For the first time in this century, with a cry of “Boarders away,” a U. S. Navy boarding party, weapons in hand, swarmed aboard an enemy craft. One Japanese made a move in the darkness, and Lieut. Bulkeley blew him down with a 45 automatic. The other passengers, twelve fully equipped soldiers, were already dead.
The boarders picked up what documents and equipment they thought would be interesting to Intelligence, and reboarded their PT. The 152 pumped 37-mm shells into the barge until it slid under the water.
Ashore, Intelligence captured the diary of a Japanese officer named Kobayashi. Under the date of August 29, 1943, was the entry:
Last night with the utmost precaution we were without incident transported safely by barge between Sio and Finschhafen. So far, there has not been a time during such trips when barges have not been attacked by enemy torpedo boats. However, it was reported that the barge unit which transported us was attacked and sunk on the return trip last night and the barge commander and his men were all lost.
The PT blockade at sea and the Australian drive ashore pinched the Japanese hard, and on September 16th Australian infantrymen walked into a deserted Finschhafen. The western hinge of the gate had been broken.
4.
Battering Down the Gate:
the Eastern Hinge
The western end of the Japanese gate was nailed to the great land mass of New Guinea, and its unhinging was a natural job for the Army. The eastern hinge was at Rabaul, in the tangle of islands and reef-strewn sea channels that make up the Solomon and Bismarck archipelagos. Reduction of Rabaul was naturally a Navy job, to be carried on simultaneously with the Army effort in New Guinea.
After the fall of Guadalcanal in February, 1943, the master plan in the South Pacific, under Admiral William Halsey, was to hop from island to island through the central Solomons, reducing one by one the Japanese bases arranged like steppingstones between Guadalcanal and Rabaul.
PTs were moved up as fast as new bases were established, because they were short of range and useless if they fell too far behind the front.
The night the Army went ashore at Rendova (June 30, 1943), three PTs sailed up Blanche Channel, on the approaches to the Rendova landing beach. Coming down the same channel was the American landing flotilla, transports, supply ships, and escorting destroyers. The destroyer McCawley, damaged by one of the few Japanese air attacks that opposed the Rendova landings, was being towed to Tulagi, but was riding lower and lower in the water and its survival was doubtful. Rear Admiral Richmond K. Turner (riding McCawley as flagship of the Rendova invasion force) was debating whether or not to give the stricken ship euthanasia by friendly torpedo when his mind was made up for him by two mysterious fish which came out of the night and blew McCawley out of the water.