Jungle warfare on the Kokoda Track in 1942 was extremely difficult. The thick jungle, mountainous terrain and wet climate made it hard for troops to see each other.
Fighting required much patience. Advances were painfully slow. Fighting techniques were often similar to those used in night fighting. But where the Japanese were trained in night fighting, the Australians were not.
In the jungle, troops could only use the weapons they could carry. This included rifles, submachine guns, grenades and light machine guns.
Defenders were camouflaged in fighting pits. The attackers' forward scouts often would not see the fighting pits until they were shot.
Communication was difficult too. Sometimes the only way to pass on information was by messengers crawling through the thick scrub. Troops were often shot while they conveyed information.
Jungle warfare at Kokoda
In 1942, Australian and Japanese troops struggled to fight in mist and heavy rain in the jungle along the Kokoda Track.
Due to lack of visibility, jungle warfare is like night fighting. The attacker struggles to find the way and becomes lost. Sub-units cannot see each other. They cannot coordinate fire and movement. Defenders, in fighting pits, cannot direct fire on targets hidden by thick foliage. Weapons designed to fire accurately for hundreds of metres are much less useful when visibility is only 20 m. Rain compounds these challenges and slows movement and visibility.
The Japanese, trained in night fighting, acclimatised to the jungle before the Australians. Australian troops had not trained to fight at night. They had to learn and adapt to jungle warfare.
Tactics of jungle war
The fighting on the Kokoda Track was an infantryman's war in close jungle. The enemy was often not seen until they were a few metres away.
The traditional tactics of infantry fighting are built upon fire and movement. When attacking, one group moves towards the enemy. The other fires to keep enemy heads down. The former was called the rifle group. They were armed with rifles, submachine guns and grenades. The latter was the gun group. They had at least one light machine gun.
On more open battlefields, the gun group might be of company size (about 100 soldiers). They might have mortars or medium machine guns. They would direct a large volume of fire towards the enemy, while another company manoeuvred towards them. This strategy was used in Papua but was made extremely difficult by the conditions. Visibility in the jungle was poor. It was usually from 10 to 50 m. During fog and rain, it was hard to see even this far.
In jungle fighting, hidden defenders in camouflaged fighting pits would fire on the attacker's lead scout. The scout would often not see the fighting pits until they were shot. If the scout survived, he still might not know where the fire was coming from unless he had seen a muzzle flash. The gun group, further back, was even worse off. It could not work out where to direct fire to support the rifle group.
It was hard for jungle soldiers to issue and receive orders. Steep slopes, few tracks, thick jungle and deep, treacherous streams hindered communication. Typically, the company commander could see few of his own men. His subordinates, the platoon commanders, were often unsure where they were in relation to their own superior, other platoons, and sometimes even their own sections. Conditions were very like night fighting and often confused or chaotic.
Infantrymen on the Kokoda Track usually fought in a section divided into 2 small groups. This included a 6-man rifle group and a 4-man gun group. After locating the enemy, the gun group would fire. Under fire cover, the rifle group crawled carefully closer. They would try to lob grenades into the enemy's fighting pit.
If another enemy position opened up, the whole movement would stop. They would reassess the problem. The platoon leader would commit another of his sections to tackle the new threat. Slowly, the attack would proceed. It would mean crawling and using every scrap of cover, with long periods where no one could see the enemy. Nor could the enemy see them.
There would still be a great deal of fire going back and forth. Section commanders directed fire where they thought the enemy would be. Eventually, one enemy would be hit by a grenade in the pit. The attackers would make a gap in the enemy defences this way. The attackers would edge forward and gradually kill the defenders or force them back. They needed to be patient. To kill a few enemies might take several hours. Quite often, soldiers would see no live enemy at all during an engagement.
This was how the campaign along the Kokoda Track was fought. The popular image of large formations sweeping the enemy aside was far from the reality for the average soldier.
Patrols through the jungle
Along the Kokoda Track, and in the rugged jungle off to the side, both the Allies and the Japanese were continually patrolling. The jungle could easily conceal large numbers of men. Knowing where the enemy was and what they were doing was vital.
A patrol is a small group that leaves the main body to seek information on the enemy. If the fingers of a hand are spread wide, then the fingertips represent patrols, while the palm is the main body of troops, which waits behind to act on the information the patrols obtain.
Soldiers of the 2/31st Australian Infantry Battalion on patrol along the swampy river flats bordering the Brown River, New Guinea, c. 4 October 1942. Photographed by Thomas Fisher. AWM 027081
Many people imagine the fighting along the Kokoda Track as taking place on a narrow front. In mid-September 1942, the fighting at Ioribaiwa Ridge took place on a front about 2 km wide along the ridge, about 1 km or so on either side of the track.
Both armies sent patrols out along a front of over 100 km and sometimes deep behind the enemy front line. During the Ioribaiwa action, Australian patrols from 2/6th Independent Company were searching for the enemy along the Vanapa River, 50 km north-west of Ioribaiwa, and along the upper reaches of the Kumusi River, 70 km to the north-east.
The 2/1st Pioneer Battalion patrolled the immediate flanks of the Australian force on Ioribaiwa Ridge. The soldiers were checking to see if the Japanese were looking for approaches to Port Moresby along the Brown and Goldie rivers.
The Japanese 41st Infantry Regiment was actively patrolling the same area for just this purpose. They also sent patrols out to the east and west to confirm that the Australians had not sent a large force around their flank.
These patrols rarely encountered each other in the vast jungle-covered and rugged mountains of the Owen Stanley Range. Most patrols returned with no contact or any sign of the enemy.
For all the efforts of 2/1st Pioneer Battalion in the last 2 weeks of September, their patrols encountered the Japanese just twice. On one of these occasions, they clashed with the deepest-known southward penetration of a Japanese patrol, on the Goldie River, well in the Australian rear and only 35 km from Port Moresby.
Japanese artillery
Australians along the Kokoda Track did entirely without artillery, except for a few days from 21 September 1942. When the Japanese were on Ioribaiwa Ridge, at the limit of their advance, two 25 lb (11.3 kg) guns of 14th Field Regiment were dragged up to Owers' Corner, from where they were able to fire on the enemy.
The Japanese experience of war in China in the 1930s had taught them that in remote roadless regions the only artillery they would have was what they carried with them.
On first landing in Papua, they had 17 artillery pieces. These were of 3 types: 75 mm mountain guns, 70 mm infantry guns and 37 mm guns. These could fire an anti-tank or an anti-personnel round. All 3 could be taken apart and carried by horse or man. When the Japanese advanced into the Owen Stanley Range, men had to carry the guns and their ammunition. One-fifth of their force shouldered the burden of the disassembled guns and several thousand rounds of ammunition.
Nadzab area, New Guinea 9September 1944. Personnel of the 2nd Mountain Battery assembling their 75 mm gun. The wheels have been fitted to the axle and the personnel standing by the wheels are inserting the lynch pins. In the centre, the front trail is being fitted to the axle. AWM 076002
In the first half of the campaign, this labour was rewarded by victory in battle. In battle it is a major disadvantage to have no artillery when the enemy has it. Japanese artillery had much longer range than any Australian weapon, meaning that they could fire on the Australians from further away. In jungle warfare, the gunners usually cannot see the target. This problem was solved by forward observers. These men advanced with their infantry until they could see the Australians, then, by field telephone, directed the fire of their artillery onto the target.
On the last day at Isurava, 6 Japanese guns were engaged. At Ioribaiwa, there were 8 guns, including 3 of the most powerful ones, the 75 mm mountain guns. The greatest concentration of Japanese guns in action was 13 at Oivi-Gorari. Despite this strong artillery presence, all guns were lost.
Australian adaptation
Although the Australian Army was initially inexperienced and unprepared for jungle warfare, it quickly adapted its weapons, uniforms, equipment, doctrine and training. By 1945, it was one of the best jungle-fighting forces in the world.
An army that was equipped, trained and experienced in large-scale, multi-unit open warfare had to rapidly reconfigure itself to meet the unexpected challenges posed by combat in the jungles, swamps and mountains of Papua, New Guinea, Bougainville and Borneo. More often than not, this was achieved by soldiers on the front line who fought – and died – at Milne Bay, Kokoda, and the beachheads of Buna, Gona and Sanananda. The lessons of those first campaigns, although acquired at great cost, provided the basis for the training and doctrine that would, with slight modification and improvement, be applicable for the remainder of the war. Those lessons made the Australian Army by 1945 the preeminent jungle fighting force in the world.
[Adrian Threlfall, 'Jungle Warriors: From Tobruk to Kokoda and Beyond, how the Australian Army Became the World's Most Deadly Jungle Fighting Force', p2, Sydney: Allen & Unwin]
