Turning the Tide

The Australian Army in New Guinea 1942-43

Field Marshal Sir Thomas Albert Blamey

• Publisher: Barajima Books
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781839741982
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Turning the Tide, first published in 1944 as The Jap was Thrashed: An Official Story of the Australian Soldier – First Victor of the "Invincible Jap", is a World War II account of the Australian Army's battle and eventual defeat of Japanese forces in portions of New Guinea (Milne Bay, the Owen-Stanleys, Buna, Gona, and Sanananda) in 1942-43. The battles were important as they represented the first defeats for the Japanese, and marked the beginning of a turn-around in the Pacific for Allied armies. The book shows the transformation of inexperienced, poorly equipped Australian recruits into battle-hardened, effective soldiers successfully fighting their way across inhospitable terrain against a determined enemy. Included are 12 pages of maps and 32 pages of photographs.

1. Milne Bay

IT WAS at Milne Bay that the Japanese was first forced to call off any complete local campaign, and it was there, too, that his plans for the capture of Port Moresby were set awry.

If time taken and numbers of men engaged are considered, Milne Bay was a small affair; but, viewed in the light of wider strategy, the defeat of the Japanese in that action was considerably important.

The Japanese were already making toward Port Moresby’s back door, over the Owen Stanley Range. They were planning a seaborne attack on the front door, and to protect their convoys around the toe of Papua and north-westward toward Moresby, they needed airfields at Milne Bay, or they needed at least to deny us airfields there.

But we already had those airfields. We had beaten the Japanese to the punch by only a few weeks. In fact, cur occupation of the place was so recent that it was still on the secret list, and was known by its cryptic code-name of “Fall River.” In July, 1942, the Royal Australian Air Force had established a couple of Kittyhawk fighter-squadrons there. To defend the airstrips from which they operated, the 7th Australian Infantry Brigade had been sent in.

A week or so before the Japanese tried to take the strips from us, the 18th Infantry Brigade, A.I.F., was moved in. Major-General Clowes arrived 10 days before the landing, and, with his headquarters, took over command less than a week before it occurred. There was also a handful of American anti-aircraft and engineer personnel.

Roads sank into the mud almost as soon as they were made. Local defenses were far from complete. The one operating airstrip existed principally in length—and name.

Beautiful in fine weather, Milne Bay was gloomily impossible in the wet. Tall, steep mountains lay on the two arms of land that formed the bay, throwing their jungle right to the water’s edge; and where the mountains flattened at the head of the bay, sago swamp, mangrove swamp and tidal swamp presented a mass of muddy horror.

Coconut-palms filled the only flat and relatively dry land in the long straight lines of one of the largest plantations in the world, and where the palm-rows ended the jungle began its climb into the mountains.

Among these coconuts, and in one place in light jungle, the airstrips were being made.

Over-Confident Japanese

The enemy intended to seize the “aerodrome,” consolidate their position quickly, and then launch a surprise attack on Samarai, which they incorrectly believed to be strongly held and fortified. All this was to be a step toward Moresby.

The Japanese were very confident about taking Milne Bay, but they were over-confident and ill-informed. They underestimated the Australian strength, and the commander of the landing force obviously thought the task would be easy.

In his operational order he wrote: “At the dead of night quickly complete the landing in the enemy area and strike the white soldiers without remorse. Unitedly smash to pieces the enemy lines and take the aerodrome by storm.”

There is good reason to believe that he landed most of his troops some miles east of where he intended. Had he landed them at Gili Gili itself, instead of down the coast to the east, it might all have been a different story.

To reach Milne Bay proper—or Gili Gili—from where they landed, the Japanese had to pass along the narrow coastal strip between the edge of the sea and the foothills of the mountains. The country was thick with jungle. The coastal strip was nowhere more than a mile wide, and at one place the mountains squeezed it down to a matter of yards. The jungle was dense with secondary growth, and soakage from the mountain faces kept the ground soft and treacherous.

An old government track followed the coastline, forded a dozen streams, and wandered through the bog of mountain springs where the hills came close to the sea.

Near Rabi the hills rolled back and jungle levels reached out toward No. 3 airstrip. Several miles farther west was No. 1 airstrip—the hub of Milne Bay’s military importance.

The first distant rumblings of the Japanese invasion came on August 24, 1942, when a report was received that seven Japanese barges were moving southward down the Papuan coast somewhere near Porlock Harbor. On the same day a dozen Japanese fighters raided Milne Bay.

Flank Attack Foiled

The barges were still moving south on the following day, and a convoy of nine Japanese vessels was sighted coming southward from the general direction of Rabual. All day that convoy moved down past the Trobriand Islands, past Normanby Island, and toward dusk faced into the mouth of Milne Bay. The Royal Australian Air Force attacked the vessels and sank one, but the convoy continued toward the Bay.

Meanwhile the barges had been beached off Cape Varietta, on Goodenough Island, where the R.A.A.F. had strafed and sunk them without seeing any sign of their occupants.

Subsequently it appeared that this barge-force was one which the Japanese intended to land at Taupota, with the intention of crossing the Stirling Range to attack Milne Bay on the flank, while the seaborne troops were attacking it from the front.

Landing at Midnight

The landing from the convoy was made about midnight on August 25, on the north shore of the bay. Power-barges ferried Japanese from the transports to the shore, about Waga Waga, and also at Wanadala, farther to the east in the bay.

Troops of the 7th Brigade first met the Japanese—deliberately in one place; accidentally in another.

The accidental meeting was at Wanadala, where the Japanese were landing stores and men. Two platoons of a battalion of 7th Brigade were returning to Gili Gili by launch from Ahioma. They literally bumped into the Japanese landing party, were shot up with machineguns from the shore, and suffered solid casualties before there was time to know what it was all about. Those who escaped struggled ashore and made inland, to bypass the main Japanese force and rejoin their battalion to the west the following morning.

The first relatively firm contact with the Japanese was made east of KB Mission, where the enemy moved down the track in groups of 20 and 30, confidently talking and laughing, and making no attempt to conceal their presence.

Seventh Brigade troops, unblooded until now, met 150 of them an hour and a half after midnight. The Japanese used mortars and rifles, and were confident in their fighting—and they had a surprise coming for the Australians. An hour after the first clash, the Australians were puzzled by the sound of engines to the east of them. They sounded like machinegun carriers, but the Australians knew that there were no carriers down the track. Half-an-hour passed before the sound was explained—a couple of medium Japanese tanks came down the road, using headlights and spotlights, and firing as they came.

The Australians had nothing more formidable than hand-grenades with which to fight the tanks, and their best efforts to extinguish the lights with automatic and rifle fire brought no results. The Japanese soon learned that the Australians could not stop their tanks, and, abandoning their earlier caution, they began using them to chase groups of men.

Sporadic fighting went on, to end at daylight, when the Japanese took to the shelter of the jungle, to rest. The Australians still held K.B. Mission.

The Japanese convoy had left the bay, and was being dogged at sea by Allied planes, with the weather in favor of the ships. The landing barges were still about the beaches, giving R.A.A.F. fighters good targets for strafing.

The Australian 25-pounders opened up on the Japanese east of K.B. Mission in the middle of the afternoon. Air-strafing followed, and the Australians moved forward, gaining high ground east of the Mission.

In fighting after dark, the Australians were forced to withdraw, and at dawn of August 27, they had been pushed back beyond the Mission to the west bank of the Gama river—a 15 to 20-yard wide stream, which gave them a short but open field of fire.

It was on this and other streams that intersected the track in a dozen places that the heaviest casualties were inflicted and suffered. Many months after the fighting was over, the rotting bodies of unburied Japanese still littered the jungle on the edge of the streams; the Australian dead had been buried in a war cemetery behind Gili Gili.

Warships Shell Coast

That night, and on succeeding nights, Japanese warships entered the bay and shelled coastal positions. Their fire was generally ineffective, and, except for the later sinking of one cargo vessel, it was little more than a nuisance.

August 27 opened with an air-raid on the strip. Three medium bombers and a dozen fighters attacked, the fighters going down to strafe, and setting fire to and destroying an American Liberator bomber on the ground. The Australian fighters and anti-aircraft guns brought down about 10 of the Japanese planes.

In the battle-area, the Japanese were lying doggo in the jungle, and a reconnaissance-plane which flew four times along the coast did not sight a single Japanese. About midday fresh troops from the A.I.F. moved forward of the Gama river, and went back over the ground given up the night before. They were 600 yards east of K.B. Mission by dusk, and established themselves in perimeter defense. Within an hour the Japanese were attacking in small parties with the support of tanks. The fighting died after an hour, to reawaken far more intensely just before midnight.

Using their spotlights to give them targets, the tanks attacked the sides of the perimeter position and inflicted solid casualties, not only with their own fire, but also by giving the Japanese infantry a chance to fire easily by the beam of the lights.

This attack split up the Australian position, and the Australians withdrew through the jungle. Anti-tank guns—by now up with our forward troops—did not stop the tanks. One gun was lost when Japanese, in a native canoe, sneaked behind its position on the beach and flung a grenade among the guncrew.

The tanks pursued the Australians, and engaged them again at various places on the way back toward the Gama River. By dawn, the fighting had moved still farther back toward No. 3 strip, and at least one tank was as far west as Kilabo. But at No. 3 strip the Japanese were held, and with daylight their activity ceased, and they lay up again in the jungle.

Fighter Planes Active

Kittyhawks of 75 and 76 Squadrons were out as soon as they had light enough to fly in, and again, as always throughout the campaign, they did splendid work. The weather was dead against flying. Low, misty cloud and rain broke visibility down to a few hundred yards. Mud oozed up through the metal strips of the runway, and the airscrews flung mud and water for yards at take-off and landing. Hour after hour, the Australian pilots hurled their planes into the rain, and blasted the Japanese wherever he could be found.

Tanks Fail

August 28 was a day of relative stagnation, the Japanese hiding in the jungle and the Australians keeping the genera line of No. 3 strip as a base upon which all Japanese thrusts must end.

And for three days the battle remained relatively static. The Japanese could not pass the strip defenses, but the Australians, gaining time and strength, probed back with patrols through the Japanese “line,” as far as the foothills and Rabi, recalling their patrols to the strip by nightfall. They found two tanks bogged and abandoned—only the ground had beaten them.

The Japanese warships played their cat-and-mouse game again at night. They came into the bay in darkness to shell Australian positions, then sneaked into the safety of wide waters and the cover of mist before daylight returned. As before, their shelling was largely ineffective, but it could have screened the landing of reinforcements or stores farther eastward in the bay, either on the north or south shore.

This factor contributed largely to the “fog of battle” necessitating dispositional plans to meet such contingencies, and leading to the postponement on several occasions of offensive plans made with the object of dislodging the Japs, from the north shore of the bay.

A particular insta...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1. Milne Bay
• 2. Owen-Stanleys
• 3. Buna-Gona-Sanananda
• 4. Goodenough Island Bluff!
• Australian Army’s War Diary
• MAPS
• PHOTOGRAPHS