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By Major General John P. Condon, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
More than 47 years after Army Air Corps pilots shot down a Japanese Betty carrying Imperial Navy Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the post-mortem goes on. Should two men be credited—or one? Conflicting stories from surviving U.S. and Japanese pilots leave the issue unresolved.
On 18 April 1943 a flight of U.S. Army Air Corps P-38 Lightnings intercepted and shot down two Japanese Betty bombers over southern Bougainville. It was probably the longest fighter intercept mission of World War II and surely one of the most important. One of those bombers carried to his death Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy and architect of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.
The success of the Y-Mission, as it came to be called, was a tribute to the aggressive skill and daring of the pilots involved; it reflected, as well, the meticulous planning of Admiral Marc A. Mitscher, Commander Air Solomons, and his staff. And in the final analysis, it was a triumph for the anonymous, highly talented cryptanalysts who broke Japan’s most secret codes and unveiled the details of Admiral Yamamoto’s planned inspection of Bougainville.
Everyone involved deserves credit for the fact that a long-shot gamble paid off so handsomely. Major honors go, of course, to the pilot who actually brought down Admiral Yamamoto. Was it Captain Thomas G. Lanphier, who claimed to have shot down the lead Betty that crashed in the Bougainville jungle—later determined to be the aircraft that carried Admiral Yamamoto? Or was it Lieutenant Rex Barber, who reported he had shot down the same bomber? In 1965, after examining all available evidence, a group of Air Force historians concluded that half credit for the Yamamoto kill should go to Lanphier and half to Barber. In 1985, an Air Force Victory Credit Board of Review made the same determination.
Thus, any argument over who shot down Admiral Yamamoto would seem to have been settled. But Y-Mission survivors, fellow World War II pilots, eminent military writers and others have kept alive a spirited discussion of that historic event. In what it describes as an “effort to establish historical accuracy,” a group called the Second Yamamoto Mission Association plans to send a team of “qualified crash investigating personnel” to examine the wreckage of Yamamoto’s plane, which is still rotting in the Bougainville jungle.
Any search for historical accuracy is surely commendable, but analysis of aircraft remnants after nearly half a century promises ambiguous results, at best. And after so many years, the memories of Y-Mission participants— mine included—may have become somewhat suspect.
THE ADMIRAL NIMITZ FOUNDATION
Nevertheless, as operations officer of the Air Solomons Fighter Command, I was intimately involved in the planning of that remarkable flight, and I like to think that I recall it with reasonable precision. I knew all the pilots. I was present when the mission was planned, when the pilots took off from Guadalcanal, and when they returned. And in some significant respects my recollection of that long-ago event differs from the memories of those who now claim that Barber alone shot down the admiral.
After so many years, some background may be in order. The enemy had been driven from Guadalcanal by early
Lanphier, Holmes, and Barber pose for a photograph before the scramble began. A prime piece of evidence is this postwar photograph of Yamamoto’s plane, later made mto a Japanese shrine. Barber claims to have shot up the tail section of the Betty.
February 1943, and the slow but steady assault up the Solomon Islands “slot” was about to begin. On Guadalcanal itself, home of the “Cactus Air Force,” air raids were less frequent, runways and taxiways were being improved, and more and more new planes were arriving. Soon all eight Marine fighter squadrons in the area were equipped with F-4U Corsairs, which—unlike the rugged Grumman Wildcats they replaced—were superior to Japanese fighters in almost every category. At about the same time, the Army Air Corps contingent at the ‘Canal was being strengthened with the new, twin-engine, twin- boomed P-38 Lightnings.
It is interesting to note that, at first, many Army pilots were wary of those P-38s. Because the planes had high- altitude capability, they were often assigned the mission of providing high cover. All too often, they would come drifting back to Guadalcanal a half-hour before the strike part of a mission returned—or had even been heard from. They rarely saw any Japanese Zeroes; they were rarely involved in any action. Marine and Navy pilots took to calling the P-38 a “high-altitude foxhole.”
All this changed dramatically with the arrival of additional elements of the Army Air Corps’s 13th Fighter Command, which had been newly outfitted with P-38s. Aggressive pilots like Tom Lanphier, Rex Barber, and Major John Mitchell (who would lead the Y-Mission) quickly earned their reputations as outstanding performers. One night, another P-38 pilot, Major Louis Kittel, received a standing ovation from troops on the ground after he flamed two Japanese Bettys caught in searchlights over the ’Canal.
There is no doubt that when the Y-Mission was laid on, the P-38 pilots were ready. And once planning for the mission began, despite the undeniable capabilities of the Marine Corsairs, there was no doubt the P-38s were the only aircraft up to the job.
I first heard about Admiral Yamamoto’s scheduled visit to Bougainville on 16 April, when Admiral Mitscher summoned his fighter commander, Lieutenant Colonel Edward Pugh, U.S. Marine Corps, and me to his headquarters. There, the admiral, his chief of staff, Marine General Field Harris, and several other staff members showed us the message outlining Yamamoto’s plan and asked us what we could do about it.
U.S. code-breakers had done a remarkable job. What we were reading was Yamamoto’s itinerary, minute by minute. Knowing of the Japanese admiral’s obsession with sticking strictly to schedules, we could be certain where and when he would be traveling on 18 April. It was equally certain that high authorities in Washington wanted him killed. In the absence of any available written record, historians still squabble over whether President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave the order to get Yamamoto, or whether Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox did it on his own. What I remember clearly is that the message Admiral Mitscher showed us was printed on a special kind of paper, different from our regular dispatches. At the end of the message was something like “KNOX SENDS,” or “SECRETARY KNOX SENDS.” Now no one can find it.
As the discussion progressed, it became clear that only our P-38s had the range for whatever mission would emerge. Even so, it also became clear that to allow any flexibility in a flight plan, and to provide any safety cushion in fuel supply, external tanks would have to be flown in from Commander Southwest Pacific (SoWesPac). Before the meeting ended, a message alerting SoWesPac was on the way. The fuel tanks arrived and were installed the next day.
Other mission parameters were introduced as we tried to maximize the probability of success at the extreme range and high closing speeds involved. We had to avoid detection by radar or visual sighting if the mission was to maintain the element of surprise. We decided that the outbound track of the P-38s should not take them closer than 20 nautical miles to any islands along their route. Maximum altitude was set at 100 feet. True heading and airspeed on each outbound leg would have to be specified, and there would be no landmarks for navigational aids. It was agreed that the slim chance of a sighting from shipboard would be left to the gods. Since we knew Yamamoto’s takeoff time from Rabaul and his planned arrival time at Balalle, (a small island off the southern tip of Bougainville), the intercept problem had a ready solution.
The conference also decided that the mission would be carried out by 16 P-38s—a killer flight of four and a high- cover group of 12 to defend against the Japanese fighters we expected from Kahili and Balalle, as an escort to greet their visiting chief. Tom Lanphier and the rest of the 70th Fighter Squadron detachment were completing their forward deployment that very day and were scheduled to leave for the rear area. Just a few days earlier, a flight led by Lanphier had shot up a Japanese seaplane base on Shortland Island, just off the coast of Bougainville, near Yamamoto’s planned landing. Because of Lanphier’s commendable aggressiveness and his familiarity with the area, Admiral Mitscher agreed to have the 70th detachment held over so Lanphier could lead the attack flight. Major Mitchell and his 339th detachment, which had just arrived to relieve the 70th, would handle high cover.
After a summary of the major specifications and an admonition about the need for secrecy, Admiral Mitscher adjourned the meeting. An operational conference was set for the next afternoon. We worked through the night to wring every possibility of error out of our plans. At Air Solomons, we were convinced that we were facing one of the greatest opportunities of the war.
The following afternoon, Mitchell and Lanphier were summoned to Admiral Mitscher’s headquarters, informed of the Yamamoto schedule, and told they had been chosen to intercept him the next morning. All the details of the flight were reviewed once more, and all the possible alternatives for the point of attack were discussed. Some of the naval officers argued for strafing the subchaser that Yamamoto was scheduled to board at Balalle for a short trip to the Shortland Island seaplane base. That tactic, they felt, had a higher probability of success than an air intercept. Major Mitchell’s choice was to attack the Japanese bomber. He did not know one boat from another, he said.
Besides, even if they sank Yamamoto’s subchaser, there was no guarantee that their quarry would perish. Admiral Mitscher cut the argument short. Since Mitchell was going to lead the mission, the choice would be his.
After the operational conference a smaller group, including Mitchell and Lanphier, reviewed the details once more. We went over everything: the vital importance of avoiding detection en route; the need to hit time, heading, and speed precisely on each outbound leg; the absolute necessity of radio silence from engine start to contact and the positioning of the attack and high cover groups, once contact was made.
When that meeting ended, I sat down to plot the outbound courses and calculate the intercept for the point Major Mitchell had chosen. I remember giving Yamamoto’s Betty five additional knots over what our daily tracking had taught us about the plane’s normal cruise speed. The admiral’s plane, I figured, would be all shined up and freshly tuned. When I was finished, my calculations were checked and rechecked by Colonel Pugh and several others. Then they were put in proper format for a pilot’s kneepad and sent to Major Mitchell.
In recent years, Mitchell has claimed both publicly and privately that my figures were incorrect. “They would have put me 40 to 50 miles offshore from where I wanted to be,” he said in one interview. He claims that he made fresh calculations for every leg. Although our recollections on this differ, what is really important is that Major Mitchell accomplished a spectacular piece of navigation as he led the mission to the intercept point. His P-38s arrived within one minute of the predicted time.
The ensuing fight has been told and retold over the years. All but one of the P-38s returned from the mission (Lieutenant Raymond Hine was lost), and they reported that they had shot down three Bettys, not the expected singleton. They were sure they had also bagged a few
Zeroes. When Tom Lanphier landed back at Guadalcanal, he claimed credit for shooting down the lead Betty. Firing from a position on the bomber’s beam, he said, he shot off the right wing and set an engine on fire just before the bomber crashed in the jungle. Of course, he could not have known at the time that Yamamoto was definitely on board that aircraft. But as we learned later, it was indeed Yamamoto’s plane that went down in the Bougainville jungle. In speeches and bylined articles before he died in 1987, Lanphier persisted in his claim.
Rex Barber also attacked a bomber, but he shot from a position on the plane’s tail. His fire, he reported, moved from left to right and back to the fuselage. He saw a piece of the tail fly off and he saw smoke come out of the right engine before the Betty made a flip to the left and disappeared from his view. Other pilots saw a column of smoke rising from the jungle. Moments later, Barber joined Lieutenant Besby Holmes to shoot down another Betty, which crashed in the sea. Based on post-mission debriefing, Barber and Lanphier were each given credit for shooting down a Betty; Barber and Holmes were each given halfcredit for another Betty.
After the war, Japanese survivors of Yamamoto’s ill- fated flight—including Chief of Staff Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki and pilot Hiroshi Hayashi—corrected some of the Y-Mission report. There had only been two Bettys, not three; no Zeroes were destroyed. Admiral Yamamoto’s body was found beside the wreckage of the plane that crashed in the Bougainville jungle. Air Force historians concluded in 1965 that both Lanphier and Barber must have fired at that plane and each man was given half-credit for shooting it down, a finding reconfirmed by a later board.
But the post-mortem goes on. Barber and others now claim that there was no real debriefing after they returned from Bougainville. They quote Lanphier as saying that he wrote the debriefing report, which was signed by other officers and became the background of most Y-Mission stories. As I remember it, the debriefing occurred as it usually did, immediately after the principal participants—■ Major Mitchell, Captain Lanphier, and Lieutenant Barber —returned. Initial debriefings in those days were informal to be sure, but at least five other officers were present. The written report of that session remains a part of the record of Commander Air Solomons.
At this juncture, the retelling of post-mission arguments, the refurbished memories of what the mission pilots said or did not say at the time, and the claims they made later all seem quite unimportant. And I doubt that any expedition to a distant jungle—whatever it finds— will be able to change opinions that have solidified over the years. What should be remembered is that dedicated and daring pilots of the U.S. Army Air Corps made a significant contribution to our war effort by carrying out an extremely difficult mission with consummate skill.
There is credit enough for all.
General Condon, a 1934 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, is a distinguished Marine Corps aviator and past president of the Marine Corps Historical Foundation.