The Conquering Tide

by Ian W. Toll

  Now Fletcher faced a dilemma. Should he pounce on the Ryujo, or should he keep his powder dry, hoping for word of the big carriers? The PBY’s report had put the Ryujo 275 miles north of Tulagi, a long flight of about 250 miles from the Saratoga—but if the target kept her southerly course, she would come closer. When Felt’s planes returned from Guadalcanal, landing at 11:00 a.m., Felt told the admiral that his pilots were dog-tired and could use a rest. “You keep getting intelligence and when those things are within our range, we’ll go,” he suggested.53 Fletcher assented. At 11:38 a.m., another PBY reported the Ryujo force, this time farther south.

  Confronted with a mass of conflicting and uncertain data, and with so much at stake, Fletcher hesitated to make a precipitous decision. Shortly after noon, he assigned the Enterprise air group to conduct a search to the northwest to a distance of 250 miles. Sixteen SBDs and seven TBFs departed the carrier at 1:15. In short order, Charlie Jett of VT-3 found the Ryujo and radioed back a contact report. Jett and a wingman attempted a horizontal bombing attack at 12,000 feet. Dropping bombs from altitude on ships maneuvering at speed was usually futile, and this was no exception. They missed and turned back toward the American task force.

  Still having heard nothing about the enemy’s big carriers, Fletcher elected to commit his reserve strike to finish the little Ryujo. Twenty-eight SBDs and eight TBFs led by Commander Felt flew a heading of 320 degrees. By that time, Ryujo had already launched six Nakajima B5N “Kates” and fifteen Zeros against Henderson Field. Marine fighters defended the airfield in a pitched dogfight over the island, downing three Nakajimas and three Zeros, losing only three American aircraft in the melee. (Bombers from Rabaul were supposed to have arrived over the target at about the same time, but thick weather had forced them back to base.) Importantly, the Ryujo planes did not do any significant damage to the marine installations around Henderson or to the airfield itself.54

  At 3:36 p.m., the Saratoga strike closed in on the Ryujo. She went into a tight starboard turn and continued to circle throughout the attack. One after another, the dive-bombers rolled into their dives and released their bombs. Several missed close aboard, but Felt personally planted the first of three 500-pound bombs on the flight deck, and one of the TBFs sent a torpedo into her starboard side. The attack, said Felt, “was carried out just like a training exercise.”55 The Ryujo was soon blazing out of control while still circling clockwise. From the air, Felt observed her “pouring forth black smoke which would die down and then belch forth in great volume again.”56 She was abandoned by her crew, most of whom simply leapt over the side. The skipper of the destroyer Amatsukaze watched the blazing wreck through his binoculars. “A heavy starboard list exposed her red belly,” he recalled. “Waves washed her flight deck. It was a pathetic sight. Ryujo, no longer resembling a ship, was a huge stove, full of holes which belched eerie red flames.”57 A total loss, she would be scuttled four hours later. Her returning planes were forced to ditch at sea.

  Meanwhile, a cruiser scout from the Chikuma sighted the two American carriers at 2:30 p.m. The sluggish floatplane was shot down by Enterprise fighters, but not before the pilot managed to get a transmission off to Nagumo. Radio direction-finding gear on the Shokaku gave the Japanese an accurate bearing to the doomed plane, and thus to the American task force. Nagumo now held the advantage. He had not yet been discovered, but he had pinpointed Fletcher’s position, and it was well within striking range. At 2:55 p.m., the first of two big strikes took off from the Shokaku and Zuikaku: twenty-seven Aichi D3A2 “Vals” escorted by fifteen Zeros.

  As the planes left the decks, two Enterprise SBDs caught sight of the Japanese carriers and radioed a report to Fletcher. The American communications were very poor, however: the airwaves were clogged by heavy static and gratuitous pilot chatter, and the admiral received no word of the contact until more than an hour later. The two SBDs dived and bravely attacked the Shokaku, but missed. About an hour after the first wave, Nagumo launched a second wave of twenty-seven Aichis and nine Zeros.

  Now Fletcher had two large waves of enemy dive-bombers incoming, and had not yet replied. When the contact report belatedly got through to him, he realized he may have repeated the error he had committed three and a half months earlier in the Battle of the Coral Sea—aiming his strike at a small carrier when the enemy’s big carriers were still in the vicinity. He tried to redirect the outbound flight, but was again defeated by feeble radio communications. As one Enterprise dive-bomber pilot ruefully observed, “We had been outsmarted strategically with the tactical battle still to be fought—it was Coral Sea all over again.”58

  The Enterprise radar plot detected the first wave of incoming planes at 4:32 p.m., when they were eighty-eight miles to the northwest.59 F4F Wildcats roared off both flight decks and “dangled on their propellers” (climbed at maximum speed), their 1,200-horsepower Pratt & Whitney radial engines straining mightily. The Japanese now enjoyed the tactical upper hand. A broken cloud ceiling gave them good visual cover.60 Knowing that the F4Fs were slow climbers, the attackers approached at abnormally high altitudes, between 18,000 and 24,000 feet. After the initial radar return, the American scopes went dark for seventeen minutes, and when they lit up again at 4:49, the leading edge of the enemy wave was only forty-four miles away. American fighters were diverted by the escorting Zeros, allowing most of the dive-bombers to slip through the screen unmolested. The Enterprise’s fighter director officer (FDO) struggled to get through to his pilots while the radio circuit was congested with their chatter: “Look at that one go down!” and “Bill, where are you?”61 (Captain Arthur C. Davis of the Enterprise later observed, “The air was so jammed with these unnecessary transmissions that in spite of numerous attempts to quiet the pilots, few directions reached our fighters and little information was received by the Fighter Director Officer.”)62

  Both carriers rang up maximum speed for evasive maneuvering and turned southeast in order to bring wind across their decks for flight operations. All strike planes spotted on deck were ordered to launch. The pilots were simply told to get away, to clear the area—it was not that important where they went, so long as they were not on deck when the enemy dive-bombers hurtled down from overhead. If both flattops went down, or were damaged and incapable of landing planes, they could fly to Henderson Field on Guadalcanal. Once aloft, the Enterprise and Saratoga strike planes were instructed by radio to head northwest in search of the big twins Zuikaku and Shokaku. With only two hours of daylight remaining, their odds of attacking the enemy and returning safely were very long.

  At 5:09, the Enterprise radar plot informed the captain that “the enemy planes are directly overhead now!”63 The antiaircraft gunners, with helmets pushed back on their heads and kapok life vests drawn up tight around their necks, studied the sky. For a moment, nothing seemed amiss. The afternoon was absurdly peaceful. A few black specks moved above and between the high, thin wisps of cloud. Then a few of those specks stopped and seemed to fix in place. Gradually, the rising drone of aircraft engines could be heard. The larger specks began to take shape—a blurred disk, bisected by wings, with fixed landing gear under the wings, sun glinting off the cockpit canopies, and a second, smaller speck (the bomb) tucked under the fuselage. Witnesses who had never seen a dive-bombing attack were surprised at how long the enemy planes took to come down. They dived at angles of 70 degrees or even steeper, most on the port beam and quarter of the Enterprise. The attack, according to Captain Davis, was “well executed and absolutely determined.”64

  With the Enterprise tearing through the sea at 27 knots, Davis ordered maximum rudder right, then maximum rudder left, and the ship heeled radically to port and then to starboard. Behind her stretched a long, foaming, serpentine wake. The gunners threw up a wall of 5-inch, 1.1-inch, and 20mm antiaircraft fire. Black, brown, and white bursts blemished the sky. The South Dakota, said a witness, was “lit up like a Christmas tree,” emitting so much fire and smoke that the battleship appeared to be herself ablaze.
The sea all around was mottled by falling antiaircraft shell fragments, as if under a heavy rainstorm. Several dive-bombers were blown to pieces. Ensign Fred Mears watched the burning remains of one Aichi “flutter down like a butterfly and kiss the water.”65 Several more flew through the 5-inch bursts and emerged with fire or smoke training behind. But it was a huge attack—Davis estimated one plane every seven seconds for four consecutive minutes—and many got through unscathed.

  The Aichis released their bombs about 1,000 feet above the ship. Each black cylindrical shape separated from the fuselage and took a steeper trajectory as the pilot pulled out of his dive. Some bombs flew straight and true like a missile; others tumbled end over end. Nine fell close aboard to port and starboard and detonated upon striking the sea, throwing up columns of whitewater that crashed down over the flight deck. Men in the catwalks were thoroughly drenched.

  At 5:14 p.m., the Enterprise took her first hit. A 1,000-pound, armor-piercing, delayed-action bomb smashed through the flight deck just forward of the aft elevator and continued through four steel decks and two bulkheads before detonating deep in the ship. The blast claimed the lives of thirty-five men in an elevator pump room and the adjacent chief petty officers’ quarters. Seventy more were injured. A chain of explosions blew down all the bulkheads in the area and tore a hole through the starboard side at the waterline.66 The force of the explosion caused the after part of the hangar deck to bulge upward, leaving a two-foot “hump.” The aft No. 3 elevator was jammed and out of action. But the Enterprise surged ahead, her speed undiminished.

  Three minutes later, after several more near misses, a second 1,000-pound bomb struck the aft starboard 5-inch gun gallery. Thirty-eight men were killed outright. The blast ignited the ready service ammunition casings, and fires raged throughout the area. The Enterprise plowed ahead, still making 27 knots, but she trailed a nasty column of oily black smoke. Hoses were put on the fires, wounded men were brought up on deck, and the ship was ventilated to release any flammable gases. Less than two minutes later, a third bomb struck just forward of the No. 2 elevator. The explosion gouged a ten-foot hole in the flight deck and put the No. 2 elevator out of commission. Photographer’s Mate Marion Riley, stationed on the island veranda, pressed his shutter button at exactly the moment it detonated. The photograph—expanding spikes of flame and smoke, rushing out from the midline of the Enterprise’s flight deck—was to become one of the most famous of the war.

  At the Battle of Midway, four Japanese carriers had taken similar punishment and been destroyed by secondary explosions and uncontrollable fires. Aboard the Enterprise, damage-control measures quickly brought the fires under control, and the ship continued to maneuver deftly and keep pace with the task force. Counterflooding corrected the starboard list. Wood planking was used to patch the holes torn in the flight deck. The rupture in the starboard side was plugged by whatever came first to hand, including mattresses, lumber, wire mesh, and wooden plugs. Most of the Enterprise dive-bombers, launched just before the Japanese attack, flew into Henderson Field. Orphaned by the damage to their ship, they would operate as part of the Cactus Air Force for the next several weeks.

  Based on the reports of his returned dive-bomber crews, who believed they had destroyed an American fleet carrier, Nagumo celebrated a tactical victory. Losing the little Ryujo was not a calamity. She was the smallest flattop in the Combined Fleet, and her sacrifice (as intended) had drawn most of the American carrier planes away from the Shokaku and Zuikaku. As more was learned about the fate of Tanaka’s transport group, however, the picture darkened. His ships had suffered heavily under air attack. Marine dive-bombers and fighters flying from Guadalcanal had planted a bomb on his flagship, the cruiser Jintsu, and sank a transport, the Kinryu Maru. Later that afternoon, B-17s operating from Espiritu Santo sank a destroyer, the Mutsuki. The Japanese were learning that they could not safely operate ships in the Slot without first suppressing the airpower of Henderson Field. As in the earlier carrier battles at Coral Sea and Midway, the encounter ended with the Japanese forced to abort a planned invasion. On the following day, August 25, Yamamoto cancelled Operation KA and recalled his forces.

  SO CONCLUDED THE BATTLE OF THE EASTERN SOLOMONS, the third carrier duel of the Pacific War. It had been a confused and scattershot encounter, in some respects analogous to the Battle of the Coral Sea three months earlier. Fletcher had been plagued by dreadful radio communications and spotty intelligence. Still, he had won a modest tactical victory by destroying the Ryujo while saving the Enterprise, and by losing only twenty-five aircraft while claiming seventy-five of the enemy’s. In forcing back the Japanese troop convoy, the Americans had also earned a strategic victory. The temporary loss of the Enterprise (to major repairs at Pearl Harbor) was counterbalanced by the arrival in SOPAC of the Hornet. Most importantly, perhaps, the battle had bought time for Ghormley—time to expand the supporting bases, to bring in air reinforcements, to transfer more cargo ships from North America, and to improve Vandegrift’s supply situation.

  The Enterprise had suffered heavy casualties: two officers and seventy-two men killed, six officers and eighty-nine men wounded. The first bomb had detonated deep in the ship, and the carnage was appalling. Most of the dead had perished quickly, but their bodies had subsequently roasted in the fire, making individual identification impossible. On August 26, as the Enterprise and her screening ships headed south toward Noumea, the bodies were collected and prepared for burial at sea. Fred Mears left a visceral impression:

  The majority of the bodies were in one piece. They were blackened but not burned or withered, and they looked like iron statues of men, their limbs smooth and whole, their heads rounded with no hair. The faces were undistinguishable, but in almost every case the lips were drawn back in a wizened grin giving the men the expression of rodents.

  The postures seemed either strangely normal or frankly grotesque. One gun pointer was still in his seat leaning on his sight with one arm. He looked as though a sculptor had created him. His body was nicely proportioned, the buttocks were rounded, there was no hair anywhere. Other iron men were lying outstretched, face up or down. Two or three lying face up were shielding themselves with their arms bent at the elbows and their hands before their faces. One, who was not burned so badly, had his chest thrown out, his head way back, and his hands clenched.67

  Lack of time and manpower on the stricken ship ruled out committing each body individually to the deep. Under the supervision of the ship’s chaplain, a single unidentified sailor was buried with the traditional honors. The remains were laid on a pantry board under an American flag. A bugler played “Taps.” The marine guard presented arms. Four sailors lifted the board, and the remains slid into the ship’s wake. Some seventy other dead, collected in canvas sacks and weighted with spare metal, were dropped from the fantail without ceremony.

  Chapter Four

  FOR A DECADE, FDR’S CRITICS HAD HAMMERED AWAY AT HIS MUDDLED and sporadically anarchic style of presidential leadership. He reversed major decisions without admitting or even seeming to know what he had done. He hated to fire a man no matter how egregious his performance had been, and blithely piled one new government agency on top of another without spelling out their relative spheres of authority. He seemed to agree with whatever advice-giver had most recently held his ear. Not even his most ardent loyalists would call him a talented administrator. “He was just not a routine executive,” said Robert H. Jackson, who served as Roosevelt’s attorney general and was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1941. “He certainly was not accomplished as an administrator and in normal times . . . it is doubtful if he could have been a distinguished president.”1 When FDR had not made up his mind about a given policy, Jackson observed, it was impossible to elicit a presidential decision. The president would stall, procrastinate, filibuster, and refuse to act for months on end. At other times, he would render far-reaching decisions “with an apparent nonchalance that sometimes took away the breath of his advisers.”2 Harol
d Smith, the White House budget director, admitted that many of Roosevelt’s domestic programs were poorly conceived, but defended the president as an instinctual and intuitive visionary, “a real artist in government.”3

  From the school of Jackson Pollock, the critics might have riposted. Or the Marx Brothers. “Bold experimentation” had been a New Deal lodestar, but could a nation at war afford to tinker with unproven methods? If not, would the price of failure be paid in American blood?

  To defeat the Great Depression, the president and his men had brewed up an “alphabet soup” of new federal agencies. To beat back the Axis, they concocted another—OPA, OPM, DPC, WPB, OWI, WRB, SPAB, and too many more to cite here without cluttering the page.* The veteran newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann, by no means a partisan critic of the Roosevelt administration, threw up his hands at the inveterate backbiting and turf-skirmishing among the heads of these various outfits. “A great deal of the trouble arises from Mr. Roosevelt’s inability to remove even the lamest of his lame ducks,” he wrote in the Washington Post:

  Since no one has to give up his titles and emoluments, no matter how inadequate he is or how badly he has failed, Mr. Roosevelt at the top of the Government sets an example which destroys the discipline down the line. It is taken for granted that if an official is out of place, his functions may be removed but that he will remain. This makes intrigue, indirection, and slickness a habit in getting things done, good things and bad things alike. If everything has to be done by beating around the bush, men lose the habit of going forward on a straight line.

  The amount of nervous energy that is burned up by the able men as they move in and out and around and across the immovable lame ducks, the fossil remains of Mr. Roosevelt’s earlier political commitments and previous political mistakes, would, if it were released, electrify the whole conduct of the war.4