Something tells me I may never lead that Darwin invasion. This may be the last operation we conduct in the south. Come May, we will be looking over our shoulder in the north. We feared a war on two fronts. Yes, I warned Ugaki about it before Pearl Harbor, but he said it was simply too late to change any of the plans. Now look at the situation. We are fighting the British in Burma out west, the Americans here in the south and now the Siberians in the north—a three front war! Ugaki should have listened to me….
That same day the invasion forces made their approach to Fiji, and the pilots of Carrier Division 1 finally got their chance to get into action. Sweeps were conducted by the A6M2 squadrons, finding a surprising number of enemy fighters up to oppose them. But the enemy planes were all older P-39s and P-400s, a variant of that same plane. They had been delivered there months ago by the Pensacola Convoy, uncrated and assembled into the 67th Pursuit Squadron. The inexperienced pilots would now get their chance against the Aces of Carrier Division 1, and though a few got lucky with an occasional shot that damaged or downed an enemy plane, they paid a high price.
There had been 42 operational planes available on the airfield near Suva at the southeastern corner of Fiji. By the end of the first day, that number had been reduced to twenty. Then the dive bombers came off the carriers, pounding the field and blasting another six planes on the ground, older Buffalos that had no business in the skies above, even though they had tried to scramble when the air alert sounded. Four were caught on the tarmac, another two gunned to firing wrecks as a pair of Zeroes swooped low to strafe the field as the Buffaloes were trying to take off.
Job one for the carrier strike group led by Yamamoto was to neutralize that airfield and any chance that the Americans could use those planes to attack the troop transports. Through all this action, DDG-180 simply provided services as an early warning picket. The Phased Array radar could spot any enemy planes unfailingly, and the information was quickly radioed to Akagi. No missiles were needed, as the Japanese pilots were more than capable in this situation, and the P-39s posed no real strike threat.
There had also been a variant of the SDB-Dauntless Dive Bomber crated up in the Pensacola Convoy, dubbed the A-24 Banshee by the Army Air Force. Yet those planes had been sent to Pago Pago, and were not available at Suva when the attack finally started.
The invasion groups had been well coordinated, and the order Nimitz had sent to Halsey meant that Carrier Division 1 would impose its Steel Reign over the scene on the first three days of the battle. The main objective of the landings was not Suva Bay, but Nandi on the western coast of the main island of Viti Lavu.
Fiji Was a large island, some 95 miles at its widest point and 65 miles top to bottom. It was surrounded by long archipelagoes of smaller islands, with one large sister in Vanua Levu to the northeast. That island was over 110 miles long, but no more than 20 to 30 miles wide, and much less developed. Most of the primary installations were on the big island of Viti Lavu that most associated with the name “Fiji.” The main port and airfield was at Suva, but there was also a port at Nandi and Lautoka, on the northern edge of Nandi Bay.
This would be the main objective of the Japanese landing, for they had determined that there were only two Brigades of troops from New Zealand, the 8th at Suva and the 14th at Nandi. It was thought that they could then overwhelm the defense at Nandi to secure a lodgment on the main island, and Nandi Bay offered a good anchorage site for the transports to offload their supplies.
But things had changed in the early months of the war. The arrival of the 132nd Infantry Regiment of the US 23rd Division at Suva had seen the 8th Brigade moved to reinforce Nandi, and so when the Abe Detachment began to storm ashore under the thunder of Yamato’s great guns, they would meet twice the force they expected to find there. The many combination that ensued in the naval maneuvers had set the scene, but now it was time for the grinding endgame as the invasion itself got underway. As always, no plan ever survived first contact with the enemy, and this one was no different.
Part VII
Endgame
“Play the opening like a book, the middle game like a magician, and the endgame like a machine.”
Chapter 19
On the western perimeter of the reefs and atolls surrounding the main islands of the Fiji Group were the Yasawa Group, a string of long thin islands that seemed to rise like bubbles from the snout of the great flat fish body of Viti Lavu below. They were mostly hilly wooded land, but the main island in the north presented some reasonably open land where an airfield might be built. It was there that elements of Base Force 9 would be put ashore to survey the island, clear it of any enemy coastwatchers, and select the best site for an airfield. In this effort, it was supported by the 2nd Yokosuka SNLF battalion, and so a Tulagi sized operation was well underway there before dawn.
Further south, the leading elements of the main invasion group were carrying the 47th Regiment, otherwise known as the Abe Detachment, which was intending to land north of Nandi Bay at Laotoka. That was defended by 29th Battalion, 14th New Zealand Brigade supported by the brigade artillery group. The preliminary bombardment here was fairly intense, with salvoes by the battleships Kirishima, Kongo and Haruna, the heavy cruisers Tone and Maya, and finally, a booming attack fired off by Yamato. They were unopposed, as the only Allied naval presence in the whole region was limited to the cruiser Chester and destroyers Dale and Hull at Suva that had been refitting with new radar equipment delivered earlier. They got no orders to sortie that morning.
It was a surface action group that could not have been challenged, even if Halsey’s entire cruiser escort had been present. Given that his carriers were still far to the north approaching the Ellice Islands, the Japanese would have absolute naval supremacy during the invasion.
Major-General Koichi Abe’s veteran 47th Regiment began its landings in the narrow coral fringed channel leading to the port, which was hotly defended in spite of the pounding delivered by those ships. 3rd Battalion landed first, storming onto the quays and docks, but was soon pinned down by withering machinegun fire from well sited positions in the buildings adjacent to the harbor. Fires were already beginning in the town where the initial bombardment had fallen most heavily. But it was not until 1st Battalion landed on the narrow coastal strip between the town and Vunda Point to the south that the deadlock at the harbor began to break up.
Japanese troops rushed into the warehouses, bayonets fixed, and killed anyone they found, whether or not they had a weapon or uniform on. They then infiltrated into the town as the Kiwis attempted to regroup, and were soon stopped again with the timely arrival of the 36th Battalion from 8th Brigade, which had been moving to the scene for the last hour. This force was strong enough to counterattack, and soon the Japanese found themselves being pushed back toward the wharf and warehouse sector.
Major-General Abe was finally ashore, and he wasted no time reorganizing a renewed attack, gathering all three of his battalions to make the push. It was going to be a shock attack, with the veteran Japanese infantry advancing with fixed bayonets into the very fluid house to house fighting that was now underway.