Operation SR

Operation SR
Japanese capture of Salamaua-Lae

The Huongolf with Salamaua and Lae on a map of the US Army Map Service from 1942

date	March 8-13, 1942
place	Area around Salamaua - Lae , Morobe Province , New Guinea Territory
output

Parties to the conflict

Australia Australia United States
United States 48

Japanese Empire Japan

Commander

Wilson Brown

Inoue Shigeyoshi ,
Horii Tomitarō ,
Masao Horie

Overview - Pacific War

The operation SR was the conquest of the area around Salamaua and Lae in Territory of New Guinea by the Japanese in March 1942 in the Pacific theater during World War II .

prehistory

Rabaul , an important base for the Japanese , was captured in the first phase of the Pacific War at the beginning of 1942 (→ Battle of Rabaul ).

The capture of Rabaul had become necessary to defend the Truk Atoll in the Caroline Islands, the important base for the Japanese combined fleet .

Rabaul had also been selected by the Japanese as a base for their further operations in the direction of New Guinea , there specifically Port Moresby , the Solomon Islands and Australia . Further upstream bases were therefore necessary.

The military value of the eastern half of New Guinea for the Japanese was to create an obstacle to the protection of the southern flank of their own armed forces. In addition, the Torres Strait could be blocked from there to prevent communication between the South Pacific, the Dutch East Indies and the Indian Ocean . The latter would force the Japanese adversaries' maritime and merchant shipping to make a detour around the south coast of Australia.

Planning

In early 1942, the Army and Navy divisions of the Imperial Headquarters began studying the operations to be carried out after the completion of the inaugural offensives ( first-stage operations, major offensive operations in the southern area ) . The results of these investigations were gradually implemented directly by the Imperial Headquarters or first discussed with the government in liaison committees of the Imperial Headquarters .

On January 29, 1942, the Naval Headquarters issued the "Large Naval Instructions No. 47" and the Army Ministry issued the "Large Army Instructions No. 596" on February 2.

Commands:

The Imperial Headquarters will plan the invasion of key locations in British New Guinea and the Solomon Islands .
The commander of the South Seas Forces, in cooperation with the navy, will penetrate these places as soon as possible.
The chief of staff gives instructions detailing the operation.

The commanders of the South Sea Forces and the Combined Fleet carried out this operation on the basis of the Central Agreement between the Army and Navy for operations in British New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

The objective of Operation Invasion of Key Areas in Eastern British New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, with the aim of blocking communications between mainland Australia and the region and controlling the seas of northern Eastern Australia.

Procedure The Army and Navy will work together to penetrate the Lae and Salamaua areas as quickly as possible. The Navy will seek a way to independently (or work with the Army according to conditions) penetrate Tulagi and secure the air base on the island. The Army and Navy will work together to penetrate Port Moresby after the Lae and Salamaua invasions are complete .

Task Force of the Army South Sea Fleet: Units based on the 4th Fleet

Further Orders Determined by discussions between army and naval commands .

Defense Duties The Navy will be responsible for the defense of the Lae, Salamaua and Tulagi areas and the Army for the defense of Port Moresby.

Military preparations

After the discovery at the end of February 1942 of a runway built by an Australian farmer near Surumi near Gasmata in New Britain , the order was issued on February 1 to immediately capture and expand the airfield. However, since the US Navy attacked the Marshall and Gilbert Islands on the same day , it was withdrawn immediately. February 8th was named as the next date.

On that same day, the invasion force and support group left Rabaul in the morning and the landings took place the next day at 4:40 a.m. in Surumi and at 5:00 a.m. in Gasmata. There were no Australian troops opposed to landing.

The airfield was ready for use on February 12th. It was of great value as a base for missions in Eastern New Guinea and the Lae and Salamaua areas. The Kavieng airfields in New Ireland , as well as Lakunai and Vunakanau , both near Rabaul, were also available.

Allied forces near Lae and Salamaua

European civilians are flown out to Salamaua

The day after the Japanese landed in Sarawak in mid-December 1941 (→ Japanese invasion of Borneo ), the evacuation of all European women and children from New Guinea and Papua was ordered on December 17th .

Fighter planes were stationed and ready for action in both Lae and Salamaua. There was also a small airfield in Wau , about 50 kilometers southwest of Salamaua. Aerodrome expansion and other preparations at Port Moresby also continued.

Allied aircraft continued to attack Rabaul and the Gasmata region from bases in Townsville and Darwin , using Port Moresby as an intermediate base and Lae, Salamaua and Wau as forward bases.

Lae and Salamaua were each manned by about fifty to one hundred volunteer troops - civilians who gathered three or four days a week for military training. Aerial photographs and reconnaissance by commanders of the invasion force showed only a small, scattered base.

In the meantime, the movements of the American task force that invaded the Marshall and Gilbert Islands on February 1 were unclear. Due to the high likelihood of further raids in the Bismarck Archipelago region , Japanese units were on high alert.

Landings at Salamaua and Lae

First attacks and Japanese reconnaissance

Horii Tomitarō

On January 21, 60 Japanese fighter jets attacked Wau, Lae and Salamaua for the first time. They destroyed many military and civil aircraft on the airfields there.

The order for Operation SR was issued on February 17 by the commanding officer of the South Sea Fleet Horii Tomitarō to Major Masao Horie , commander of the unit directly responsible for the offensive, the 2nd Battalion of the 144th Infantry Regiment . The deadline for the invasion was March 3rd. Major Horie undertook a reconnaissance of the terrain and the hostile situation in the Salamaua region in a naval aircraft on February 19.

On February 20, the Japanese Navy discovered an American task force with aircraft carriers moving northwest about 740 kilometers northeast of Rabaul and later operating against the 4th Fleet. This delayed the planned landing. A new landing date has been set for March 8th.

Allied response

Ernest J. King , US chief of naval operations in the Pacific, foresaw the coming situation and on February 26th ordered Admiral Chester W. Nimitz , commander of the US Pacific fleet , to maintain part of his aircraft carrier strength in the ANZAC area in order to avoid a Japanese one Protect expansion. On March 2, King sent further orders to Vice Admiral Herbert F. Leary , commanding officer of ANZAC, and Vice Admiral Wilson Brown , commander of Task Force 11, to attack Rabaul on or about March 10th. Four days later, Rear Admiral Frank J. Fletcher's TF17 with the aircraft carrier Yorktown and the destroyers Russell and Walke had joined the TF11 in the Coral Sea .

Landing preparation

Transporter Tenyo Maru

Meanwhile, Vice Admiral Inoue Shigeyoshi , commander of the 4th Fleet, prepared Operation SR to capture the Lae and Salamaua area. This also included the runway at Lae, from which the Japanese could reach Port Moresby. On March 5, Rear Admiral Kajioka Sadamichi ran out of Rabaul with the invasion unit.

Five transport ships carried the 2nd Battalion of the 144th Infantry Regiment of Horii Tomitaro in the Yokohama Maru and China Maru and the 2nd Maizuru Special Marine Landing Unit in the Congo Maru , Tenyo Maru and Kokai Maru .

The support fleet consisted of Rear Admiral Gotō Aritomos 6th Destroyer Squadron with the light cruiser Yūbari and the destroyers Oite , Asanagi , Mochizuki , Mutsuki , Yūnagi and Yayoi .

The 6th cruiser squadron with the heavy cruisers Aoba , Furutaka , Kako and Kinugasa , as well as the light cruisers , Tatsuta and Tenryū of the 18th cruiser squadron serve as cover.

Heavy cruiser Furutaka

Air support was provided by 15 Zero fighters , 21 Betty bombers and six Mavis flying boats from Rabaul. Another 19 Zero fighters should be delivered on March 9th by the light carrier Shōhō . You should be stationed in Lae. Airplanes aboard the seaplane carrier Kiyokawa Maru conducted daily air patrols.

On the evening of March 7th, the landing units for Lae and Salamaua split up. On that day there were tropical storms that restricted the view and made landing difficult. On the afternoon of March 7th, the invasion convoy was sighted by an Australian Hudson reconnaissance bomber .

The landings

One hour before midnight on March 7, the landing craft were launched and the landing units boarded. The journey to the southeast coast of Salamaua began at 12:15 a.m. on March 8 and was reached at 0:55 a.m. Although several signal flares were visible over the land at this point , the Horie battalion was able to go ashore unhindered. An airplane was taking off from the airfield just then. The advance began immediately and the airfield was successfully occupied by 3:00 a.m.

When the Japanese landed, the small Australian garrisons in Lae and Salamaua withdrew into the jungle. Only a few Hudson bombers managed to damage a transport. In spite of everything, the Japanese went to work unloading their transports, fixing their beachheads, and preparing the runways to receive Japanese Zero fighters from New Britain.

The Australians had left none of their units in the Salamaua and Kela areas . Therefore, battalion commander Horie changed his plans. He dispatched elements of his armed forces to occupy Salamaua and Kela, and held the battalion's main strength close to the airfield.

Salamaua and Kela were successfully occupied around 4:30 a.m. Intelligence reports showed that the Australians had withdrawn to Wau along the valley on the Francisco River . The local population had also been evacuated to Wau and Port Moresby in view of the invasion of the Japanese army in Rabaul and were on their way there. Wau could be reached from Salamaua via a narrow road.

In the morning a Hudson bombed the transport ships three times. The Yokohama Maru was slightly damaged, three Japanese killed and eight wounded. Lt. Col. Tanaka, the chief of staff of the South Sea Forces aboard the flagship Yūbari , telegraphed the commander of the need to conduct more flight patrols as concerns about Allied air strikes increased.

Landing in Lae began at 2:30 a.m. on the southern coast. Lae and the airfield were occupied without resistance, so that the expansion work for the use of fighter aircraft on the airfield could begin immediately. They were locked around 1:00 p.m. The following day two anti-aircraft guns were brought ashore and erected. An Allied air raid caused damage to the destroyer Asanagi .

On the morning of March 9th, units landed in Queen Carola Harbor on the west side of Buka Island and began searching for sea mines .

The allied counterstrike

USS Lexington

Vice Admiral Brown received the news of the Japanese landings in Lae and Salamaua while the Lexington and Yorktown , accompanied by eight cruisers and fourteen destroyers, were sailing in the Coral Sea towards New Guinea. Immediately the original plan to attack Rabaul and Gasmata was dropped. The allied task force could suddenly defeat the Japanese when they were most vulnerable; while their transporters are being unloaded at the bridgeheads.

Since the merger of Task Force 11 with Task Force 17 on March 3, the cruisers Indianapolis , Minneapolis , Pensacola , San Francisco and the destroyers Phelps , Clark , Patterson , Dewey , MacDonough , Hull , Aylwin , have been sailing alongside the two aircraft carriers Dale , Bagley , Drayton , Russell and Walke .

As additional cover, an ANZAC association operated southeast of Papua with the cruisers Australia , Chicago and the destroyers Lamson and Perkins .

HMAS Australia

Brown decided that Task Force 11 would attack the Japanese beachheads from the Gulf of Papua on the south side of mainland New Guinea in order to avoid early detection by Japanese patrol pilots. The crossing of the Owen Stanley Mountains was an obstacle . The many ridges of this area were covered with thick rainforest and often shrouded in clouds or fog. Experienced Australian New Guinea pilots regularly flew on a well-defined route from Port Moresby to Lae. They were careful not to get caught in the clouds in the mountains.

Lieutenant Commander William B. Ault , of the Lexington Air Group flew to Port Moresby and learned that there was a pass at an altitude of 2285 m through the mountains, almost directly along the planned route to Lae. In addition, the weather was usually favorable in the morning.

In the early morning of March 10, 18 F4F Wildcat fighters , 61 SBD Dauntless dive bombers and 25 TBD Devastator torpedo bombers took off from the flight decks of the two aircraft carriers. At 7:40 a.m. they started their attacks on units on land and at sea near Salamaua and Lae. The attacks continued in waves until 9.45 a.m. Eight land-based Hudson's and eight B-17's also participated in the attacks.

Kiyokawa Maru (above) and the destroyer Mochizuki (below) maneuver during the air strikes

All of the Japanese air units were mobilized immediately, from the patrol aircraft aboard the Kiyokawa Maru to the naval and land units. Ten Allied planes were shot down.

Since the airfield at Lae was already completed, the 4th Air Fleet wanted to station the first units there that day. However, poor communication resulted in 11 fighter planes missing the battle and not arriving in Lae until between 1pm and 3pm.

Damage in the attacks
	Sunk	Damaged	Easy Damage
Ships	Congo Maru, Tenyo Maru, No. 2 Tama Maru, Yokohama Maru	Kiyokawa Maru, Yūnagi, Kokai Maru	Yūbari, Tsugaru, Asanagi, Tama Maru

In addition, 6 army soldiers and 126 men of the navy personnel were killed and 17 army soldiers and 240 men of the navy personnel were wounded. The Americans lost a fighter plane with pilots.

consequences

Despite the damage caused, the attack did not have much of an impact. The damaged ships were brought to Rabaul and replaced by new units. With the capture of Lae and Salamaua, the Japanese had control of the Huon Gulf and the entrance to the Bismarck Sea .

In March, the Japanese expanded their southern line of defense by occupying Buka , Bougainville and the Shortland Islands and establishing additional airfields there. In the north, this also happened on Manus and the Admiralty Islands . Halmahera was also taken at the end of March .

The strong Japanese base in Rabaul was secured by a ring of surrounding airfields and naval bases, and the so-called Bismack Sea Barrier was also built. The latter served to block the direct route from Australia to the Philippines .

Individual evidence

↑ Bullard, Steven: Japanese army operations in the South Pacific area: NewBritain and Papua campaigns, 1942–43 . Ed .: Australian War Memorial. Canberra 2007, ISBN 978-0-9751904-8-7 , pp. 3 (English).
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Christopher Chant: The Encyclopedia of Codenames of World War II . Routledge Kegan & Paul Publishing House, 1987, ISBN 978-0-7102-0718-0 (English, codenames.info [accessed August 17, 2020]).
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j Bullard, Steven: Japanese army operations in the South Pacific area: NewBritain and Papua campaigns, 1942–43 . Ed .: Australian War Memorial. Canberra 2007, ISBN 978-0-9751904-8-7 , pp. 30th ff . (English).
^ Dudley McCarthy: Second World War Official Histories, Volume V - South – West Pacific Area - First Year: Kokoda to Wau (1st edition, 1959). Chapter 2 - The Island Barrier. Australian War Memorial, 1959, accessed August 17, 2020 .
^ ^A ^b Paul S. Dull: A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1941-1945 . Naval Institute Press, 2013, ISBN 978-1-61251-290-7 , pp. 101 ff . (English, google.de [accessed on August 17, 2020]).
^ Imperial Cruisers. In: http://www.combinedfleet.com . Imperial Japanese Navy Page, accessed August 19, 2020 .
↑ ^a ^b Jürgen Rohwer: Chronicle of the Naval War 1939–1945. Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart 2007 to 2020, accessed on August 19, 2020 .
↑ ^a ^b ^c The Lae-Salamaua Raid. The Pacific War Historical Society, accessed August 18, 2020 .

Web links

Office of Naval Intelligence: Early Raids in the Pacific Ocean . Ed .: Hyperwar Foundation. (English, ibiblio.org [accessed August 20, 2020]).
Information on Pacific Wrecks :

[1] Bullard, Steven: Japanese army operations in the South Pacific area: NewBritain and Papua campaigns, 1942–43 . Ed .: Australian War Memorial. Canberra 2007, ISBN 978-0-9751904-8-7 , pp. 3 (English).

[:1-2] Christopher Chant: The Encyclopedia of Codenames of World War II . Routledge Kegan & Paul Publishing House, 1987, ISBN 978-0-7102-0718-0 (English, codenames.info [accessed August 17, 2020]).

[:0-3] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j Bullard, Steven: Japanese army operations in the South Pacific area: NewBritain and Papua campaigns, 1942–43 . Ed .: Australian War Memorial. Canberra 2007, ISBN 978-0-9751904-8-7 , pp. 30th ff . (English).

[:2-4] Dudley McCarthy: Second World War Official Histories, Volume V - South – West Pacific Area - First Year: Kokoda to Wau (1st edition, 1959). Chapter 2 - The Island Barrier. Australian War Memorial, 1959, accessed August 17, 2020 .

[:3-5] A ^b Paul S. Dull: A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1941-1945 . Naval Institute Press, 2013, ISBN 978-1-61251-290-7 , pp. 101 ff . (English, google.de [accessed on August 17, 2020]).

[6] Imperial Cruisers. In: http://www.combinedfleet.com . Imperial Japanese Navy Page, accessed August 19, 2020 .

[:10-7] Jürgen Rohwer: Chronicle of the Naval War 1939–1945. Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart 2007 to 2020, accessed on August 19, 2020 .

[:4-8] The Lae-Salamaua Raid. The Pacific War Historical Society, accessed August 18, 2020 .