Tin Can Titans

by John Wukovits

  “The Juneau Had Disappeared”

  Shortly after 2:00 a.m., Wilkinson and Cole came to a similar conclusion. While Cole retired eastward through Sealark Channel and down Indispensable Strait, Wilkinson turned southeast to locate and attack any Japanese transports that might have sneaked through. After Wilkinson investigated the Guadalcanal coast near Kukum without result, he turned through Lengo Channel to join Fletcher and the other surviving American ships.

  At daylight three cruisers, San Francisco, Helena, and Juneau, joined with O’Bannon, Fletcher, and Sterett to continue their retirement. The sister ships had been fortunate, as Fletcher escaped without damage and O’Bannon had suffered only minor harm. According to MacDonald, however, San Francisco “was in a bad way. She had received numerous hits above decks and a large number of her personnel had been killed.”34 Wilkinson and other skippers sent their doctors and pharmacist’s mates to the flagship to help treat the wounded before the group retired southeastward toward Espiritu Santo.

  A heartrending episode ensued. Helena’s skipper, Captain Gilbert C. Hoover, now the senior surviving officer after the deaths of both Admirals Callaghan and Scott, ordered Wilkinson to take O’Bannon fifty miles north and radio his preliminary report of the battle to Admiral Halsey. In doing so, O’Bannon would be far enough from the other ships that Hoover believed Wilkinson could radio the report and risk Japanese interception without endangering Hoover’s crippled cruisers and destroyers as they retired toward Espiritu Santo.

  Among Hoover’s ships was the cruiser Juneau. An hour before noon on November 13, Japanese Commander Minoru Yokota in the submarine I-26 sighted five vessels, including Juneau and Fletcher, as he prowled the waters southeast of Guadalcanal. Yokota fired a spread of five torpedoes that raced past San Francisco and smacked into Juneau with such force that men aboard Helena were blown against bulkheads from the concussion.

  In Fletcher’s chart house, Cole and Wylie were about to enjoy a few ounces of medicinal whiskey sent to the bridge by the ship’s doctor when Juneau erupted. “There was an enormous explosion,” said Wylie, “and we both rushed out and looked back. The Juneau had disappeared and there was a lot of smoke. We could see this debris rising high in the air.” Cole called for full speed while Wylie rushed to the loudspeaker to tell the crew to take cover from the debris that was about to rain on them from the stricken cruiser, now enveloped in flames and sinking, less than one mile away. Moments later, an intact five-inch twin gun mount zoomed directly over Helena and splashed in Fletcher’s wake one hundred yards astern of the destroyer.

  Even though few aboard Fletcher believed anyone could have lived through such a titanic explosion, Cole turned Fletcher to where Juneau had gone down, intent on rescuing any survivors. They were halfway to the site when a message from Hoover ordered Cole to turn back and resume her station with the other ships. “We were very irate,” said Wylie of an order telling them to abandon fellow Americans in the water.

  Fifteen minutes later Captain Hoover sent Cole a long message explaining his decision to leave Juneau. Hoover understood Cole and his crew were upset with his decision, but he had received information that more than one enemy submarine operated in those waters, and he had a responsibility to shepherd his remaining ships to Espiritu Santo and safety. At that time Helena, lightly damaged in the battle, was the only cruiser in the South Pacific available for combat. Sterett was already burying her dead, San Francisco needed significant repairs, and with O’Bannon split from the unit, Fletcher was the only ship under Hoover’s command that had sonar and antisubmarine search-and-attack capability. He could not allow Fletcher to utilize time searching a large area of water for survivors few believed existed, all the while exposing his other ships to enemy submarine attack.

  “That was probably the most courageous single decision I’ve ever seen a man make,” said Wylie, “because everybody’s instinct is to go after survivors. He knew the submarines were there and he also knew he had the only cruiser left in the South Pacific that wasn’t damaged, that was Helena.”35

  Unfortunately, more than one hundred Juneau survivors floated in the waters as Hoover left the scene. Rescue craft eventually picked up ten men eight days later, but almost seven hundred Juneau sailors perished, either in the horrible explosion or from exposure or sharks, including five Sullivan brothers from Waterloo, Iowa.

  While Cole departed with Hoover’s ships, to the north Wilkinson completed his mission, transmitted the report to Halsey, and reversed course to catch up with Hoover. Later that afternoon, O’Bannon passed the area where Juneau went down, but unaware of the tragedy, Wilkinson maintained course to the south. He did not learn about Juneau’s absence until the next morning.

  In a controversial decision even he later regretted, in the heat of the moment Halsey relieved Hoover from command of Helena as soon as the ship returned from the action. To avoid a repetition of what happened to the Sullivan family, who lost five sons in one battle, the Navy altered its policy and banned the posting of multiple family members to the same ship. Cole, whose crew included five father-son combinations, had to arrange transfers so that only one member from each family remained aboard.

  When Seaman Chesnutt learned that the cruiser had sunk, he could not help but think how close he had been to joining her at Espiritu Santo the previous month. Only an unexpected delay on Juneau’s part had caused him to be posted to Fletcher rather than Juneau, a delay that saved his life. “I didn’t realize it at the time,” he confided to his diary on November 13, “but it was the Lord protecting me—not only in battle, but not allowing me to catch up with the Juneau which went down.”36

  Callaghan had sacrificed much, including his life, to save Henderson Field and keep the Japanese from strengthening their position on Guadalcanal. Against one Japanese battleship and two destroyers sunk, Callaghan lost two cruisers and four destroyers, with two other ships badly damaged. However, his unit’s actions, including those of O’Bannon and Fletcher, checked the enemy’s momentum in the South Pacific.

  “As the day ends it seems most probable that while we have suffered severe losses in ships and personnel,” concluded Nimitz’s command summary of November 13, “our gallant shipmates have again thwarted the enemy. If so, this may well be the decisive battle of this campaign.”37

  “My Pride in You Is Beyond Expression”

  The Japanese were not finished. With Callaghan’s forces pulling away to Espiritu Santo, two Japanese cruisers raced toward Guadalcanal and, for thirty minutes during the night of November 13–14, bombarded Henderson Field with almost a thousand eight-inch shells. The damage they inflicted would have been much worse had Callaghan and Scott not already dented the Japanese.

  A second threat ensued when eleven Japanese troop transports bearing more than ten thousand reinforcements reversed course and again headed toward the island. However, Henderson Field fighters and bombers, assisted by Enterprise aviators, eliminated the threat by sinking one cruiser, damaging three other ships, and destroying all eleven transports.

  The Japanese used their final card in the three-day Naval Battle of Guadalcanal during the night of November 14–15 when Vice Admiral Nobutake Kondo’s battleship, Kirishima, four cruisers, and nine destroyers moved south to blast Henderson Field. Two American battleships and their four escorting destroyers engaged in a fierce thirty-minute brawl that, despite the loss of the four American destroyers, sank two Japanese ships and sent Kondo reeling to the north.

  “We’ve got the bastards licked!”38 Halsey shouted to his staff in the aftermath of the momentous sea action. He had a right to be elated, as his scrappy ships, including O’Bannon and Fletcher, had gained a clear-cut victory. He had thrown everything in his meager arsenal at the Japanese, with orders to Wilkinson, Cole, and the other skippers to take the fight to the enemy.

  Halsey’s aggressive attitude set the tone for Callaghan’s crews. Their naval roadblock halted Japanese reinforcements from reaching Guadalcanal, where they would have tested
Vandegrift’s weary Marines, while at the same time bringing in more forces to support those same Marines. With Henderson Field and its vital fighters preserved, aircraft based there slaughtered the eleven Japanese troop transports that otherwise would have strengthened their position on the island.

  Though both sides suffered similar losses in the three-day battle—Halsey lost two cruisers, seven destroyers, and more than seventeen hundred men against Yamamoto’s two battleships, one cruiser, three destroyers, eleven transports, and almost nineteen hundred men—the Japanese were unable to replace lost men, ships, and aircraft as readily as the United States. American industrial might had yet to fully flex its muscle, but already the nation’s factories and shipyards were sending the first of what became a burgeoning flow of ships, guns, and planes to the war fronts.

  After the war, in gathering material for his autobiography, Halsey termed the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal “a decisive American victory by any standard” and called it a turning point in the Pacific war. He contended that had he lost, the Marines on Guadalcanal might have been forced to surrender, but with the American victory, Japanese momentum in the South Pacific had been irrevocably halted. “Until then he had been advancing at his will,” he wrote of the enemy. “From then on he retreated at ours.”39 Although Japanese reinforcements would trickle into Guadalcanal over the next two months, their focus now turned to rebuilding the empire’s naval forces and strengthening her posts in the northern Solomons. The arena of battle was gradually shifting north of Guadalcanal, to the risky waters known as the Slot.

  Halsey credited the officers and crews of the ships that had steamed into battle and slugged it out with the enemy. In a message read to the crews of both O’Bannon and Fletcher, as well as to those of the other participating ships, Halsey said, “Your names have been written in golden letters on the pages of history and you have won the everlasting gratitude of your countrymen. No honor for you could be too great. My pride in you is beyond expression. Magnificently done. To the glorious dead: Hail heroes. Rest with God. God bless you all.”40

  MacDonald was proud of how his young crew had performed in their first major action against the Japanese: “The Japs tried to knock us out and, if they had knocked us out that night, they would have had Guadalcanal.” MacDonald said that in the nighttime encounter, only their collection of cruisers and destroyers had stood between the Japanese and Vandegrift’s defenders. “Stood in between all right,” MacDonald proudly added, “there’s no doubt about that.”41

  Commander Wilkinson wrote in his action report, “The officers and men of this vessel handled the ship and themselves excellently.” He said that he could not too highly praise the “manner in which they remained unflinching and steadfast at their posts with shells from all sides falling short and over.” In answer to those who harbored doubts that the country could so speedily fashion a professional fighting force out of civilians, he concluded, “It is believed a tribute to the spirit and indoctrination of the Naval Service that a group of American men and boys, many of them never having seen a ship, could be welded into an organization that would stand up so calmly under fire in the short period of this vessel’s official life, June 26 to November 13. The officers and men of this crew, each and every one, handled themselves like veterans and are greatly deserving of all meritorious considerations.”42

  The Navy thought highly of O’Bannon’s senior officers as well. For their actions in the battle, Wilkinson was awarded the Navy Cross, while MacDonald and Pfeifer received Silver Stars.

  Aboard Fletcher, Cole was equally effusive about his men. Cole tipped his hat to Wylie for creating a more efficient system of obtaining, assessing, and relaying information under fire. “From his station at the SG Radar screen he kept the Commanding Officer continuously advised of the tactical situation (which was often visually obscured), selected targets, and directed gun and torpedo control. The effectiveness of the Fletcher’s engagement was due principally to his intelligent analysis and cool judgment.”43

  Obsessed as they were with the ill fortune often associated with the number thirteen, as far as the men of the Fletcher were concerned, luck had also played a major role. Having avoided harm, they nicknamed their destroyer “Lucky 13” and considered Fletcher a lucky ship for having stared down so many intimidating omens.

  The battle, though, exacted a toll. Lieutenant Malcolm M. Dunham, O’Bannon’s doctor, was among those whom Wilkinson sent over to aid the wounded aboard San Francisco. He treated so many broken limbs, ghastly cuts, and burned faces, and witnessed such destruction while on the cruiser, that when he returned he was noticeably affected. He told MacDonald that being on the San Francisco “was like walking through a death chamber, people were wounded and dead every place you turned, the ones who were not wounded give the impression of being very severely shocked for days.” As MacDonald talked with the physician, he noticed that “the realization that he might have to go through another [battle] again bothered him.”44 MacDonald made a mental note to keep tabs on how Dunham fared as the weeks passed.

  On Fletcher, the twenty-one-year-old Chesnutt heard and saw enough to believe that his future was drastically limited. Only in the Guadalcanal area a few weeks, he told himself, “Forget it! You’ll never live through this war.”45

  Action reports also included recommendations. MacDonald urged that the TBS be used only when necessary, as he found that in the heat of the fight, the channel became cluttered with too many unnecessary communications. He was pleased with the contribution made by the ship’s advanced radar and advised the Navy to install the equipment on other ships as quickly as possible, but he was disappointed that the enemy had opened fire first. Had Callaghan better arranged his ships, with O’Bannon, Fletcher, and other radar-carrying vessels in the van, he might have seized the advantage. Their radar would have detected the Japanese sooner, and the destroyers could have gathered for a massed torpedo attack to be delivered before Callaghan’s cruisers opened fire with their batteries. In splitting his destroyers, though, Callaghan had negated that impact.

  Unfortunately, even had a coordinated torpedo charge been conducted, the results most likely would have been disappointing. At this stage of the war American destroyers and submarines were, almost criminally, sent into battle with faulty torpedoes. Unlike the Long Lance, the vaunted Japanese torpedo that packed double the explosive power and which could be fired at longer ranges than the American counterpart, O’Bannon and Fletcher carried torpedoes that either ran too deep to strike against enemy hulls or exploded before reaching their targets. Tests conducted in August, three months before the action off Guadalcanal, revealed that a ten-foot error in depth performance afflicted many of the torpedoes, but the information had yet to be disseminated throughout the Pacific.

  Commanders at headquarters and in South Pacific officers’ clubs heatedly discussed the dismal performances posted by the US torpedoes, and even Halsey scoffed at the weapon’s value. “There was a saying in the South Pacific Forces at this and later times,” he wrote of the latter months of 1942 in the South Pacific, “that every time a Japanese torpedo hit our ships stopped, and that every time one of our torpedoes hit the Japanese ship made two knots extra speed.”46

  Mixed impressions marked the Japanese reaction. On November 13 Commander Hara joined Vice Admiral Kurita’s fleet 250 miles north of Guadalcanal. The admiral relayed his congratulations to Hara over the battle, but Hara “felt no triumph at all.”47

  Accompanied by Kurita and the remnants of the force from Guadalcanal, the next day he anchored Amatsukaze at Truk, the vast Japanese naval bastion in the Caroline Islands. When he was able to inspect his ship, Hara counted thirty-two holes in her hull larger than one yard in diameter and another forty-five smaller ones, a sign both of the ferocity of the battle as well as of his good fortune in surviving it.

  Radio Tokyo boasted of a victory. Captain Shoichi Kamada, chief of the Japanese Navy press section at Shanghai, claimed that the battle was “a heavy b
low dealt at the United States,” and Domei, the Japanese news agency, added, “The Japanese have the Americans where they want them, and mean to keep them there until no American warship is left in active service.”48

  Those in the know, such as Hara, understood that Pacific reality clashed with propaganda announcements. Many senior officers termed the battle a defeat because the Americans had retained their hold on Henderson Field, the Guadalcanal landmark that stood like an unsinkable aircraft carrier from which hundreds of aircraft would soon bomb Japanese installations in the Central Solomons. “Up until this battle,” explained Captain Toshikazu Ohmae, Chief of Staff, Southeastern Fleet at Rabaul, “we were determined to retake Guadalcanal,” but the naval encounter forced them to reexamine their plans.49 In a sign that the military was not as elated as the news accounts, the Japanese relieved Admiral Abe of his command.

  The American home front resounded with praise for its navy. Time magazine highlighted the encounter in successive November issues, placing Halsey on the cover of the November 30 edition and stating that the Japanese naval advantage “had been whittled down” and that “the forces under Vice Admiral William F. (‘Bull’) Halsey met the Japs and slugged it out. Three bloody days later the Japs were retreating northward from Guadalcanal waters and the Navy had won one of the most satisfactory victories of the war.”50

  The magazine explained that a confident Japanese force had steamed south toward Guadalcanal, as “the U.S. Navy had not, in over three months of fighting, done much fighting with surface units: only once (on the night of Oct. 11–12) had the Japs met a determined effort to cut their line of reinforcements. They had a surprise in store.” Instead of the “hit and run” operations that marked September and October, “this time there was a new spirit in the U.S. task forces. The Americans came in slugging again and yet again.” Time stated that O’Bannon, Fletcher, and every other ship under Callaghan and Scott had “saved Guadalcanal” by repulsing “the strongest Japanese attempt to take Guadalcanal,” and in the process “restored the Navy’s confidence in itself and public confidence in the Navy.”51