Operation Cartwheel

Markham Valley and the Huon Peninsula

The Coastal Advance

by James Miller, jr.

Finschhafen

Vasey's operations through the Ramu Valley were co-ordinated with those of Wootten's 9th Australian Division, which was operating on the coasts of the Huon Peninsula in a series of operations that began with Finschhafen.

Jumbo Map: Finschhafen (slow: 137K)

Before leaving Milne Bay for Lae, Wootten had been alerted to the possibility that he might have to send a brigade to Finschhafen. (Map 14) Thus GHQ's decision on 17 September to invade Finschhafen at once was no surprise to the veteran Australian commander. (This section is based on Craven and Cate, The Pacific: Guadalcanal to Saipan, pp. 187--89; Morison, Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, pp. 269-74; Off of Chief Engr, GHQ AFPAC, Engineers in Theater Operations, p. 112, and Critique, pp. 106-9; ALF, Rpt on New Guinea Opus: 4 Sep 43-26 APr 44; 2d ESB Rpt; GHQ SWPA Check Sheet, Chief Engr SWPA to CINC, CofS, and G-3 SWPA, 23 Oct 43 [a rpt Of 2d ESB action], in GHQ SWPA G-3 Jnl, 23 Oct 43; Japanese Operations in the Southwest Pacific Area (Vol. II of MacArthur hist), Ch. VII, OCMH; 8th Area Army Operations, Japanese Monogr No. 110 (OCMH), pp. 82-83; 18th Army Operations, III, Japanese Monogr No. 43 (OCMH), 84-117.)

Admiral Barbey had just time enough, and no more, to assemble 8 LST's, 16 LCI's, 10 destroyers, and 4 APD's for the invasion on 22 September, but "Uncle Dan" was now an old amphibious hand and he met the deadline.

The LST's loaded at Buna, and the whole task group assembled in the harbor at Lae on 21 September. General Wootten meanwhile had selected the 20th Infantry Brigade Group of his division to make the landing, and had ordered the 22d Infantry Battalion to advance east along the coast to threaten Langemak Bay, just south of Finschhafen. Elements of the 2d Engineer Special Brigade had been attached to Wootten, and these units also made ready. No close air support was planned for the invasion, but in the days preceding 22 September B-24's and B-25's bombed the Gasmata airfield on the south coast of New Britain. Daytime A-20's and B-25's struck at Japanese lines of communication to Finschhafen, and PT's took over the work at night.

Troops of the 20th Brigade boarded their convoy on the afternoon of 21 September. The force included, besides the Australians and Barbey's American sailors, one boat company, half the shore battalion of the 532d Engineer Boat and Shore Regiment, and medical and signal troops, Or 575 men, 10 LCM's, and 15 LCVP's. The 22d Battalion marched out of Lae en route to Langemak Bay on the 21at, and the same day the amphibious force sailed for Finschhafen, eighty-two miles distant.

The beach selected for the landing, designated Scarlet, lay six miles north of Finschhafen at the mouth of the Song River. It was nine hundred yards long (north to south), thirty feet wide, and was marked by coral headlands to the north and south.

Destroyers bombarded Scarlet Beach on the morning Of 22 September, and during darkness, at 0445, the first Australian assault wave touched down. Coxswains had difficulty finding the right beach in the dark with the result that most landing craft carrying the first two waves lost direction and landed in a small cove south of Scarlet Beach. First light aided the LCI's carrying the third wave; they landed at the right place. The waves that landed at the cove met some scattered but ineffective fire from enemy posts in the fringe of the jungle. The third wave met better organized opposition from log-and-earth pillboxes, but by 0930 all resistance had been overcome, all troops and supplies were ashore, and the landing craft retracted.

The Japanese survivors retired to rising ground about a half mile inland and some sharp fighting ensued before the 2/17th Battalion was in complete possession of the beachhead. The 2/13 Battalion meanwhile swung left (south) toward the village of Heldsbach, which was just north of the Finschhafen airstrip.

General Yamada had posted only a small part of his force at Scarlet Beach. He was keeping the rest of his 4,000-man command at Hanisch Harbor on the south coast of the peninsula and on Satelberg, a 3,240-foot peak which was about six miles west of Scarlet Beach, dominated the entire coastal region, and overlooked both Finschhafen and Langemak Bay. When General Adachi received news of the Allied landing he ordered Yamada to concentrate his force at Satelberg and attack at once. This attack was designed to hold or destroy the Australians pending the arrival of General Kitagiri's 20th Division. By 21 September the 20th Division, advancing overland and hauling its heavy materiel on barges, had reached Gali, one hundred miles from Finschhafen; it expected to arrive at Finschhafen on 10 October. Adachi ordered Kitagiri to hurry.

Admiral Barbey's retiring ships offered a tempting target to Japanese airmen, but the 7th Air Division, under orders to cover a Wewak- bound convoy, hesitated to leave it unprotected. The 4th Air Army headquarters ended this indecision by ordering the 7th out against Barbey, but bad weather over central New Guinea kept the Army planes on the ground. Those of the naval iith Air Fleet at Rabaul went up and fiercely attacked the amphibious force on 22 and 24 September. But the vigilant destroyer Reid had given warning and Allied fighters, the ships' own antiaircraft, and "good luck in addition to good ship maneuvering" kept the ships from harm. (Ltr, Adm Barbey to Gen Smith, Chief of Mil Hist, 20 Nov 53, no sub, OCMH.)

At the beachhead the American engineers built roads and dumps and unloaded naval craft. The larger engineer craft carried additional supplies from Lae to Scarlet Beach, while the LCVP's hauled supplies at night from Scarlet Beach to the Australians who were pushing south toward Finschhafen.

The 20th Brigade continued its move toward Finschhafen on the 23d. It captured Heldsbach, the airfield, and part of the shore of the harbor before meeting stiff resistance at the Bumi River, where three hundred enemy sailors and one company of the 2d Battalion, 238th Infantry, defended the south bank. Two companies of the 2/15th Battalion moved inland (right) to outflank the enemy, and the next morning the Australians forced their way over the river in the face of stalwart resistance. The brigade commander, who was becoming increasingly aware of the Japanese concentration at Satelberg, asked Wootten for one more battalion with which to hold Scarlet Beach while he concentrated his brigade against Finschhafen. Wootten assented. The 2/43d Battalion landed at Scarlet Beach on the night Of 29-30 September to relieve the 2/17th, and the latter moved out at once for Finschhafen. Following air and artillery bombardment, the three Australian battalions-the 2/13th, 2/15th, and 2/17th attacked on 1 October, fought all day, and overwhelmed the defenders. The next morning they occupied the village and harbor of Finschhafen and made contact south of Langemak Bay with patrols of the 22d Battalion, which had advanced overland from Lae.

The Counterattack

To gain complete control of the New Guinea side of Vitiaz Strait, Generals MacArthur and Blamey had ordered that the capture of Finschhafen be followed by an advance along the coast to Sio, fifty land miles distant. But the advance could not be undertaken until the Japanese were driven from their dominating positions at Satelberg and on Wareo spur, a lower spur which lay north of the Song River from Satelberg.

On 26 September Yamada had launched an unsuccessful attack with the 80th Infantry against the Australian beachhead. After Finschhafen fell on 2 October, the 20th Brigade moved back to Scarlet Beach in preparation for an assault against Satelberg. Two battalions attacked but met stout resistance.

When General Wootten's headquarters and the 24th Brigade arrived, Wootten decided that all signs indicated the Japanese would counterattack immediately, before he could complete his preparations for advancing to Sio. He decided to go on the defensive for the time being.

Meanwhile the 20th Division was on its way; advance elements totaling 2,354 men had reached Sio by 30 September. General Kitagiri decided to advance by an inland route rather than use the coastal track to Satelberg. Like so many other Japanese generals in similar circumstances during World War II, he decided not to concentrate all his forces before attacking but ordered his units to attack the Australians upon arriving. Japanese tactical doctrine warns of the dangers of such piecemeal commitment but Japanese generals frequently aided the Allied cause by putting aside their doctrine in favor of pell-mell, piecemeal attack.

For his main attack against Scarlet Beach, Kitagiri decided to drive eastward from Satelberg with most of his forces while a small detachment aboard four landing craft attempted an amphibious assault. But his division was no better at safeguarding important documents than was any other Japanese unit.

On 15 October General Wootten received a captured Japanese order which warned him to expect a two-regiment attack from Satelberg, coupled with a seaborne assault. The Australians made ready.

Next day the 9th Division, though suffering some local reverses, repulsed the 20th's attack from Satelberg. At 0300, 17 October, Japanese planes bombed the Allies, whereupon 155 men of the 10th Company, 79th Infantry, attempted to land from their four craft. Two barges were sunk, one departed in haste, and the other reached shore in the vicinity of a .50-caliber machine gun position manned by Pvt. Nathan Van Noy, Jr., of the 532d Engineer Boat and Shore Regiment, and one other American engineer. As the enemy soldiers disembarked they hurled grenades, one of which wounded Van Noy before he opened fire. But Van Noy held his fire until the Japanese were visible, then opened up and killed about thirty of them. He died of his wounds, and for his gallant devotion was awarded the Medal of Honor. (See The Medal of Honor of the United States Army (Washington, 1948), pp. 283-84. Van Noy's loader, who was wounded, received the Silver Star.)

Though the Japanese claim that the few men who reached the shore wrought great damage, in actuality they were all quickly killed.

Later in the morning came another major attack from Satelberg. Wootten, who had no reserve brigade, asked for the 26th and Barbey's ships transported it to Scarlet Beach on 20 October. The Japanese attacks continued through 25 October, but all failed. As his food supplies were exhausted, Kitagiri suspended the attacks and regrouped for another try. The Australians, losing 49 dead in these actions, reported killing 679 of the enemy.

General Adachi, who had often been in and out of Salamaua during the fighting there, traveled from Madang via Kiari and Sio to Satelberg. He arrived on 31 October, and stayed for four days. During this period Kitagiri made some hopeful estimates on the success of future, more gradual offensives.

Satelberg to Sio

But Wootten was now ready to assume the offensive. By 17 November one more brigade, the 4th, had arrived to hold the beachhead while the three infantry brigades of the 9th Division attacked. Meanwhile work on the airstrip and advanced naval base at Finschhafen had gone forward so quickly that PT boats from Finschhafen were now harrying enemy sea communications at night in consort with PBY's ("Black Cats"). With the support of tanks and artillery, and rocket-equipped LCVP's lying offshore, the 9th Division fought a major action starting on 17 November. By 8 December it had captured Satelberg and Wareo spur and was ready to push up the coast to Sio, whence the 20th Division was retreating on orders from General Imamura himself.

Wootten's men advanced slowly but steadily against the retreating enemy, supported all the while by the 2d Engineer Special Brigade craft. (In the Nassau Bay-Lae-Finschhafen operation the 2d Engineer Special Brigade lost twenty-one dead, ninety-four wounded, and sixty evacuated sick. On the pursuit to Sio four LCVP's were lost to enemy action, four more to surf and reefs.)

The Australians found many sick, wounded, and dead Japanese who had fallen by the way as the weakened 20th Division, which numbered 12,526 men on 10 September and only 6,949 men by December, laboriously marched along. On 15 January 1944 the 9th Division entered Sio, on the north coast of the Huon Peninsula.

Fighting on the peninsula was not yet over, but the main strategic objectives the airfield sites and the coast of Vitiaz Strait were now in Allied hands. When the Lae-Nadzab road and the airfields were completed, the Allies could control the air over the straits and bring a heavier weight of metal to bear on Japanese bases to the north and to the west.

More Markham Valley and the Huon Peninsula

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