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

by John Prados

  Meanwhile, at about noontime Admiral Nagumo had detached Rear Admiral Abe Hiroaki’s Vanguard Force with its battleships. Both Abe and Vice Admiral Kondo Nobutake—his Advance Force also with battlewagons—dashed for the reported position of Fletcher’s carriers. Late that day they actually reached the place where the Enterprise had been damaged, but by then the Americans had retired and there remained no game for the hunters. Kondo and Abe turned back, marking the end of Japanese offensive action at the Eastern Solomons.

  The worst happened with Admiral Tanaka’s convoy the next day. Lousy weather kept Rabaul-based bombers from Henderson, and a destroyer bombardment (by five ships, not seven) was ineffectual. Now the Cactus Air Force showed its mettle. Major Mangrum’s Marines and Enterprise’s Navy dive-bombers were up with the dawn. The half dozen floatplane fighters that Captain Takeda Kakuichi sent from his Sanuki Maru and the Sanyo Maru to patrol over the convoy never saw the Americans. Cactus planes damaged a destroyer searching for Ryujo survivors. Five Marine Dauntlesses broke out of the clouds above Tanaka’s flagship, the Jintsu, and dived on her. Second Lieutenant Lawrence Baldinus put his bomb into the light cruiser’s bow, impacting between the two forward guns. Tanaka takes up the story: “A frightful blast which scattered fire and splinters…spread havoc throughout the bridge. I was knocked unconscious, but came to happy to find myself uninjured. The smoke was so thick that it was impossible to keep one’s eyes open…. I stumbled clear…and saw that the forecastle was badly damaged and afire.” Fortunately sailors flooded the forward magazines before any ammunition cooked off, but twenty-four were killed, and necessary repairs would take five months. Tanaka shifted his flag to destroyer Kagero. In the meantime U.S. Navy dive-bombers went after aviation ship Kinryu Maru, the biggest transport in the convoy, and holed her too. Destroyers and patrol boats stood alongside. As they worked to rescue the soldiers and crewmen, B-17s arrived overhead and plastered the sea with high explosives, wrecking destroyer Mutsuki. Both ships sank. Admiral Tanaka withdrew his battered force to Shortland. Combined Fleet canceled the operation. It would need some new formula.

  THE WAY IT WAS

  Now came expedients to rush Japanese soldiers to their destination. Before Tanaka even reached Shortland, he got instructions from Tsukahara to send some troops forward on destroyers. Hours after the warships left, Eighth Fleet directed him to recall them. Furious, Tanaka perhaps felt the world was mad. It was the third time his superiors had issued conflicting orders. Tanaka could not understand why Tsukahara and Mikawa, both at Rabaul, could not coordinate. But it turned out more was involved. Confusion also resulted from the advent of General Kawaguchi’s 35th Infantry Brigade. Admiral Mikawa had sought to leapfrog part of it while arranging to move the rest. The Cactus Air Force frustrated that initial reinforcement with thirteen Dauntlesses that sank a destroyer and damaged two more. Guadalcanal had begun to cost dearly. Capping these headaches, on August 29, the U.S. minelayer Gamble depth-charged Ueno Toshitake’s I-123 and sent her to the bottom.

  Kawaguchi paused briefly at Rabaul, then headed for Shortland to huddle with Tanaka. The latter had moved his flag to cruiser Kinugasa to utilize its more ample radio room. Aboard Tanaka’s flagship, Kawaguchi proposed sending most of his men to New Georgia on transports, proceeding from there aboard barges. Tanaka, with orders to use destroyers, was dumbfounded. Each consulted superiors.

  Here, within weeks of the Watchtower landings, were proposals for both methods that would sustain Japan’s war in the Solomons. The basic parameters were determined by airpower, at that time the Cactus Air Force. A destroyer that left Shortland before noon and steamed at speed could be off Guadalcanal by midnight and well on her way home by dawn. With its surface ships vulnerable to planes, the Imperial Navy had either to move reinforcements quickly, exiting the Allied air umbrella before daylight—hence the use of destroyers—or stealthily in small packets—thus barges (and in due course, submarines for small supply shipments).

  By trial and error the Navy evolved tactics to operate in the face of enemy airplanes. Both methods were used. The destroyer operations were called “rat” (nezumi) sorties, the barge voyages “ant” missions. General Vandegrift and his Marines quickly appreciated these Japanese tactics, and began calling warships offshore the “Rat Patrol” or the “Cactus Express.” As journalists began using the term, some wag of a censor, anxious to preserve Guadalcanal’s code name “Cactus,” changed that to “Tokyo Express.” Thus was born one of the best-known phrases of the Pacific war.

  Destroyers were the mainstay of the Tokyo Express. They typically carried 100 or 150 men on each transport mission. The Japanese came to a technique of having a guard ship fully combat-ready to lead the column, with loaded ships following in trail. If the threat level was low, the force small, or the mission urgent, all the vessels might be loaded. There were many challenges to the Tokyo Express, the Cactus Air Force only the biggest. Allied subs were active in these waters, surface ships could catch the Express, mines could explode beneath them, and, beginning in October, American PT boats became an increasing annoyance. When a destroyer sank, stopping to rescue survivors was dangerous. A damaged ship could be calamitous—endangering others traveling in her company while offering the Allies a ready target. Four destroyers were damaged and two sunk during August, three sunk and six damaged in October, and four sunk and seven damaged in November. The worst month was December 1942, when eight tin cans were damaged, though only two were sunk. Best would be September, when but a single ship succumbed.

  But fate remained fickle—Chief Petty Officer Oshita Mitsukuni of the Hayashi recalls that his ship made three or four transport missions to Guadalcanal before she was ever attacked. Some ships were never struck at all. Seaman Watanabe Hashio’s destroyer made multiple runs to Guadalcanal and was never in a battle. Petty Officer 2nd Class Tokugawa Yoshio in the Kawakaze remembered twenty-five to thirty Express runs. His ship was bombed in The Slot during September but back off Cactus a month later. Warships with slight damage remained on duty.

  Coupled with peril was the sheer oppressiveness of the climate. The heat and humidity of the tropics multiplied exponentially when the ship had to button up for protection. Lieutenant Nakamura Teiji of the Yudachi, which first arrived at Rabaul on August 22, found the hot air in the ship terrible, but there were also fatigue and exhaustion plus endless air raids. Nakamura credits the warm personality and open heart of Yudachi’s skipper, Commander Kikkawa Kiyoshi, for the destroyer’s high morale. On Yudachi even supply officers watched for planes. Sharp eyes kept the enemy at bay.

  Meanwhile, at Shortland, the dispute over reinforcement methods continued. Admiral Mikawa affirmed his instructions to deliver troops by destroyer. General Kawaguchi finally acceded, though some subordinates never did. The general himself with 2,000 men traveled to Cactus aboard destroyers on the last two nights of August and the first of September. A big mission the night of September 4–5 deposited another 1,000 men and covered a barge convoy. Their intent to bombard Henderson was vitiated when they discovered a couple of U.S. ships in Ironbottom Sound. Rear Admiral Hashimoto Sentaro’s tin cans sank the destroyer-transports Little and Gregory instead. The barge unit encountered various delays and had not beached by dawn. The Cactus Air Force found them at sea—now for the third time—and strafed them mercilessly. The convoy disintegrated. About a hundred of the 1,000 passengers died, but the rest were scattered, including almost half marooned on Savo Island. The survivors regrouped over a period of days, starting with shuttles by the next night’s Tokyo Express, which also landed another 375 men on Guadalcanal. The survivors would not be in position for Kawaguchi’s planned offensive—he wanted to attack from Taivu Point, east of the Marine position (they had landed at the west end of the island)—nor would they be in time. At this point, after numerous transport missions, the Japanese had roughly 5,400 troops on Cactus, and about half that many had perished in the effort to get there.

  Among those who stumbled onto Guadalcanal’s
shore was Colonel Tsuji Masanobu, a notorious operative of the Japanese Army. The forty-year-old Tsuji, a mainstay of Army cabals through the 1930s, enjoyed the benevolence of imperial family members and had access to the office of the Army’s chief of staff. Tsuji had played his part in Japan’s machinations in Manchuria and China. He led the unit that gathered intelligence for the Malayan invasion and participated in the last stage of the Philippine conquest. Tsuji was ubiquitous in Japan’s war, and the Solomons were no exception. Now he headed the operations section of the General Staff, and traveled to the Outer South Seas on a personal inspection. Tsuji passed through Truk in late July, just ahead of Admiral Mikawa. At Rabaul he found Hyakutake’s 17th Army headquarters located in a nice concrete building, but almost everything else in the fleet way. With typical Army disdain for things Imperial Navy, Tsuji remarked on the music concerts and sake joints that entertained the sailors, not to mention the geisha houses that had sprouted at Rabaul.

  When the Americans landed at Guadalcanal, Tsuji immediately suspected the intel on their strength was bogus—such a large invasion flotilla would not have landed the paltry force estimated. After a few weeks’ frustration, Tsuji secured Hyakutake’s permission and set out to see for himself. He went with the barge convoy, mesmerized by luminescent waters at night that made him forget about the war. The convoy faced aerial strafing by Major Mangrum’s Dauntlesses on September 2, then storms. The compass on his barge was knocked out, and the crew steered using a handheld compass. Their barge shipped so much water its occupants jettisoned provisions and half their ammunition. Then came the Cactus Air Force’s last-minute attack. Soldiers staggered ashore—some jumping into neck-deep water—but that was just the beginning. Colonel Oka Akinosuke, who led the regiment with which Tsuji had deployed, spent five days just gathering the survivors. American planes looked for them too—and had such plentiful munitions, it seemed to Tsuji, that they could drop bombs like rocks. The Japanese hid under palm fronds. Colonel Oka finally began marching toward Mount Austen, the assigned destination, hacking through jungle. Food was almost gone. A mission house they encountered was a godsend—shelter—and the men slept like pigs, but once they began cooking rice the smoke betrayed them, and Marine artillery pounded their position. Oka’s group finally found Colonel Ikki and some Navy construction troops. They were practically naked and had nothing to eat. Oka shared his men’s sparse rice. Their ordeal continued.

  The other way to get to Guadalcanal was to eliminate the Cactus Air Force. Then the Imperial Navy could steam anywhere, in daylight if it liked. The Eleventh Air Fleet did its best to accomplish that. An interdiction campaign began in late August and continued unabated for four months, with almost daily raids on Henderson. Sometimes the missions failed due to weather over Cactus or at the launch points, occasionally because of operational factors. Usually the raids were conducted by two to three squadrons (twenty to thirty bombers) covered by roughly equal numbers of fighters. The JNAF altered routine by mounting fighter sweeps or else sending a few bombers with substantial fighter escorts.

  The Japanese also used their seaplanes offensively, creating the R Area Force, a unified command for floatplanes and patrol bombers under Rear Admiral Joshima Takatsugu. Admiral Joshima anchored seaplane carrier Chitose at Shortland for his main base. He rotated aviation ships Sanuki Maru, Sanyo Maru, and Kamikawa Maru through Rekata Bay on Santa Isabel, 140 miles from Henderson, as a forward refueling and control point. It was Sanuki Maru and Sanyo Maru that failed in covering the Tanaka convoy. Aviation ships not at Rekata shuttled new aircraft up from Truk or performed antisubmarine patrols around Rabaul. Chitose herself sailed with Admiral Kondo on the KA Operation, providing air cover until damaged. Captain Sasaki Seigo would return to Japan for repair and Chitose’s conversion to a light aircraft carrier, but Sasaki sent his floatplanes to the R Area Force.

  On July 1 the Chitose had had fifteen active and twenty-one reserve aircraft. Two months later her air group would have ten aircraft with no reserves. The aviation ships usually contributed six to eight aircraft, and the air fleet’s complement of four-engine flying boat patrol planes ranged from none to about a dozen. Most nights the R Area Force put a floatplane over Guadalcanal, dropping flares and occasional bombs just to shake up the Marines, who began calling these aircraft “Louie the Louse” to distinguish them from twin-engine night intruders, known as “Washing Machine Charlie.” Closer to Cactus, the R Force also made small attacks on Henderson Field at odd hours.

  Vice Admiral Tsukahara, the Imperial Navy’s senior air admiral, was the man for the job, most experienced at conducting a long-range air campaign. It was he who had masterminded the long-distance interdiction of Clark Field during the Philippine invasion, and before that Tsukahara had led JNAF formations in the first extended bombing of the China Incident. But Guadalcanal was different and more complex. In the Philippines, a months-long air campaign had been unnecessary. In China the operations had not been over water, so it was easier for crews to survive aircraft damage, and there had been plentiful emergency airstrips. Neither campaign had featured an adversary able to sustain its defense, and this time the enemy maintained its strength. Tsukahara’s Eleventh Air Fleet, though powerful, had to fly from primitive airfields in a challenging climate. He also faced competing needs for his component air flotillas and was unable to mass them to overpower the Cactus Air Force. But the Japanese were serious about this effort—just how serious became evident when the high command sent Tsukahara a new air staff officer, Captain Genda Minoru.

  The admiral, originally a gunner, had been associated with naval aviation in Japan since the early 1920s. He had been executive officer of Japan’s first carrier, the Hosho, and skipper of Akagi, and he had led the JNAF development command. As a captain, Tsukahara had participated in naval arms limitation talks at Geneva, where the powers’ aircraft carrier tonnage had been a major issue, and he had visited the United States too—at a time when the young Yamamoto was assigned there. Tsukahara was the senior aviation officer in the Imperial Navy. If anyone could overcome the difficulties of flying in the Solomons, it would be he.

  In addition to the climate, the enemy, and the campaign’s duration, at least four factors hampered the Japanese Naval Air Force in the Solomons. First, lack of an effective bombsight decreased precision. In combination with Tsukahara’s inability to mount true mass attacks (bomb raids in the European war already comprised hundreds of aircraft and would grow larger), inaccurate bombing severely limited the possibility of neutralizing Henderson Field. Second, U.S. defenses forced the Japanese to higher altitudes, further diminishing accuracy. Third, the relatively small JNAF bombs (the heaviest at 550 pounds, compared to 2,000 pounds for the Allies) reduced damage potential. And finally, the small payloads of JNAF aircraft (1,750 pounds on the “Nell” or 2,200 pounds on the Betty; even an early American model, the B-25, carried 4,000 pounds) curtailed the overall weight of force loadings. The JNAF had long oriented itself toward tactical naval warfare. Both the Nell and the Betty had been developed as land-based long-range torpedo planes.

  Japan paid dearly for its failure to produce a true heavy bomber. Only in February 1943 did the Japanese Navy ask industry to work on a multiengine bomber, and JNAF specifications were not forthcoming until that fall. The resulting aircraft had reached only the prototype stage by the end of the war, much too late for the Solomons arena.

  Zero fighters had an early advantage in being armed with cannon in addition to machine guns, whereas the F-4F Wildcat had only the latter, meaning the JNAF could hit opponents with explosive projectiles. But the Americans had both armor and self-sealing tanks, and they could dive faster. In the very first dogfight over Cactus, U.S. pilots learned that even when damaged their planes could often reach home. And while the .50-caliber machine gun might not be so powerful as the Zero’s 20mm cannon, Cactus pilots bragged that their Wildcats could stand up to fifteen minutes or more of Zero fire, while the Japanese planes often flamed within seconds of taking hi
ts. Pilots even claimed their .50-calibers had sunk a couple of Jap destroyers. Nevertheless, from the F-6F on, subsequent American fighters had increased armament, providing additional firepower.

  The other side of the coin lay in aircraft vulnerability. Japanese aircraft design emphasized speed and maneuverability in preference to armor and armament. This contributed to attrition, since planes, once hit, frequently caught fire or were crippled even if not destroyed. Damaged aircraft had little chance. It was 560 nautical miles from Henderson to Rabaul, more than 400 to Buka, and more than 300 to the Buin-Ballale-Faisi complex. A major reason the Japanese later installed an air base at Munda on New Georgia was to recover aircraft damaged over the lower Solomons. In the meantime there was no alternative except the long return at great hazard—as Sakai Saburo’s experience illustrates so vividly. The attrition was appalling. After the Eastern Solomons, to take one example, the Shokaku and Zuikaku sent thirty planes to fly from the new Buka base on Bougainville, which the carriers’ expert pilots did for two weeks. Only half the aircraft survived that assignment.