Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun

by John Prados

  Imperial Navy night battle tactics were very good. Indeed, the Battle of Savo Island confirmed their reputation. Admiral Mikawa’s vessels saw the Allies first, approached the southern cruiser group in line-ahead formation, and launched torpedoes before firing. The U.S. destroyer that had the picket duty remained oblivious. Within minutes the American heavy cruiser Chicago and the Australian light Canberra were both crippled. The latter sank. No warning reached the other Allied cruiser group before Mikawa was upon them. Heavy cruisers Astoria, Vincennes, and Quincy were all blown apart within fifteen minutes. Admiral Mikawa obtained a decisive victory.

  The Japanese could have pressed on into the anchorage to smash the Allied transports. Commander Ohmae was with Mikawa when he chose not to. The admiral based himself on several factors. First, his ships had expended much ammunition (roughly a fourth to a third of main battery shells and half the available torpedoes), making a shipping attack more problematic. Battle maneuvers had put the Japanese on a heading away from Guadalcanal. The time required to regroup and enter the anchorage would put a fight just before dawn. Mikawa knew that daylight would leave him open to air attack no matter what, and it seemed desirable to be moving away from the danger area at speed when that happened. Imperial Navy radio intelligence had intercepted transmissions characteristic of U.S. aircraft carriers, so Mikawa knew a task force lay within about a hundred miles of him. Finally, the Japanese Army had told the Navy that wiping out the Americans would be a simple thing. At this moment when an aggressive attitude could have served his Navy the most, Kami Shigenori’s posture remains unknown. Admiral Mikawa ordered the withdrawal at 2:23 a.m. on August 9. That marked the beginning of a long and bloody campaign in which victory in the Pacific hung in the balance.

  IRONBOTTOM SOUND

  The other prong of Admiral Mikawa’s immediate counterattack had been an air strike the day of the invasion. Yamada assembled twenty-seven Betty bombers escorted by eighteen Zero fighters and sent them toward Guadalcanal. Coastwatcher Paul Mason saw them over Bougainville and warned of the raid. Australian cruiser Canberra piped its crew to lunch early so they would be ready. When the Japanese arrived, Fletcher’s carrier fighters quickly engaged them. An Enterprise flight met the enemy over Santa Isabel Island. They splashed a Betty but lost several F-4F Wildcats to the escort. More Enterprise interceptors battled over Florida Island. They downed another Betty and claimed four more probables. Armed to strike New Guinea, the JNAF bombers could do no better than a level bombing attack. They made no hits.

  The JNAF escort fighters, led by Lieutenant Commander Nakajima Tadashi, flew in small “squadrons” of six Zeroes each, because of Rabaul’s shortage of planes. But the Tainan Air Group was among the Imperial Navy’s best, containing several leading aces. One unit preceded the bombers to disrupt interceptors. The others flew close escort. Petty Officer Sakai Saburo encountered the Wildcat fighter here for the first time and was amazed at the plane’s durability. Closing to point-blank range, Sakai managed to shoot one down. Its American pilot, “Pug” Southerland of the Saratoga, incredibly, endured cannon fire right into his cockpit, bailed out, and survived. Sakai’s comrade Nishizawa Hiroyoshi claimed six U.S. planes. According to Sakai, none of the other Zero pilots scored that day. Historian John B. Lundstrom, however, records an array of JNAF claims totaling more than forty aircraft, and finds that nine Wildcats plus a Dauntless dive-bomber were actually blasted. The redoubtable coastwatchers rescued several pilots. Four JNAF bombers were lost, two so badly damaged they were written off, and excepting two others the rest were hit to some degree. Among the fighters, two Zeroes failed to return, and Sakai’s plane was an effective loss. Half a dozen were damaged enough or so low on fuel they landed at the base the JNAF had now opened at Buka on Bougainville.

  Sakai Saburo’s survival story is epic. Sakai closed in on a group of planes in tight formation, not realizing they were Dauntless SBDs, featuring paired, rear-firing machine guns. When Sakai discovered the error it was too late to abort his attack run. The eight SBDs laced Sakai’s Zero with bullets, one of which grazed his head while others shattered its windshield. The airman briefly blacked out but recovered his plane from a dive and flew instinctively, bleeding, hardly able to see, for several hours until landing at Lakunai. Petty Officer Sakai’s plight well illustrates JNAF’s difficulties fighting at Guadalcanal. Damaged airplanes had far to go for anywhere to land. Quite often they never returned. The lack of air bases in the lower Solomons became a major Japanese strategic headache.

  Meanwhile a second wave of JNAF planes approached the ’Canal. This was a squadron of nine “Val” dive-bombers. Anxious to hit the enemy, Admiral Yamada had sent these planes knowing they lacked the range to return. Crews were told to make for Shortland and ditch where the aircraft tender Akitsushima had a floatplane base. Only three reached that place—and one crew perished in the water landing. The rest were destroyed by U.S. fighters or flak. The strike inflicted slight damage on destroyer Mugford. Japanese land-based dive-bombers were typically armed with 120-pound bombs that lacked the punch to seriously affect a warship. Yamada’s second wave had been a desperate mission.

  Rabaul might not have scored much on D-Day, but so long as the JNAF could keep up its attacks, it was merely a matter of time until they did. Thus, neutralizing Rabaul was a key element in Watchtower. That mission went to MacArthur and SOWESPAC, where General George C. Kenney had just taken the reins of what became the Fifth Air Force. MacArthur and he discussed a Rabaul attack, and, following his inspections, Kenney decided SOWESPAC could put eighteen to twenty B-17s over Rabaul on invasion day. He later wrote that the flight had run into an equal number of Japanese interceptors, had had to fight its way in, and had scored “a real bull’s eye,” wrecking at least half the 150 enemy planes “lined up wingtip to wingtip along both sides of the runway” at Vunakanau—results supposedly verified by poststrike photography. The commander was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross, and one pilot—captured and executed—received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

  General Kenney’s claims are not accurate. Not only were there not 150 Japanese flying machines at Rabaul—nor, for that matter, the additional hundred Kenney says were observed arriving days before Watchtower—but nearly half of Admiral Yamada’s aircraft were off attacking Guadalcanal when the B-17s struck. In addition, the runway damage proved insufficient to prevent returning planes from landing a few hours later. A squadron of twin-engine Bettys came from Tinian that afternoon and had no difficulty either. Nor did Vice Admiral Tsukahara Nizhizo, Yamada’s boss as C-in-C of the Eleventh Air Fleet, who arrived to lead the countercharge. At 7:30 the next morning the JNAF began launching the first of twenty-six Bettys with fifteen more Zeroes for escort. They too had no trouble taking off. Rabaul had not been neutralized.

  Lieutenant Kotani Shigeru led the formation, this time torpedo-armed. Kotani hoped to hit the American carriers but, lacking word of them, went for Guadalcanal. Remarkably a Japanese scout plane passed close to Fletcher’s force that morning without seeing it. Kotani’s planes passed coastwatcher Jack Read, who promptly alerted the ’Canal. Read had problems with his connection, but another radio finally picked up his message and relayed it in time. Admiral Turner ordered the flotilla to weigh anchor so they could maneuver under attack. Marine Herbert Merillat watched from the beach and recorded the action this way:

  Someone told me that an air raid was due in about ten minutes. This was the first I had heard of it. I rushed up to the beach to watch the show. And what a show it was. I didn’t see the Jap planes at first, but a sky full of flak from our transports told me they were there. Then I saw them. They swooped in from the east, unbelievably low, and swept along the lanes of transports. Antiaircraft fire from the ships was terrific. Jap planes plunged in flames—one, two, three, so many I lost count. One ran the gauntlet and started out to sea, toward the west. A fighter dived on him and sent him flaming into the sea. There was so much smoke and flame in the transport area that I though
t surely many of our ships must have been hit.

  Despite early warning, the patrolling Wildcats were out of position. They engaged only after the raiders’ torpedo runs. The Japanese attacked ferociously, some planes only a few tens of feet above the sea, but their determination went unrewarded. Transport George F. Elliott, struck by a crashing Betty, and destroyer Jarvis, hit by a torpedo, were the only vessels harmed. The Jarvis limped away to be finished off by airplanes the following day. The Elliott burned down to the waterline and finally sank. But flak and fighters savaged the raiders. Only five bombers returned to Rabaul, a couple too badly damaged to fly. The 125 disappeared crewmen represented the biggest single loss of JNAF land-based aircrews of the entire campaign.

  Exhausted survivors of Lieutenant Kotani’s mission made fantastic claims of success, but their real impact was on the mind of Frank Jack Fletcher. It was significant to the admiral that the Japanese had hit with torpedoes. Fletcher knew that one strike the previous day had utilized dive-bombers of the type borne by Japanese aircraft carriers. Although U.S. intelligence still placed the enemy carriers in Empire waters, the COMINCH intelligence summary of August 8 recorded sighting a carrier-type ship seventy miles northwest of Rabaul. While the report noted the craft as most resembling aircraft tender Kasuga Maru (the Japanese were now regularly using such ships to ferry aircraft to Rabaul), in light of the Val attack Fletcher worried about a real Japanese carrier. For a leader anxious about his vulnerable flight decks, who had had carriers shot out under him in two previous battles, fear galvanized action.

  At midafternoon, having learned details of the torpedo attack, Admiral Fletcher consulted his tactical commander about withdrawal. Shortly after 4:00 p.m., Task Force 61 turned southwest, then south, then bore southeast, to judge from the track of carrier Wasp. These alterations meant Admiral Fletcher was steaming away from Guadalcanal. At that instant Mikawa’s Japanese cruisers were about 300 miles away, off Choiseul and bearing down The Slot, yet to fight at Savo Island. By the next morning the reverse applied—had Fletcher remained in place or moved toward the enemy, Mikawa’s retreating cruiser force would have been exposed to a powerful retaliatory assault. This episode was fraught with consequence. Anxious to defend Fletcher against every criticism, biographer John B. Lundstrom quotes sources indicating the admiral wanted to make a night attack. But Fletcher’s heading lengthened the range every minute, his position data on Mikawa was eight hours old, and his own decisions limited his afternoon search. These were not the actions of a leader seeking battle. Though Wasp had squadrons qualified in night flying, they were not used. The morning after Savo the American flattops were out of range, when they could easily have been poised to strike.

  Lundstrom obfuscates Fletcher’s timing by referring only to the last turnaway, shortly before 7:00 p.m. About an hour earlier Fletcher had sent SOPAC a dispatch recommending he withdraw due to loss of fighter aircraft, Japanese air strength, and low fuel. It is often recorded that Fletcher left without awaiting Admiral Ghormley’s reply, but in truth, when he requested permission, Fletcher had already been steaming away from Guadalcanal for two hours, albeit within a maneuvering area. He did in fact turn southeast before authorization. Task Force 61 held that course until 1:00 a.m. of August 9, when for several hours Fletcher headed back toward Guadalcanal. Only after 3:00 a.m. did he receive Ghormley’s approval, and an hour later he reversed again and left the scene. It is likely that these alterations reflected Fletcher’s sense that he should not complete his departure without SOPAC approval. Had the carrier commander pressed ahead, even from his 4:00 a.m. position, Mikawa’s retreating fleet would have been in grave danger. (The map on page 63 projects U.S. air ranges from several of Fletcher’s positions, including a hypothetical 9:30 a.m. location based on a speed of advance of twenty-six knots.) Fletcher’s withdrawal angered many.

  The night of Savo, Admiral Crutchley left his own position, depriving the Allied cruisers of their tactical leader at Savo. Crutchley’s absence was because Admiral Turner had summoned senior officers, including the cover force commander, to figure out how to proceed in the absence of Fletcher’s aircraft. Turner felt he had no choice except to pull out, abandoning Vandegrift’s Marines. Thus Fletcher’s decision had at least three contingent effects: It removed one of six major warships (and the commanding officer) from the Allied battle line; it discarded the opportunity to blunt Mikawa’s attack by means of a carrier air strike (and, additionally, the possibility of catching the retreating Japanese with a strike the next morning); and it isolated the U.S. Marines on Guadalcanal.

  Many trees have been slaughtered in debating the merits of Fletcher’s withdrawal. It is true that Richmond Kelly Turner’s plan for Watchtower foresaw unloading to be completed in two phases—by the second day for troops and the fourth for supplies. Turner had also anticipated leaving sometime during that interval for a secondary landing at Ndeni in the Santa Cruz Islands. In theory, Fletcher’s departure merely jeopardized supply off-loading. But supplies would be critical, and whatever his stated rationale, Fletcher did exactly as he had told his horrified colleagues at Fiji. In fact, worse: Timed from when the landing began, Fletcher’s pullout occurred thirty-six hours into Watchtower—thirty-four if counted from the instant of his first southwesterly course change. He had promised at least forty-eight hours, seventy-two if counting D-Day itself.

  Supply handling at Guadalcanal had been a headache from the outset. Jack Clark, the beachmaster, lacked sufficient men to move crates and boxes quickly off the shore. Matériel piled up. Sailors were drafted to help the shore parties. At one point a hundred landing craft crowded the beach, while fifty circled offshore awaiting space to land. Partway through the first day, Vandegrift had expanded the original beach area, but that had been a mixed blessing, injecting even more confusion. Then Japanese attacks interrupted the unloading. That day the cargo ships at least remained at anchor, but on August 8 they maneuvered and then had to regain the anchorage. The vessel Betelgeuse gives a good example. On D-Day she discharged cargo during two periods totaling ten and a half hours. The next day there were three spurts of off-loading totaling just under twelve hours. On August 9, before Turner pulled away, the Betelgeuse managed to unload for less than four hours. When she raised anchor the vessel still contained half her freight.

  The Marines dug in at Lunga Point, under the stars of the Southern Cross. Disappearance of the invasion armada left the Marines in a sorry state. Alexander Vandegrift had cut back supply levels before Watchtower, and now he could not land what he had. His 10,900 men on Guadalcanal proper had food for just two weeks, ammunition for less than one. General Vandegrift soon put Marines on half rations. Their long-range communications for several weeks depended on captured radio equipment. Medical staff used Japanese instruments. The George F. Elliott and the cruisers sunk at Savo Island became the first of many vessels to founder in these seas. So many that the waters off the Point, bordered by the islands of Guadalcanal, Tulagi-Tanambogo, Florida, and Savo, acquired a new name: Ironbottom Sound.

  CHRYSANTHEMUM AND CACTUS

  Whatever the faults in Watchtower’s execution, the initial Japanese response also proved inadequate. Neither Mikawa’s cruisers nor Yamada’s airplanes had destroyed the invaders, and despite their successes the effort proved costly. Mikawa’s cruiser force got away from Savo scot-free, but lost a heavy cruiser nonetheless—American submarine S-44 put four torpedoes into the Kako as she neared Kavieng. Meanwhile the S-38, which had been too close to get off a shot at Mikawa before Savo, torpedoed the Meiyo Maru the next day. That ship bore the Japanese reinforcements, and her loss meant the Imperial troops on Guadalcanal were beleaguered, exactly like Vandegrift’s Marines. The first dispatch from the garrison would be a cry for help.

  Due to the few messages received from the front, Rabaul knew little of the real situation on “Cactus,” as the Allies code-named the island. In Tokyo, IGHQ believed Marines aimed to raid Guadalcanal, not conquer it. Emperor Hirohito was not so sure.
Acording to his naval aide, when told of the landing Hirohito wondered whether it was the beginning of an Allied counteroffensive. The emperor proved nearer the mark than the high command. Intelligence put American strength at just 2,000 men, a gross underestimate. The command decided to match that by sending the Army regiment previously tagged to capture Midway, Colonel Ikki (often rendered as Ichiki) Kiyonao’s 28th Infantry, presently camped on Saipan. Japanese Army circuits on August 8 carried traffic between 17th Army (Rabaul) and Saipan, plus Davao, rear base of the South Seas Detachment and camp of Major General Kawaguchi Kiyotake’s 35th Brigade, already slated as a later reinforcement. Kawaguchi went immediately to Rabaul for consultations. The landing of Ikki’s troops led to another great naval battle.

  While preparations were made to transport the Ikki detachment, the Japanese harassed Cactus. That began with submarines. Here too the Imperial fleet was caught flat-footed. Concentrating against shipping off Australia, Rear Admiral Kono Chimaki’s Submarine Squadron 3 operated in the Outer South Seas. Kono had a boat of the smaller RO-type off Port Moresby, another cruising near Townsville, Australia, plus fleet boats I-121 and I-122 at Rabaul and I-123 then servicing at Truk. Rear Admiral Tamaki Tomejiro’s Submarine Squadron 7 had four I-boats off Australia, one in the New Hebrides, and one at home. Tamaki had just been ordered to Japan, so 7th Squadron simply mustered the boats available in the Mandates and the South Pacific and sent them to the Solomons.

  Kono’s 3rd Squadron led the attack. They were too late. The I-boats at Rabaul left on invasion day and reached Cactus on August 9, just after Kelly Turner departed. Lieutenant Commander Kuriyama’s RO-33 arrived from Papua twenty-four hours later. Lieutenant Commander Ueno Toshitake had sortied from Truk in I-123 on August 7 and approached Ironbottom Sound ninety-six hours later. Admiral Kono recalled RO-34 (Lieutenant Commander Morinaga Masahiko) from northeastern Australia, and she patrolled off Guadalcanal’s southern tip but found nothing. Morinaga made up for his bad luck by relaying messages from Japanese lookouts at Taivu Point.