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Maintain communications as long as possible.”
    Lerew ignored Bladen as well. Heading to the hospital on Namanula Hill, he picked up the men who had been wounded on the 20th. The doctor advised that they were unfit to travel, but Lerew insisted on their release. Leaving them to the Japanese was not an option. Thus, wearing casts and fresh dressings, still dopey from the effects of morphine, they were driven to Vunakanau airdrome in the middle of the night.
    A light rain fell as the wounded were loaded aboard the Hudson. At 0300 on January 22, with Jack Sharp back at the controls, the Lockheed accelerated down the soggy runway and lurched into the air, one propeller over-revving loudly due to a problem with its constant-speed control. Other mechanical troubles plagued the journey, but the last Allied plane out of Rabaul stayed in the air long enough to reach Port Moresby. After refueling, Sharp continued to Australia with his cargo of wounded airmen. Thanks to his determination and Lerew’s stubbornness, they would heal—and return to fight again.
    WHATEVER SATISFACTION Lerew may have felt as he watched the Hudson depart lasted only a couple of hours. Just before dawn, forty-five carrier planes from Akagi and Kaga returned to finish the job of destroying the fixed defenses at Rabaul. Dive-bombers pounded the coastal gun battery at Praed Point, and this time succeeded in dislodging the upper gun from its emplacement. The heavy weapon tumbled down the steep slope onto the lower gun, killing or wounding more than twenty artillerymen. Other carrier planes attacked the two airdromes, and several dive-bombers tried, again without success, to knock out the antiaircraft battery.
    The Aussie gunners apparently scored hits on at least two of Kaga’s Type 99 dive-bombers, which later made forced landings in the water alongside the carrier. If their loss was indeed the result of damage from antiaircraft fire, then Selby’s young militiamen accounted for a total of fiveenemy carrier planes—a tremendous accomplishment considering the gunners’ lack of experience and unsophisticated weaponry.
    Soon after the raid ended, lookouts on Watom Island observed the enemy fleet only twenty miles north of their position. By midday, the ships could be seen from Rabaul itself, leaving no doubt whatsoever that an invasion was imminent.
    AT HIS NEW headquarters on high ground near Vunakanau, Colonel Scanlan decided he was no longer bound by his original orders regarding the defense of Rabaul. With the coastal guns in ruins and 24 Squadron out of action, Lark Force’s essential purpose had all but evaporated.
    Determined to leave nothing useful to the enemy, Scanlan issued orders to demolish the two airdromes and the antiaircraft guns. The rigged explosions added to the chaos that gripped Rabaul that afternoon, but the biggest blast was yet to come. At 1600 hours, a stockpile of approximately two thousand bombs, offloaded from the freighter Herstein a week earlier, was destroyed by Lark Force engineers. Lacking the time to do the job methodically, they set off the entire dump in what was later described as a “rather botched demolition.” The explosion was disastrous, leveling houses and buildings within a quarter-mile radius and causing extensive damage as far away as half a mile. Electrical service was knocked out all over town, and the delicate glass vacuum tubes in the radio transmitters were smashed. In the blink of an eye, communication with the outside world was cut off. Even worse, several local natives had been caught in the open. Their corpses, torn open grotesquely by the massive concussion, lay in the middle of the street.
    LATE THAT AFTERNOON, Lerew paid a visit to Scanlan’s new headquarters to make a determination about his squadron. Almost all of his remaining men were either mechanics or support personnel, he told Scanlan. None had received any infantry training, and only a few had fired a rifle during basic training. Should