“Flying low and fast above the harbor’s edge, Cooper released salvoes of phosphorous bombs every few seconds. The smoke they generated screened the defending Japanese gunners, rendering them impotent.”

By Jay Stout

AT 100-YEARS-old, George Cooper considers that deadly air combat against the Japanese was not what his parents had in mind for him when they raised him and his siblings in idyllic pre-war Manila. But like for so many, the world changed unexpectedly in 1941. 

Soon after the Japanese conquest of the Philippines—when he was starting flight training in the United States—Cooper’s father was imprisoned at Santo Tomas in no-longer-idyllic, Japanese-occupied Manila. His mother and sister were essentially held under house arrest in his childhood home. Many of his school friends were likewise imprisoned or slain. Some of them, as George was destined to do, were fighting the Japanese. 

One of the fights that George remembers well took him to Rabaul, on the northeastern tip of New Britain. The massive and heavily defended Japanese bastion was ideally situated to launch air and naval strikes against Allied bases and lines of communication. Consequently, neutralizing it was critical to General MacArthur’s plan to secure the southwest Pacific. Unless it was taken out of the fight, American plans to advance north to the Philippines—and ultimately Japan—were at risk. On Nov. 2, 1943, George and his comrades—whose families were not imprisoned by the Japanese—were part of the fighting there.

Cooper was piloting the lead B-25 in a three-plane formation. A bomber from a formation ahead went down trailing smoke. It hit the ground and skidded apart into great fiery pieces. Cooper watched as another aircraft from his bomb group arced low across the water and away from the target, the heavily defended harbor town of Rabaul. High above, American P-38s tumbled through the sky in a deadly ballet with Japanese fighters. Trails of smoke led earthward, marking the deadly descents of the doomed planes.

Flying just barely above the jungle scrub, Cooper had no time to take in the dramatic scene. He snatched his twin-engine bomber hard to the left as a careless comrade, flying just above him, dumped his bombs. The payload missed Cooper and his two wingmen, but the Japanese anti-aircraft fire, lacing the air all around them, was more effective. The cockpit of the wingman flying to his right filled with smoke—the aircraft’s load of phosphorous bombs still in bomb-bay had been hit and was burning. The heat from the blazing ordnance threatened to melt the fuselage in midair. Seconds later, the pilot jettisoned the load into the town. 

Aside from the anti-aircraft fire, Japanese fighters had punched through the protective screen of P-38s to attack Cooper’s flight and the rest of his squadron—the 499th Bats Outa Hell, part of the famed 345th Bomb Group. The booming counter-

fire that Cooper’s top turret gunner sent after the enemy aircraft vibrated his ship—he had named it Jayhawk—and filled the cockpit with the stink of spent gunpowder.

Flying low and fast above the harbor’s edge, Cooper released salvoes of phosphorous bombs every few seconds. The smoke they generated screened the defending Japanese gunners, rendering them impotent against other groups of B-25s that were tasked with hitting the Japanese warships and cargo vessels anchored nearby. All around Cooper and the rest of the 499th, great cottony phosphorous plumes crept across Rabaul and the surrounding area.

Cooper spotted a line of enemy float planes moored a short distance from the beach. He dipped the nose of Jayhawk slightly and fired a test burst from his eight, forward firing .50 caliber machine guns. The rounds spattered into the closest aircraft, blowing away chunks and setting it afire. Satisfied with his aim, Cooper mashed down on the firing button and sprayed more gunfire into the remaining aircraft. Seconds later, he flashed past the last of them—four were definitely destroyed, and others were no doubt seriously damaged.

Just past Matupi Island, Cooper spotted a P-38 with a smoking engine passing in front of his flight from left-to-right. Hot on the friendly fighter’s tail were three Mitsubishi Zeros. As he came close, George pulled Jayhawk’s nose up and pressed the firing button in an attempt to shoot the enemy fighters off the P-38 pilot’s tail. The 90-degree deflection shot was almost impossible and none of the enemy aircraft were hit. The P-38 smashed into the water and the crewmen in Cooper’s flight had bare seconds to consider the pilot’s fate—he could not have survived. 

Cooper led the other B-25’s across Raluana Point where it was caught by a barrage of anti-aircraft fire. At the same time, Zero fighters dove down on them. To his left, Cooper’s wingman was struck by ground fire and then jumped by a Zero and hit again. His guns were rendered inoperable and hydraulic fluid sprayed across the windscreen. He struggled not just to keep the wavering bomber in formation, but simply to keep it from smashing into the water. The co-pilot was injured—shot in the leg—but he still left his position on two different occasions to climb to the rear of the aircraft and render first aid to both the flight engineer and the radio operator who were seriously wounded.

The Zeros also hit Cooper’s wingman to the right. One of the main landing gear tires was shot up, as was part of his hydraulic system. Happily, none of the crew was injured and the aircraft remained controllable. Both wingmen tucked in tightly to Cooper’s aircraft as they raced low across the water. 

The enemy pilots continued to harry them. At first, they attacked from the front but the combined forward-firing firepower of the B-25s quickly dissuaded them, and they consequently were compelled to make near-level attacks from the sides and rear. Cooper kept the flight at near-wavetop height which made it impossible for the enemy pilots to make firing passes from above lest they pull out too late and crash into the water. And, of course, attacks from below were impossible.

Cooper and his flight put miles between themselves and Rabaul until their pursuers, low on fuel, or ammunition or guts—or all three—climbed away and headed back to their bases. Finally safe from the enemy pilots, Cooper led his flight in a gentle climb and eased back the power to his engines. Both his wingmen were damaged and there was still a great deal of ocean to cross before reaching their own base at Dobodura. There was no sense in needlessly straining their engines and running the risk that they might fail.

On a course for home, Cooper felt exhaustion overtake him. The attack on Rabaul was finished, but there was much more war remaining to be fought.

Born in the Philippines to an American father and a Filipina mother, George Cooper is 100 years-old. Together with historian and combat-experienced fighter pilot, Jay A. Stout, Cooper tells the story of not just his war, but the war that ripped apart his family and friends in the Pacific, the Philippines and the United States. The book is, Jayhawk: Love, Loss, Liberation, and Terror Over the Pacific. It is published by Casemate, August 2020.