Capture of Lae

In September 1943 two Australian divisions, supported by American air power, naval forces and paratroopers, closed a pincer on the Japanese base at Lae on the north-eastern coast of New Guinea: the 9th Division landed from the sea east of the town on 4 September, while the 7th Division was flown in to the airfield at Nadzab in the Markham valley, seized by American paratroopers. Salamaua fell on 11 September and Lae on 16 September, and Nadzab became the main Allied air base in New Guinea. Most of the Japanese 51st Division nevertheless escaped encirclement and withdrew over the Saruwaged Range to the northern coast of the Huon Peninsula.

Name and dates

The capture of Lae is the name given to the operation in which Australian troops, supported by American air power, naval forces and paratroopers, took from the Japanese their two main bases on the Huon Gulf on the north-east coast of New Guinea: Lae and Salamaua. In the documents of General Douglas MacArthur’s General Headquarters the whole undertaking was codenamed Postern – although, strictly speaking, that was the code designation for Lae itself – and English-language literature usually describes it as two linked engagements, the Landing at Lae and the Landing at Nadzab, which concluded the longer Salamaua–Lae campaign.

The operation began on 4 September 1943 with a landing by the Australian 9th Infantry Division on beaches some twenty-odd kilometres east of Lae. The next day, 5 September, the US 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment jumped over the abandoned airfield at Nadzab in the valley of the Markham River, to which the Australian 7th Infantry Division was flown in from 6 September. Salamaua, which had been under attack from the south for months, was occupied by the Australians on 11 September, after its Japanese garrison had withdrawn to Lae. Both Australian divisions reached Lae itself on 16 September; some sources give 15 September, because on that day the 9th Division’s 24th Brigade took the airfield at Malahang on the approaches to the town, but the first troops – of the 7th Division’s 25th Brigade – entered Lae on the morning of 16 September. That date is regarded as the end of the operation. The pursuit of the Japanese retreating through the mountains went on for a few more days, and their march to the north coast of the Huon Peninsula until mid-October.

The capture of Lae was part of Operation Cartwheel – the Allied offensive intended to isolate and neutralise the main Japanese base at Rabaul. At the same time the forces of Admiral William Halsey, after the New Georgia campaign, were advancing through the central Solomon Islands towards Bougainville.

Background

Lae and Salamaua, two small settlements on the Huon Gulf, had served the goldfields inland before the war. The Japanese seized them in March 1942 and built an important forward airfield at Lae, and later the main supply base for their forces in eastern New Guinea. Attacks on Port Moresby were launched from here, and after the defeats on the Kokoda Track and at Buna and Gona Lae became the mainstay of the Japanese defence. At the turn of 1942 and 1943 reinforcements were shipped in, and in January they attacked the Australian base at Wau without success. The next large convoy to Lae was destroyed by Allied aircraft at the beginning of March 1943 in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea. From then on the Japanese no longer risked convoys: men and supplies were brought to Wewak and Madang and moved on from there by barge, by submarine or on foot.

In March 1943 the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington scaled back MacArthur’s plans and postponed the capture of Rabaul until 1944. A directive from his headquarters of 6 May set three tasks: to seize the islands of Woodlark and Kiriwina (which was done at the end of June), to take the Lae–Salamaua–Finschhafen–Madang area, and to take western New Britain. The second task fell to New Guinea Force under General Thomas Blamey, the Australian Commander-in-Chief of land forces. The burden of the 1943 offensive thus fell once again on the Australian Army.

On the Japanese side, General Hitoshi Imamura’s Eighth Area Army in Rabaul placed New Guinea under Lieutenant General Hatazō Adachi’s Eighteenth Army. In the summer Adachi had three divisions: the 41st at Wewak, the 20th around Madang and Lieutenant General Hidemitsu Nakano’s 51st around Salamaua and Lae – some 80,000 men in all, of whom, however, only the 51st Division was in contact with the enemy. Imamura even ordered him to capture the Allied bases at Wau, Bena Bena and Mount Hagen, but the chronic shortage of transport and supplies made these plans unrealistic.

Blamey’s plan and the Salamaua diversion

Blamey planned a double envelopment of Lae by his two most experienced Australian divisions. He discussed the details on 16 May with Lieutenant General Edmund Herring, commander of the Australian I Corps, over a model of the Lae area kept under guard day and night in a boarded-up room at his headquarters in Brisbane. Major General George Wootten’s veteran 9th Division – men of the siege of Tobruk and the Second Battle of El Alamein, retrained for jungle warfare and amphibious operations – was to land from the sea east of the town. Major General George Vasey’s 7th Division, which had fought at Kokoda and Gona, was to strike from the west, from the Markham valley, and cut Lae off from reinforcements.

It was the Australian Army’s first large amphibious undertaking since Gallipoli, and it was six months in preparation. Originally one brigade was to move along the coast in small boats from Morobe, but Blamey judged this too risky within reach of Japanese aircraft, and in May he obtained MacArthur’s consent to use the whole 9th Division and the large landing ships of Rear Admiral Daniel Barbey’s VII Amphibious Force (Task Force 76). Thanks to the range of the LSTs, LCIs and LCTs, the division could sail directly from Milne Bay. Its landing craft were operated by the US 2nd Engineer Special Brigade. The beaches were named after colours – Red Beach and Yellow Beach – and were chosen to be out of range of the Japanese artillery at Lae.

The western part was harder. Under the first plan the 7th Division was to reach the Markham valley overland, via Wau and Bulolo, on an unfinished road; Vasey called this “a dog’s breakfast”, that is, a complete mess. He proposed flying in most of the division, which required the swift seizure of a landing ground. The choice fell on Nadzab on the Markham, some 40–50 kilometres upriver from Lae. MacArthur placed Colonel Kenneth Kinsler’s US 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment at New Guinea Force’s disposal – first one battalion, and from 8 August the whole regiment. Volunteers from the Australian 2/4th Field Regiment took a hurried parachute course so that they could drop with two dismantled 25-pounder guns.

Everything depended on air power. Lieutenant General George Kenney’s US Fifth Air Force built a secret airstrip in the mountains at Tsili Tsili and on 17 August struck the Japanese airfields at Wewak, destroying some hundred aircraft on the ground. By September the Japanese Army Air Force in New Guinea had a mere 60–70 serviceable machines.

The diversion at Salamaua played a key role. From April Major General Stanley Savige’s Australian 3rd Division had been attacking from the Wau area towards Mubo, Bobdubi Ridge and Komiatum, and on 30 June the US 162nd Infantry Regiment landed at Nassau Bay and advanced along the coast. Nakano judged Salamaua to be under threat and drew more and more troops there, stripping Lae – exactly as Blamey intended. At times the attack went almost too well: the premature capture of Salamaua would have pushed the Japanese back into Lae and wrecked the whole plan. On 23 August Major General Edward Milford’s Australian 5th Division took over the front at Salamaua. Allied intelligence at that time estimated the Lae garrison at about 7,250 men and the forces at Salamaua at nearly 7,000.

Course: the landing east of Lae (4–6 September)

Brigadier Victor Windeyer’s 20th Infantry Brigade sailed from Milne Bay on 2 September; the first waves travelled in four fast transports converted from old destroyers, the rest in Barbey’s landing ships. Aircraft covered the convoy with strikes on Madang and Wewak. After a short stop off Buna the force sailed on through the night of 3–4 September. Kenney, relying on two teams of meteorologists, one Australian and one American, set the landing for 4 September and the drop at Nadzab for the following morning – he was counting on weather that would keep the Japanese aircraft on New Britain grounded.

At 6.30 a.m. on 4 September, after a brief bombardment by five American destroyers, the first troops of the 20th Brigade went ashore on Red Beach and Yellow Beach, near Hopoi Mission. There was almost no one on the beaches – the few Japanese sentries had abandoned their posts. Resistance came instead from the air: a handful of fighters and bombers attacked the fifth wave of LCIs, and a bomb hit USS LCI-339, which burned and was lost. Eight Australians were killed, among them the commanding officer of the 2/23rd Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel R. E. Wall, and 45 were wounded. Even so, about 8,000 men were put ashore in roughly four hours. The 26th Brigade landed after the 20th.

In the afternoon some 70 Japanese aircraft attacked a group of LSTs bringing in the next echelon. Forty-eight P-38 fighters were sent to help. LST-473 was hit by two bombs and LST-471 by an aerial torpedo; more than 50 Americans and Australians were killed on the two ships, the heaviest losses being among the commandos of the 2/4th Independent Company. The damaged ships were towed to Morobe. Further air raids on the beachhead blew up an ammunition dump and set a fuel dump ablaze. Despite these losses the landing succeeded: the next day the 26th Brigade advanced a few kilometres westwards, and on the evening of 5 September the division’s reserve – the 24th Brigade – came ashore. Wootten advanced on Lae with two brigades, the 24th along the coast and the 26th a few kilometres inland, while the 20th Brigade guarded the beachhead.

Course: the airborne landing at Nadzab (5–12 September)

On 5 September the morning fog over the airfields around Port Moresby began to lift at about 7.30 a.m., as the meteorologists had predicted. At 10.07 a.m. more than 300 aircraft from eight airfields assembled over Tsili Tsili. In the lead flew B-25 bombers, which “cleaned up” the drop zones with fragmentation bombs and cannon fire, followed by A-20s laying smoke screens. Then came some 80 C-47 transports carrying three battalions of the 503rd Regiment, escorted by more than a hundred fighters. The drop began at 10.22 a.m. and took less than five minutes. Meanwhile heavy bombers attacked the Japanese position at Heath’s Plantation, halfway to Lae.

MacArthur, Kenney and Vasey watched the operation from three B-17s. Kenney recalled that MacArthur first reminded him that he was forbidden to take part in combat, and on being told that these were “his boys”, replied that they were his boys too, and flew with him. He was later awarded the Air Medal for the flight. The paratroopers met no opposition either on the ground or in the air; three were killed as a result of faulty parachutes and falls from trees, and several dozen suffered minor injuries. In the afternoon the Australian gunners were dropped with their guns; one howitzer was assembled within two and a half hours, the other after three days spent searching the tall grass for parts.

The same day a force under Lieutenant Colonel J. T. Lang – the Australian 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion, sappers and a company of the Papuan Infantry Battalion with several hundred carriers – reached Nadzab overland and by river, crossing the Markham in boats and over an improvised bridge. Pioneers, sappers, paratroopers and local people cut the kunai grass by hand and lengthened the old runway. On the morning of 6 September the first small aircraft landed, followed by transports carrying American aviation engineers, who soon began building further runways.

The airlift of the infantry was held up by the weather over the Owen Stanley Range. Early on 7 September at Jackson airfield near Port Moresby a B-24 bomber taking off on a reconnaissance flight clipped some trees and crashed onto lorries carrying men of the Australian 2/33rd Battalion. Eleven airmen and 59 Australians were killed (15 on the spot, the rest dying of their wounds) and 92 were injured – the 7th Division’s heaviest loss of the entire operation. By 8 September only the 2/25th Battalion and part of the 2/33rd had reached Nadzab, but Vasey did not wait: he ordered Brigadier Kenneth Eather’s 25th Brigade to advance on Lae. The brigade’s last battalion did not fly in until 12 September, after three days of bad weather.

Course: the Busu River and the fall of Salamaua (6–14 September)

The 9th Division’s advance soon slowed. The ground east of Lae was cut by numerous rivers – the Buso, Bunga, Buiem, Burep and Busu – fast-flowing, without fords and running into the sea amid swamps and jungle. On 6 September a Japanese company attacked the positions of the 2/23rd Battalion around Singaua Plantation; the attack was beaten off, but it delayed the advance by several days, and in the meantime torrential rain set in. Supplies were brought by barge along the coast, which led to disputes between the Australian commanders and the US Navy, which was reluctant to send ships close inshore.

The most serious obstacle proved to be the Busu, swollen after three days of rain and several hundred metres wide at its mouth. The Australians had no boats or bridging equipment, and waiting meant losing the initiative. On 9 September Lieutenant Colonel Colin Norman’s 2/28th Battalion waded across the river at its mouth in extended order, under machine-gun fire from the far bank; thirteen men drowned and dozens were swept away by the current, but the battalion secured a bridgehead. Inland, the 26th Brigade was held up on the eastern bank for several days and crossed only on 14 September, after a box-girder bridge had been built under fire.

The Japanese no longer had any illusions. On 8 September Adachi ordered Nakano to abandon Salamaua and concentrate all his forces at Lae; Nakano had already sent his hospitals and artillery there. From the night of 10–11 September the main body of the 51st Division withdrew from Salamaua by barge and along the coastal track – between 5,000 and 6,000 men, according to Australian estimates. On 11 September troops of the Australian 5th Division entered the deserted, ruined Salamaua. Herring, who visited it on 14 September, found mainly bomb craters and corrugated iron; plans to build a base there were dropped, on the grounds that Salamaua had already served its purpose by drawing the Japanese away from Lae. The fighting at Salamaua from April to September cost the Australians, according to Australian figures, more than 1,000 killed and wounded (including about 340 killed), the Americans of the 162nd Regiment nearly 480, and the Japanese – according to estimates – some 8,000 killed and wounded.

Meanwhile the 25th Brigade was advancing from the west. On 11 September it routed a Japanese detachment at Jensen’s Plantation and then fought a hard battle for Heath’s Plantation, where according to Australian figures more than 300 Japanese were killed. On 13 September Private Richard Kelliher of the 2/25th Battalion single-handedly destroyed a Japanese post with grenades and Bren gun fire, and then carried a wounded corporal to safety under fire; he was awarded the Victoria Cross for this. The same day the Australians captured a copy of Nakano’s withdrawal order. North of the main advance, a patrol of the 3rd Battalion of the 503rd Regiment clashed on 15 September with some two hundred Japanese crossing the Bumbu River.

Course: the entry into Lae and the retreat over the mountains (15–16 September)

On 15 September the 9th Division’s 24th Brigade took the airfield at Malahang on the eastern edge of Lae, and it seemed that it would be the first to enter the town. On the morning of 16 September, however, the 7th Division resumed its advance along the road through the Markham valley. It now met only sick and isolated Japanese soldiers. Brigadier Eather, impatient with the pace, marched at the head of the column himself, pistol in hand. Men of the 2/25th and 2/33rd Battalions entered Lae without a fight – the only fire and bombs they faced came from American aircraft that did not know the town was already in Allied hands. Vasey signalled in clear that “only Fifth Air Force bombers” were preventing him from entering Lae. In the afternoon the 2/31st Battalion reached Lae airfield, and the 25th Brigade also came under fire from the 9th Division’s Australian howitzers before word reached Wootten. The two formations linked up in a town that its Japanese defenders had already left.

For Lae did not become the trap Blamey had planned. Once it became clear that the Australians intended to encircle and destroy the 51st Division, Imamura and Adachi – after consulting Tokyo – abandoned the attacks on Bena Bena and Mount Hagen. Nakano and Major General Ryōichi Shōge, commander of the Lae defences, were ordered to cross the mountains to the north coast of the Huon Peninsula, while the 20th Division was to move from Madang to Finschhafen. The Salamaua garrison assembled at Lae on 14 September, and over the following days some 9,000 Japanese left the town northwards, across the Busu and then over the Saruwaged Range, whose highest peak rises to more than 4,000 metres.

The march proved a severe ordeal. The soldiers carried food for ten days, which ran out halfway; they abandoned their artillery, heavy equipment and in the end even their rifles. Lieutenant General Kane Yoshihara, chief of staff of the Eighteenth Army, recalled a cold so bitter that sleep was impossible, sleet under a tropical sky and steep slopes from which man after man slid into the abyss. According to various estimates, between 600 and 1,000 soldiers were killed or died on the way. The survivors reached the coast in mid-October, by which time the 51st Division numbered about 6,400 men, more than 1,200 of them sick. The Australian official historian David Dexter acknowledged that the Japanese had conducted a creditable defence of Lae in the face of an attack by “two of the best divisions on the Allied side”, and that fate and nature had favoured “the gallant defender” despite the equally gallant efforts of the attackers – above all the swollen Busu, which had held up the 9th Division.

Losses

Casualty figures differ according to the tally and the period covered. According to various studies, the 9th Division lost between 77 and 115 killed, 397 wounded and 73 missing in the operation. The 7th Division reported 38 killed and 104 wounded between 5 and 19 September, with 138 men evacuated sick; to these must be added the 59 Australians killed in the bomber crash at Jackson airfield. The 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment lost three killed in the drop and eight in action. The US Navy lost the landing ship LCI-339, and two LSTs were badly damaged; several dozen sailors and soldiers were killed aboard them. According to a tally covering both divisions and the crash, a total of 119 Allied soldiers connected with the Nadzab landing were killed and 241 wounded.

Japanese losses are known only approximately. The Australians estimated them at about 2,200 killed in the Lae area during the operation; other studies give about 1,500 killed. Few were taken prisoner. To these must be added the losses at Salamaua in the preceding months and the 600 to 1,000 men who were killed or died on the march over the Saruwaged Range.

Significance

The capture of Lae was one of the most efficiently conducted Allied operations in the Pacific in 1943. The combination of seaborne and airborne landings achieved in less than two weeks what two months of bloody fighting at Buna and Gona had failed to achieve. The drop at Nadzab, carried out after the disappointment of the night airborne landings in Sicily, was regarded in the US Army as a textbook example of an airborne operation and helped convince sceptics of the value of such troops. For the Australian Army it was the first major amphibious operation since Gallipoli – and this time a successful one. Blamey called the capture of Lae and Salamaua “a significant step on the road to victory”.

The plan did not succeed in full, however: the 51st Division was not destroyed, and its surviving soldiers reinforced the defence of the Huon Peninsula. As early as 22 September the Australian 20th Brigade landed near Finschhafen, opening heavy fighting on the peninsula that lasted until early 1944. The 7th Division, moved by air, advanced up the Markham and Ramu valleys towards the Finisterre Range and Madang. Nadzab, expanded to four airfields, became the main Allied air base in New Guinea, and Lae an important port and supply base. From them MacArthur conducted his successive “leaps” along the island’s north coast in 1944, as far as Hollandia.

The loss of Lae and Salamaua at the same time as the Americans were taking New Georgia also forced Tokyo to change its strategy. At the end of September 1943 the Japanese leadership drew a new “absolute” defence line running through western New Guinea, the Carolines and the Marianas. The positions in front of it – including Rabaul and eastern New Guinea – were henceforth merely to delay the Allies for as long as possible. Imamura’s and Adachi’s forces were no longer fighting for victory, but for time.