Operation Cartwheel

Markham Valley and the Huon Peninsula

Nadzab: The Airborne Invasion

by James Miller, jr.

The Jump

Capture of Nadzab had been spectacularly effected on 5 September.

AIRDROP AT NADZAB, MORNING OF 5 SEPTEMBER 1943. The paratroopers began jumping from C-47's onto separate jump areas about 1020.

This mission, assigned to Col. Kenneth H. Kinsler's 503d Parachute Infantry Regiment, was coupled with the additional mission of preparing the airstrip for C-47's carrying Maj. Gen. George A. Vasey's 7th Australian Division from Marilinan and Port Moresby. (Unless otherwise indicated this section is based on Craven and Cate, The Pacific: Guadalcanal to Saipan; pp. 184-86; Morison, Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, pp, 266-69; Kenney, General Kenney Reports, pp. 292-96; ALF, Rpt on New Guinea Opus: 4 Sep 43-26 Apr 44; Combined Operational Int Center GHQ SWPA, Resume . . . Lae and Salamaua, in GHQ SWPA G-3 Jnl, 20 Sep 43; 503d Parachute Inf Rpt of Opns, Markham Valley, 5-19 Sep 43; Japanese Operations in the Southwest Pacific Area, MS (Vol. II of the MacArthur hist), Ch. VIL OCMH; 8th Area Army Operations, Japanese Monogr No. 110 (OCMH), pp. 81-85; 18th Army Operations, II, Japanese Monogr No. 42 (OCMH), 18-80; Interrogation of Adachi et al., by Mil Hist Sec, Australian Army Hq, OCMH.)

Reveille for the men of the 503d sounded early at Port Moresby on the morning Of 5 September. The weather promised to be fair, although bad flying weather over the Owen Stanleys delayed take off until 0825. New Guinea Force had prepared its plans flexibly so that the seaborne invasion on 4 September would not be slowed or altered if any threat of bad weather on 5 September delayed the parachute jump, but Kenney's weathermen had forecast accurately.

The paratroopers and a detachment of 2/4th Australian Field Regiment which was to jump with its 25-pounder guns reached the airfield two hours before take off. (The 503d had trained this detachment.)

There they put on parachutes and equipment. The 54th Troop Carrier Wing had ninety-six C-47's ready, and the troops boarded these fifteen minutes before take-off time.

The first C-47 roared down the runway at 0825; by 0840 all transports were aloft. They crossed the Owen Stanleys, then organized into three battalion flights abreast, with each flight in sixplane elements in step-up right echelon.

An hour later bombers, fighters, and weather planes joined the formation over Marilinan, on time to the minute. All together 302 aircraft from eight different fields were involved. The air armada then flew down the Watut Valley, swung to the right over the Markham River, and headed for Nadzab. The C-47's dropped from 3,000 feet to 400-500 feet. The parachutists had stood in their planes and checked their equipment over Marilinan, and twelve minutes later they formed by the plane doors ready to jump.

In the lead six squadrons of B-25 strafers with eight .50-caliber machine guns in their noses and six parachute fragmentation bombs in their bays worked over the Nadzab field. Six A- 20's laid smoke after the last bomb had exploded. Then came the C-47's, closely covered by fighters.

The paratroopers began jumping from the three columns Of C-47's onto separate jump areas about 1020. Eighty-one C-47's carrying the 503d were emptied in four and one-half minutes. All men of the 503d but one, who fainted while getting ready, left the planes. Two men were killed instantly when their chutes failed to open, and a third landed in a tree, fell sixty feet to the ground, and died. Thirty-three men were injured. There was no opposition from the enemy, either on the ground or in the air. Once they reached the ground, the 503d battalions laboriously moved through high kunai grass from landing grounds to assembly areas.

Five B-17's carrying supply parachutes stayed over Nadzab all day. They dropped a total of fifteen tons of supplies on ground panel signals laid by the 503d. The Australian artillerymen and their guns parachuted down in the afternoon. The whole splendid sight was witnessed by Generals MacArthur and Kenney from what Kenney called a "brasshat" flight of three B-17's high above. MacArthur was in one, Kenney in another, and the third B-17 was there to provide added fire power in case the Japanese turned up.

The 503d's ist Battalion seized the Nadzab airstrip and began to prepare it to receive C-47's. The 2d and 3d Battalions blocked the approaches from the north and east. As soon as the parachutists had begun landing, the Australian units that had come down the Watut River-the 2/2d Pioneer Battalion, the 2/6th Field Company, and one company of the Papuan Infantry Battalion-began landing on the north bank of the Markham. They made contact with the 503d in late afternoon and worked through the night in preparing the airstrip.

The next morning the first C-47 arrived. It brought in advance elements of the U.S. 871st Airborne Engineer Battalion.

Twenty-four hours later C-47's brought in General Vasey's 7th Division headquarters and part of the 25th Australian Infantry Brigade Group from Marilinan, where they had staged from Port Moresby. Thereafter the transports flew the Australian infantry and the American engineers directly from Port Moresby. By io September the welltimed, smoothly run operation had proceeded fast enough that 7th Division troops at Nadzab were able to relieve the 503d of its defensive missions. Enough American engineers had arrived to take over construction of new airstrips.

The 503d's only contact with the enemy came in mid-September when the 3d Battalion ran into a Japanese column at Yalu, east of Nadzab. The parachute regiment was withdrawn on 17 September. It had lost 3 men killed jumping, 8 men killed by enemy action, 33 injured jumping, 12 wounded by the enemy, and 26 sick. (These figures are taken from a table of casualties attached to the 503d's report and differ slightly from casualty figures in the body of the report.)

This was, comparatively, small cost for the seizure of a major airbase with a parachute jump. Nadzab paid rich dividends. Within two weeks the engineers had completed two parallel airstrips six thousand feet long and had started six others.

The Advance Against Lae

The 25th Australian Infantry Brigade Group moved eastward out of Nadzab toward Lae on io September while General Wootten's 9th Division troops were forcing a crossing over the Busu River east of Lae. The Markham Valley narrows near Lae, with the Atzera Range on the northeast and the wide river on the southwest. A prewar road in the Atzera foothills connected Nadzab with Lae, and a rough trail on the other side of the Atzeras paralleled this road from Lae to Yalu, where it intersected the road. Thus while some troops blocked the trail at Yalu, and the 2/33d Australian Infantry Battalion guarded the line of communications, the 2/25th Australian Infantry Battalion advanced down the road and part of the 2/2d Australian Pioneer Battalion moved down the north bank of the river.

When a small group of Japanese offered resistance to the advance at Jensen's Plantation, toward the lower end of the valley, the 2/25th Battalion drove it back and on 14 September captured Heath's Plantation farther on. The 2/33d Australian Infantry Battalion then took over and pushed on toward Lae. By now the Australians had come within range of Japanese 75-mm. guns and found the going harder. But an assault the next day cleared Edward's Plantation and enemy resistance ended.

The advance elements of the 25th Brigade entered Lae from the west the next morning, 16 September. In the afternoon the 24th Brigade, which had advanced from the east and captured Malahang Airdrome on 15 September, pushed into Lae and made contact with the 25th Brigade. Lae had fallen easily and speedily. The Japanese had vanished.

The Japanese Evacuation

Throughout July and August the Salamaua Japanese were reinforced at Lae's expense, but were continually forced back. On 24 August General Nakano' reflecting the importance which his superior had attached to Salamaua, addressed his troops thus: "Holding Salamaua is the Division's responsibility. This position is our last defense line, and we will withdraw no further. if we are unable to hold, we will die fighting. I will burn our Divisional flag and even the patients will rise to fight in close combat. No one will be taken a prisoner." (18th Army Operations, II Japanese Monogr No. 42 (OCMH), 37.)

Imperial Headquarters, however, did not order a suicidal last stand. Nakano was ordered to hold out as long as possible, but to withdraw if he could not hold Salamaua. The Australian landing between Lae and Finschhafen and the 503d's seizure of Nadzab, coupled with Allied air and PT boat activity in the Huon Gulf and the straits, caused General Adachi on 8 September to order Nakano to abandon Salamaua and pull back to Lae. Nakano's hospital patients and artillery had already been sent to Lae, and on 11 September withdrawal of the main body began.

Meanwhile, after considerable discussion Imperial Headquarters, Imamura, and Adachi abandoned their plans to take Bena Bena and Mount Hagen. Adachi saw that the Allied operations at Salamaua, Nadzab, and Lae threatened to cut off the 51st Division. He now decided that he would have to withdraw from Lae, but determined to hold the Finisterre Range, the Ramu Valley, and Finschhafen. Therefore he ordered Nakano and Shoge to withdraw overland from Lae to the north coast of the Huon Peninsula, and directed the 20th Division to move from Madang to Finschhafen and to dispatch a regiment to the Ramu Valley to assist the 51st.

Thus the Allied troops pushing toward both Lae and Salamaua in early September met only delaying forces. The Salamaua garrison had assembled at Lae by the 14th, two days after the first echelon of the Lae garrison had started north. Another echelon left that day, and the last slipped out on the 15th. The day before, General Vasey had learned from a captured document and from interrogation of a prisoner that the Japanese were leaving Lae. He dispatched troops northward to reinforce the 2/4th Australian Independent Company, which was operating in the wilds north of Lae but the Japanese eluded their pursuers. It was a band of retreating enemy that the 3d Battalion, 503d, encountered at Yalu, and when Australian forces rushed there the Japanese hastily altered their route to avoid interception.

Once out of Lae, the 51st Division and the Lae naval garrison executed one of the difficult overland marches that were to characterize so many future Japanese operations in New Guinea. There was little fighting, but Australian patrols harried the retreat. The Japanese moved north out of Lae and avoided Nadzab and the obvious Markham-Ramu trough that Adachi had originally planned to use for the withdrawal. They moved in a generally north-northeasterly direction, crossed the Busu River by means of a rough-hewn bridge on 20-22 September, and skirted the west ends of the Rawlinson Range and Cromwell Mountains in the vicinity of Mount Salawaket about 25 September.

They had started with food for ten days, but this was exhausted by the time they reached Salawaket. Thereafter they lived by looting native gardens and by eating roots and grasses. Dysentery and malaria made their appearance, but as there were plenty of suppressive drugs the malaria rate was low.

The 51st Division had already abandoned most of its heavy equipment before the retreat. Along the way mountain artillerymen, unable to drag their guns over the precipitous slopes, were forced to abandon them. Many soldiers threw away their rifles. This was in strong contrast to the behavior of the 1st Battalion, 20th Division, which had reinforced the 51st Division at Salamaua. The commander, a Major Shintani, had threatened death to any soldier who abandoned his arms. Shintani died on the road, but his battalion rigorously adhered to his orders. Each soldier who completed the march carried his rifle and his helmet.

By mid-October the troops reached the north coast of the Huon Peninsula. The Army troops went to Kiari, naval personnel to nearby Sio. Slightly over 9,000 men had left Lae; 600 were march casualties. Nearly 5,000 soldiers arrived at Kiari, and some 1,500 sailors went to Lio. Many others were taken to the hospital at Madang. The defense of LaeSalamaua and the subsequent retreat cost almost 2,600 lives.

More Markham Valley and the Huon Peninsula

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