Prowling the Pacific night

Flight Journal, Oct 2003 by Martin, Michael

"There was very little wind at sea, with no discernible whitecaps; instead, there were huge swells that rose 15 to 20 feet. By the time the first Zero was making a firing run on us, I was at the bottom of a trough looking up at water on both sides. As a swell terminated, I picked up either the port or starboard wing and slid into the next trough. As a Zero came in on a firing run, I turned quickly into his line of flight to shorten his run. He tightened his turn as much as he dared, flying ever so close to the water. The Zero attack was totally ineffective. The closest they came was to splatter bullets 20 to 30 yards behind us. Apparently sensing their ineffectiveness, and having no desire to be drawn miles away from their fleet, they broke off and left us."

As time went on, Catalina patrols got better at denying the enemy nighttime use of the waters in the Solomons. To thwart PBY radar, the Japanese used coast-hugging barges, but the Cats still found enough of them to severely restrict resupply efforts. Often, the mere sound of a PBY overhead in the dark would be enough to cause re-supply ships to turn back. In February 1943, the Japanese conceded the futility of the efforts and evacuated Guadalcanal. Momentum in the Solomons (and in the entire Pacific) shifted, as the Allies now began to work their way up the island chain and on toward Japan.

A few months later, Catalinas operating in the vicinity of New Guinea began to rack up a series of stunning successes. The early morning hours of October 24, 1943, for example, found the crew of the PBY Black Magic braving intense antiaircraft fire off New Britain as they dropped a 500-pound bomb on the destroyer Mochizuki. Ablaze from amidships to stern, the Mochizuki eventually sank.

Meanwhile, during the month of December, Patrol Bombing Squadron 52 sank or damaged two cruisers, three destroyers, two submarines and 76,000 tons of merchant shipping. Impressive as those numbers were, they would be far surpassed-but not before a legendary raid by Lt. Bob Dilworth and his Black Cat crew.

On the night of February 11, 1944, Dilworth was approaching the large air base at Wewak on Japanese-held New Guinea. He had been using rainsqualls as cover on his approach to the field, but as he dropped down out of the clouds, he found himself in the middle of a group of enemy fighters with their lights on. By sheer coincidence, he had blundered into a Japanese landing formation. One of the enemy pilots, possibly annoyed at being cut off, pulled alongside and flashed his lights at the darkened PBY (he was so close that Dilworth's waist gunner could read his instrument panel).

Keeping his cool, Dilworth acted as if he belonged until the unlikely formation neared touchdown. At that point, he veered off toward a cargo ship that was anchored at the end of the runway. Before the Japanese could react, he sank that ship with two bombs, demolished the Wewak lighthouse with another and, for good measure, strafed the shore facilities before departing the scene.