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

by John Prados

  Admiral Thomas Kinkaid steamed out of Nouméa that day. All fifty-nine sailors of the “Big E’s” damage control division, plus eighty-five specialists from SOPAC’s repair ship Vestal, continued to labor on the ship even as she cruised the South Pacific. Pearl Harbor estimated the “Big E” at 70 percent effective. The Enterprise was accompanied by two cruisers and six destroyers. Also in train was Task Force 64, under Rear Admiral Willis A. “Ching” Lee, now consisting of the battleships Washington and South Dakota. As Kinkaid and Lee hovered in Torpedo Junction, Cactus reported a force of two Japanese carriers about 150 miles away—some 575 miles from “Big E’s” position. Kinkaid began a high-speed chase. Meanwhile SOPAC ordered Callaghan’s cruisers back into Ironbottom Sound.

  At Truk, based on his intelligence, Admiral Ugaki asked Combined Fleet staff to restudy the plan. Ugaki wanted additional strong air attacks and a preliminary prompt sortie by Mikawa’s Eighth Fleet cruisers. Senior staff officer Kuroshima Kameto argued against changing the arrangements. Ugaki did not insist. To the south, Admiral Kondo detached his “raiding unit” with battleships Hiei and Kirishima.

  The Abe force had been awarded a commendation for earlier battles, and Abe himself was rewarded with promotion to vice admiral at the beginning of November. Now they were to repeat the bombardment of “The Night.” According to Hara Tameichi, who commanded destroyer Amatsukaze in Abe’s screen, the admiral feared his sortie would fail. Rear Admiral Kimura Susumu’s Destroyer Squadron 10, including Hara’s ship, along with light cruiser Nagara and seven other tin cans, had departed Truk on November 9 separately from Kondo’s main body. They joined Abe, under way near Shortland, before dawn on the twelfth. It was early in the day, as the tropical heat rose, that the Abe Force was first seen by an American B-17.

  In addition to Kimura’s screen, a contingent of Rear Admiral Takama Tamotsu’s Destroyer Squadron 4 strengthened the raiding unit. Takama’s five warships were also spotted by Allied aircraft. Abe ordered a double-ring cruising formation, with Takama’s tin cans in the lead on the outside perimeter. Takama took position around midafternoon. In all, Admiral Abe would have two battleships, a light cruiser, and eleven destroyers. The Hiei launched a floatplane scout that reported ten Allied vessels off Lunga Point about sunset. As evening deepened into night, the flotilla entered a storm front. Unable to return to its ship, the floatplane flew to Shortland. Abe neared Guadalcanal amid squalls, alternating with soaking rain and occasional calm. At times Hiei’s lookouts found the wakes of nearby vessels practically invisible. The R Area Force reported that weather would preclude aerial spotting. Abe signaled his final plan around 7:00 p.m. Takama would sweep Ironbottom Sound ahead of the bombardment unit. The battleships were to execute a forty-minute shoot beginning shortly before 2:00 a.m. Admiral Abe, who yearned to avenge the death of his boon companion Goto Aritomo in these same waters a month before, would have his chance.

  “WE WANT THE BIG ONES!”

  Dan Callaghan had skippered cruiser San Francisco before moving to South Pacific headquarters. A seasoned sailor and practical fellow, Callaghan wanted to make his command work despite the awkward presence of two admirals so close in rank. Not overly proud, Callaghan assigned light cruiser Atlanta, Norman Scott’s flagship, to the lead position in his line. Thus the two American admirals sailed in the first two major vessels in the battle line. Neither of them had the more sophisticated surface search radars. Callaghan posted his destroyers in front of and behind his cruisers, in a line-ahead formation that became a standard tactic in the U.S. fleet. The warships cleared for action and expected battle. Heavy cruiser Portland, for example, had sent her floatplanes back to Espíritu Santo to prevent their flammability from becoming an issue.

  All day Callaghan’s ships had been off Lunga Point shepherding transports and cargo ships of Turner’s latest convoy and bombarding Japanese positions. Anticipating the usual noontime air raid, the flotilla had gone to Condition Red but then stood down—Kelly Turner signaled that a flight of U.S. cargo planes would be arriving. When the first showed up, sure enough someone began shooting, and bedlam followed. Admiral Turner angrily demanded to know which ships had not fired. Fortunately no friendly aircraft were destroyed. At midafternoon the alert was real. The Japanese mounted a torpedo attack alongside their usual bombing. Amazingly, ships that had not managed to score against a single friendly aircraft virtually obliterated the JNAF strike force, which accomplished little except to get the transports to weigh anchor. One torpedo bomber crashed aboard the San Francisco, however, disabling her after the main battery gun director. The warships screened the convoy as it left through Indispensable Strait.

  Meanwhile, in shelling Japanese positions they claimed destruction of a midget submarine near Kamimbo. Around sunset U.S. sailors went to general quarters again, and Callaghan’s flotilla prepared for the expected battle. In the gun director of destroyer Sterett, third in the van, despite his advanced optics Lieutenant Ray Calhoun could barely see the ships ahead of them. Their boiling wakes were the most visible feature. The vessels behind were ghosts, the night very dark with squalls.

  The rain and dark especially bothered Vice Admiral Abe. Shortly after midnight he elected to turn away, reducing speed. Then the weather seemed to break and messages from Guadalcanal promised better conditions there. About twenty minutes after turning, Abe changed his mind, ordered a course reversal, and increased to eighteen knots. At 12:48 a.m. of November 13—Friday the thirteenth—Abe instructed Takama to begin his sweep. The battleships started loading the special incendiary AA shells that had been so effective on The Night. Another thing they had learned: This time the battleships would use weaker propellant charges to reduce overshoots. Unfortunately for them, Admiral Abe never did deploy into battle formation, and the two successive course reversals threw his armada into confusion. Rather than an arrowhead of Vs protecting the core battlewagons, Abe now had small clumps of warships scattered across the sea. It was almost exactly 1:00 a.m.

  Suddenly the Allied and Japanese fleets were closing at a speed of nearly forty miles an hour. Callaghan’s flotilla, under tight control, settled onto a heading to block entry to Cactus waters. The commander intended to circle Savo Island and reenter Ironbottom Sound. At 1:12 Admiral Abe ordered his force onto a heading of 130 degrees for his bombardment. Light cruiser Helena detected the oncoming enemy almost fourteen miles distant at 1:24. Helena was eighth in line, and warships ahead of her might have been able to see something, but none did. Admiral Callaghan, pulled between radar reports and the negative sightings of his van, hesitated. Ray Calhoun, in the main battery director of the Sterett, heard Helena’s report over TBS, the “Talk Between Ships” low-frequency radios the U.S. fleet used for tactical communication. But when he looked in the indicated direction with his optics, there was nothing. His destroyer’s five-inch guns had a maximum effective range of about 18,000 yards, so Calhoun figured he’d have ten minutes until the action commenced.

  The TBS announced two columns of Japanese and two big targets—battleships were suspected. Still nothing to be seen. Dan Callaghan must have been surprised at that news, but he was game, and altered course to due north at 1:37. If he could block the enemy he might repeat Norman Scott’s achievement of crossing their T. That would also afford his smaller guns their best chance against the enemy’s big ships. Callaghan’s efforts to obtain information over TBS from the vessels with the best radars were frustrated as the U.S. ships all talked at once. Suddenly, at 1:42 destroyer Cushing announced she could actually see three Japanese tin cans. Lieutenant Calhoun spotted the enemy for the first time with the range down to 4,000 yards. It was now clear there could be no clever maneuver. The fleets were upon each other. Admiral Callaghan ordered odd-numbered ships to fire to port and even ones to starboard. Calhoun discerned the silhouette of a Kongo-class battleship. Her towering superstructure overlooked the sea like the Empire State Building towered over structures in New York.

  Ahead of Admiral Abe’s fractured form
ation, destroyer Yudachi saw the Americans nearly simultaneously—within a minute. A U.S. tin can appeared out of the night on a collision course. Commander Kikkawa Kiyoshi of the Yudachi, flabbergasted, turned hard to starboard, followed by Harusame. Yudachi flashed a warning but no position, because the dark and the fleet’s maneuvers left her without a good reckoning. Early in the war his ship had been taken unawares while Kikkawa concentrated on another target, so he was determined not to repeat that error. Kikkawa launched torpedoes immediately along the length of the U.S. column. Then he retreated momentarily to ready his gun crews. Yudachi tried to circle the Americans to come up on the opposite side. The destroyer fired fiercely at ranges down to 1,200 yards—point-blank for a modern warship. The Americans shot back and they had much bigger ships—Kikkawa successively engaged a heavy cruiser, a light cruiser, an antiaircraft cruiser, and two destroyers. Yudachi’s luck had run out—a cruiser Kikkawa thought friendly inflicted crippling hits to his engines and boilers. By then there were also fires near the forward magazines. Lieutenant Nakamura Teiji saw crewmen fetching their hammocks and bringing canvas, hoping to rig sails to catch the wind and beach on Starvation Island. But it was not to be. The Yudachi drifted until, much later, destroyer Samidare came alongside. Commander Kikkawa ordered, “Abandon ship.” After evacuating the crew, the Samidare fired a torpedo to scuttle her sister, without apparent effect. Kikkawa asked Samidare’s skipper to fire a second tin fish, but just then an American cruiser approached and Samidare had to flee. The Yudachi was finished off after dawn by a crippled U.S. cruiser shelling her at leisure.

  Kikkawa’s boss, Rear Admiral Takama, was embarked in the Asagumo. The fleet’s perambulations had left Takama’s destroyers behind and to starboard of Abe’s force. They were on the disengaged side. They did not come into action until about 2:00 a.m., and retired after a brief firefight.

  Hara Tameichi, a good friend of Kikkawa’s, was in his Amatsukaze, following light cruiser Nagara. Commander Hara worried about the closeness of Florida Island, with its dangerous reefs. Abe’s battleships were between Hara and the Americans. When U.S. warships engaged them, shells fired long began to fall near Amatsukaze. Caught between reefs and shells, Hara ordered a high-speed turn. Suddenly he found himself beside Callaghan’s battle line. Commander Hara had literally written the book on Japanese torpedo tactics, having authored the Imperial Navy’s torpedo warfare manual. He found himself in a perfect position and at 1:54 launched eight Long Lance torpedoes that crumpled the destroyer Barton at the rear of Callaghan’s line. Five minutes later, spotting an American cruiser, Hara launched four more tin fish, badly damaging cruiser Juneau. At that moment the Juneau had been battering Yudachi, so Hara’s intervention saved her for a time. Later he almost collided with Callaghan’s flagship San Francisco, initially mistaking her for Japanese, and expended his last four torpedoes on that cruiser. But the Amatsukaze blundered into cruiser Helena. Firing under radar control, the Helena inflicted heavy damage and killed fifty-nine of Hara’s shipmates. Hara’s vessel limped away and barely reached Truk.

  Rear Admiral Kimura’s flagship, the light cruiser Nagara, was under Captain Tahara Yoshiaki. Like Hara, Captain Tahara broke to the left at the outset. A few minutes later lookouts saw a pair of heavy cruisers and a destroyer. Tahara ordered his gunnery officer, Lieutenant Commander Kuhara Kazutoshi, to illuminate the targets with star shells. Then Kuhara began shooting. Suddenly torpedoes struck the enemy cruiser they were blasting. The ship, identified as a Portland-class cruiser, began to sink, though the Nagara had so far fired just nine 5.5-inch shells. Captain Tahara credited the torpedoes to Amatsukaze. The time recorded does correspond to that destroyer’s first Long Lance salvo. Tahara turned the Nagara in company with destroyers Yukikaze and Harusame, and discovered what they identified as a Cairo-class antiaircraft cruiser. Admiral Kimura ordered a combined attack. Tahara’s 5.5-inch guns fired 127 shells at the warship. At one point the range became so short that Kuhara ordered flak guns into action. The Nagara expended 332 rounds from her AA machine guns. Accompanying destroyers were also credited with sinking an American tin can.

  If Abe’s escort vessels were confused by sudden apparitions from the night, the admiral himself was even more startled. The story from Hiei’s flag bridge is from Commander Sekino Hideo, communications officer, who related it to Hara Tameichi. Lookouts on the Hiei caught their first glimpse of Guadalcanal at the very moment the ship’s image appeared on U.S. radar. Admiral Abe expected to execute his shoot on Henderson Field momentarily and had already laid in the course as gunners loaded incendiaries. Observers on the island had informed Abe that the sky was clearing, and he knew JNAF had put up night intruders from Buin. Suddenly came Yudachi’s contact report.

  Agitated, the admiral screamed, “What is the range and bearing? And where is the Yudachi?”

  Before anyone answered, Hiei’s own lookouts piped up. “Four black objects ahead…look like warships.” Look like warships? In those waters, on that night, how could there be any question? “Five degrees to starboard. Eight thousand meters…unsure yet. Visibility bad.”

  Admiral Abe’s staff chief, Commander Suzuki Masakane, tried to confirm the range while Abe himself decided what to do. He knew where Yudachi was supposed to be, but his course alterations had thrown everything out of kilter. He ordered the battleships to switch their incendiary rounds for armor-piercing shells. Aboard the Hiei the main battery gunner, Lieutenant Yunoki Shigeru, hastened to comply. Sekino saw “pandemonium” as turret crews raced to make the substitution and store the flammables. Radiomen spread the warning and yelled for information on every wavelength—so much that U.S. monitors at FRUPAC picked up high-frequency transmissions and began to listen, a vigil that led to a startling end. Had the Americans hit Abe’s battleships during those vulnerable moments it would have been like the glorious dive-bomber attack on the Japanese carriers at Midway. But for eight critical minutes no American guns spoke, no shells tumbled from the sky.

  Lieutenant Calhoun on the Sterett watched the range close with trepidation. His ship awaited firing orders. Four thousand yards, three thousand. Tension grew. Finally Callaghan set the fire distribution, which required Sterett, in the van, to fire to the opposite side. As Calhoun turned the gun director the inferno engulfed them. Lieutenant Commander Edward N. Parker skippered the destroyer Cushing at the head of the van. Parker turned to bring his broadside to bear. It was his ship that nearly collided with Kikkawa’s Yudachi. His superior, Commander Thomas M. Stokes, the division commander, requested permission to make a torpedo attack. Admiral Callaghan refused. All his van destroyers were now turning to avoid Japanese warships.

  Aboard cruiser Helena, Captain Gilbert C. Hoover had his guns trained at zero elevation. The Japanese were that close. Suddenly a searchlight split the night, illuminating the Helena. That was enough for Hoover, and he opened fire. The searchlight was from Commander Takasuka Osamu’s destroyer Akatsuki, in company with the Hiei. The whole U.S. battle line firing to that side pasted her. Atlanta estimated her own range at 600 yards. Akatsuki crumpled under the concentrated fire. Fifty years later, at a commemoration of the Guadalcanal campaign, Lieutenant Shinya Michiharu of the Akatsuki would meet Lieutenant Stewart Moredock, who had been on the Atlanta as Admiral Scott’s operations officer. Both men survived the sinking of their ships in this hellish encounter.

  Behind Akatsuki were destroyers Inazuma and Ikazuchi. They did not wait for orders to launch torpedoes. The Americans quickly saw Lieutenant Commander Ishi Hagumu’s Ikazuchi and hit her several times. Ishi led his damaged ship out of the action. Commander Terauchi Masamichi in the Inazuma was full of fighting spirit. This was his first sea battle. It was so dark they could see nothing; then the night was lit with flashes and there were big ships. Terauchi loosed his torpedoes at the nearest big enemy vessel, though in his case he received orders first. Ishi’s and Terauchi’s destroyers proved an inadequate screen for Captain Nishida Masao’s Hiei. Parker’s Cushing fired her own to
rpedoes now, too close to arm properly but impossible to miss. Nishida’s ship could not miss either, and even her secondaries were enough to leave Cushing dead in the water. But the American torpedoes grievously wounded Admiral Abe’s flagship.

  Captain Nishida switched on a searchlight, picking out the Atlanta. The Hiei blasted her. But Lieutenant Yunoki’s main battery got off just two salvos before U.S. shells began pitching in on Hiei. Meanwhile the Atlanta sheared out of line, swerving to avoid the destroyer melee ahead. Lieutenant Commander Bruce McCandless, at that moment officer of the deck on the next vessel, heavy cruiser San Francisco, had the conn and wondered whether to follow. He turned to his captain for orders and was told to match her turn. But the bigger ship could not duplicate the tight maneuver; plus the Atlanta kept weaving back, causing McCandless to alter slightly in an attempt to clear the bow for his turn. The ships steered shaky parallel courses as a result. Then the Atlanta shuddered from the impact of two Long Lances. Torpedoed, battered by the Hiei, she was nearly done for. At that moment the San Francisco, shooting at Japanese beyond Atlanta, dropped one or more shells short. A salvo—probably from San Francisco—carried away one of the ship’s bridge wings, and with it Rear Admiral Norman Scott. From the flagship Callaghan’s talker piped up on the TBS, “Cease firing, own ships!”