At Cape Gloucester, the 1st Marine Division had an air force of its own
consisting of Piper L-4 Cubs and Stinson L-5s provided by the Army. The
improvised air force traced its origins to the summer of 1943, before
the division plunged into the green inferno of New Britain. Lieutenant
Colonel Kenneth H. Weir, the division's air officer, and Captain
Theodore A. Petras, the personal pilot of Major General Alexander A.
Vandegrift, then the division commander, concocted a plan for acquiring
light aircraft mainly for artillery spotting. The assistant division
commander at that time, Brigadier General Rupertus, had seen Army troops
making use of Piper Cubs on maneuvers, and he promptly presented the
plan to General MacArthur, the theater commander, who promised to give
the division twelve light airplanes in time for the next operation.
When the 1st Marine Division arrived at Goodenough Island, off the
southwestern tip of New Guinea, to begin preparing for further combat,
Rupertus, now a major general and Vandegrift's successor as division
commander, directed Petras and another pilot, First Lieutenant R. F.
Murphy, to organize an aviation unit from among the Marines of the
division. A call went out for volunteers with aviation experience; some
sixty candidates stepped forward, and 12 qualified as pilots in the new
Air Liaison Unit. The dozen Piper Cubs arrived as promised; six proved
to be in excellent condition, three needed repair, and another three
were fit only for cannibalization to provide parts to keep the others
flying. The nine flyable planes practiced a variety of tasks during two
months of training at Goodenough Island. The airmen acquired experience
in artillery spotting, radio communications, and snagging messages, hung
in a container trailing a pennant to help the pilot see it, from a line
strung between two poles.
The division's air force landed at Cape Gloucester from LSTs on D-Day,
reassembled their aircraft, and commenced operating. The radios
installed in the L-4s proved too balky for artillery spotting, so the
group concentrated on courier flights, visual and photographic
reconnaissance, and delivering small amounts of cargo. As a light
transport, a Piper Cub could drop a case of dry rations, for example,
with pinpoint accuracy from an altitude of 200 feet. Occasionally, the
light planes became attack aircraft when pilots or observers tossed hand
grenades into Japanese positions.
Before the Marines pulled out of New Britain, two Army pilots, flying
Stinson L-5s, faster and more powerful than the L-4s, joined the
division's air arm. One airplane of each type was damaged beyond repair
in crashes, but the pilots and passengers survived. All the Marine
volunteers received the Air Medal for their contribution, but a
specially trained squadron arrived from the United States and replaced
them prior to the next operation, the assault on Peleliu.]
_The Landings at Volupai_
By coincidence, 6 March was the day chosen for the reinforced 5th
Marines, now commanded by Colonel Oliver P. Smith, to land on the west
coast of the Willaumez Peninsula midway between base and tip. The
intelligence section of division headquarters believed that Japanese
strength between Talasea, the site of a crude airstrip, and Cape
Hoskins, across Kimbe Bay from Willaumez Peninsula, equaled that of the
Smith's command, but that most of the enemy troops defended Cape
Hoskins. The intelligence estimate proved correct, for Sakai had been
preparing a last-ditch defense of Cape Hoskins, when word arrived to
retreat all the way to Rabaul.
[Illustration]
To discover the extent of Japanese preparations in the immediate
vicinity of Volupai, a reconnaissance team landed from a torpedo boat at
Bagum, a village about nine miles from Red Beach, the site chosen for
the assault landing. Flight Lieutenant G. H. Rodney Marsland of the
Royal Australian Air Force, First Lieutenant John D. Bradbeer--the
division's chief scout, who had participated in three similar
reconnaissance patrols of the Cape Gloucester area before the 26
December invasion--and two native bearers remained ashore for 24 hours
and learned that Red Beach was lightly defended. Their sources,
principally natives who had worked at a plantation that Marsland had
operated in the area before the war, confirmed Marine estimates of
Terunuma's aggregate force--some 600 men, two thirds of them located
near Talasea, armed with mortars and artillery.
Bristol Beauforts of the Royal Australian Air Force based at Kiriwina
Island bombed the Volupai-Talasea region for three days and then
conducted a last-minute strike to compensate for the absence of naval
gunfire. Smith's force, designated Landing Team A, loaded into a small
flotilla of landing craft, escorted by torpedo boats, and set out from
Iboki Point. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Amory, Jr., an Army officer in
command of an engineer boat unit, took command of the collection of
small craft, some of them manned by his soldiers and the others by
sailors. A storm buffeted the formation, and after the seas grew calm,
the boat carrying the Army air liaison party broke down. Major Gordon D.
Gayle, the new commander of the 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, who already
was behind schedule, risked further delay by taking the disabled craft
in tow. Gayle felt that Combat Team A's need for the liaison party's
radio equipment justified his action.
At 0835 on 6 March, the first of the amphibian tractors carrying the
assault troops clawed their way onto Red Beach. During the movement
shoreward, Sherman tanks in Army LCMs opened fire with machine guns and
stood ready to direct their 75mm weapons against any Japanese gunner who
might oppose the landing. Aside from hard-to-pinpoint small-arms fire,
the opposition consisted mainly of barrages from mortars, screened by
the terrain from the flat-trajectory cannon of the tanks. When Japanese
mortar shells began bursting among the approaching landing craft,
Captain Theodore A. Petras, at the controls of one of the division's
Piper Cubs, dived low over the mortar positions and dropped hand
grenades from the supply he carried on all his flights. Natives had
warned Marsland and Bradbeer of a machine-gun nest dominating the beach
from the slopes of Little Mount Worri, but the men of the 1st Battalion,
5th Marines, leading the way, found it abandoned and encountered no
serious opposition as they dug in to protect the beachhead.
Meanwhile, Gayle's Marines pressed their attack, with four medium tanks
supporting Company E as it tried to push farther inland. One of the
Shermans bogged down almost immediately in the soft sand of Red Beach,
but the other three continued in column. The tank in the lead lost
momentum on a muddy rise, and two Japanese soldiers carrying land mines
burst from cover to attack it. Riflemen of Company E cut down one of
them, but the other detonated his mine against the vehicle, killing
himself and a Marine who tried to stop him. The explosion jammed the
turret and stunned the crewmen, who were further shaken, but not
wounded, when an antitank grenade exploded against the armor. The
damaged Sherman got out of the way; when the other two tanks had passed,
it returned to the trail only to hit a mine that disabled it.
Despite the loss of two tanks, one temporarily immobilized on the beach
and the other out of action permanently, Gayle's battalion continued its
advance. During the fighting on the approaches to the Volupai coconut
plantation, the body of a Japanese soldier yielded a map showing enemy
dispositions around Talasea. By mid-afternoon, Smith's regimental
intelligence section was disseminating the information, which proved
valuable in future operations.
While Company E of Gayle's battalion followed the trail toward the
plantation, Company G kept pace, crossing the western shoulder of Little
Mount Worri. Five Army Air Forces P-39s from Airfield No. 2 at Cape
Gloucester arrived overhead to support Gayle's attack, but the pilots
could not locate the troops below and instead bombed Cape Hoskins, where
there was no danger of hitting the Marines. Even without the aerial
attack, the 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, overran the plantation by dusk
and dug in for the night; the unit counted the bodies of 35 Japanese
killed during the day's fighting.
On D-Day, Combat Team A lost 13 killed and 71 wounded, with artillery
batteries rather than rifle companies suffering the greater number of
casualties. The 2d Battalion, 11th Marines, set up its 75mm pack
howitzers on the open beach, exposed to fire from the 90mm mortars upon
which Petras had ineffectually showered his hand grenades. Some of the
corpsmen at Red Beach, who went to the assistance of wounded
artillerymen, became casualties themselves. Nine of the Marines killed
on 6 March were members of the artillery unit, along with 29 of the
wounded. Nevertheless, the gunners succeeded in registering their fires
in the afternoon and harassing the enemy throughout the night.
[Illustration: _At Volupai, as on Cape Gloucester, sand, mud, and land
mines--sometimes carried by Japanese soldiers who detonated them against
the sides of the vehicle--could immobilize even the Sherman M4 medium
tank._