Supplies were stored under coconut trees, pilots slept on the ground or in their planes, and bombers were fueled by bucket brigades. With the arrival of additional construction units, conditions began to improve. First to reach the island was the 7th Naval Construction Battalion, joined on 23 September by Company B of the 810th Aviation Battalion. While the Seabees concentrated on completing a bomber field at Pallikulo, near the southeastern tip of the island, the aviation engineers began construction of a second one at nearby Pekoa. Clearing the tangled growth of teak and banyan trees which covered the Pekoa site was in itself a major undertaking, made still more difficult by frequent enemy bombings. Yet, by early December, a coral runway 5,500 feet long, 2 miles of taxiways,
and 75 hardstands had been put in. On 23 November, the 822nd Engineer Aviation Battalion had landed. Part of this unit went to Pallikulo to build hardstands, taxiways, a pier, and a control tower, and part went to Pekoa to help the engineers there. Most of the battalion, however, was put to building roads, camps, and a hospital. Although the facilities on Espiritu were limited and crude, they played an important role in backing up the forces in the Solomons.81
The first Army engineers to reach Guadalcanal were members of the 57th Combat Battalion of the Americal Division who arrived on 12 November in the midst of the decisive battles. After unloading during an air attack and witnessing a naval engagement off the coast, the men took the lay of the land. Clearly, engineers were needed here. Some ninety miles long and twenty-five miles wide, Guadalcanal had a generally rugged terrain. A chain of mountains ran its entire length from east to west, with the highest peak, Mount Popomanisu, reaching an elevation of nearly 8,000 feet. Along the central part of the northern coast were flat, sandy beaches, in back of which was a plain extending west to the Matanikau River. Beyond the river, the plain narrowed and was broken by ridges and ravines. The American beachhead was on the northern coast east of the Matanikau, whereas the main enemy strength was lodged near Mount Austen in the foothills southwest of the American position and in the area beyond the river. Guadalcanal had almost no roads. At the time of the invasion, the island’s network had consisted only of a trail along the northern shore and a few native footpaths into the hinterland. Marine engineers had done much good work, improving the coastal track and starting a road toward Mount Austen, but an immense job remained to be done. Although the 57th Combat Battalion was to be employed in clearing mines, supplying water, and doing many different types of construction, its principal concern was to be roads and bridges. The men did not have long to wait before beginning. On 18 November they were sent to support the infantry in an attempt to push the Japanese westward along the coast. In a hard-fought action, the troops succeeded in establishing a bridgehead on the west bank of the Matanikau. By the 21st the engineers had completed a span over the flooded stream and heavy vehicles were rolling across. Two days later the Americans were firmly established west of the river.82
Late November and early December witnessed preparations for the final offensive. Now the combat battalion was occupied with what the men referred to as “normal duties.” One group helped the marines clear out enemy machine gun nests, using dynamite and
bottles filled with gasoline and explosives. Another helped construct a fighter strip near the front lines, while marines stood guard against enemy raiding parties. A third worked to complete a hospital and provide shelters for division headquarters. Some of the engineers prepared artillery and radar positions along the northern shore. Others took over the operation of water points. By far the largest contingent worked in the valley of the Matanikau, building bridges and cutting trails. Prevented by the shortage of cargo space from bringing in more than a fraction of their equipment, the men had to do most of their work by hand. As in Papua, the climate and terrain were anything but favorable. The days were intensely hot, the nights were cold, and downpours were frequent. Streams were swollen and roads were mud-holes. The ridges west of the river presented an added difficulty. Whenever they could, the engineers ran the roads through the lowland rain forests, laying corduroy of coconut logs to keep the traffic out of the muck. Where the jungles were impenetrable, the road builders had to take to the ridges. Because construction here required innumerable fills, great quantities of coral and gravel had to be hand-loaded and trucked in. The men worked long hours, their clothes often wringing wet, and they shivered through the chilly nights. Before long, symptoms of fever and malaria began to appear.83
In mid-December the pace began to quicken. On the 16th General Patch ordered the capture of Mount Austen. Two days earlier, a part of the 57th engineers had started extending the trail the marines had built toward the enemy strongpoint. For a time the road crews kept pace with the advancing infantry. But when the foothills were reached, construction slowed almost to a halt. Here the engineers encountered slopes with grades of up to sixty degrees. The rains became more intense. The battalion’s heavy equipment, the trucks and dozers left behind on New Caledonia, were missed more sorely than before. As the engineers tried to extend the trail up the slippery mountainsides, the infantry outran its line of supply. Such food and ammunition as the forward elements received was dropped from the air or carried in by native bearers. The hard work of the engineers was sometimes coupled with danger. On the 19th, a group of enemy infantrymen infiltrated the American lines to harry the men busy on the road. On the 21st one officer and five enlisted men of the 57th answered a call for volunteers to remove a mine field that stood in the way of the advance. These engineers, locating the mines without detection devices, removed 225 before they were ordered to stop. They met their death when the truck in which they were hauling the mines to a depot mysteriously blew up. Occasionally the men of the 57th applied engineering techniques to the problems of other services. When the medics had difficulty evacuating casualties from the
heights around Mount Austen, the engineers devised litters with skids that could be eased downhill and stretched cables on which litters could be moved across ravines by means of pulleys. The main work of building roads meanwhile went forward, receiving a boost on 30 December when a sizable group of natives was assigned to help. By early January the Japanese on Mount Austen had been compressed into a small area and the infantry had turned west toward the Matanikau.84
On 10 January Patch launched the final offensive. The Americal and 2nd Marine Divisions struck west along the coast and the 25th Infantry Division pushed through the hills beyond Mount Austen, with the object of surrounding and annihilating the enemy forces. Two engineer combat battalions took part in the advance, the 57th and the 65th, the latter having recently arrived from Hawaii with the 25th Division. The second engineer unit was more poorly equipped than the first, for it lacked not only bridging materials gasoline-operated saws, and many minor items, but dump trucks as well. It had but two bulldozers, described by the battalion commander as being “of inferior make, partially worn out, and too light for the job.” Again, the engineers functioned mainly as road builders. But now, in addition to extending the interior and coastal trails, they had to keep open lateral communications between the two spearheads of the advance. Natives helped hack trails through the jungles and put down corduroy. The difficulty of supplying troops in the interior was eased to some extent when the engineers dredged the Matanikau, enabling boats to ply up and down the river. As the fighting moved westward into increasingly rugged terrain, ravines too deep for filling were spanned with trestles. Heavy rains, almost unbearable heat, and frequent bombings and strafings added to the strain. By mid-January the malaria rate in some of the engineer platoons had reached 40 percent. Gradually the Americans made their way westward. On February an amphibious force landed near Cape Esperance, on the northwestern end of the island, cutting off the Japanese retreat. During the following week, some of the enemy were evacuated, the remainder were hemmed in. On the afternoon of 9 February the engineers got the welcome news that organized resistance had ended.85
Problems of Logistics
Japan’s expansion southward had been stopped. Australia and the islands in the South Pacific at last seemed secure. The victories at Buna and Guadalcanal, however significant in themselves, were also indicative of the growing Allied strength in the Far Pacific. While combat troops were fighting in Papua and the Solomons, service forces, some
distance to the rear, were laying the foundations for further victories. Australia, New Zealand, and New Caledonia, once hardly more than rallying points, could now be counted as bases capable of supporting major offensives. Stretching from Port Moresby to Fiji was a chain of advance bases that guarded the vital areas to the south and rendered more vulnerable the enemy’s forward positions. Communications with the United States were surer than before. Slowly the Allies were gaining the upper hand.
To accomplish so much had not been easy. The very presence of the U.S. Army in the South and Southwest Pacific was the reaction to Japanese offensives rather than the result of prewar planning. Before the outbreak of war, little thought, if any, had been given to the unique problems that now confronted the commanders of the South and Southwest Pacific. Such questions as how to go about building in New Guinea and New Caledonia and what the size and composition of an engineer force should be and how it could be supplied had scarcely been raised, much less answered. Not only the absence of long-range planning but also the immense distances, the shortage of shipping, the production lag in the United States, and the priority of the war against Germany, all conspired to slow the progress of the war in the Pacific. In the two theaters which then bore the brunt of the conflict against Japan, the engineers found themselves under the necessity of relying on makeshifts, exploiting local resources to the utmost, and exercising ingenuity. This was no less true in the rear areas than in the combat zones.
Troop Shortages
One of the principal drawbacks was the shortage of engineers. In both the South and Southwest Pacific the number was far too small. By the end of 1942, there were but 7,684 under MacArthur and 8,770 under Halsey to support about 100,000 Army troops in each theater. Not only were the engineer components too slim, but they were also not properly constituted. There were too few construction units, and most of them were not adequately equipped. Only the aviation battalions had anything like enough machinery. The general service regiments and separate battalions, originally organized as hand labor outfits and expected to use machinery only to a limited extent, were not prepared for the tasks they faced in the Pacific. The combat battalions, which frequently had to be thrown on construction jobs, were neither trained nor equipped for such missions. Efforts to get more of the right kind of construction units from the United States were thwarted by the policy of defeating Germany first and by the shortage of shipping. An alternative was to increase the effectiveness of the units already in the theaters. In the Southwest Pacific the separate battalions were converted into general service regiments, and the tables of equipment of all the regiments were then revised to bring them more in line with those of the aviation battalions. In both theaters, additional equipment was authorized for units engaged in construction. Still, the engineer forces in SWPA and SOPAC (South Pacific Area) could not meet the requirements. Fortunately, additional military and civilian forces were on hand
to perform much vital construction. The engineers of the Southwest Pacific received their greatest support from the Royal Australian Engineers, who by late 1942 totaled some 25,000, from the Royal Australian Air Force engineers, now grown in number to about 2,700, and from the Allied Works Council, which had 52,000 men on its rolls at the end of the year. Seabees and Marine engineers, together with New Zealand troops and civilians, undertook a large share of construction in the South Pacific. In remote and backward areas, it was the natives who often made up a large part of the labor force.86
Supply Problems
Just as critical as the shortage of troops was the scarcity of supplies. Insofar as the Engineers were concerned, the War Department’s plans for supplying the far Pacific were unrealistic. Five categories of material were furnished the Army. The Engineers were concerned primarily with two of them, Class II and Class IV. Issued to units in accordance with tables of equipment, Class II items were expected to suffice for routine work. Class IV stocks were those needed over and above Class II, usually for extensive construction projects. Soon after the United States entered the war, the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-4, authorized a go-day level of supply for both Class II and Class IV items in the far Pacific. In July 1942 a go-day reserve was added. Engineer stocks in the two theaters never approached such levels. Shipments from the United States fell short of requirements, and local resources were not rich enough to make up the deficiency. In rugged jungle terrain where everything had to be built from the ground up, supplies were expended in unprecedented amounts. The engineers in the Southwest Pacific received more materiel in terms of tons from all sources than any other service—about 40 percent of the total. But since most of their supplies were heavy construction materials, which were expended as quickly as they were obtained, the engineers were not able to build up any reserves. To make matters worse, the engineers in the theaters did not get detailed information on strategic plans far enough in advance to make intelligent estimates of what or how much they would need. By the end of the year construction forces were still operating “virtually on a hand to mouth basis.”87
After construction equipment and materials in the United States had been earmarked for the Pacific, months elapsed before they reached their destinations. One reason for the lag was the small proportion of shipping space allotted to engineer items. Although their supplies were exceedingly bulky, and although the Engineers were more
heavily dependent on shipments from the United States than most of the other services—the Quartermaster Corps, for example, could procure plenty of food in Australia and New Zealand, whereas the Engineers could get almost no heavy machinery there—only 14 percent of the cargo space on transpacific transports was reserved for the Engineers. From April through December 1912, 353,023 measurement tons of cargo were shipped from the United States to the Quartermaster Corps in the Southwest Pacific, only 53,500 tons to the Engineers. Partly because of inadequate transportation and partly because of such factors as equipment shortages and administrative delays, engineer troops were sent from the United States without their machinery. With monotonous regularity, units arrived with little or no equipment. On 7 November the 131st Combat Battalion landed in New Caledonia with three dump trucks; by the end of the year the rest of their equipment still had not arrived. The 828th Aviation Battalion reached Efate in mid-November; its equipment did not show up until February. Much time was wasted because units had almost no equipment to work with. As Matthews pointed out, an engineer unit without its plant and tools is like an artillery unit without its guns.”88 Once ships put in at Brisbane, Sydney, or Auckland, there remained the work of sorting and distributing their cargoes. Consignments were often jumbled; ships’ manifests, incorrect; and labels, missing. Distances within the theaters were enormous. Ships traveling from Brisbane to Port Moresby had to cover a distance of 1,500 miles; those going from Noumea to Guadalcanal, 1,000. Shortages of local shipping intensified the problem. The lack of port facilities made matters still worse, especially at Noumea harbor, where congestion was particularly severe.89 It is hardly surprising that many engineers in New Guinea and the Solomons firmly believed that supplies intended for the forward areas were being held back by commanders at rear bases to be used on their own special projects.
Such little equipment as the units did receive, they had trouble keeping in working order. Part of what they got was in poor repair, while much of it was too light for heavy construction jobs. All of it was put to hard and continuous use by the troops, many of whom had inadequate training as operators and slight knowledge of preventive maintenance. Breakdowns were frequent and once out of commission, a machine might stand idle a long time. First to be reckoned with was the exasperating shortage of spare parts, a shortage aggravated by the great variety of makes and models to be serviced. Four different makes of medium-type tractors alone were sent to the engineers in the Pacific. Each had its own line of parts to be stocked and distributed. Next was the matter of finding skilled mechanics. Repeated requests
from the theaters for equipment repair units brought the word from Washington that none were available. Finally, on o November, the 472nd Engineer Maintenance Company landed at Noumea, the sole unit of its kind to be sent to the far Pacific in 1942. Within a few days the men were swamped with work. Because their shop equipment was being sent on a later transport, they had to tackle the tremendous backlog of repairs with a few tools borrowed here and there.90 A month after reaching New Caledonia, the unit’s commander wrote, “Life is very busy over here, but very interesting, what with three-cylinder Southern Cross engines, Leeds-Fowler power units, five-cylinder Paxman-Ricardo diesel engines, 75-year-old French locomotives, Nippon brand cement mixers, [and] miscellaneous Japanese electrical apparatus ... there is never a dull moment.”91 The situation in the Southwest Pacific was not encouraging. Visiting the two theaters in January 1943, Lt. Col. Raymond L. Harrison, head of the Spare Parts Branch, Supply Division, Office of the Chief of Engineers, was alarmed to find that 40 percent of the equipment in SWPA was deadlined. Recalling the prodigal expenditure of equipment and spare parts on construction jobs in the States, he wrote his chief, “I cannot help but believe ... that sufficient preference is not being given to overseas requirements... I am appalled by the lack of equipment and spare parts in overseas theaters with active fighting fronts.”92
Both Australia and New Zealand were making determined efforts to ease the shortage of construction supplies. Having diverted as much as they felt they could spare from existing stocks and current production to American projects, the Australians branched out into new manufacturing fields. Using pilot models developed in Colonel Teale’s office from designs drawn by General Casey’s staff, the seven firms of the Earth Moving Manufacturers Group tooled up to make heavy construction machinery. Between April and September 1942 the engineers contracted for the manufacture of £2,000,000 worth of heavy equipment in the Commonwealth. Not much equipment could be expected from New Zealand. The only supplier in SOPAC, New Zealand had a much smaller productive capacity than Australia and was itself badly in need of machinery. Almost no tractors had been imported since 1938, and in 1940 the best of New Zealand’s plant had been sent to the Middle East, Malaya, and Fiji. By September 1942 members of the New Zealand Supply Mission in Washington were complaining that their country was “almost without plant,” and Prime Minister Fraser was warning that important defense construction could not be completed unless tractors and carryalls were forthcoming from the United States. But New Zealand was able to contribute some supplies. Like Australia, it furnished materials on reverse lend-lease
through the Joint Purchasing Board. The New Zealand Joint Supply Council turned over to the Americans names of local firms supplying the Dominion’s armed services, with the understanding that these concerns would make goods available at the same preferential prices charged the New Zealand forces. The Dominion became the principal, and for some items the only source of engineer construction materials in the South Pacific. It furnished large quantities of cement, asphalt, plywood, piping, and fibrolite roofing. Yet however hard the Australians and New Zealanders might try, they could succeed in easing only slightly the shortage of construction supplies.93
Supply Organization in the South Pacific
In some respects, the engineers in SOPAC were worse off than those in SWPA. The South Pacific had only a rudimentary logistical organization at the time the Guadalcanal Campaign began. Each of the island garrisons was more or less independent and each was left largely to its own resources. Coordination between supply agencies of the Army and the Navy left much to be desired. Once the struggle for Guadalcanal had begun, the need for better control became increasingly apparent. By November action could no longer be postponed. Scores of ships jammed Noumea harbor awaiting their turn at the docks. Troop movements were slowed. Units building on Efate and Espiritu Santo and troops fighting on Guadalcanal meanwhile waited for sorely needed supplies. On o November the War Department activated Services of Supply (SOS), USAFISPA, under the command of Brig. Gen. Robert G. Breene. Headquarters, originally at Auckland, was moved to Noumea at the end of the month. Breene established three subordinate service commands, one on New Caledonia, another on New Zealand, and a third on Fiji. The setup at the other bases was left unchanged for the time being, but plans were made to organize additional commands if the situation warranted. The job of Engineer, SOS, went to Colonel Beadle. Since he continued to serve also on Harmon’s staff, he henceforth acted in a dual capacity. In December he transferred all personnel from his section in USAFISPA to the one in SOS, retaining purely nominal duties as Engineer, USAFISPA. Since his office in SOS was now the sole agency for supervising and planning engineer work in the South Pacific, Beadle had important responsibilities. It was he who must find the wherewithal to carry out the Army’s construction program in SOPAC, get more engineer troops and equipment from the United States, and exploit local resources to the fullest. It was he too who must handle the difficult assignment of fitting the Army engineers into an Allied theater under the command of a naval officer.94
Australian-American Cooperation
In the Southwest Pacific one of the foremost problems continued to be that of bringing about more effective Allied cooperation. The Australian Government kept a tight rein on military construction within the Commonwealth and its territories. The views of the Curtin cabinet and those of the U.S. engineers did not always coincide. One point of difference was organized labor. The government, drawing much of its support from the trade unions, was sensitive to their demands. The engineers, who had to rely on Australian workmen for many urgent jobs, deplored what they considered the government’s pampering of the workers. Of even greater concern to the engineers was the government’s attitude toward the construction program as a whole. Many projects that the Australians seemed to consider highly important the engineers continued to regard as unnecessary. By the end of 1942, there were numerous complaints that more jobs had been authorized than could be completed within a reasonable time. In Queensland alone, one member of Teale’s staff asserted, there was enough work to keep the “existing labor forces busy until the end of September 1943.” A number of engineers believed that the entire construction program in Australia should be radically revised. Few of them realized that the Commonwealth had undertaken its defense construction program with an eye to the postwar period. A policy document prepared by the Economic Cabinet in February 1940, had bracketed plans for increasing the nation’s military strength with programs for water conservation, rural electrification, afforestation, and the enhancement of the “beauties and amenities of country towns.” Various public officials continued to emphasize that the postwar economy must be kept in mind while industry and commerce were being mobilized for war.95
The leisurely pace at which the governmental machinery moved was a constant source of irritation to the engineers, who found it hard to understand why so many agencies had to pass upon every project. Shortcuts were proposed repeatedly. Col. Bernard L. Robinson, for instance, suggested that the War Ministry, instead of investigating to find out if projects were justified, ought to limit its activities to providing funds to get construction started promptly. In an attempt to expedite work for the American forces, Colonel Teale began submitting requests for construction directly to the Allied Works Council as soon as he received word that the Chiefs of Staff Committee had assigned a priority. The engineers saw nothing irregular in Teale’s stratagem. As Robinson pointed out, Mr. Theodore was empowered to undertake “works of whatever nature required for war purposes by [the] Allied Forces in Australia.” But the Commonwealth Government saw things in a different light. On 4 September Prime Minister Curtin protested to MacArthur. The supreme commander
was reminded that putting requests through regular channels was “not only essential to sound budgetary planning in view of the incidence of the Reciprocal Lend-Lease Agreement, but also ... to ensure that all important works proposals affecting the war effort in Australia come before the War Cabinet for consideration.” MacArthur’s reply was an endorsement of Teale’s shortcut. He stated that in his opinion the approval of a project by the Chiefs of Staff Committee followed by assignment of a priority was sufficient justification for starting construction. He furthermore assured the Prime Minister that a fund of several million dollars was available in case Australian funds were not sufficient for American construction needs. But MacArthur could not persuade the government to alter its methods. The War Cabinet continued to insist that, in view of Australia’s severe limitations in manpower and resources, all requests for construction must be closely scrutinized. Procedures remained as they were.96
The Australians did make one major change the engineers considered long overdue. They let their demolitions program go by the board. MacArthur, who was inclined from the first toward an offensive strategy, had never deemed the program appropriate. But the Commonwealth government was fully and it seemed, irrevocably, committed to a scorched earth policy. A directive
issued in July 1942 had stated: “Denial plans should aim at total destruction ... and should not be compromised by any desire to recover resources intact when the enemy withdraws. He will most certainly himself destroy anything of value in his retreat.”97 As General Blarney pointed out to the Americans, even the limiting of destruction to important industries would “involve a major change in a policy that had already been given wide circulation.” MacArthur had decided not to press the issue, and the various Australian states had gone ahead with their preparations for total destruction. By late 1942 New South Wales had drawn up a scorched earth code and had mined numerous roads and bridges. Western Australia had completed total denial plans for her principal cities. Even Tasmania had a detailed and comprehensive plan for total destruction. But as the fear of invasion abated, less attention was devoted to denial schemes. By the end of the year preparations for destruction had all but ceased. Although the government was still officially bound to it, the scorched earth policy was a dead letter.98
Changes in Design
Since there was little the engineers could do to augment their resources further, they were forced to seek ever more efficient methods of doing things.
As Casey pointed out many times, they had to do more with less. The main idea was to give the combat forces what they required in the shortest possible time and with a minimum of effort. This meant lowering construction standards, devising shortcuts, and resorting to improvisation. During 1942 the greatest strides toward increased efficiency were made in the Southwest Pacific. Here an effective theater-wide engineer organization had functioned at a much earlier date than in the South Pacific. After the Battles of Coral Sea and Midway had ended Japanese naval predominance and placed the South Pacific seemingly beyond the enemy’s reach, the danger to the Southwest Pacific still remained, making speed of construction particularly urgent there.
During their first year in the Southwest Pacific, the engineers had to make frequent changes in structural plans. By late 1942 there were few vestiges left of the original theater of operations drawings. To make possible better use of local materials, theater of operations designs had been revised and many of them had been replaced by blueprints for less substantial structures. With the demand for quarters, hospitals, and storage space rising rapidly, the engineers could not afford to miss any opportunities to save on manpower and materials. There was a marked trend toward flimsier housing. In the early days of the war, most Americans had occupied fairly commodious quarters in Australian barracks, hotels, apartments, and private homes, and the first camps constructed for United States troops had featured screens, electricity, and water borne sewerage. But as time went on, more and more men were living in tents, sleeping on the ground, dining in unfloored mess halls, working in unscreened offices, and doing without electric lights and modern plumbing. For a while floors could be put in mess halls, and bunks and floors in tents, if time and funds permitted, but later, standards became still more rigorous. A construction policy issued by GHQ SWPA in October eliminated tent floors entirely and cut out nearly all other refinements. Although no such drastic innovations could be made in hospital designs, floored tents and prefabricated huts had made their appearance at many medical installations by the close of the year. Similar developments occurred in the design of warehouses. One popular new type was a modified version of the theater of operation warehouse with the interior columns eliminated—a change made possible by the amazing strength of Australian hardwoods. Another was the standard storehouse of the Australian Army, also designed to take advantage of the unique characteristics of native timbers. A third was a prefabricated, portable warehouse of corrugated iron developed by the Australians. A fourth, and among the most widely used, was the igloo warehouse, modeled on a hangar designed by Mr. Brizay, a French engineer who had come to work for the base section engineer in Brisbane after fleeing from Malaya. Brizay’s hangar consisted of arches constructed of scrap lumber, held together by purlins and covered with camouflage netting. By taking such a hangar, adding a concrete floor and a corrugated iron or fibrolite
roof, and closing the ends, a large and roomy warehouse could be quickly provided.99
Construction for the Army Air Forces, which represented about 80 percent of the engineer program, offered a rewarding field for savings. When the war began, blueprints for military airports were more or less standard. Fields were to have three intersecting landing strips running in the direction of the prevailing winds. Strips for fighters were to have an average length of 3,000 feet, those for medium bombers, 4,000, and those for heavy bombers, 5,000. All runways were to be 150 feet wide with a 1,000-foot clearing on each side. The engineers soon discovered that the shorter runways did not work out in SWPA. Overloaded planes needed extra length to take off, and disabled ones, to land. In the fluid tactical situation, a field might be used by fighters one day and by bombers the next. Six-thousand-foot runways, capable of taking the heaviest craft, became the rule. The added effort expended on longer airstrips was more than offset in other ways. Since it was found that pilots could align their planes just as easily on narrower strips, runways were reduced in width to 100 feet. Because the speed of planes landing or taking off was at least 100 miles an hour, the direction of the wind made little difference. Intersecting runways were replaced by parallel strips, and thus satisfactory sites could usually be located more quickly and less earth moving was required. “We tended,” Matthews explained, “to go not to wide runways but to double barreled and triple barreled runways, approximately parallel but separated by 100 feet or so between the edges of the pavement. This actually simplified both drainage and grading and gave us uninterrupted construction and paving work on each of the new strips while the older strip was in full use.”100
Although the Air Forces generally preferred concrete pavements, few landing strips of that material were built in SWPA. Runway surfaces, the engineers found, had to be neither so thick nor so rigid as had previously been thought necessary. The first designers of airfield pavements, most of them highway engineers, had usually assumed that a runway must be strong enough to carry a wheel load one and one-half times the weight of the plane. With the fast new planes of World War II, most of the weight in landing and taking off was borne by the wings, not the wheels. With this discovery, the concrete runway passed from the scene in SWPA, for it was both expensive and time consuming to build. In Queensland and New Guinea, graveled strips were the rule. But wherever possible, the gravel was topped with bitumen to give a better wearing surface and eliminate dust. A thin bitumen surfacing of the type used on country roads in the United States served the purpose well. Four coats were applied for heavy planes and two for light on a gravel base from three to
five inches thick. A half-inch layer of pea-size gravel was then spread on the bitumen and rolled. This thin paving saved a great number of man-hours, and although it was sometimes picked up by thc wheels of the planes, especially in the turnaround areas, repair was easy. While gravel and bitumen runways became standard, the engineers experimented with other types of paving. Soil cement, a recent development in the United States, was tried for the first time in Australia. The formula called for about six parts of dirt and gravel to one part of cement, with water added. The mixture formed a weak concrete but saved a good deal of labor, since it made use of the materials found at the site of construction and thus eliminated the hauling of gavel and rock. It was tried on an experimental basis at Roto and North Burke, two fields of the Melbourne-Cloncurry ferry route. Visiting Roto in mid-November, Colonel Robinson reported that the first runway there had been completed in six weeks, and the second, in two. He expected the strips to give good service for one or two years. However, since soil cement did not stand up as well at bitumen and gravel and cost half again as much, it was not widely used. The engineers made rather extensive use of the recently developed Marston mat, or pierced steel plank, as an alternate type of surfacing to bitumen and gravel. Capable of being put down quickly, the mat proved very satisfactory when placed on a firm foundation.101
Putting in runways was only a small part of the job of building an airfield. In addition to well-paved and well-drained strips, a complete airdrome included miles of taxiways, innumerable hardstands and dispersals, and such necessities and refinements as operations buildings, hangars, fuel storage and dispensing systems, camouflage, and revetments. The engineers in SWPA could not hope to build such elaborate fields. Any feature that could be dispensed with had to be omitted if essentials were to be provided. Little was done with camouflage. Making an airfield invisible from the air was anything but easy, and the engineers considered the effort unjustified in any case, since the enemy would have little trouble locating an active airdrome even if it were camouflaged. During the early months of the war some attention was paid to camouflage in Australia. Several types of hangars were designed which could be quickly erected and would serve to hide planes, the best known being Mr. Brizay’s igloo. In the advanced areas, concealment became largely a matter of dispersal. Revetments were gradually eliminated. Originally, the engineers had been called upon to build an enormous number of them, each one consisting of a hardstand with an earthen wall fifteen feet high on three sides. It took three D-8 tractors about three days to produce one such revetment. When it became apparent that the best protection was a strong air force ready to meet the enemy in the skies, the engineers stopped
putting earthen walls around hardstands. Still other items were dropped. Hangars were seldom built. Gasoline storage tanks with fueling systems at airfields in the combat zones were a rare luxury. Usually gasoline was stored in drums.102
Work that could not be eliminated was sometimes postponed. During the dry season, graveled strips in northern Queensland and New Guinea went weeks and sometimes months before a coating of bitumen was applied. Planes landing and taking off raised huge clouds of dust which sometimes took as long as thirty minutes to settle. Calcium chloride was of no value here, for it was effective only when it could draw moisture from the air. In hot, dry climates it merely became additional dust. Gradually, the engineers brought the situation under control. At some fields they sprinkled the runways with oil and tar, while at others they experimented with solutions consisting of one part molasses and nine parts water, which proved quite effective. The delay in sealing the runways produced little more than a temporary annoyance. In deferring drainage work the engineers ran a greater risk. When the tropical downpours began, they were hard pressed to keep many of the fields, especially the highly critical ones at Moresby, from being flooded out. Hundreds of culverts and drains had to be put in almost overnight. Many of them had to be built of wood or improvised out of gasoline drums with the ends knocked out, since stocks of pipe and cement had been quickly used up. Adequate drainage could not be supplied in a hurry, and several runways gave signs of buckling as water seeped into the subgrades. The strips at Seven-Mile were weakened by underground springs, which put the field out of operation for a time. Early in December, Casey flew to Moresby to see the fields at firsthand and discuss with the airmen some of the problems about which they had been continually complaining. ‘Talking to Kenney, he maintained that the engineers had, on the whole, done a splendid job. Few fields had been out of operation and then only for a short time. But in conversations with the engineers, Casey expressed his dissatisfaction over the way drainage had been handled. He was not convinced “that all had been done that could be done.” Suggesting that closer attention and more intelligent thought be given to this aspect of construction, he reminded the engineers that even though a strip might consist of “six-inch armor plate, if it rests on soup it will sink and not support anything.” So long as the rains continued, conditions were far from ideal. Even so, the disaster that some had predicted, the grounding of large numbers of planes, did not occur.”103
Construction Progress.
Despite manifold difficulties, construction forces in the South and Southwest
Airstrip at Dobodura, showing revetments. Note the dust behind the plane
Pacific had succeeded by the close of 1942 in forging a chain of bases to secure the Allied position. All the engineer construction units in SWPA had been sent to New Guinea. At Moresby, where most of them were located, work was fairly well along. Finishing touches were being put on the airdromes, and base development was continuing with the improvement of the port and the building of depots, hospitals, camps, roads, and bridges. Though Milne Bay and Oro Bay were considerably behind Moresby, largely because of the swampy terrain and the shortage of engineers, they nevertheless showed some progress. At Milne, the troops had finished a ponton wharf, a Liberty dock, a pier for small ships, and several stretches of road, in addition to completing two airfields and surfacing them with steel mat. The third had been abandoned because of its swampy site. The engineers at Oro Bay, where work had only recently begun, had built a dock for barges and a few miles of road. In the South Pacific, also, construction had advanced. When the fighting ended on Guadalcanal, Espiritu Santo boasted four airfields, a seaplane base, three hospitals, ten small
camps, and thirty-two miles of roads. Efate had two bomber fields, a fighter strip, a seaplane base, a 600-bed hospital, and a rather extensive roadnet. Facilities on Viti Levu had been expanded to include a narrow-gauge railroad between Nandi and Narewa, several gasoline pipelines, and additional roads, depots, piers, and docks. Farther south, planes were staging over the alternate ferry route, which was operational by late 1942.104
Although New Zealand was a major Allied base in the South Pacific, the engineers did no construction there during 1942. Facilities for the U.S. forces, including some $3.3 million worth of camps, warehouses, and hospitals for the Army, were provided by the New Zealanders themselves through reverse lend-lease. The engineers confined their activities in the Dominion to exploring for oil. In April 1942, with the Netherlands Indies falling rapidly to the Japanese, and Allied tankers being sunk in large numbers, the War Department began seeking new sources of oil within the Pacific theaters. On the 29th General Somervell directed the Chief of Engineers to contract with the Superior Oil Company of California for the testing of certain promising geologic structures in New Zealand. A fund of $5 million was set aside for the purpose.
By a fixed-fee contract signed on 2 May, the United States underwrote the costs of the exploration, and the company agreed, if oil were found, to reimburse the government with deliveries of petroleum. On 31 May Lt. Col. Cornelius Beard, who was to supervise the project for the Engineers, and a party of the contractor’s men, reached Wellington, and from there left immediately for the site of a supposed oil field on the western coast of South Island. Drilling began late in June, after a force of local workmen had been assembled and rigs had arrived from the United States. In August a large shipment of machinery arrived for drilling on North Island. With the help of New Zealand troops, this equipment was moved ten miles beyond Palmerston North. During the first week in November work was abandoned on North Island with “absolutely negative” results, and a short time later drilling was suspended at the South Island site. Explorations were continued at other points on South Island, but, by the end of the year, no oil had been found.105
Insofar as the Army was concerned, the great base in the South Pacific was New Caledonia. This island was a beehive of activity. By early 1943 there were twelve Army airports on the island, seven of which were satellite fields and five, major dromes. Plaines des Gaiacs, the largest, had been vastly improved by
the 810th Aviation Battalion, and Tontouta, as a result of the almost continuous efforts of the 811th, was on the way to becoming perhaps the leading air base in the theater. Considerable attention had been devoted to ports and roads. In November the engineers embarked on a program of extensive development at Noumea harbor. Reaching New Caledonia on the 7th of that month, the 131st Combat Battalion was given as one of its jobs the building of a new dock, 60 by 500 feet, complete with warehouses and a railroad siding. This unit also repaired the approach to the port’s original dock. When the 955th Topographic Company arrived at Noumea late in 1942, it went to work not on maps but on the harbor. While much of the construction and repair of highways was handled by the New Caledonia Department of Public Works, every engineer unit on the island, with the exception of the mapping company, had a part in widening, surfacing, and maintaining roads. The 810th alone kept up eighty miles of roads in the northern part of the island. Transforming New Caledonia into a major base necessitated all kinds of projects. Besides working on roads, ports, and airfields, the engineers had completed such varied assignments as building a new headquarters for USAFISPA, rehabilitating the tracks and rolling stock of the Noumea-Paita railway, renovating a sawmill which had been out of operation for fifteen years, working in stone quarries, and putting a fence around Tontouta to keep out cattle and deer.106
Within the two theaters, the most extensive construction was still by far on the Australian continent. The program of the Allied Works Council included nearly every type of military installation—airfields, camps, depots, hospitals, arsenals, staging areas, and harbor defenses. Included also were munitions plants, aircraft factories, docks, defense highways, oil pipelines, radio stations, and telephone lines. By 31 December 1942, the AWC had built or improved over zoo airfields—to cite only one figure. In Queensland, a number of camps were going up, including four to house units expected soon from the United States. The center of construction activity remained in the southeast, where the bulk of the Commonwealth’s defense projects were located. During the last months of 1942, the Australians began three large jobs in this area for the Americans. Two were hospitals, one of which, the largest in the Southwest Pacific, was being built at Herne Bay in Sydney, while the other, only slightly smaller, was going up at Holland Park in Brisbane. The third project was a huge supply depot at Meeandah near Brisbane, which was to have 47 warehouses dispersed over 260 acres. Notwithstanding the size of some of the installations being built for the Americans, work for the United States forces on the whole had dropped off considerably and accounted for only a small proportion of the AWC’s construction by the end of the year. Funds being expended by the council totaled slightly more than forty-five million pounds on 31 December,
Moving supplies on the rebuilt railroad, Noumea
but only 6 percent of that amount was being spent for the Americans. Yet many of the Australian projects, by strengthening the major Allied base of operations in the Southwest Pacific, would benefit the U.S. forces.107
From their bases in the South and Southwest Pacific, the Allies hoped to launch large-scale offensives during 1943. As the old year ended, plans were already being drawn for the reduction of the Japanese stronghold at Rabaul. Once details of strategy and command had been settled and sufficient forces had been assembled in the theaters, operations would commence.