New Guinea campaign

New Guinea campaign. This was fought during the Pacific war on this rugged, jungle-clad, malaria-ridden island, firstly in the Australian territory of Papua, then in the Australian mandated territory of New Guinea, and lastly in Dutch New Guinea (see Map 72). Of great aid to the Allies in one of the fiercest and most unrelenting campaigns of the war were the Papuans and New Guineans who not only formed volunteer infantry battalions (see previous entry), but performed miracles in bringing up supplies, evacuating the wounded, and helping with reconnaissance and intelligence missions.

The campaign started on 8 March 1942 when the Japanese landed two battalions at Lae and Salamaua on New Guinea's Huon Gulf as part of the forces to be deployed to take Papua's capital, Port Moresby, situated on the island's south-western coastline. This gave them control of the Dampier and Vitiaz Straits, and in April they put troops ashore at nine other points. Their seaborne assault on Port Moresby was frustrated by the battle of the Coral Sea, but as most of the Australian Army was fighting in the Western Desert campaigns, or had been captured after the fall of Singapore or in the Netherlands East Indies, there were only two small Australian forces—one at Kokoda, the other (Kanga Force) at Wau—to oppose an overland advance on the capital by the Japanese from Lae and Salamaua.

However, the battle of Midway in June 1942 decisively shifted the balance of Pacific naval power towards the USA, and on 2 July the US Joint Chiefs of Staff directed MacArthur, the commander of the South-West Pacific Area, to start a limited offensive to clear the Japanese from the island. As a first move to recapture Lae and Salamaua, MacArthur ordered his small forces across the Owen Stanley range to Papua's northern coast. But the Japanese pre-empted him when, on 12 July 1942, Maj-General Horii Tomitaro's South Seas Detachment landed there to advance on Port Moresby via the Kokoda trail. This soon drove back the Australian militia battalion sent to reinforce the Papuan Infantry Regiment defending Kokoda, and by 14 August Horii's men were at Isurava with more reinforcements being regularly poured into the Japanese beachhead.

By mid-August two extra Australian battalions were on the Kokoda trail, but neither MacArthur nor his Allied Land Force Commander, General Blamey, was aware of the terrible conditions confronting their troops. Overloaded with equipment they staggered up muddy, near-vertical tracks; and air drops, on which they depended, often failed to materialize. As they reached Isurava, Horii, who was having supply difficulties himself, took personal control of the Japanese advance and drove the Australians back, harassing them all the way with ambushes and outflanking movements. Many Australians who were driven off the trail by these tactics simply died in the jungle; and soaked by rain, burdened by their wounded, and worn out by lack of food and by the constant fighting, the rest retreated to Ioribaiwa.

On 30 August MacArthur, concerned not only by events on the Kokoda trail but by the pressure being exerted on Kanga Force around Wau, and by a Japanese landing at Milne Bay on the south-eastern tip of Papua, told the Joint Chiefs of Staff that unless ‘moves are made to meet the changing conditions a disastrous outcome is bound to result shortly; it is no longer a question here of preparing a projected offensive …’

But ULTRA intelligence had disclosed the presence of a Japanese submarine screen off Milne Bay—which indicated that the Japanese intended landing in the area—and this enabled Allied reinforcements (18th Australian Brigade) to be sent to the bay. As a result the 2,000 Japanese of the Special Naval Landing Forces who landed there on the night of 25/26 August 1942 were heavily outnumbered. The troops, a second prong of the Japanese advance on Port Moresby, were reinforced by another 600 on 29 August, but the Australian garrison—aided by US engineers and by two Australian squadrons flying from airstrips built by them—held them off. The Japanese fought bravely but were eventually forced to withdraw, and only 1,200 survived to start re-embarking on 4 September.

However, on the Kokoda trail it looked as if MacArthur might be right. Though the Australians at Ioribaiwa were again reinforced, on 17 September they were forced back to a final defensive position at Imita Ridge. That day MacArthur told Curtin, the Australian prime minister, that he had lost confidence in Australian troops and recommended that Blamey take personal control in New Guinea. This Blamey did, precipitating a major command crisis with Lt-General Sydney Powell, the Australian commander there, which resulted in Powell's dismissal. But by then the worst of the crisis was past. For Horii, his hopelessly over-extended supply line now under constant air attack from Lt-General George C. Kenney's Fifth USAAF, had been ordered to withdraw to the Japanese beachhead to conserve supplies and reinforcements required for a final Japanese effort in the Guadalcanal campaign. Supplies were so short that the Japanese resorted to cannibalism, eating the flesh of prisoners and their own troops. This was a campaign so fiercely fought that few prisoners were taken and fewer survived capture.

The collapse of the Japanese offensive enabled MacArthur to mount his own on their beachhead in northern Papua, now protected by a strongly fortified 18 km. (11 mi.) perimeter. In October 1942 two regiments of 32nd US Division were airlifted or brought by sea to the Wanigela-Pongani area. On 19 November they attacked Buna and Cape Endaiadere while the Australians, having routed the Japanese on the Kokoda trail, advanced on Gona and Sanananda Point. But the US troops were inadequately equipped and trained and the Australians were exhausted by the fighting on the trail. Both sides suffered from disease, and lack of food and matériel, and casualties increased alarmingly in a battle of attrition that amounted to a stalemate. The Australians even tually captured Gona on 8 December 1942 and after a crisis in command which needed the personal attention of the corps commander, Lt-General Eichelberger, the Americans entered Buna village on 14 December and then, on 2 January, took Buna mission. But it took a further three weeks for the combined forces of the Americans and Australians to eradicate the final Japanese positions at Sanananda Point.

About 20,000 Japanese had been involved in this first phase of the New Guinea campaign: probably 12,000 of them were killed or died of starvation or disease. Allied losses were heavy, too:2,165 Australian and 930 US servicemen were killed, but malaria—the Australians recorded 9,249 cases, the Americans 8,659—caused the most casualties (see medicine). The 32nd US Division was so depleted that retraining and rehabilitation kept it from operational duties for almost a year.

The fighting now shifted north-westwards along the coast and into the Australian mandated territory of New Guinea where the Japanese garrisons at Lae and Salamaua were reinforced in early January 1943 by elements of Lt-General Adachi Hatazo's Eighteenth Army. As a preliminary to another overland advance on Port Moresby, 2,500 Japanese troops were dispatched into the Bululo valley to destroy Kanga Force and capture Wau airstrip. Heavy fighting followed and the Japanese were only thwarted when part of an Australian brigade was flown into Wau airstrip under fire, and fighting in the stench, mud, rottenness, and gloom of the jungle had, by the end of February, driven them back to Mubo.

But having been by now defeated on Guadalcanal the Japanese were determined to hold New Guinea. During the next months the balance of Adachi's army began to be landed along the coast and the Fourth Air Army was created to control an equal expansion of Japanese air power in the area. Despite losing part of his 51st Division in the Bismarck Sea battle in March, Adachi's build-up continued. He moved his HQ to Lae and by April this controlled 20th Division at Wewak, 41st Division at Madang, and the remaining two regiments of 51st Division in the Huon peninsula, and at Lae and Salamaua.

To oppose these new Japanese forces in the New Guinea mandate, and those in the South-West Pacific Area as a whole, MacArthur regrouped his forces into two main bodies: Alamo Force, which contained mostly US troops, and the Australians of New Guinea Force. With these, on 29 June 1943, he launched an operation (CARTWHEEL), of which the New Guinea campaign formed a part, to isolate and reduce the main Japanese base of Rabaul at the eastern end of New Britain.

The increase in Japanese air power posed a threat to these plans and Fourth Air Army, short of airstrips, concentrated two of its air divisions at Wewak—well beyond the range of Kenney's fighters, with which his bombers must operate or suffer unacceptable losses. But, alerted by ULTRA intelligence to the Japanese build-up, Kenney secretly constructed a forward airstrip 95 km. (60 mi.) west of Lae. It was eventually detected by Japanese photographic reconnaissance, but too late to prevent nearly 200 US aircraft being launched against Wewak's four airstrips on 17 August 1943. Even at that late date the Japanese had no radar operating at Wewak and the telephone lines of the air intelligence unit, which spotted Kenney's bombers over Hansa Bay, failed to operate. The result was total surprise and the raid, and another the next day, left only 38 Japanese aircraft operational and three of the four strips out of action.

This devastating operation allowed Allied ground operations on New Guinea to proceed almost unchallenged from the air. Three Australian divisions (3rd, 5th, and 11th), the 41st US Division, and a number of Australian Independent Companies (see Australia, 5(e)), started an all-out offensive to defeat Adachi and capture the airstrips needed to attack Rabaul and to support MacArthur's final drive on the Philippines. A successful Allied feint drew Japanese reinforcements from Lae to Salamaua. The 9th Australian Division then made an amphibious landing east of Lae while the 7th Australian Division (which had been airlifted to Nadzab after the airstrip there had been secured by US paratroopers on 5 September) advanced from the north. By 16 September 1943 both Japanese strongholds had been overrun, though about 7,800 Japanese escaped by marching across the mountainous Huon peninsula to Sio.

On 4 October 7th Division, now advancing up the Markham Valley, captured Dumpu, and another amphibious landing by Australian troops enabled Finschhafen to be seized in early October. But severe fighting continued in the Huon peninsula with the 20th Japanese Division fiercely defending the area around Sattelberg peak. This was not cleared until 8 December 1943 and it took most of that month to clear the peninsula's tip. Then, on 2 January 1944, 32nd US Division, now part of Alamo Force, landed at Saidor, 112 km. (70 mi.) west of Sio, but they failed to cut off the retreating Japanese 20th and 51st Divisions being pursued by the Australians. The 7th Division, advancing along the Ramu valley, also failed when their thrust to the coast was halted by Japanese defending the Finisterre mountains; and it was not until US troops landed further to the west at Hollandia and Aitape on 22 April 1944 that Adachi's escape route was cut. These landings were the result of ULTRA's greatest contribution to the Allied campaign on New Guinea, for it revealed where Adachi had concentrated his forces, so that MacArthur could bypass and outflank them.

In March 1944 control of Adachi's army passed from Eighth Area Army at Rabaul to Lt-General Anami's Second Area Army, elements of which had been recently transported to Dutch New Guinea. To deal with these, 41st US Division landed on Wakde and Biak islands in May and, aided by 6th US Division, had, by 25 June, captured Wakde, and Sarmi on the mainland. In early July another island, Noemfoor, was seized and by the end of the month 6th Division had taken Sansapor on the Vogelkop peninsula, the last Allied landings of the campaign.

To free US troops for the invasion of the Philippines, in October 1944 the Australians began to assume responsibility for all operations on the islands of Bougainville, New Britain, and New Guinea. Eichelberger's troops around Aitape, having virtually destroyed the Eighteenth Army's offensive capabilities when Adachi attacked their perimeter on the Driniumor river in July 1944, were replaced by 6th Australian Division. Supported by an Australian wing of fighter-bombers this attacked along the coast towards Wewak, where Adachi had his HQ, and through the precipitous Torricelli mountains, but by the time Wewak fell on 10 May 1945 the Japanese had already begun withdrawing into the Prince Alexander ranges for a final stand. They were still resisting when the war ended and only 13,500 survived to surrender.