Getting Yamamoto
Eighteen P-38G Lightnings, each armed with four .50 caliber machineguns and one 20mm cannon, and equipped with drop tanks for extra range, were selected for Operation Vengeance. They were to be led by USAAF Major John Mitchell. A flight of four was designated as a “killer team” to go after the two bombers. The other Lightnings, whose numbers included two spares, were to fly cover above and keep the Japanese Zero escorts and swarms of other enemy fighters expected to take off from nearby airfields off the killers.
Sixteen Lightnings, equipped with drop tanks for extra range, were sent on a 600-mile roundabout flight to meet Yamamoto’s plane as it arrived from Rabaul at Bougainville on April 18th, 1943. The mission went like clockwork. The P-38s skimmed the ocean at 50 feet to avoid detection, and swung wide of islands between Guadalcanal and Bougainville and watchers therein.
They reached the planned interception point within one minute of Yamamoto. The Lightnings, armed with 20mm cannon and .50 caliber machineguns, attacked. While a kill team of four P-38s fell upon the two medium bombers carrying the admiral and his staff, the other Lightnings took on the Zero escorts and flew top cover to fend off any fighters scrambled from local airfields. Within minutes, both Japanese bombers were shot down.
One crashed into the jungle below, and the other made a crash landing into the ocean. The P-38s then broke off contact. Avoiding detection no longer a necessity, they flew a 400 mile straight line flight back to Guadalcanal, which they reached after completing a 1000-miles-long mission. Yamamoto’s crashed bomber was located by a search and rescue party the following day, and his corpse was recovered from the wreckage strewn around the crash site.
