They said no one survives here, then one Marine shot down 12 bombers in 24 hours

The humid air on Rendova Island was thick enough to chew. At 09:00 on July 4, 1943, Private First Class Evan Evans wasn’t thinking about Independence Day fireworks back in Indiana. He was crouching behind a wall of sandbags, watching sixteen Japanese Mitsubishi G4M “Betty” bombers emerge from the broken clouds over Blanche Channel.

He was 22 years old, three weeks into this muddy hell, and he had exactly zero aircraft to his name. Two days earlier, he had watched 59 of his fellow Marines die on this very beach. The Japanese had turned the northern tip of the island—a place the Marines now called “Suicide Point”—into an inferno of melting trucks and cooking ammunition. The island’s radar had been knocked offline, leaving the anti-aircraft crews firing blind. Evans and his crew had burned through 32 rounds that day and hit nothing but air.

But on this morning, as the heavy drone of Japanese engines vibrated in his chest, something was different. The radar was back up. And Evans was about to rewrite the mathematics of air defense.

THE GIANT IN THE MUD

The weapon at Evans’ command was the 90mm M1 Anti-Aircraft Gun. It was a nine-ton beast capable of hurling a 24-pound high-explosive shell to an altitude of 33,000 feet. At a maximum rate of 28 rounds per minute, it was designed to create an impenetrable umbrella of steel.

The Japanese Betty bombers were fast, crossing two miles in just 27 seconds. Without radar, they were ghosts. But with the SCR-268 radar sets finally operational, the Marines of the 9th Defense Battalion could finally see the “ghosts” coming.

“Radar contact! 120 miles out, bearing 320, altitude 14,000 feet!” the operator shouted.

Evans stood at his post. His crew moved like a well-oiled machine: loader, rammer, fuse setter, gunner. They had practiced these drills 10,000 times in the deserts of California, but training didn’t prepare you for the sight of sixteen bombers carrying 128,000 pounds of high explosives intended for your head.

THE INTERCEPT SOLUTION

The brain of the operation was the Sperry M4 Gun Director—a massive mechanical computer. It took the radar data and calculated exactly where a shell needed to be in 18 seconds to meet a moving plane.

“Commence firing!” Lieutenant Colonel Shier roared.

All twelve guns on the island erupted simultaneously. The concussion knocked the dust off the sandbags and turned the beach into a localized earthquake. Evans settled into the rhythm: Load. Ram. Set. Fire.

At ten miles out, Evans’ gun director achieved a perfect lock. He fired. The shell climbed through 8,000 feet of tropical air. Eighteen seconds later, the variable time fuse triggered.

The shell exploded 200 meters directly in front of the lead Betty. Shrapnel shredded the bomber’s right engine. Black smoke turned into a localized sun as the fuel tanks ignited. The bomber’s wing snapped off like a dry twig, and it tumbled into the channel.

One down. Fifteen to go.

THE 27-MINUTE MASSACRE

The Japanese pilots, usually disciplined, were stunned. Two days ago, American flack had been a joke. Now, the sky was a wall of black death. They tightened their formation, but that only made them easier targets for the radar-guided shells.

Evans didn’t stop. His gun barrel was beginning to glow, heat waves shimmering off the metal.

• 7 Miles: Two more Betties disintegrated. One lost its tail; the other simply evaporated into a cloud of debris.

• 6 Miles: Panicked, the Japanese bombardiers released their loads early. Thousands of pounds of explosives fell harmlessly into the empty ocean, creating massive geysers of water half a mile from shore.

• The Retreat: The bombers turned hard to the west, abandoning the mission. But they were still in Evans’ range.

“They’re climbing! They think altitude will save them!” the spotter yelled.

Evans elevated the 90mm to its maximum angle. He tracked a bomber at 11,000 feet. He fired. The shell hit the cockpit directly. The Betty’s nose shattered, and the plane fell like a stone nine miles north of the island.

In the next 60 seconds, Evans and the other batteries across Rendova added eight more bombers to their tally. The sky was filled with falling oil slicks and burning debris.

THE IMPOSSIBLE RATIO

At 09:32, the order for “Cease Fire” came. The sudden silence was painful. Evans stepped back from his gun, his hands shaking from pure adrenaline exhaustion. His ears were ringing so loudly he couldn’t hear his crew cheering.

The results were unprecedented in the history of the Pacific War:

• Bombers Intercepted: 16

• Bombers Destroyed: 12

• Rounds Expended: 88

• American Casualties: 0

• Bombs on Target: 0

The 9th Defense Battalion had achieved a hit rate of nearly 14%. Most anti-aircraft units in 1943 were considered elite if they hit 2%.

THE SURVIVING PHOTOGRAPH

That afternoon, a combat photographer arrived at Battery C. He captured three men standing beside their 90mm gun: Private Roy Boone, PFC John Gamberowski, and in the center, Evan Evans.

That photograph, labeled 127-GW in the National Archives, became the face of the “Wall of Flack.” The Japanese commanders at Rabaul were horrified by the reports from the four surviving planes. They realized that Rendova was no longer “Suicide Point” for the Marines—it was a graveyard for the Imperial Japanese Navy.

EPILOGUE: THE GRANDFATHER’S LETTER

Evans survived the war, serving again in Korea before retiring as a machinist in Richmond, Indiana. He lived a quiet life, rarely speaking of the day the planes fell from the sky.

In 1993, at the age of 72, Evans wrote a letter to the National Archives. He simply wanted a picture of the gun he used to show his grandkids. When the archivist sent him the high-resolution copy of his own 22-year-old self standing next to his history-making turret, Evans wept.

He had carried Rendova in his soul for fifty years. He died in 2004, a man of peace who, for 27 minutes on a muddy island, had become the deadliest barrier the Japanese Air Force had ever encountered.

Rendova’s beach is quiet now, reclaimed by the jungle. But the mathematics of air defense changed that day because one Marine refused to blink in the face of a rising sun.

Note: Some content was generated using AI tools (ChatGPT) and edited by the author for creativity and suitability for historical illustration purposes.