Challenge for the Pacific

by Robert Leckie

  “Bakayaro! Bakayaro! Stupid bastard! Stupid bastard!”4

  Goto thought friendly ships were firing on him. He thought vessels of the Supply Force had blundered, and as his own guns began to speak, he gave the order to cease fire.

  Norman Scott also thought his ships were firing on each other—which was true in the case of Duncan and Farenholt—and he also gave the order to cease fire.

  Then the dying Goto gave the command to turn right.

  The movement enabled the Japanese ships to aim all their guns, but it also gave the Americans the opportunity to mass their fire at each ship as it approached the frothing white water that marked the turning point. They did, for Scott’s gunners were slow to respond to his orders to cease firing. Some of them never did, and Aoba and Furutaka were battered repeatedly and set ablaze.

  Nine minutes before midnight Scott ordered: “Resume firing!”

  Once again shock waves went rolling over black water and Marines crouching in Guadalcanal’s sodden holes heard again those familiar iron tongues of midnight.

  Captain Charles (“Soc”) McMorris of San Francisco heard the order just as his lookouts sighted a strange warship on a parallel course three quarters of a mile to the west. Frisco’s searchlights leaped alight to illuminate a destroyer with a white band around her second stack. American gunners, now trained, knew her as Fubuki.

  They opened up from all sides. They poured a horrible punishing fire into the enemy ship, and she blew up and sank at seven minutes before midnight.

  Now all the American ships were pursuing fleeing Aoba and Furutaka. They pummeled them by turns. But now Kinugasa was fighting back.

  With destroyer Hatsuyuki, the big Japanese cruiser had misread Goto’s orders and had turned left rather than right. The mistake saved them. It took them out of the fight, and it gave Kinugasa the chance to open up on Boise at eight thousand yards.

  Eight-inch shells straddled the American and a spread of torpedoes came running toward her. Captain Mike Moran ordered hard right rudder and Boise swung around to comb the wakes.

  Then Boise spotted Aoba and put her searchlights on her. Aoba fired back, and Kinugasa made a bull’s-eye of the American’s light. For three minutes Boise took a fearful pounding, until heroic Salt Lake City interposed her own bulk between her and the enemy, while silencing Aoba and driving Kinugasa off.

  And now it was the twelfth of October. Furutaka was dragging herself toward her watery grave twenty-two miles northwest of Savo, Fubuki was gone, Aoba was so badly damaged she would have to limp all the way home to Japan for repairs, while slightly damaged Kinugasa and unscathed Hatsuyuki were streaking north for sanctuary.

  Behind them destroyer Duncan, fired on by both sides, was also in her death throes: she would take the plunge at two o’clock in the morning.

  And Boise was ablaze. Her gallant crew was struggling to quench the flames that streamed off her tail as she joined up with the victorious American column and sailed south for Nouméa. Aided by sea water which flowed through her pierced sides to flood the magazines, Boise made it.

  The Battle of Cape Esperance was over. It was an American victory, and though it was not as decisive as Savo, it was at least some measure of vengeance for that defeat. Moreover, it made it clear to the enemy that The Slot was no longer a Japanese channel, and it heartened the Marines on Guadalcanal to know that the Navy was coming out fighting again.

  But the Battle of Cape Esperance did not prevent Pistol Pete from coming ashore. The enemy supply ships went boldly about unloading Hyakutake’s big guns, his tanks, his shells and his medical supplies. They paid dearly for their insouciance: that same October 12 Dauntless dive-bombers from Henderson Field caught destroyers Murakumo and Natsugumo in The Slot and sent them to the bottom loaded with survivors from Goto’s stricken ships.

  In all, Japan had lost one heavy cruiser and three destroyers against one American destroyer sunk. And Henderson Field had been spared bombardment.

  But not for long.

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  THE JAPANESE did not consider the Battle of Cape Esperance to be an unmitigated defeat. Rather, they regarded the outcome as salutary: Admiral Scott had sailed his ships south and the way was now clear for heavier bombardment of Henderson Field.

  Much, much heavier—for Combined Fleet was now ready.

  On October 9 the big converted carriers Hiyo and Junyo with smaller Zuiho sailed into Truk lagoon, and Vice-Admiral Kakuji Kakuta—a Japanese giant standing six feet tall and weighing two hundred pounds—left his flagship, Hiyo, to report to Admiral Yamamoto aboard Yamato.

  With Kakuta’s arrival, Yamamoto now had five carriers, five battleships, fourteen cruisers and forty-four destroyers—backed up by about 220 land-based airplanes to deploy against the enemy. On October 10 most of these ships sortied from Truk as part of the Guadalcanal Supporting Forces commanded by Vice-Admiral Nobutake Kondo. Yamamoto, remaining behind, watched them go.

  As always, it was a stirring sight. Out of the reef passages they sailed, battleships leading—standing to sea in a stately column of ships. Then they were in open water and the escort ships broke column, heeling over with strings of signal flags tautening in the wind, while the queens of the fleet—the carriers—steamed majestically into position surrounded by protecting rings of cruisers and battleships.

  They sailed south to take up supporting positions north of the Solomons, and to carry out Yamamoto’s instructions: “… apprehend and annihilate any powerful forces in the Solomons area, as well as any reinforcements.”

  A few days after they departed Truk, their own reinforcements began going aboard six fast transports in the Shortlands. These were the last of the Sendai and some of the soldiers of the 38th Division: about ten thousand men in all. They were to arrive at Guadalcanal the night of October 14–15, joining General Hyakutake’s 17th Army in time for the big push now scheduled for October 20. Before they sailed, Henderson Field would be knocked out to guarantee them safe passage.

  That was why, a few days after the grand sortie from Truk, battleships Kongo and Haruna under Vice-Admiral Takeo Kurita peeled off from Kondo’s forces and made for Guadalcanal. Each carried five hundred horrible fourteen-inch bombardment shells, plus ammunition of smaller sizes. Both were escorted by seven destroyers and flag cruiser Isuzu carrying Tanaka the Tenacious back to The Slot. These ships were also loaded to bombard, as were four heavy cruisers scheduled to deliver later attacks.

  But The Night of the Battleships would be first: on October 13.

  Kelly Turner’s luck had held.

  While Norman Scott had been sailing south in triumph, Turner had pushed on to the north with 3000 soldiers of the 164th Infantry Regiment. The huge Japanese armada which Yamamoto had ordered to destroy American reinforcements had left Truk too late to intercept him. Fourteen Japanese submarines screening Torpedo Junction had somehow let his two transports filter through.

  As dusk of October 12 approached, Kelly Turner sighed with relief. He had made it. At dawn next morning he would be off Lunga with the first American soldiers to join the first American offensive.

  Oh, some PT’s do forty-five

  And some do thirty-nine;

  When we get ours to run at all

  We think we’re doing fine.

  Lieutenant Alan Montgomery’s four torpedo boats were truly not running at all when they arrived at Guadalcanal that afternoon of October 12. They had been towed from the New Hebrides by destroyers Southard and Hovey, entering the great battle of the Pacific and Iron Bottom Bay in a pedestrian style that delighted the hearts of the uninhibited deep-water sailors who greeted them.

  “Rub-a-dub-dub, five gobs in a tub!”

  “Tootsie-toys, yet! The Japs got the Tokyo Express and we got the Toonerville Trolley.”

  Under tow the torpedo boats were indeed unlovely and unformidable sights, but once they had been freed and fallen astern and had drowned the taunts of their detractors in the great throaty roar o
f their powerful motors, they went thundering across the Bay with lifted prows, planing gracefully along and throwing out huge bow waves that showered torpedo tubes and machine-gun mounts with spume and trailed a thick wide wake of frothing white behind them.

  With their arrival the battle for Guadalcanal became complete.

  Marines and sailors, soldiers and fliers, Seabees, native scouts and Japanese laborers, every type of warrior or martial worker imaginable had fought above, around, and upon this island; they had struck and hacked and shot at each other on foot or from every type of ship or aircraft or vehicle, wielding every kind of gun or knife, fighting with spears and axes, with fists and with stones—and now the bold little cockleshells were here to round out the roster and complete the arsenal of modern arms. As they came into the fight, taxiing up to Government Wharf in Tulagi Harbor, the Skytrains of SCAT were overhead flying south with the last of that valiant band of Marine fliers who were the first to fight for Cactus Air Force.

  Major Richard Mangrum was himself the only pilot of his bombing squadron able to walk away from the field. Seven other fliers were dead, four had been wounded, and the remainder flown out with malaria or other illnesses. Four of Mangrum’s reargunners had also been killed, and another wounded.

  Major John Smith was going home as America’s leading ace: nineteen enemy warplanes shot down in less than two months. But six of Smith’s fighter pilots had been killed and six others wounded. Captain Carl was still alive, victor in sixteen aerial battles, and he, too, went home that afternoon of October 12—after the Skytrains had unloaded their cargoes of precious gasoline.

  Fuel supplies were again critically short at Henderson Field. Although a Skytrain could fly in enough 55-gallon drums to keep twelve Wildcats aloft for one hour, what they brought in on October 12 would certainly be gone by October 13. Once again General Roy Geiger appealed to Nouméa, and an emergency barge-towing convoy was made up.

  Cargo ships Alchiba and Bellatrix, PT-tender Jamestown, fleet tug Vireo and destroyers Meredith and Nicholas each towed a barge loaded with two thousand drums of gasoline and five hundred quarter-ton bombs.

  They set out from Espiritu Santo late in the afternoon of October 12, a few hours after Japanese engineers began surveying a road to the south of Henderson Field.

  Lieutenant General Masao Maruyama had graciously consented to Captain Oda’s request that the trail to the assembly areas be called “The Maruyama Road.” That had been on October 10. The next day Captain Oda and his engineers sat down with Colonel Matsumoto, the Sendai Division’s intelligence officer, to study aerial photographs of the route. They saw the roof of a solid jungle. It seemed straight going. Oda was sure he could blaze the trail to the upper Lunga without difficulty. Meanwhile, Colonel Matsumoto would continue to torture captured Americans to extract information from them. None of them had talked so far, much to the surprise of Matsumoto and the concealed admiration of Colonel Masajiro Furumiya of the 29th Infantry,1 and they had had to be beheaded in the honorable way. But more prisoners would be taken, and perhaps more forthright measures would produce better results.

  Leaving Matsumoto, Captain Oda and his engineers cheerfully set out to cut The Maruyama Road.

  “Hey, Lucky—the doggies are here!”

  “Yeah, I know, Lew,” Lucky grunted. “They came in on the New York bus.”

  “It’s the straight dope. They’re out in the Bay. You want to take a look?”

  “We can’t. We’ve got to stand by to move out. We’re moving to new positions today or tomorrow.”2

  It was true, both that the 164th Infantry Regiment had arrived safely off Lunga Point, and that this latest reinforcement had induced General Vandegrift to shift his troops again. He expected the gathering enemy to strike hard from west of the Matanikau and he was moving his strength in that direction. The Tenaru line to the east would be held by the newly arrived 164th under Colonel Bryant Moore. To the south of Henderson Field, farther inland and a little to the east of Bloody Ridge, Vandegrift stationed Chesty Puller’s battalion.

  Almost exactly at the point where The Maruyama Road was to terminate.

  “Condition Red!”

  The cry was almost meaningless to these American soldiers hearing it for the first time on that afternoon of October 13, and it was raised too late.

  Up north Japanese patrols had at last flushed the coastwatchers from their hideouts. Paul Mason and Jack Read were on the run, unable to warn Guadalcanal, and Henderson Field’s new radar had also been remiss. And so, twenty-four Bettys with escorting Zeros came thundering over the big runway and Fighter One while forty-two Wildcats and thirteen P-400s and Airacobras hung roaring on their noses in a desperate attempt to gain altitude. Eventually, one bomber and one fighter would fall to their guns, but not before huge gashes were torn in both runways, parked aircraft were blasted apart, five thousand gallons of gasoline were set afire, and the men of the 164th Regiment had felt the first scorching licks of a baptism of fire that none of Vandegrift’s Marines had ever experienced.

  Some of the bombs fell on Colonel Moore’s men only a few minutes after they set foot on Guadalcanal. Corporal Kenneth Foubert was killed—the first American soldier to die on the island—and two other men were wounded. Casualties mounted during another savage raid—again without warning.

  All of the planes of the second raid got safely away, except for the Zero which fell to the flaming wing guns of a square-jawed, cigar-smoking Marine captain named Joseph Jacob Foss. Then Foss took a bullet in his oil pump and came rocketing down from 22,000 feet to a dead-stick landing while a trio of Zeros took turns trying to shoot off his tail. It was Captain Foss’s first victory, and it was a hair-raising flying feat which was to be typical of Henderson’s newest and greatest fighter pilot.

  Individual victories, however, were of small solace to Archer Vandegrift on that black-bordered day of October 13. Henderson Field was now out of action for the first time. Geiger had almost no gasoline. The fury of the enemy onslaught suggested that a period of comparative lull had ended and that the Japanese were now opening their third and heaviest bid for victory. Far away in Australia General Douglas MacArthur was planning an all-out defense of the island continent in the event that the Solomons were lost, a huge Japanese bombardment force had been reported on its way south, forcing Admiral Turner to flee for the New Hebrides again, and as dusk introduced The Night of the Battleships, Archer Vandegrift heard a new voice speaking over Henderson Field.

  Sergeant Butch Morgan was preparing the general’s dinner when Pistol Pete spoke.

  His first shell screamed over Vandegrift’s pavilion and struck the big runway with a crash. Sergeant Morgan seized his World War I helmet and raced for the dugout. Another shell screeched overhead. Morgan slammed on his helmet and dove for cover.

  Crrrrash!

  General Vandegrift looked up in thoughtful surprise.

  “That wasn’t a bomb,” he said. “That’s artillery.”3

  Sergeant Butch Morgan came out of the dugout, his face a crimson match for his red walrus mustache. He looked around him furtively to see if any boots had witnessed the discomfiture of the Old Salt who had fought in France and knew all about artillery barrages.

  “Aw, hell,” Morgan muttered, taking off his helmet and going back to his makeshift stove. “I mean, only artillery …”

  If it was “only” artillery, it was still authoritative enough to reach the airfield and to introduce a new element of danger into the harried lives of the Seabees there. Formerly, after attack from bombers or warships, repairmen might rush to the torn-up runway to fill the craters without fear of lightning striking twice in the same place. But now, Pistol Pete could fire one shell, wait until the Seabees were at work, and then drop another in the very same place.

  Moreover, Vandegrift’s heretofore matchless artillery was now outranged. Even his biggest guns, five-inch rifles, were of lesser bore than these six-inch howitzers of Hyakutake’s; and his field pieces, 105- and 75-mm h
owitzers, that is, roughly four- and three-inch cannon, were far outweighed by them. Nevertheless, the Marine artillerymen were unafraid to duel the Japanese in counter-battery firing; if only they could locate them. The Marines had no sound-and-flash ranging equipment on Guadalcanal, and General Geiger could not consume precious gasoline keeping observation planes aloft.

  Pistol Pete would speak for many, many days, unsilenced even by the five-inch rifles of visiting destroyers; speak as he was speaking now in the fading light of October 13, churning up the runways and forcing Marine ground crews to dare his flying fragments while moving parked aircraft to the comparative safety of Fighter One, ranging in on Kukum to chew up naval stores, hurling desultory shells into the Marine perimeter and moving from there, accidentally, into the heart of the 164th Infantry’s bivouac area, raining shells upon these soldiers with such ferocity that one of them—a sergeant—crawled about begging his men to shoot him.

  Then it was dark.

  Pistol Pete thundered on, red flares shot up from the jungle, enemy bombers roared overhead—flashing in and out of Marine antiaircraft fire and thick pencils of searchlight crisscrossing the sky—and everywhere there was a thumping and lashing of tortured earth and a whistling of invisible steel, while dazed and sleepless men stumbled in and out of their pits and foxholes, bracing for the enemy to appear once the uproar ceased.

  At half past eleven Louie the Louse planted a green flare directly over Henderson Field and The Night of the Battleships began.

  Screened fore and aft, and flanked to each side by Isuzu and Admiral Tanaka’s seven destroyers, battleships Haruna and Kongo raced down The Slot at twenty-five knots.

  Just before midnight, west of Savo, speed was dropped to eighteen knots. Gunnery officers could see the first of many flares burning brightly over Henderson Field. They began calculating the mathematical problems. At half past one, at a range of about ten miles, sixteen great fourteen-inch guns swiveled toward Henderson, gouts of flame gushed from their muzzles, and huge red blobs went arching through the blackness with the effect of strings of lighted boxcars rushing over a darkened hill.