The problem Halsey faced now was in thinking his battle was over, while all this time he had been shadow boxing. His real enemy was still out there, still unseen by any search plane, and now Admiral Hara would send 69 dive bombers, 15 torpedo planes escorted by 17 zeroes. If they had found Halsey as he regrouped and started west towards Noumea again, it would have been a heavy blow. As it happened, they were not aimed at him this time. They were out after the American landing at Noumea, hungry for blood.
They came late in the day, flying between the high puffy clouds that were left on the wind like herds of grazing sheep. The storm front had passed north, and was now over Hara’s carriers, but his planes had punched through long ago and were over Noumea. There they could see that the Americans had landed at three separate locations.
Noumea sat on an irregular peninsula that jutted about seven miles out to sea on the southwest coast of the island. The harbor was approached through Dumbea Bay, which could also serve as a large anchorage. Dumbea led further north to Gadji Bay where the coastal road north ran just meters from the shore, and the main harbor entrance on Moselle Bay. A series of small islands sheltered the main harbor there. The largest of these was Nouville Island, about five kilometers long and only a little over a kilometer wide. It acted as a breakwater for the harbor, which it reached for with its narrow tail.
The US did not know how long they would have naval gunfire support, so they had planned to land artillery on that island, which had once housed up to 40,000 prisoners as a penal colony for the French. From there, the guns could command the entire city, while remaining relatively immune from a land based counterattack by the defenders.
Directly across the narrow Moselle Bay was the Nickel smelting works on another spit of land to the north, then the main port area with the Grand Quay, Government House, High Commissioner’s Office, Main Barracks for the French Garrison, and Artillery Barracks for the shore gun emplacements. The town also had an electrical plant, waterworks, rail depot, radio station, a cathedral and several churches, library, and a girl’s school. A few hotels, the best being the Hotel du Pacifique, were on the inland side of the harbor town, and the wide open square called Place de Cocotiers was dead center, with expansive grounds, botanical gardens and a rotunda that served as a stage for the military band. A tall statue of the French Admiral Orly stood there, commemorating his victory in the Kanek Rebellion of 1878, putting down tribes the French called cannibals.
Now new conquerors were coming, not cannibals, but the old doughboys that had once come to France to stop the Germans in the last war. The 41st Sunrise Division had shipped out with Pershing, though it did not fight as a cohesive unit in that war, its regiments being parceled out to buttress other divisions on the line. Now the French would have to face the descendants of the men who had fought for them at the Battles of the Aisne, Meuse-Argonne, Chateau Thierry and St. Mihel. Their names were still on the crosses in France, where LtC. John McCrae had written his famous poem….
A few more would die here as they assaulted the White Poppy, finally realizing where they were after they landed. Considered the best of all the National Guard Divisions, and one of the top three units in the Army, the 41st would give a good account of itself. The heaviest fighting in this part of the landings would fall to the 162nd Regiment, which came in through Moselle Bay, and the smaller harbor approach to the south called the “little entrance.”
Troops in this assault would arrive on the APDs, a few fast destroyers that could carry a company each. Their mission was to get in fast and get in close, the men having the benefit of the destroyer’s gunfire support as they took to their small rubber boats to make the short trip to the harbor. Coming at night, they had surprised the French Artillery Garrison, and fire from shore batteries was sporadic and ineffective. Any guns that did range on the landing site quickly became the focus of the destroyer gunfire, which was also blasting away at desultory machinegun fire coming from the edge of the harbor.
It was a daring attack by 1/162nd Battalion, the riskiest part of the operation, but it would succeed in getting the men ashore to begin the fight for the harbor itself. Farther out the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of would begin their Ship-to-Shore movement with simple landing boats, there being few LVTs to support the operation. Amazingly, the found all the harbor approaches unmined and lightly defended. The Japanese had rested their defense on the presence of numerous warships in that harbor, and the planes on Tontouta airfield about 25 miles to the northwest, but those planes and ships were largely gone.
Two days earlier, Halsey’s raid had hit that anchorage heavily, sinking four of five Japanese APs that had been in Dumbea Bay, and roughing up several destroyers and cruisers. Haguro was hit badly enough to force it to withdraw to Rabaul for repairs, and the Japanese squadron had put to sea, fleeing north to escape further harm.
As for the planes at Tontouta, there had been 24 twin engine Nell bombers, six Kates and 12 Vals, and they were ordered to transfer to Luganville after the attack. Only 14 of Bombers survived to make that trip, and went those planes were transferred, the defense of Noumea rested on the single French Battalion, and 1st Battalion of the Ichiki regiment, which was scattered over a ten to twelve-mile area.
So the Doughboys were going to get ashore that day, moving over the dark waters of Dumbea Bay in their tactical landing boats. The waning gibbous moon was just a little over half full, and it cast a silver sheen over the water, broken by the small dark intrusion of the landing craft. If MacArthur had waited a week, the invaders would have enjoyed the dark of the moon, but this being a first landing by the division, the US actually needed the moonlight to help keep order and prevent chaos in the darkness.
Most would survive the journey to the coast easily enough, the rifle teams leaping ashore on the narrow strand along the waterway known as Anse du Tir. Others were confused by the many small bays to the north that all seemed to look inviting enough, and some wandered into Numbo Bay; others into Dames Bay near the headland that framed the north end of the harbor area, called Komourou. Company platoons got separated, mixed in with those of another unit, but in the main, most everyone got ashore somewhere and began sorting themselves out under the bawling, throaty urgings of their Sergeants.
Further south, in the area designated “Plum Beach,” the 3rd Battalion of the 162nd would land on the seaward flanks of a high hill dubbed Mount Dore. There were shallow beaches in Plum Bay, with a small tree-studded settlement there. The main mission of this unit was to follow the road inland south and east of Mount Dore, and cut the main road on Route 7 to the south. This was the road that led to the mines at Goro, where full a third of Ichiki’s troops were stationed, many actually helping with the work there.
While the 162nd move to isolate and secure the port itself, it soon found itself in hot firefights with the scattered Japanese defenders. Yet outnumbered three to one, with little help from the feckless French troops, Ichiki’s 1st Battalion was slowly being overcome, one house after another.
Farther north, about 245miles up the main coastal road, the 163rd Regiment was landing at Anse Longue, or “Long Cove.” Well named, the landing site was the only location suitable for a landing aimed at seizing Tontouta Airfield, which was the real prize objective of the attack. Areas due west and north of the field saw the coastal bays overgrown with boggy mangrove swamps, so much so that one was named “Inaccessible Bay.” The beach at Long Cove was fringed on its seaward edge by rocky coral, but the boats would hit the submerged sandbars before they reached it, and it would be easy enough for the infantry to simply wade ashore. To their great surprise, there was no defense there whatsoever. An amphibious landing was the farthest thing from the minds of the local Japanese garrison, who were posted mostly at or very near the airfield itself, some six miles inland.