# South Pacific Air War Volume 5 - Michael Clairngbould, Peter Ingman



## Wild_Bill_Kelso (Apr 24, 2022)

So I just got this in the mail a couple of weeks ago, been waiting for it for several months. I have a few others in the series already, these are day by day accounts of the air combat in the South Pacific, for this volume mainly around New Guinea. This is one of those series which looks at records from both sides, so you get a much more complete and balanced picture of what was actually happening, as distinct from the older generation of WW2 aviation books we read in the 70s-90s, which were facts mixed with a lot of "patriotic optimism" and all kinds of more or less random legends.

I'd been looking forward to Volume 5 because this is where the 49th FG gets into the mix, the very first P-38s arrive, and the Allies start pushing back a bit in this area. This post / review is kind of a high level overview with some broad, sweeping observations. I think these operational histories always change the way we look at things a bit which is what makes them exciting and interesting. I wanted to point out some of these and I'll get into more detail in followup posts.

This one is 225 pages not counting references etc. It gets into the mix pretty quickly. These books are illustrated partly with some color CG images that are slightly artificial looking, but by and large pretty good and they kind of make the book come alive and give you some idea of what things looked like in color where and when this was actually going on. I particularly like the A-20 on the cover of this one. This is just a vague impression but overall I'd rate this book higher than some of the other volumes in terms of overall quality and overall merit. There are just enough charts, not too much of a wordy introduction or summary, it's mostly just hard data.

This book covers September, October, November and December 1942. It starts out pretty slowly, as the air combat died down a bit. The Japanese are no longer sending a lot of daylight raids against Port Morseby, and the Battle for Guadalcanal isn't as hot and heavy, the fighting is mostly concentrating on the Kokoda trail campaign in the East coast of Papua New Guinea. Both the US and IJN are rotating some units out, and bringing some new ones in. For the Japanese this includes some IJA units with their Oscars (and a bit later, Ki-48s) though they aren't operational until toward the end. For the first two thirds of this book, covering fighting from September through mid-November, the book is actually a little bit boring. It's not written in a particularly dramatic way, and page after page of reading how some unit strafed the jungle, dropped 14 x 300 lb bombs and expended 1,400 rounds of 20 mm and 8,000 rounds of .303 is only so gripping, even though if you read between the lines a bit, interesting and dramatic things are still happening there almost every day.

There just isn't that much air to air combat in the first 150 pages or so, mostly bombing sorties and mostly against jungle targets with results that are are hard to verify. Partly this is due to the weather (see below) and partly due to changing out some exhausted units, and realignment of command structures and so on.

But by the end, in the second half of November and getting into December, the fighting really picks up a lot and it gets much more interesting. Taken in aggregate, it does change my perception on several things and now I'm looking forward to Volume 6 quite a bit. Here are a few of my general / broad strokes observations, and I'll post some specific examples later on.

*The mountains, the sea - the weather!*
There are three sides fighting here - The Allies, the Japanese, and the weather! I think the weather was the most lethal force. An average mission is at the squadron level goes like this: A dozen aircraft take off, one has engine trouble and goes back right away. Then they hit weather and half get lost in storms and clouds and turn back. The remainder bomb the target in wildly varying conditions, often to no measurable effect. Then one more plane has another mishap, either they get lost in total overcast and crash into a mountain, they struggle to find the base and finally crash land on the strip, or end up way out to sea, run out of fuel and crash land on a beach or ditch. Some later to be rescued and / or recovered in some amazing feats of engineering. The weather is incredibly capricious and dangerous, and the risks of flying around this area were IMMENSE. I would assume still are at least to some extent. The weather was the major limiting factor which kept the combat from being much more bloody, at some points you have something like 60-80 fighters or more active on both sides, but they never run into each other in those kinds of numbers

*Every kinda plane you could possibly want*
The aircraft types in action are extremely varied. On the Japanese side - A6M2, A6M3, A6M2-N, D3A, G4M, Ki-43, Ki-48, G3M, E-13, Ki-15 / C5M, Ki-46, H6K, F1M, and probably some others I forgot. On the Allied side, P-39D through K, P-40E and K, P-38F, B-17D, E and F, B-24, B-25C, B-26, A-20A, Hudson, Wirraway, Beaufort, Beaufighter, C-47, and PBY are all _heavily _engaged in fighting, albeit mostly on a small scale. They all have their moments too. Most of these types were being encountered by one another in various combinations which are often not what you would expect, sometimes with very interesting results!

*Bomber vs. bomber*
One example of what I mean by the above is that there are several cases where bombers were fighting bombers. In one incident three B-25s encountered a G4M and they got into a running fight, resulting in fairly severe damage on both sides but no shoot down. On another case D3A bombers joined A6M fighters attacking a B-17, on another case a G4M joined with some A6Ms attacking a B-24, and got shot down by the B-24 gunners. I think there are a few more of these.

*US and Allied Bombers were fending off Japanese fighters by themselves*
I've been told quite confidently in the past that even the big four engine US bombers could not fly missions without fighter escort in the Pacific. This is demonstrably not the case, as many US and some Australian bombers got into lengthy fights with sometimes large numbers of Japanese fighters, A6M and later Ki-43, sometimes for as long as a half hour to an hour or more, and rarely got shot down. By the second half of the book this seems to have happened every 3 or 4 days. Usually these were B-17s, especially during their routine raids against Rabaul, then later B-24s as those went into action. But it also happened with B-25s, B-26s, A-20s, and on at least one occasion, Beauforts. Usually neither side lost any aircraft, in a few cases bombers were shot down, in a few cases fighters were shot down (especially if the bombers were in formation and not by themselves). Most often each side sustained some damage but made it back to base. On the flipside, the same was sometimes the case with Japanese bombers too, and neither Zeros nor Betty's seemed to burst into flames every time they were hit, but the Japanese bombers did seem to be more vulnerable to fighters. One one occasion 49th FG P-40s seem to have rather easily fought past some A6M fighter escort and shot down 3 or 4 G3Ms in a matter of seconds.

*Fighter vs Fighter was about even*
The fighter vs. fighter combat i was looking for was actually pretty rare and most of it happened in December. The Japanese lost 19 Zeros and 4 Oscars. The US lost 20 Kittyhawks and 6 Airacobras. The airacobras actually did quite well, better than the Kittyhawks in two incidents, though they were mostly flying the less aggressive missions so didn't get into as many fights. By this time they also have newer model P-39s in action with more experienced pilots, and have probably developed tactics. P-38s come into the picture only a little bit at the very end of the book, claiming I think one Oscar and one Val. They were still having severe maintenance issues with these which Claringould gets into some detail on that. It was a P-39 unit which had converted to the P-38s, and Bong was sent over to them. 9th FS / 49th FG is still flying P-40s at this point, and they have the most worn out ones. Just a few P-40Ks have arrived and are in use with only one squadron (I think it was 8th FS). The Allies lost a lot more bombers in action because they were still flying daylight missions almost every day, but I think most of the losses were actually to weather and accidents... the Owen Stanley range was probably the single biggest Ace in the Theater by a wide margin, followed by the Pacific Ocean.

*Skip Bombing*
One of the neat things about this book is that we get to see the actual results of skip bombing and some other low-level bombing attempts. The beginning of the book, and the previous books, are filled with dangerous, hair raising B-17 raids against Rabaul, against enemy ships, and other targets which ultimately seem to have very little effect. That must have been so frustrating for the crews. But by the second half of the book they are starting to try skip-bombing attacks and a lot of very low-level bombing runs (usually getting shot up by flak in the process). I'm happy to say (sorry IJN) that this did actually seem to work on at least 3 or 4 occasions. I need to go through again and count them all carefully. Most of the skip-bombing runs were done by B-17s. I think the first few times they thought they got hits but didn't, but toward the end they thought they got hits and actually did hit and seriously damage several Japanese warships and transports. Low level attacks by the twin engine bombers also seemed to be pretty effective more generally.

*The Theater was D A N G E R O U S*
New units coming into the Theater were walking a tightrope of death and all kinds of ghastly accidents were very routine. When they first brought the A-20s in, they were using British made parafrags (actually WWI vintage bombs designed to be thrown out of airplanes by hand) with twitchy contact fuses. Several A-20s just blew up for no apparent reason while flying around, killing all crew aboard. It turned out to be these parafrag bombs and they switched them out for more modern ones. New units rotating in had very high accident rates, far more maintenance problems, much higher rates of disease, got lost more often on missions, ran into the Owen Stanley mountains more often, did much more poorly in combat, and ended up ditching in the sea more often than the veteran units. Once they survived a couple of weeks of action they did a lot better. Sometimes sanity prevailed, for example canceling one particularly hare brained mission planed for the P-38 squadron.

*Pilot rescue and Attrition*
Reading between the lines again, there are a lot of really dramatic survival stories in here. Pilots walking for days in the jungle, or stranded on tiny islands, getting their planes flying again and making it back to base, etc. This is where the Japanese seem to be indeed really be losing out. It's not so much that Zeros and Bettys are blowing up like the Hindenburg every time a bullet hits them, because they don't. The Zeros in particular actually seem like pretty tough planes and routinely take battle damage and make it back to base. But when they do go down, the pilot more often ends up dead, (maybe 2/3 of the time as a completely unscientific guess), while on the Allied side it's the opposite, about 2/3 of the time it seems like the pilot eventually gets back to base and back into action.

*The Kokoda Trail*
It's hard to determine how much effect the Allies had on the land battle in terms of air support / interdiction. Clarngbould himself thinks they didn't have much effect, at least until the Allied troops actually got over the mountains and managed to build an airfield on the north side. Certainly a lot of bombs and bullets were wasted strafing empty jungle, empty huts, and one little rope bridge that kept being rebuilt. And there were the usual ugly accidents with friendly fire incidents and so on. On the other hand some Japanese supplies were getting stopped, and in particular their shipping was suffering. You did not want to be in a boat or barge on the eastern or northern coast of New Guinea in late 1942. I came away with the impression that they did have an effect, certainly the Japanese ground forces supply situation was desperate. This is where the Wirraway came into it's own, in the later stages of the fighting around Buna / Gona. The Aussies used them as spotters and to coordinate air strikes by the other aircraft, and it really helped a lot.

The Allies also did other clever things non-aviation related like manage to get three Stuart tanks delivered to the vicinity of Buna (using barges with only 4" of freeboard clearance while carring them!) which did make a big difference in the fighting. But this was largely possible because of Allied air cover.



Anyway, that's a little summary, I'll post some specific examples of the above wildly insane claims later.

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## texvanwinkle (Apr 25, 2022)

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:


>


Outstanding summary. Thanks for taking the time. I've spent almost 30 years now researching Jay Zeamer's "Eager Beavers," the most highly decorated air crew in U.S. history, whose members separately and together served in the 19th and 43rd BG in 1942/43. What you detail here was very much their experience, and in many respects unlike any other theater of the war. (Which in fact is one of my primary selling points in pitching the crew's story as a limited series.)

As part of the research, I've corresponded some with Clairingbould. Great researcher, fine author. Sounds like I need to add this one to my book collection.

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## SaparotRob (Apr 25, 2022)

Was that the crew of "Old 666"?


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## texvanwinkle (Apr 25, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> Was that the crew of "Old 666"?


Don't want to hijack the thread, but yes, Old 666/"Lucy." "Old 666" specifically was mostly Zeamer in his post-service accounts. The crew members I interviewed said they mostly just referred to it as "666" or simply "the plane." Zeamer renamed it "Lucy" for a former girlfriend at Langley shortly before the 16 June 1943 Bougainville mission.

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## SaparotRob (Apr 25, 2022)

That ain’t high jacking, bro’!

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## Wild_Bill_Kelso (Apr 25, 2022)

I would say "Old 666" though is a bit of an outlier just in the sense that the most common outcome of these encounters was that the heavy bomber made it home to base with moderate or light damage, or no damage. Sometimes they could just duck into a cloud and escape the attack, but there were several cases of long fights, half an hour to an hour long, like probably more than 20 just in the four months covered by this book, and these were not typically casualty events for the bomber crews.

The heavy bomber units seemed to have much more trouble when they first got into theater though, I think the 19th BG did lose a lot of planes, but again this is often due to navigation errors, flying into mountains, maintenance problems and so on, more than fighters. Fighters got a few but if I had to guess I'd say it was like 1/4 of the losses.

Here is one example right at the end of the book in December ... I think Dec 14? (The dates are not always as clear as they should / could be). This is from page 192 at the top:

"_During a two-hour period in the middle of the day a further four formations totaling 15 Liberators attacked the destroyers south of Gasmata, dropping 53 x 100, 48 x 300 and 100 x 500 lb bombs. Once again no hits were claimed, and the bombers were intercepted by Zeros. These were from a second No. 252 Ku patrol led by Lieutennant Kagi Yu'uzo which departed Rabaul 0820. The Zeros recorded a high ammunition expenditure indicating sustained combat. Three Zeros were damaged by defensive fire from the B-24s, and one pilot was injured.
..
The crews claimed to have destroyed eleven Zeros with others probably shot down or damaged. In fact just one Zero was shot down, and five were lightly damaged by gunfire, underlying the persistent over-claiming by all Fifth Air Force turret and side gunners at the time_"

Even in cases like Old 666 where a lone heavy bomber was attacked while on recon or something they seem to have usually been able to fend off the Japanese fighters, taking damage but rarely being shot down.


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## Wild_Bill_Kelso (Apr 25, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> That ain’t high jacking, bro’!



Definitely not hijacking, always glad to hear more about all this. By all means welcome.

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## texvanwinkle (Apr 25, 2022)

SaparotRob said:


> That ain’t high jacking, bro’!


Yours wasn't, no. I meant I didn't want my response to do that, i.e. spark a lot of conversation about that crew/plane in a post about this book.

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## Wild_Bill_Kelso (Apr 25, 2022)

texvanwinkle said:


> Yours wasn't, no. I meant I didn't want my response to do that, i.e. spark a lot of conversation about that crew/plane in a post about this book.



Your post is welcome, I'm ok with thread drift!

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## texvanwinkle (Apr 25, 2022)

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:


> I would say "Old 666" though is a bit of an outlier just in the sense that the most common outcome of these encounters was that the heavy bomber made it home to base with moderate or light damage, or no damage. Sometimes they could just duck into a cloud and escape the attack, but there were several cases of long fights, half an hour to an hour long, like probably more than 20 just in the four months covered by this book, and these were not typically casualty events for the bomber crews.
> 
> The heavy bomber units seemed to have much more trouble when they first got into theater though, I think the 19th BG did lose a lot of planes, but again this is often due to navigation errors, flying into mountains, maintenance problems and so on, more than fighters. Fighters got a few but if I had to guess I'd say it was like 1/4 of the losses.
> 
> ...



Completely agree. The Eager Beavers' experience on that mission was indeed an outlier in that sense, even by Zeamer's account. One of his stated reasons for going ahead and doing the Buka recon that day was because they'd done another two weeks prior and found little to report. He reported that it was typical for them to run into a half-dozen or fewer green Army Zeros who never pressed much of an attack. The difference on the 16 June 43 mission, of course, was that naval squadrons from Rabaul had moved forward to Buka for an attack on Guadalcanal slated for later that day. (In fact at least one of the pilots that engaged '666 that morning was killed over Guadalcanal that afternoon.) It was eight of those more seasoned combat pilots, likely concerned about the secrecy of the upcoming Guadalcanal mission, that pressed the engagement on 666 so effectively at the start—neutralizing the SWPA Allied bomber technique of turning inside the Japanese line of fire—and so hard. That's when, according to the crew itself, their successful return came down to Zeamer's outstanding piloting and, frankly, supernatural will.

Coincidentally, Clairingbould also seems to have cracked the nut of the "twin-engine fighter" mentioned in the 16 June 43 crew statements. In research for a prior book, he found that a Japanese "Irving" (J1N1-S) recon flying that morning to Lunga—off the southern tip of Bougainville—reported seeing a lone B-17 under attack by several Zeros and deciding to engage himself. Hard if not impossible for it to be a different engagement.

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## Wild_Bill_Kelso (Apr 25, 2022)

That's another really interesting thing in the latest SPAW book, is that Japanese bomber etc. crews seemed to join in on attacks on US bombers and vice versa. 

Tell me more about this tactic of turning inside the Japanese line of fire?


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## texvanwinkle (Apr 25, 2022)

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:


> Tell me more about this tactic of turning inside the Japanese line of fire?


The Japanese routinely attacked bombers from the front since that was their least defended point. Walter Krell, originally of the 19/22, described in a letter to me how the 22nd pilots (who first took the B-26 into combat in April '42) discovered fairly quickly that the best way to engage the Zero, or any fighter with fixed guns, in that circumstance was to turn inside their line of fire as they were banking to line up on their nose. The Zero would continue to bank into them attempting to get fire on the bomber, but as long as they stayed inside the fixed guns, never could. Krell said they repeatedly would roll completely over trying to get on them, but would then be past them and the rear gunners would take their own shot at them. Zeamer brought the technique with him from the 22nd when he transferred into the 43rd. Others similarly picked it up from veteran/outgoing bomber pilots or figured it out for themselves.

Zeamer couldn't use the technique at the start of the 16 June 43 engagement because, unlike the vast majority of the time, the 251 Kokutai pilots were able to successfully coordinate a frontal attack, from 10, 12, and 2:00, ensuring Zeamer couldn't turn into either side without exposing the belly of the plane to the Zeros. So Zeamer chose to keep their profile narrow and slug it out and, hopefully, surprise them with the additional fire power of his own fixed .50 mounted below and to the right of the bombardier deck similar to some other Fort's in the 43rd.

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## Wild_Bill_Kelso (Apr 25, 2022)

Very interesting!


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## Wayne Little (Apr 25, 2022)

Great Review, the entire series is excellent and well done. Well worth purchasing.

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