Challenge for the Pacific: Guadalcanal: The Turning Point of the War

by Robert Leckie

  “Avoiding our own destroyers,” came the reply.10

  It was then that Hiei’s lookout sighted the Americans, then that the gunners and seamen aboard Hiei and Kirishima rushed from their battle stations to haul the vulnerable Type-3 shells below, stampeding the magazines, pushing and kicking each other to get at the armor-piercing shells lodged deep inside—and it was then that confusion in Admiral Callaghan’s column became compounded.

  Excited voices began crackling over the Talk Between Ships. Reports of target bearings multiplied, but no one could tell if they were true bearings or merely relative to the reporting ships. No one knew which target to take under fire or when. From little Cushing still out in the lead came the voice of the destroyer leader, Commander Thomas Stokes, pleading, “Shall I let them have a couple of fish?”11

  “Affirmative,” came the reply, but it was too late. Yudachi and Harusame had raced off into the darkness.

  Four minutes had passed before Callaghan gave the order: “Stand by to open fire!” Another precious four minutes were to slip by before he bellowed, “Commence firing! Give ’em hell, boys!”

  And then, with surprise squandered and opportunity lost, the Americans called upon their last resource—their valor—and went plunging full tilt toward the mastodonic foe.

  One of the most furious sea fights in all history had begun.

  Ashore on Guadalcanal, veterans of the campaign—Japanese as well as American—looked at each other in openmouthed, overawed incredulity. Never before had the iron tongues of midnight bayed with such a maniacal clanging. Out there giants clad in foot-thick steel were contending with one another, and never before had the thunder of their blows rolled so mightily over glistening black Bay water.

  Scarlet star shells shot into the sky with the horrible beauty of hell. Searchlight beams licked out like great pale crisscrossing tongues. Ships in silhouette, big and small, plunged wildly toward each other, heeled away, dashed in and out of the smoke, blew up, blazed, vanished—or reappeared with spouts of white and orange gushing from their guns. The surface of Iron Bottom Bay was like polished black marble shot with the bubbles of torpedo wakes, swirled with the foaming trails of careening ships, splashed with the red or the yellow of burning vessels.

  And above the roar and reverberation of the battle came the voice of Admiral Callaghan, crying, “We want the big ones, boys, we want the big ones!”

  A trio of American destroyers was charging the big ones. They had broken through Abe’s screen and taken on great Hiei. Cushing in the van loosed a spread of torpedoes from a half-mile range, missing, but forcing Hiei to turn away. But then Cushing was illuminated in searchlight beams and enemy shells began to take her apart.

  Laffey swept in so close that she narrowly avoided collision. Hiei’s pagoda-like masts swayed over the little American as she dashed past, pouring a torrent of automatic shellfire into Hiei’s decks. Fires broke out aboard the big Japanese. But then Hiei bellowed and little Laffey began to burn.

  O’Bannon bored in last. She came in so close that Hiei could not depress her 14-inch guns to shoot at her. Great shells howled harmlessly over O’Bannon’s masts while her gunners raked the Japanese with guns aimed in the light of her flames. Then O’Bannon was gone, sheering sharply left to avoid burning Laffey, tossing life jackets to sailors struggling in the water as she passed.

  Now San Francisco was battering Hiei. But the enemy battleship thundered back. Fourteen-inchers tore into San Francisco’s bridge to kill Admiral Callaghan and almost every American there.

  Norman Scott was also dead. Atlanta had been the first to be caught in enemy searchlights. With her port bridge clearly illuminated, bracketing warships gave her her death blows and killed the hero of Cape Esperance.

  Thereafter the fight became a melee. It was a free-for-all, ship-for-ship and shot for shot, with Japanese firing upon Japanese and American upon American. Every ship but Fletcher was hit. Barton blew up, Monssen sank, Cushing and Laffey were lost, and so were the cruisers Atlanta and Juneau—the latter finished off by a Japanese submarine as she tried to stagger home from battle.

  But the Japanese were fleeing.

  Mighty Kirishima, late to enter the battle, was already streaking north at the head of a general retirement.

  Every one of Abe’s ships had been staggered. Yudachi was sinking and so was Akatsuki. Amatsukaze had been battered. A cascade of shells had fallen flashing around Commander Hara on his bridge, cutting down his men, blowing his executive officer over the side but leaving his legs behind, and so crippling the ship that Amatsukaze had to be steered manually.

  Slowly, in the dawn lighting that glassy metallic sea, dragging herself past survivors lying burned, wounded, and dazed on their life rafts, or struggling to keep afloat in oily, debris-laden, shark-infested waters, little Amatsukaze made her way home.

  Off his port bow Hara saw Hiei. The great ship was dying. She was almost dead in the water, crawling, with jammed rudder, in a wide aimless circle. Marine bombers from Henderson Field were already slashing at her. They shot down the eight Zeros flying cover above the battleship while Major Joe Sailer knocked out Hiei’s remaining antiaircraft turret with a well-planted bomb, after which they bombed and torpedoed her without interruption.

  But she refused to go down.

  “We’ve got to sink her!” Henderson’s pilots cried, landing to rearm and refuel and to return to the attack. “If we don’t the admirals will stop building carriers and start building battleships again.”12

  Again and again they struck at Hiei, but on and on she crawled, glowing like a great red gridiron, circling and circling while destroyers ministered to her like cubs caring for a wounded lioness, until, at nightfall, after survivors and Admiral Abe had been taken off, the Japanese scuttled her and she sank with a hiss and an oil slick two miles long.

  But on that morning of Friday the thirteenth, the heart of Commander Hara was heavy with grief as he saw the Americans hurtling down from the skies. They came, he knew, from that Henderson Field which had not been bombarded.

  Nevertheless, Gunichi Mikawa was already coming down The Slot determined to succeed where Hiroaki Abe had failed.

  Admiral Halsey was aware of Mikawa’s approach, and he planned to intercept him with the battleships from Admiral Kinkaid’s Enterprise force. To send these capital ships into the narrow and treacherous waters of Iron Bottom Bay was not, as Halsey knew, consonant with accepted naval doctrine. But the safety of Henderson Field seemed to him well worth the risk of his heavies, and so, on November 13, confident that the winds favored Kinkaid, he broke radio silence to tell him to put South Dakota and Washington and four destroyers under Rear Admiral Willis Lee with instructions to lay an ambush east of Savo Island. Kinkaid replied:

  FROM LEE’S PRESENT POSITION IMPOSSIBLE FOR HIM TO REACH SAVO BEFORE 0800 TOMORROW.

  Halsey was stunned. Mikawa would have a clear path to Henderson Field.

  In the early afternoon of Friday the thirteenth the Tokyo Express moved toward Guadalcanal again.

  Tanaka’s eleven transports were in a four-column formation sailing at eleven knots with a dozen destroyers deployed to the front and either side.

  Tanaka was still in flagship Hayashio, which means “Fast running tide.” The tide, it seemed to Tanaka, who had heard of the disaster which had overtaken Abe, was running fast against Japan.13

  At eight o’clock that morning Enterprise was still 280 miles south of Henderson Field. But she launched planes, some of which reached Guadalcanal in time to join the attack on Hiei, and continued to steam north.

  All day long Big E remained buttoned up with her men at battle stations while her scout planes fanned out in search of the Japanese carriers and her combat air patrol flew overhead. But no enemy ships or aircraft were sighted. At dusk her men were secured from General Quarters and went below. Mighty South Dakota and Washington and their destroyers slid away from the screen and vanished into the darkness ahead. They could not stop Mikawa tonigh
t, but they would at least be in the battle zone by tomorrow.

  Enterprise ran steadily north at twenty-five knots.

  It was happening again. It was not supposed to happen, Callaghan and Scott were supposed to have ended it, but there it was: Louie the Louse, flares, the lethal thunder-and-lightning of the sea cannonade, and flames engulfing Henderson Field.

  Admiral Mikawa had brought six cruisers and six destroyers down to Savo. With flagship Chokai, Kinugasa, Isuzu, and two destroyers, Mikawa guarded the western gate at Savo while heavy cruisers Suzuya and Maya, escorted by light cruiser Tenryu and four destroyers, entered the Bay to bombard.

  They hurled about a thousand rounds of eight-inch shell into the airfield, until six little torpedo boats under Lieutenant Hugh Robinson crept from Tulagi Harbor to launch torpedoes at them and scare them off.

  Mikawa sailed jubilantly north on that morning of November 14, delighted to see his success celebrated in the intercepted plain-language radio message which Vandegrift had sent to Halsey: being heavily shelled.

  In Washington the news that the Japanese had once again penetrated American defenses to batter Henderson Field produced a pessimism and a tension unrivaled throughout the campaign. Upon receipt of reports that heavy Japanese reinforcements were sailing down The Slot unopposed, even President Roosevelt began to think that Guadalcanal might have to be evacuated.14

  Mikawa’s guns had wrecked eighteen American planes and had churned up the airstrips. But they had not knocked out the field entirely, nor had Admiral Kondo sent any aircraft from Hiyo or Junyo down to protect Mikawa from likely pursuit. At dawn of the fourteenth, while fires still raged and ammunition dumps exploded, pilots raced to their armed planes and took off.

  They found Mikawa’s ships. They put two torpedoes into big Kinugasa, leaving her to be sunk by pilots from Enterprise, who also bombed Chokai, Maya, and Isuzu. Admiral Mikawa, who had intended to provide indirect cover for Admiral Tanaka’s ships, was forced to retire to the Shortlands.

  Tanaka sailed south all alone.

  Since dawn, when a few Flying Fortresses had been driven off by covering Zeros, Tanaka the Tenacious had stood on Hayashio’s bridge anxiously scanning the skies. He had seen flights of enemy planes but they did not attack him. He conjectured that they had gone after Mikawa. He was positive that they had not been frightened off by the handful of Zeros circling overhead; all, it seemed, that Admiral Kondo to the north could spare from the crowded decks of Hiyo and Junyo.

  At noon Tanaka’s ships were only 150 miles from Guadalcanal, and it was then that the American planes came hurtling out of the sun and the slaughter known as the Buzzard Patrol began.

  They flew in from everywhere: from Espiritu Santo, from the Fijis, from Henderson Field, from the decks of Enterprise still closing Guadalcanal at high speed. They flew in to bomb or launch torpedoes or to strafe, banking to fly back to base again or to land at Henderson where cooks, clerks, typists, mechanics, Seabees, even riflemen, had formed a human chain to hand along the bombs and bullets that would shatter the Tokyo Express forever.

  Wildcats and Airacobras and the newly arrived twin-tailed Lightnings went flashing and slashing among Kondo’s pitifully few Zeros and the other eagles racing to the rescue from Rabaul. They shot them down while the Dauntlesses dove or the Forts unleashed their high-level patterns or the Avengers came in low with their fish, and then they, too, went after the transports, screaming in at masthead level to rake the decks of ships already slippery with blood.

  They struck five times, from noon until sunset, these pilots of the Buzzard Patrol, and they put six transports on the bottom while sending a stricken seventh staggering back to the Shortlands. Admiral Tanaka’s destroyers were powerless to protect their transports. They could only scurry among these burning, listing, sinking charges to take aboard survivors or to fish a weaponless, terrified soldiery from the reddening waters of The Slot.

  They were red, and so were bunks and bulkheads glowing with heat and visible beneath decks torn open as though by a monster can opener. American pilots sickened in their cockpits to see the slaughter that they were spreading, but they did not remove their hands from gun-buttons or bomb releases. Every enemy soldier spared meant a Japanese alive to kill Americans on Guadalcanal. And the bullets continued to spurt among the bobbing heads, and bomb followed bomb into smoking, settling ships.

  Tanaka the Tenacious plowed on.

  He had only four of his original eleven transports, his destroyers were widely scattered by hours of evasive zigzagging, but he was nevertheless determined to make Tassafaronga. After nightfall relieved him of his ordeal, he withdrew to the north. He would wait there until morning, resuming course after Admiral Kondo had bombarded Henderson Field.

  Nobutake Kondo was already rushing south with mighty Kirishima escorted by cruisers Atago, Takao, Sendai, and Nagara and nine destroyers. Kondo was infuriated by two days of disaster. He would brook no further delay, no additional losses of ships and men, and he would personally see to the obliteration of the enemy airfield. Kondo was not only spoiling for a fight, he expected one.

  In this, Ching Chong China Lee would not disappoint him.

  Rear Admiral Willis Lee received the first part of his alliterative nickname at the Naval Academy, and the next two parts during extensive service in China, a land in which his last name, although spelled Li, was far from rare, and where he had befriended a Marine major named Vandegrift.

  On the night of November 14, Ching Lee came to Vandegrift’s aid, leading the battleships and destroyers he had detached from Kinkaid’s force the night before. Screened by destroyers Walke, Benham, Preston, and Gwin, Admiral Lee took Washington and South Dakota around Guadalcanal’s western tip. He went sweeping west of Savo, but found nothing, only the glare of Tanaka’s burning transports.

  Lee’s six-ship column turned north, and then east to put Savo on the right and enter Iron Bottom Bay.

  The bay was calm. Its waters gleamed faintly in the light of a first-quarter moon setting behind the mountains of Cape Esperance. Lee’s deep-water sailors could sniff a sweet land breeze redolent of honeysuckle. They could see very little, only the heights of land looming to either side. Needles on the magnetic compasses fluttered violently as they passed, in grim reminder of their purpose, over the hulks of the sunken vessels that gave the bay its name.

  Ching Lee tried to raise Guadalcanal by radio. Back came the reply: “We do not recognize you.”15

  The admiral thought of his friend from China, and countered:

  “Cactus, this is Lee. Tell your big boss Ching Lee is here and wants the latest information.”16

  No answer. But then, out of nowhere, but over the Talk Between Ships: “There go two big ones, but I don’t know whose they are.”17

  Lee stiffened. The chatter was from a trio of torpedo boats to his left. He spoke quickly to Guadalcanal again: “Refer your big boss about Ching Lee; Chinese, catchee? Call off your boys!”18 And then, more sharply to the torpedo boats themselves: “This is Ching Chong China Lee. All PTs retire.”19

  Over the Talk Between Ships a skeptical voice murmured, “It’s a phony. Let’s slip the bum a pickle.”20

  “I said this is Ching Chong China Lee,” the admiral roared. “Get the hell out of the way! I’m coming through!”21

  Startled, the tiny craft scuttled aside and the battleships went through.

  Lee led them west again toward Savo, straight toward Sendai and a destroyer coming east as Kondo’s vanguard. Shortly after eleven o’clock, Washington and South Dakota’s 16-inch guns boomed, and the battle was joined.

  As always it began badly for the Americans. Japanese crews quickly launched shoals of shark-shaped steel fish. Preston, Benham, and Walke took the full brunt of them, of enemy gunfire as well, and were given their death blows. South Dakota was caught in enemy searchlights and an entire Japanese bombardment force opened up on her. She shuddered under their blows. She fought back, shooting out the searchlights—but Japanese
shells tore into her superstructure, sweeping away her search radars and all but one gunnery radar.

  But then mighty Washington found Kirishima.

  Again and again her 16-inch guns flashed and roared, again and again her five-inchers fired starshell to illuminate the enemy giant or to rip her decks. Kirishima was staggered repeatedly. Nine of those terrible 2700-pound armor-piercers tore into her vitals. Topside she was a mass of flames, she was drifting helplessly, she was done. Kirishima would join her sister-queen, Hiei, on the bottom of the sea. And like Hiei’s ladies-in-waiting, all of Kirishima’s escort, excepting sinking Ayanami, were turning to flee. South Dakota and Washington had trained their terrible guns against Atago and Takao, who were caught in friendly searchlights, and these battered cruisers led the flight to the north.

  Washington gave pursuit alone, for South Dakota and Gwin had withdrawn, but she found nothing—not even the Japanese transports whom Admiral Lee was also hungrily hunting—and so Ching Chong China Lee swung south of Guadalcanal to sail back to Nouméa in triumph.

  Behind him, Admiral Raizo Tanaka began shepherding his four remaining transports for a last-ditch run into Guadalcanal. He asked Admiral Mikawa for permission to beach the troopships, but Mikawa replied: “Negative.” He appealed to the retiring Admiral Kondo aboard Atago, and received the answer: “Run aground and unload troops!”22

  Full steam ahead, with only Hayashio to guard them, the four transports raced toward Tassafaronga. Before the sun was up they had reached it and driven themselves hard aground almost line abreast. Tanaka the Tenacious turned to collect his scattered destroyers—many of them low in the water with rescued troops—and lead them sadly north.

  And then came the dawn of November 15.

  Men of the First Marine Division who had passed another of so many apprehensive and thundering nights looked west once more, and saw, at Tassafaronga, the familiar sight of enemy ships aground. But these ships were burning. American aircraft were already bombing them from the air, an American destroyer, Meade, was shelling them from the sea, and American long-range artillery was battering them from the beaches.