On the night of 25/26 August 1942 Japanese naval landing troops came ashore on the north shore of Milne Bay, at the south-eastern tip of Papua, to capture the airstrips of the Allied base there. They expected two or three companies and met Major General Cyril Clowes's Milne Force: two Australian infantry brigades, American engineers and anti-aircraft gunners, and two RAAF fighter squadrons. Harried from the air by day, the Japanese reached No. 3 Strip, where their attack failed before dawn on 31 August. Early in September the survivors were taken off by sea. Douglas Gillison, the RAAF's official historian, wrote that there "the Japanese met their first unquestionable defeat on land".
Battle of Milne Bay
25 August 1942 · 84 years ago
Three airstrips at the tip of Papua
In 1942, the Australian War Memorial writes, the Allies chose the sheltered harbor of Milne Bay for a base whose key component was three airstrips; these made the bay a stepping stone for the Japanese drive towards Port Moresby, and the Japanese landing was meant to capture them.1
Brigadier John Field's 7th Brigade, militia of the Citizen Military Forces, arrived from July, Brigadier George Wootten's 18th Brigade was complete by 21 August, and Clowes formally took command on 22 August. Dudley McCarthy, in the Australian Army's official history, counts 8,824 ground troops by 28 August, only about 4,500 of them infantry; Gillison, in the RAAF's official history, writes that by 22 August Clowes had 8,824 army troops under his command; the US Army historian Samuel Milner counts "9,458 men" on 22 August, 664 of them RAAF; the Memorial gives almost 9,000 Allied troops. Nos. 75 and 76 Squadrons RAAF flew P-40 Kittyhawks from the bay. According to Milner and McCarthy, the Japanese judged the bay held by two or three companies and twenty or thirty aircraft.2
Barges on Goodenough, ships in the bay
In the Japanese records compiled after the war for General MacArthur's headquarters, the main force under Commander Shōjirō Hayashi was to land near Lehoa, about five miles east of Rabi, while 353 men of the Sasebo 5th Special Naval Landing Force were to come from Buna by barge to Taupota and cross the mountains to strike from the rear. Milner writes instead that Hayashi's orders were to land at Rabi and that the force came ashore five to seven miles east of it; McCarthy says the main force landed "at the wrong place", and the Memorial puts the landing 11 kilometers east of the intended area.3
The Buna detachment sailed on 24 August in seven landing barges, and on 25 August RAAF Kittyhawks destroyed all seven at Goodenough Island, stranding the troops there. A captured Japanese document quoted by the Memorial's curator Shane Casey counts "8 persons killed … and five seriously wounded".4
The main force sailed from Rabaul on 24 August. The Japanese records say the landing near Lehoa "was carried out with reasonable ease at 2150 on 25 August"; Milner has it begin "about 2200 hours" near Waga Waga and Wanadala. McCarthy writes that an RAAF tender's crew reported at 1.15 a.m. on the 26th that they had sighted four ships in the bay at 11.40 p.m..5
About 1 a.m., McCarthy writes, four Japanese reached a standing patrol of the 61st Battalion near K.B. Mission; in the rain and darkness the foremost sentry, Private Whitton, challenged them, and they shot him. From first light on 26 August the Kittyhawks struck the landing places: Gillison writes that all the barges at the shore were sunk, McCarthy that the sinking of these barges on the morning of 26 August was of great importance, and Milner and the Japanese records that the aircraft destroyed most, or a large part, of the food and ammunition landed.6
Tanks at K.B. Mission, bugles at No. 3 Strip
The Japanese records say that air strikes made daylight movement impossible and that the troops advanced by night; the Memorial writes that the P-40s harassed the Japanese constantly during daylight hours. On the night of 27 to 28 August they struck the 2/10th Battalion at K.B. Mission with two tanks; Milner writes that the tanks' headlights made targets of the Australians, and the Memorial that the battalion "disintegrated in a confused withdrawal".7
At 2100 on 29 August, according to the Japanese records, Commander Minoru Yano landed with 769 more men; Milner gives "nearly 770", McCarthy "about 770", probably on the night of 29/30 August, and the Memorial 800. Yano, apparently senior to Hayashi, took over command, Milner writes.8
No. 3 Strip was held by the Australian 25th and 61st Battalions, the US 709th Airborne Antiaircraft Battery and, in Milner's account, Companies D and F of the 43rd US Engineers. The attack came about 3 a.m. on 31 August, McCarthy writes: "Three times they formed up and attacked and three times fell before the hail of fire which caught them". Milner says they withdrew at first light, "leaving 160 dead behind". McCarthy adds that "In the lull which preceded the dawn three bugle calls rang loud and clear from the darkness of the Japanese positions".9
That morning Clowes sent the 2/12th Battalion after them along the north shore. Yano, himself wounded, told the Eighth Fleet that the end was near, Milner writes; a radio message quoted in the Japanese records read "Situation most critical. We shall defend key position to the last man". The Japanese records date the withdrawal order to 4 September, and McCarthy has the last lift, by the cruiser Tenryu and two corvettes, on the night of 6/7 September.10
Counting the cost
Of the 1,943 troops landed on 25 and 29 August, the Japanese records say, 1,318 were eventually withdrawn; McCarthy gives 1,900 to 2,000 landed, and Milner some 1,300 of 1,900 evacuated. The Memorial counts 2,800 landed, of whom only 1,318 re-embarked. Clowes put enemy killed at "at least 700", not counting any lost with the merchant ship Nankai Maru; Milner gives some 600 killed; the Memorial writes that up to 750 were estimated to lie dead around the bay and that most of the rest were killed trying to escape overland to Buna.11
McCarthy counts 373 Australian battle casualties, of whom 12 officers and 149 men were killed or missing; Milner gives 321 Australian ground casualties, 123 killed and 198 wounded; the Memorial records 167 Australians and 14 Americans among the Allied deaths. McCarthy gives one American killed and two wounded in the ground actions and several more killed or wounded in air raids; Milner gives one American killed and two wounded in the defense of No. 3 Strip.12
A first defeat on land
Gillison wrote that at Milne Bay "the Japanese met their first unquestionable defeat on land"; McCarthy called it "This first land victory over the Japanese since December 1941". The Memorial writes that Milne Bay "is remembered as the first defeat of the Japanese on land during the Pacific War". McCarthy adds that the battle confined the main Japanese operations in Papua to the Buna-Kokoda area and spelt failure for their plans to capture Port Moresby; Milner, that it "snapped the southern prong of the pincers" the Japanese had hoped to apply to Port Moresby.13
General Rowell judged that "the action of 75 and 76 Squadrons R.A.A.F. on the first day was probably the decisive factor". General MacArthur wrote to General Marshall that the defeat "must not be accepted as a measure of relative fighting capacity of the troops involved" (Gillison prints "the relative"), a remark both official historians call ungenerous. The wider war is surveyed in our guide to the greatest battles of the Pacific War.14
Battle of Liaoyang, 1904: Kuropatkin gives up the field
25 August 1904 · 122 years ago
Outside the fortified city of Liaoyang in Manchuria, Japanese armies under Ōyama Iwao attacked Russian forces under Aleksey Kuropatkin in the Russo-Japanese War. After heavy fighting Kuropatkin abandoned the city and retreated north to Mukden.
Read the full story of Battle of Liaoyang, 1904: Kuropatkin gives up the field ›Also on this day
1944: Paris was liberated. On 25 August the French 2nd Armored Division and American forces entered the city, writes the French Ministry of the Armed Forces. French tankers surrounded the Hôtel Meurice shortly after noon, writes Martin Blumenson in the US Army history, and when a young French officer burst in shouting "Do you speak German?", General von Choltitz replied "Probably better than you" and let himself be taken prisoner. In Blumenson's account he then signed a formal act of capitulation at the Prefecture of Police before General Leclerc and the commander of the Paris FFI, who accepted it in the name of the Provisional Government of France; the Ministry writes instead that at 17.00 de Gaulle reached the capital and received the act of capitulation from Leclerc (our translation).15
De Gaulle, who in Blumenson's account arrived unannounced that afternoon, spoke at the Hôtel de Ville, writes the historian Pierre Laborie; the text he prints from Les voix de la Liberté begins "Paris, Paris outragé, Paris brisé, Paris martyrisé, mais Paris libéré !", "Paris, Paris outraged, Paris broken, Paris martyred, but Paris liberated!" (our translation). Elsewhere in his chapter Laborie quotes, as the original version, a text with more exclamation marks and the added words "de la seule France", of France alone (our translation). His life is told in our article on Charles de Gaulle.16
