Bad luck dogged the Milne Bay operation from the start. The second week in August, the battalion of the Kawaguchi Detachment assigned to the 8th Fleet (ViceAdmiral Gunichi Mikawa) for the operation was sent instead to help clear Guadalcanal in the Solomons, where U. S. Marines had landed on August 7. A replacement battalion could not arrive in time. Admiral Mikawa, who had won a brilliant naval victory at Guadalcanal on August 9, would have no help from the Army at Milne Bay.
At the last minute the target was changed. Reports from reconnaissance planes in mid-August that the Allies were building an airfield at the head of Milne Bay near Gili Gili led planners to change the landing from Samarai, at the mouth of the bay, to Gili Gili.
The Japanese knew little about the Gili Gili area, in peace-time the site of a coconut plantation. Low-lying rain clouds usually protected it from reconnaissance. Estimating that it was held by not more than three infantry companies and 30 aircraft, Mikawa allotted only about 1,500 men to the invasion. Most of them were to come from Kavieng; 612 marines of the Kure 5th S. N.L. F. (Commander Shojiro Hayashi), 362 16th Naval Pioneer Unit troops, and 197 marines of the Sasebo 5th S. N.L. F. The Kavieng convoys were to sail up Milne Bay and land at Rabi, about three miles east of the Gili Gili jetty. At the same time, 353 marines of the Sasebo 5th S. N.L. F. at Buna, carried in seven big, wooden, motor-driven barges, were to land at Taupota on the Solomon Sea side and march over the mountains to Gili Gili.
The overland force was the first casualty of the operation. As it chugged down the coast under cloud cover on August 24 it was sighted and reported by a ”coastwatcher”-one of the Australian organisation of planters and officials who had taken to the hills with wireless sets. The following day the marines beached the barges on Goodenough Island and went ashore to eat lunch. At that moment the clouds parted and 12 Australian P-40 fighter planes swooped low and destroyed the barges. The Buna marines were left stranded.
Two cruiser-escorted transports with Commander Hayashi and the first echelon
Of the Kavieng marines arrived safely at the head of Milne Bay in a downpour on the night of August 25. Shortly before midnight Hayashi began the landings at a point he believed to be Rabi. But he
Cover of a heavy mist. They were 568 marines of the Kure 3rd S. N.L. F. and 200 of the Yokosuka 5th S. N.L. F., all junder Commander Minoro Yano who, being senior to Hayashi, took command , of operations.
Before one o’clock on the morning of
Had no reliable map, and in the darkness and rain he landed about seven miles to the east on a swampy coastal shelf where the mountains came down almost to the water. His only means of advance westward toward Gili Gili was a muddy 12-foot track.
Hayashi was a stickler for night operations. He waited until darkness fell on August 26 to attack his first objective, a plantation astride the track at K. B. Mission, lightly held by Australian militia. Preceded by a flame-thrower, his troops tried to outflank the defenders by wading into the bay on one side and the swamp on the other. By dawn they had ¦ almost succeeded; but at first light they retired into the jungle.
The following night the attack was resumed in greater force, the second , echelon from Kavieng having arrived.
; This time the Japanese used two small. tanks-the first tanks to be landed on ii the New Guinea coast. They each had a . strong headlight which, shining through ;i the rain, enabled them to illuminate the r Australian positions while the attackers (remained in darkness. With the help of . the tanks, Hayashi’s men cleared K. B.
‘ Mission, crossed the Gama river beyond, 'fi and before dawn on August 28 were j[ attacking an airstrip that U. S. engineers were building between Rabi and Gili I,; Gili. There, lacking the tanks, which had bogged down in mud and had had to be abandoned, they were stopped by heavy fire. At daylight they withdrew into the jungle.
Commander Hayashi had already asked Admiral Mikawa to send him reinforcements. He had been deprived of his overland force and had lost a considerable part of his food and ammunition when Allied aircraft sank the steel barges ferrying it ashore. He had met ground opposition greater than he expected and ;:i found the terrain worse than anything •j he could have imagined. Reinforcements landed on the night of August 29 under
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August 31 the combined Japanese forces launched a furious assault on the airstrip. They were beaten back by intense fire from anti-tank guns, heavy machine guns, and mortars, expertly sited with a clear field of fire and backed by heavy artillery positioned in the rear. Before day broke, three Japanese bugle calls rang out, the signal for retreat.
The Australians pursued. By nightfall on September 1 they had retaken K. B. Mission. Commander Yano, setting up defences on the track to block the pursuit, cabled Admiral Mikawa on September 3 for permission to withdraw from Milne Bay. He himself had been wounded; Hayashi had been killed; he had lost 600 men and had more than 300 wounded on his hands. The rest of the men, most of them suffering from trench foot, jungle rot, and tropical fevers, could not hold out.
Mikawa sanctioned the evacuation. By dawn of September 6, Japanese ships, carrying the 1,300 men remaining of the 1,900-man invasion force, were on their way to Rabaul.
The crowning misfortune of the Milne Bay invasion was the miscalculation of the strength of the defenders. Unknown to the Japanese, the Allies had landed at the head of Milne Bay between June 25 and August 20 some 4,500 Australian infantrymen, supported by about 3,000 Australian and 1,300 American engineer, artillery, and service units.
Japanese fanaticism had met its match; but it had been a close run thing.
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