Tell about yourself and what got you interested in WWII?
I was born in 1939 in Innisfail,
Australia, north of Townsville. When the Pacific War started there
was a great increase in air activity and apparently at an early age
I was an expert in aircraft recognition. As
the Japanese came closer almost all civilians were evacuated south
to Brisbane. Before we left, I have a clear memory of standing outside
our home, with all the adults, after the air raid siren sounded,
and watching a Japanese flying boat silhouetted against the full
moon. I now know these were the Mavis aircraft of the Yokohama Kokutai
flying recon from Rabaul looking for shipping, and Innisfail was
a port for coastal traders. The flying boats would check out the
rivers and harbors for shipping, and of course the moonlight would
help them.
Almost all civilians were
evacuated south ahead of the expected Japanese invasion, and we
spent a couple of years in Brisbane. After a year or so
in Brisbane we returned home, and had an apartment next to a tailor,
who did a lot of business with US and Australian military - uniforms
and badges were everywhere. My father and uncles were in the armed
forces, and one uncle was killed in the RAAF in
an air collision. So WW2 was full of interest for me as
a child. My own intention to become a pilot was halted by getting
hit in the eye by a cricket ball which inflicted permanent damage.
I later joined the army and did three tours of duty in South Vietnam
which allowed me to experience the war from out in the weeds with
infantry to General Westmoreland's operations room at MACV - probably
a wider range of experience than any other Australian.
My own intention of joining the RAAF as a pilot ended
one day at a high school cricket match, when I was hit in the eye by
a ball traveling at a high Mach number. This resulted in an eye injury
which affected depth perception, so my landings tended to be 'not good'.
Being of Nordic-Celtic ancestry, I joined the Army instead and by closing
my 'cricket eye' shot to Marksman standard.
I applied for language school and graduated from the
year-long Vietnamese course, the equivalent of the US school at Monterey.
I did three tours of duty in Vietnam, and these ranged from out in the
weeds to the Military Attache Staff at the embassy in Saigon. The time
in Saigon included the Tet offensive, and my apartment was between the
US Embassy and the Independence Palace, so the first hours were full
of interest. So were the following weeks. I retired from the army after
22 years and started researching and writing military history. In 1996
we left Canberra and came to live here in sub-tropical Queensland. So
from my earliest memories I had an interest in WW2 in the Pacific, both
from family connections and as a child observing the adult world.
Talk about your first book,
and the process of writing and researching
WWII
My first book was a novel based on my experiences
in infantry in Vietnam - When The Buffalo Fight. However, I had retained
my interest in the Pacific War and the big daylight raid on Rabaul Harbor
seemed to be ignored by most writers, so I began research on this in
the early 1980s and it became Into The Dragon's Jaws, published by Champlin
when Barrett Tillman was publishing manager.
I used a mixture of veterans'
interviews, and their letters and diaries, plus official records and
donated personal records at the Australian War Memorial. Now, of course,
the WW2 veterans are going fast. One aspect I soon experienced was
that often the veteran knew little of what actually happened apart
from his own personal observations, and often what he 'knew' was public
relations communiques which not always were accurate. So some tact
was necessary when a veteran repeated what was from a MacArthur communique
but was not historically accurate. Also, because something had appeared
in writing from a headquarters it was accepted as solid fact, but often
this was not so.
In the following years I alternated books on Australians
in Vietnam with books on WW2, which included two on Australian fighter
aces - Six Aces and Four
Aces - and RAAF fighter pilots in the siege
of Malta 1942, Against All Odds. As the subject matter of my other
three books on the SWPA was mostly American, I sought US publishers
for Battle of the Bismarck Sea, Into
The Dragon's Jaws and MacArthur's
Eagles.
Depending on the manuscript size required by the
publisher, I included as much as possible about the aviation contribution
in my books on the campaigns in Papua-New Guinea 1942-43, Blood & Iron (Kokoda) and To The Bitter End (Buna-Gona)
because other writers concentrated on the ground actions and ignored
the vital contribution of the air arm, and also the effect Japanese
naval superiority and the Rabaul convoy runs had on Allied land operations
- attacks were ordered against the fortifications in hope the landing
sites would be captured before the convoy arrived. Some other authors
did not make this connection and criticised the commanders without
knowing why orders were given. To correct what seemed to me to be a
great imbalance in books on the SWPA, I was the first to make extensive
use of the large Australian War Memorial collection of translations
of captured documents and prisoner interrogations to give the Japanese
side of events. Even now authors cannot always be bothered to do this
research.
Tell a little more about your book about the Battle
of the Bismarck Sea
Battle of the Bismarck Sea was a natural chronological
successor to my books on Kokoda and Buna-Gona, and, of course, it was
the first great success for the 5th Air Force - Kenney's ideas were
starting to fall into place: new commanders, new aircraft modifications,
new tactics. There was probably a bit of thin ice appearing under the
feet of Kenney and Whitehead after the debacle of the January 1943
convoy to Lae, so the March success was necessary in every way.
This battle was another in that series of those where everything goes
right for one side before the battle but nothing works after it begins.
Bad weather hindered Kenney's recon flights and signals intelligence
only told him a convoy was forming. The convoy was happily steaming
along under the bad weather and seemed sure to arrive at Lae as scheduled.
Then the B-24 found them; the B-17s attacked and scored hits; the Japanese
commander made his fatal error and decided to circle while survivors
were ferried back to Rabaul; Allied air power massed for the first
time and in the morning caught the convoy well out to sea instead of
under the protection of the Lae defenses.
Other books on the Bismarck
Sea repeated MacArthur's claims for 22 ships sunk and 30,000 soldiers
lost, but my research identified the ships, their cargoes and total
losses, as historical fact, not public relations communiques. This
information was a bit of a disappointment to some veterans, who had
been comfortable with MacArthur's exaggerations. The sad thing about
this book was that when it was in the publishing process, several
of the veterans died and so never saw the book. One good thing was
that my research located the surviving crew members of John Smallwood's
B-25, which crashed back at base - they all had thought for decades
that each was the sole survivor of the crash.
Some controvery still goes on about the subsequent
attacks on Japanese soldiers off the ships, but these men had lowered
landing barges and were aboard with uniforms and equipment, even artillery,
and one regiment's military colours with honor guard, and were heading
for shore. To say that these people should have been immune from attack
is to say that no one ashore or aloft should fire on military forces
until they reach the high tide mark on the beach. The do-gooders would
have had no problems if the Japanese were strafed once they reached
the beach, but are upset because they were attacked at sea. Can they
be attacked at the 5-fathom line? In the surf? Knee-deep in water?
Or do they have to be ashore and dried out? It must also be remembered
that many Allied airmen had seen the crew of a B-17 machinegunned in
the air when they baled out over the convoy. The sort of mentality
that promotes the view that the Japanese off the ships should have
been left to get to shore, and only then attack them, is the sort of
mentality that had European regiments lined up shoulder to shoulder
standing 50 metres apart while the officers argued over which side
should have the courtesy of firing first. A sort of blind stupidity,
or stupid blindness.
Talk about your Rabaul book Into The Dragon's Jaws
Into The Dragon's Jaws came
from my interest in the low-level raid into Rabaul Harbor, and was
the first project when I used the collection of captured documents
and prisoner interrogations. This material gave a whole new view into
the actions. The MacArthur Archives in Norfolk, Virginia, provided
excellent service by copying and sending the collection of Special
Intelligence Bulletins, the signals intercept reports for the top level
commanders in the SWPA, and this allowed me to show that despite the
series of raids on Rabaul, the JNAF and JAAF were replacing aircraft
as fast as they were lost. Where the Wewak missions of August were
a great success, the weather was to the advantage of the Rabaul defenses
and General Kenney could not apply enough air power on successive days
to achieve the desired effect. This book was my first adventure into
the world of official records and archives of the SWPA campaigns.
Mention your new book on
Wewak & Hollandia
MacArthur's Eagles completes the series I wanted to write about the
New Guinea theater, and it describes the air campaigns against Wewak
in August 1943 and March 1944 and the Hollandia campaign March-April
1944. The Japanese air commanders never really understood air power
and General Kenney showed them how it was done, by destroying the JAAF
three times on their own bases. Again, to give the Japanese side I
made extensive use of the captured documents, prisoner interrogations,
and also the signals intelligence intercepts in the US Archives in
College Park, MD.
When the captured documents and signals intercepts
are assembled, we can see that wartime Japanese reporting was abysmal
and I believe it to be one reason for their complete defeat. There
was a constant stream of replacement aircraft and entire units had
to go to Manila to re-equip, but along with this there were laughable
claims for damage inflicted on the US air arm. In some actions my
research shows the US claims and JAAF losses exactly relate. I tried
to identify the losses for Neel Kearby's big day over Wewak, his MOH
mission, but apart from admitting two officers were lost, and a couple
of other airplanes were damaged, nothing in the Japanese records confirms
this combat - yet Kearby's claims were confirmed by cameragun and witnesses.
Similar losses reported in captured documents are not reflected in
the signals intelligence reports.
I did find in the captured documents
the name and unit of the man who shot down Tommy Lynch and nearly
got Dick Bong on that same mission. Of course, to them it was merely
a P-38 shot down - they never knew who was the pilot. I've come to the
conclusion that the coastwatchers and similar 'spy' missions were
conducted to give the Japanese a decoy away from our use of signals
decodes, which provided far better information over the entire SWPA
than could be seen by a few people watching a few military bases. There's
probably a Ph.D there for someone.
Speak more about your research methods and
processes
Research for the books involves locating and interviewing
as many veterans as possible, and official records, donated personal
records, and official and personal and official photos. Sometimes
the official records are not a good and accurate account of the events,
for several reasons. Some reasons are interference from high command,
pressure of work on the relevant staff, or reconstituted records
after the originals have been lost or destroyed. In the Bismarck
Sea action, as I have shown in my book, the staff were deluged with
reports of the actions, of bad weather, ships on fire, bomb hits
and so on, and it would have been impossible to establish and maintain
an accurate account of what was happening in real time. Only after
the battle was over could it all be sorted out and an accurate account
complied. But then General MacArthur insisted that 22 ships had been
sunk and kept this up until the end of the war, when it must have
been known that real losses were 12 ships.
An Australian Army Intelligence Officer, Lieutenant
Geoff Waters, was most unpopular when he showed from captured documents
and prisoner interrogations that 115 Regiment was alive and well fighting
in New Guinea, after MacArthur and Willoughby insisted it had been sent
to the bottom of the sea. Geoff was sent back to Australia for showing
MacArthur to be wrong, but later returned to New Guinea and showed that General Adachi was the originator of orders to kill prisoners, so Adachi
was arraigned on war crimes. He committed suicide.
Another example of high
command interference in official records is by General Kenney. The mission report of the daylight
bombing attack on Rabaul on 5 January 1943 did not claim much damage
to shipping, but there is a typed note on the bottom to the effect
that, 'by order of General Kenney' a list of ships sunk and damaged
was inserted. This was to back the citation of the award of the MOH
to General Walker.
When I wrote my books on the above campaigns, no
one had made use of the valuable collection of translations of captured
documents and prisoner interrogations in the SWPA and South Pacific
Areas. These were a window into the life and times of the Japanese,
at that time, far more valuable and accurate than the post-war stuff
from Japan. I made as much use of that captured material as possible,
and since then other writers have used it. I find it excellent to
give a balanced account of the events, and otherwise any book without
the enemy side is unbalanced. I have been to New Guinea, but not
actually walked the Kokoda Trail - I had enough of that in the infantry
anyway.
Where are your published
works available
When I was visiting the AWM or other archival locations
I met various people working on their own projects, and it became obvious
to me that the mainstream publishers would not publish those manuscripts
with the excuse that they were 'too specialized'. However, I believed
those stories should be told and the information made available to
the public and families of veterans. Also I was not always happy with
the amount of editorial interference with my manuscripts at various
publishers. When Banner Books became available in the early 1990s,
I took it and decided to be more understanding of the author's intentions.
Since then we have published over twenty titles, including a couple
of mine, on Australian aviation, maritime and military subjects. If
we Australians do not do this, no one else will. The return from one
book goes to finance the next. We have a standard style of presentation,
and with two exceptions publish in hardcover with dustjacket, and in
large format to do justice to the photos, and so the book will have
some dignity and presence on the owner's bookshelf. Eleven titles are
out of print, as we do not reprint, but go on to the next title. For
information, see banner-books.com.au
What is your next project?
A biography of John Lerew, the RAAF Commander at Rabaul when the Zeros
arrived and his squadron lasted 7 minutes. He asked Townsville for
modern fighters and was told the cold truth - there were none; he
was to attack the invasion fleet. He then sent the Roman gladiator's
salute - We who are about to die salute you - and disobeyed orders
and arranged for his squadron to be evacuated, then survived being
shot down at Gasmata, established the RAAF Directorate of Flying Safety and went to ICAO in 1946. A full career.
What is your greatest hope for the future of WWII Pacific research?
The continuation of what is going on now. The WW2 veterans are going
fast, but there is a very active group in all fields working hard
to present the facts of that major war. Researchers
and authors in this field are mostly a good bunch of people who share
information and discoveries with each other and will research something
for another in the field. There are few prima donnas. Since the advent
of the Internet and email, the flow and cross-flow of information 'around
the circuit' has been amazing. It's a great fraternity and a pleasure
to be one of them.
How do you feel about the remaining relics of WWII left in
the Pacific?
The only way in which these relics will be preserved is for those actively
interested in the matter to remove them to a location where they can
be refurbished, and this is to the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia
or Europe, where facilities and expertise exist. To leave the relics
in the field will be to see them eventually completely destroyed by
natural or human action. It takes lots of money to do this, of course.
Thank you for the interview Mr. McAulay
Books by Lex McAulay
The Battle of Long Tan (1987)
The Battle of Coral (1988)
Contact: Australians in Vietnam (1989)
Against All Odds: RAAF Pilots in the Battle for Malta 1942 (1989)
To the Bitter End: The Japanese Defeat at Buna and Gona 1942-43 (1993)
Into the Dragon's Jaws The Fifth Air Force over Rabaul, 1943 (1987) reprinted (2012)
Battle of the Bismarck Sea (1991) reprinted (2012)
Blood & Iron The Battle of Kokoda 1942 (1991)
Six Aces Australian fighter pilots, 1939-45 (1992)
MacArthur's Eagles: The U.S. Air War Over New Guinea 1943-1944 (2005)
Blue Lanyard Red Banner (2012)
Burma Hurricane Ace: Flight Lieutenant Jack Storey DFC MiD RAAF (2015)
Hurricane Ace 1940: The flying career of the first Australian fighter ace of World War 2 - Flying Officer Les Clisby (2015)
Remember When....? Some Over A Beer Yarns: Australians in South Vietnam 1965-71 (2016)
A Clean Sweep: The Destruction of the Japanese Army Air force Fighter Arm Over New Guinea 1943-44 (2016)
A Petrol Log-book: Australia 1980-2018 (2018)
Yarra & Parkinson: Aussie aces, Malta 1942 (2020)
Two Australian Spitfire Aces Malta 1942: Squadron Leader Tim Goldsmith DFC DFM & Flight Lieutenant Paul Brennan DFC DFM (2020)
Kicking Rommel & Trig 33: Four Australian raids at Tobruk & the Australian victory in July 1942 that destroyed Rommel's Supremacy (2020)
Some Australian Trench Raids: France 1916-18 (2020)