“Since Barnett had landed far from a major river for a Catalina flying boat to carry out an extraction, an overland rescue was planned instead.”

By Bas Kreuger

EARLY ON THE morning of July 27, 1944, four B-25H bombers of the U.S. Fifth Air Force’s 418 Night Fighter Squadron took off from the Allied airfield at Wakde, New Guinea for an anti-shipping strike around the Vogelkop Peninsula.

Their mission: to find and destroy Japanese supply ships en route to remote garrisons in the region.

One of the bombers, 43-4422, was flown by 1st Lt. Ira M. “Herky” Barnett. The aircraft also carried navigator F/O Thomas R. Wright, radio operator Sgt. Peter P. Whipland and tail gunner Sgt. Harold A. “Chief” Tantaquidgeon.

It was while flying over the MacCluer Gulf, some 300 kilometres from base, that Barnett spotted a Japanese barge. The four planes shifted into an attack pattern, with 43-4422 being the last of the bombers over the target.

The formation swooped in at low altitude to carry out a masthead attack. The first three B-25s missed the barge; Barnett’s plane scored a direct hit with one 100-pound bomb. Tantaquidgeon, reporting from the tail gun position, observed that “kindling was flying all over the place.”

Anti-aircraft guns on the barge opened up on the attackers. Two of the B-25s were hit by Japanese AAA fire; one of them was Barnett’s plane. The bomber sustained heavy damage to the right engine and rudders and Barnett knew immediately he wouldn’t be able make it back to Wakde or even to Biak, the nearest Allied base. A crash landing was the only option.

Because of heavy Japanese shipping in the area, along with the presence of a Japanese airbase at nearby Babo, Barnett chose to set down in an open area he’d spotted on the Vogelkop, some 60 kilometres in from the coast.

The pilot managed to land his crippled plane in a sago swamp. Despite keeping the bomber in one piece on impact, the aircraft struck a tree just as it was sliding to a halt. The collision swung the plane to the left and broke the fuselage in two just behind the wing.

Pete Whipland and Harold Tantaquidgeon, sitting in the rear of the aircraft, were thrown clear. Tantaquidgeon suffered only minor injuries; Whipland sustained a serious gash in his right leg.

The pilot of one of the other aircraft in the American formation, a lieutenant by the name of Sorbo, followed Barnett’s stricken plane as it went in noting the position of the crash site.

Sorbo reported the details upon his return to Wakde. Commanders of the Fifth Air Force immediately ordered a rescue mission. Since Barnett had landed far from a major river for a Catalina PBY flying boat to carry out an extraction, an overland rescue was planned instead.

Because of the location in Dutch New Guinea and with likely friendly Papuas in the area, the mission was assigned to a team of Indonesian soldiers from the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army. A second-lieutenant by the name of Louis Rapmund commanded the detachment. Joining them were four Australian jungle warfare experts under a Captain William Gillespie, along with a survival specialist from the U.S. Fifth Air Force, Staff Sgt Donald C. Brickner. Offering additional firepower were eight men from the U.S. Army’s 41st Infantry Division, known as “the Jungeleers.” Leading this American contingent was a master sergeant by the name of Victor J. Krause.

On Aug. 4, the expedition was flown to the mouth of the Kais River by Catalinas of the 2 Emergency Rescue Squadron (2ERS) where Rapmund had arranged canoes and rowers from the local Papua village to be waiting for them. The team set out for the upper reaches of the Kais where they knew the B-25 had set down.

Arriving in Kampong Baroe, Rapmund picked up rumours from locals that substantial numbers of Japanese troops were moving into the area from the north. Ironically, the enemy force was looking for survivors from barges that had been sunk by U.S. bombers earlier in the month.

Rapmund decided to split the team. He’d remain in Kampong Baroe with half the team (the infantry men) while sending the other half of the team under command of ‘Mac’ Gillespie onwards to the wreck.

Over the next 48 hours, Japanese soldiers, travelling by canoe from the coast, arrived in the area. Rapmund and Sergeant Victor J. Krause of the 41^st Infantry, managed to ambush the enemy column.

Most of the 90-man Japanese force were either killed or captured in the ensuing firefight. Four prisoners were sent to Biak by Catalina. While airborne, the captives unsuccessfully tried to overwhelm their guards. One was shot in the struggle and thrown overboard from the blister of the Catalina. Only three arrived in Biak.

Meanwhile on the ground, the rescue party commanded by the Australian captain Gillespie, which included the Brickner, the Fifth Air Force’s survival specialist, proceeded up the River Kais and after some four days reached the small village of Bawane. From there they moved inland where they endured a horrible journey through marshes and swamps to reach the crew.

The bomber crew had been re-supplied almost daily since their crash landing. After one plane added a walkie-talkie to an allotment of provisions, the men on the ground could make radio contact with the PBYs and B-25s overhead. Up until that point, they only means of communication was through signals and waving.

The crew was also fortunate in having Tantaquidgeon with them. A Native American experienced in survival in the bush, he’d shown his comrades how to improvise survival gear from the wreckage and live off the land. Under Tantaquidgeon’s guidance, whom the crew nicknamed “Chief,” the group supplemented their rations with frogs’ legs. In fact, they had named the landing spot of their B-25 “Tantaquidgeon airdrome” in his honour.

Whipland’s leg gash, suffered during the crash, needed treatment to avoid infection. His comrades managed to sow it up and care for the wound with sulfa powder. Barnett and Tantaquidgeon quietly discussed the possibility of amputating the leg if necessary – the latter had a hunting knife big enough to do the job.

When the recuse team finally reached the crash-site on Aug. 16, they found the crew in good shape and in good spirits, although filthy dirty and bored half to death. As Gillespie ran a “dry” expedition, there was unfortunately no “wee dram of Scotch” to celebrate to meeting. Instead, a nice pot of tea was brewed and drunk from mess tins and empty cans.

Now came the difficult job of extracting the crew. It took the entire group four days to canoe back to Baroe, where they were met by their CO, Major Smith of the 418^th.

After singing the national anthems of their respective countries and enjoying an impromptu celebratory feast, the crew was flown to Hollandia by Catalina on Aug. 18, 1944.

So, ended a three-week rescue mission, far behind enemy lines. All involved faced constant in danger in one of the most rugged and inhospitable places on earth. What’s more, all of the crew, as well as the members of the rescue expedition, survived. Even the local Papua population had been won over to the Allied cause in the process. All in all, a successful enterprise.

Interestingly enough, the story doesn’t end there.

In January 2019, a small team of five Dutchmen travelled in the footsteps of the rescue team up the Kais River to locate for the wreckage of the B-25 lost in that New Guinea swamp 75 years earlier.

Despite their best efforts, the group was unable to locate the crash site – the terrain proved too difficult to conquer.

But the expedition didn’t leave the area empty handed. On its way down river, the team managed to encounter an unlikely participant in the story: the last surviving Papua who had taken part in the rescue.

The man, named Paulus, was just 15 in 1944 and was a rower in one of the Allied the canoes. He is now in his 90s.

In 2021 the team plans to go back to West Papua and search once more for the wreck of the B-25, this time with improved equipment and a better understanding of the area.

Watch for details as they emerge.

Bas Kreuger is the author of KAIS: A True Story of a Daring Rescue in the Swamps of New Guinea, Summer 1944, published this past April. Born in the Dutch town of Delft, he studied maritime history at Leiden University and started working in heritage in 1990. In the 1990s he worked as a curator at the Military Aviation Museum of the Royal Netherlands Air Force and later in the Aviodrome Aviation Museum. From 2004 – 2015 he was the director of the Netherlands Fortress Museum, situated in the 17th century fortified town of Naarden. Since 2015 he works as a self-employed heritage specialist, historian and writer. The history of the Dutch in the East Indies has always been a driving force in his work, from projects in Indonesia on aviation history, research on the 1942 Broome Raid in Australia, an inventory of WWII history and heritage of the oil island of Tarakan (Borneo) to the sinking of a Dutch warship in 1859 on the Barito River.