Landing at Nadzab
Channel: the aleatoric learning channel
Date: 2021-09-17

In July 1942, the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff approved a series of operations against the Japanese bastion at Rabaul, which blocked any Allied advance along the northern coast of New Guinea toward the Philippines or north toward the main Japanese naval base at Truk. As a result of the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, the Japanese decided not send any more convoys to Lae, but to land troops at Hansa Bay and Wewak and move them forward to Lae by barge or submarine. The Markham Valley was traversable by motor vehicles in the dry season, which ran from December to April, and therefore formed part of a natural highway between the Japanese bases at Lae and Madang. Major General Stanley Savige's 3rd Division in the Wau area and Major General Horace Fuller's US 41st Infantry Division around Morobe were ordered to advance on Salamaua so as to threaten it and draw Japanese forces away from Lae. Taking the Japanese by surprise, they destroyed around 100 Japanese aircraft on the ground. A group of 24 B-24s and four B-17s, which left the column just before the junction of the Watut and the Markham attacked the Japanese defensive position at Heath's Plantation, about halfway between Nadzab and Lae. The last ten Japanese troops facing the 2/33rd Infantry Battalion were killed and the 2/25th Infantry Battalion passed through its position and headed for Lae. The column entered Lae unopposed by the Japanese but aircraft of the Fifth Air Force strafed the 2/33rd Infantry Battalion and dropped parachute fragmentation bombs, wounding two men. Whitehead soon received a message sent in the clear from Vasey that read: "Only the Fifth Air Force bombers are preventing me from entering Lae." By early afternoon, the 2/31st Infantry Battalion reached the Lae airfield where it killed 15 Japanese soldiers and captured one. The Salamaua garrison assembled at Lae on 14 September, and the Japanese evacuated the town over the next few days.