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

by John Prados

  But shooting continued unabated. The Mikazuki, hit in her number one boiler room, lost a gun and a searchlight. Akatsuki simply disappeared. She had gone down with most crewmen, the skipper, and the destroyer division commander. Commander Terauchi on the Inazuma was one of the few to see her capsize. The Americans rescued eighteen Akatsuki seamen. Captain Hoover of the Helena asked whether he could fire if he had targets. The TBS spit back, “Advise type of targets. We want the big ones.” This last bit became Callaghan’s epitaph, forever marking his determination to prevail.

  By this time both Japanese battlewagons were only a few thousand yards away, and Captain Iwabuchi Sanji’s Kirishima was blasting away too. Iwabuchi had been following Hiei in column, but Abe’s maneuvers left his vessel on the flagship’s starboard quarter. Kirishima’s action record claims inflicting four hits on the cruiser illuminated by the Hiei, which would have been Callaghan’s San Francisco. The shells smashed the bridge and conning tower, killing every officer there except Bruce McCandless, who lived to tell the tale. Captain Cassin Young, who had survived Pearl Harbor and, in fact, won the Congressional Medal of Honor there, perished on the cruiser’s bridge. Ranges came down to a thousand yards or less. Gunnery Ensign John G. Wallace later recalled that it would have been easy to toss a sweet potato onto some of the Japanese ships. The Kirishima claimed to have sunk the enemy cruiser. Lieutenant Tokuno Horishi, the battleship’s assistant gunnery officer, recalled that the Kirishima received only one hit during the entire battle.

  San Francisco got in her licks on the Hiei. Lieutenant Commander William W. Wilbourne had only to press the firing key to send six-gun salvos crashing into the battlewagon. The San Francisco’s after turret was masked until McCandless swung the ship around. It had to fire under local control, since the after director had been wrecked earlier that day by the Betty crash. San Francisco claimed at least eighteen hits. Others fired too. The Hiei endured more than eighty hits. Communications were knocked out; fires erupted near the bridge; Admiral Abe was grazed in the head by flying splinters. Nishida’s ship mutated into a floating derelict, barely under way, with rudder jammed and flooded compartments barring access. The engines were good but the steering so bad that hours later the battleship still lay only a few miles from Savo Island.

  Captain Iwabuchi led his Kirishima away from the combat zone. At about 2:00 a.m. Abe canceled the bombardment mission anyway and ordered general withdrawal. The Imperial Navy recorded the end of the battle at 2:34. Iwabuchi radioed a preliminary report about half an hour later, while Rear Admiral Kimura in the Nagara reassembled the destroyers, detached ships to attend the Hiei, and got the others out of Cactus air range. At 3:44 a.m., Combined Fleet postponed Z-day, leaving Rear Admiral Tanaka to withdraw his convoy up The Slot.

  At FRUPAC the radio monitors listened to increasingly frantic messages from Captain Nishida. The Hiei was not besting her damage. Dawn meant the Cactus Air Force. Nishida’s messages conveniently supplied his position, which U.S. intelligence passed on to Cactus. Meanwhile, Abe wanted to tow the crippled battleship to safety. Some called for beaching her, shelling Guadalcanal until the ammunition ran out, then joining the troops on Starvation Island. Nishida preferred to try to save Hiei. But the rudder jam greatly complicated towing. Combined Fleet suggested the jury rig of having the Hiei also tow a destroyer behind herself to compensate for the rudder.

  Captain Iwabuchi reversed course with Kirishima and headed back. His ship would have towed her sister. But U.S. intelligence could have tactical as well as strategic impact. As a result of Ultra, Iwabuchi’s Kirishima became a U.S. sub’s target. Strategic warnings had led to some submarines being sent out from Australia. These included the Trout. Lieutenant Commander Lawson P. “Red” Ramage’s Trout had actually been on the way to repair damage she had suffered patrolling off Truk—where Ramage had succeeded in putting a tin fish into light carrier Taiyo. On November 12, sub chief Rear Admiral Ralph W. Christie alerted Red to look out for major warships. Sure enough, in the morning the Kirishima appeared. Zigzagging foiled Ramage’s first approach, but later he got close enough to launch five torpedoes. Red claimed no hits, but the Japanese felt one—fortunately a dud. Iwabuchi promptly hightailed it north.

  Meanwhile Admiral Abe finally gave up on towing the Hiei and ordered her beached at Kamimbo instead. He transferred to destroyer Yukikaze after dawn. Beginning at 6:15 a.m., relays of Marine and Navy dive-bombers, Enterprise torpedo planes—flying from the carrier to recover at Cactus—and Army B-17s struck the Hiei again and again. The JNAF provided some air cover, including from the Junyo, but that started out badly—the air force was given the wrong coordinates—and got worse. The first patrol fighters did not reach Hiei until nearly noon. At least three American bombs and six or more torpedoes hit the warship. Captain Nishida, preoccupied with the incessant air attacks, did little to beach the ship. Given the mounting danger to the destroyers standing by, Admiral Abe ordered the Hiei scuttled and her crew taken off. Yamamoto countermanded that. Abe appealed the decision, twice. By evening the crew had been evacuated and the ship’s seacocks opened. Soon afterward arrived Yamamoto’s repeat order to keep the Hiei afloat. The fleet commander refused to give up on saving the ship, but his dispatch, delayed in transmission, arrived too late. An I-boat received instructions that night to proceed to the Hiei’s location and ascertain her status. The following morning Commander Yamada Kaoru signaled from the I-16 that the Hiei was no more.

  On the American side, Task Group 67.4 had been virtually annihilated. The Portland, hit by Hiei, once by Kirishima, and aft by a Yudachi torpedo, circled helplessly in Ironbottom Sound on a remaining screw with her rudder jammed. She managed to limp into Tulagi harbor. Two destroyers sank where they were. Gil Hoover of the Helena regrouped the survivors—his light cruiser and a few tin cans. The Atlanta, San Francisco, Juneau, and Sterett joined. The Atlanta fell out of formation, too waterlogged to survive, and sank near Cactus. Every ship was damaged. McCandless of the crippled San Francisco would be awarded the Medal of Honor. Roughly 1,400 survivors landed on Guadalcanal. Captain Hoover led the battered vessels toward Espíritu Santo. The next day, south of Cactus, they stumbled into Commander Yokota Minoru’s I-26. Yokota fired torpedoes, which missed the San Francisco but hit the Juneau instead. She virtually blew up. Besides providing incredible pyrotechnics for the men on Guadalcanal, the first round of this naval battle had been woefully destructive. But there had been no decision. Yamamoto remained determined to have his Z-Day.

  Combined Fleet now had a liaison officer on Guadalcanal, Lieutenant Commander Emura Kusao, personally representing the fleet commander. Emura reported the cripples lying off Lunga Point and various Allied activities in Ironbottom Sound. Air searches discovered Kinkaid’s task force with the Enterprise, as well as another Allied convoy. The Japanese were racing against time. Yamamoto ordered Admiral Kondo to finish the job. Kondo could cover arrival of the Japanese convoy in person. Now Kondo advised that his fleet, low on fuel, needed to top off. He put back his bombardment a day.

  Not willing to leave Henderson Field unmolested, Combined Fleet ordered a cruiser foray. Rear Admiral Nishimura Shoji departed Shortland at 7:30 a.m. with his Cruiser Division 7 ships Suzuya and Maya, screened by light cruiser Tenryu and destroyers. Vice Admiral Mikawa with a cruiser-destroyer group accompanied Nishimura to reinforce him if a surface action eventuated. Combined Fleet undertook this sortie even as the Hiei drama unfolded in The Slot. Yamamoto did not intend to let up. It was possible for Mikawa to have taken all of his ships into Ironbottom Sound to put greater weight of shell on the airfields. The admiral, who prided himself on having read Alfred Thayer Mahan’s Influence of Sea Power upon History four times, surely appreciated the value of contesting the waters off Lunga Point. But he kept to his support role. Nishimura separated from Mikawa’s unit about 11:00 p.m. on November 12 and a little over an hour later began his bombardment run. His cruisers shelled Henderson on the outbound leg, and Fighter One on the return. They b
lasted the fields with nearly a thousand eight-inch shells, destroying a number of aircraft. That night the PT boats intervened. While Nishimura’s cruisers blasted away, PT-47 and PT-60, on patrol out of Tulagi, went up against one of the screening destroyers. PT-47 fired three torpedoes from close range, certain she obtained a hit. This was apparently mistaken.

  Chief of Staff Ugaki at Truk disappointedly noted that many of Nishimura’s shells had impacted between targets and not on them—there had been communication problems with the Suzuya floatplane Nishimura launched to spot for him. But the admiral did not stick around to check. He rejoined Mikawa and exited The Slot past the Russell Islands to escape to the west. In the morning Vice Admiral Mikawa’s force experienced the mad hornets. After dawn Lieutenant Commander Glynn R. “Donc” Donaho’s sub Flying Fish—also cued by Ultra—found Mikawa and sent six torpedoes toward his cruisers. All missed. Submarine attack was followed by air. Marine and Navy torpedo planes and dive-bombers, from both Henderson and the Enterprise, hacked away at Mikawa’s ships.

  First to run the gauntlet of the Cactus Air Force was heavy cruiser Kinugasa. She sustained a direct hit from a 500-pound bomb forward of the bridge, which ignited a gasoline fire, sprang leaks that gave her a list, took out an AA gun, and killed both Captain Sawa Masao and his exec. The ship’s torpedo officer took over. The fires were quenched and Kinugasa, accompanied by a couple of destroyers, was under way again when several Enterprise dive-bombers struck from astern. Their bombs fell close enough to perforate the hull. The cruiser lost both rudder control and engines. Her flooding accelerated. Inside of two hours she capsized, with fifty-one seamen killed, forty-two badly wounded, and thirty-three sailors more lightly injured. Japanese records mention only bomb hits and near misses, though U.S. ones claim three to six torpedo hits.

  Next up was Captain Hayakawa Mikio’s Chokai. She beat off an early torpedo plane attack, but two hours later came dive-bombers. One missed close enough to wound a sailor. In the heat of action a fire broke out in the boiler rooms and reduced speed to twenty-nine knots, but Hayakawa’s ship reached safety and required only a short repair from the Arashi at Truk. Then came Maya. Captain Nabeshima Shunsaku had enough warning to use his main battery, expending nine of those incendiary AA shells that might have been usefully plopped on Henderson Field the previous night. One U.S. plane was damaged so badly it crashed on the high-angle gun deck, igniting ready ammo and starting a fire that spread to the torpedo room. Nabeshima jettisoned his torpedoes. A torpedo tube and two heavy flak guns were wrecked, thirty-seven sailors died, and twenty-seven more were wounded, but the ship survived. Last was light cruiser Isuzu, attacked by dive-bombers under the Enterprise’s master scout, Bucky Lee. Captain Shinoda Kiyohiko’s ship was damaged by near misses that flooded two boiler rooms and left her steering manually, but Isuzu, too, lived to fight another day. Given fresh reasons to respect Allied airpower, Mikawa staggered into Shortland late that afternoon.

  Rear Admiral Tanaka’s Army convoy had to run the gauntlet too. Already repelled once, Tanaka wondered how many ships would survive. Tanaka had a premonition, and he was right to worry. This day might have been a nightmare for Mikawa, but for the convoy it was sheer hell, beginning soon after dawn, when the first scouts—both Cactus dive-bombers and SOWESPAC B-17s—made their instant attacks. At that point the convoy had a combat air patrol. Interceptors claimed several of the scout bombers, which inflicted no damage. An hour later a pair of scout bombers from Enterprise also were claimed destroyed. But at 11:50 a major strike arrived—more than forty planes, half of them SBDs, and eight each of Avengers and B-17s. Tanaka’s destroyers laid a smoke screen and the transports maneuvered, but the aircraft were upon them. Torpedoes sank two transports, while a third, carrying the Nagoya Division’s commander, was hurt and had to turn back.

  From Truk the Combined Fleet desperately demanded the Army shell Henderson Field with everything it had. This was the Army convoy, after all. Success depended upon stopping Allied air attacks. The Army blithely replied that it would bombard the American airfields the next day! Besides, the soldiers argued, even if they did neutralize Henderson, the Americans still had an aircraft carrier somewhere out there at sea.

  More Cactus attacks followed at 12:45 and 2:00 p.m., with three transports sunk. Destroyers rescued survivors. A B-17 strike, another Enterprise attack, and a series of mixed raids, ending with a big punch before sunset, sent another transport to the bottom. Tanaka managed to evacuate or pull from the water some 5,000 soldiers and sailors, quite impressive under the circumstances. At SOPAC, clutching the latest situation report, Bull Halsey exulted to his staff, “We’ve got the bastards licked!”

  Only four transports were left. Admiral Tanaka was in a quandary. Though they were not far from Cactus, regrouping the convoy would add delays. Air search had revealed an Allied cruiser-destroyer group (actually Lee’s force) racing to intercept, while Mikawa’s shot-up cover unit had had to withdraw. Tanaka did not know whether Kondo would come up in support. But Combined Fleet ordered the transports ahead to beach on Guadalcanal. Then a dispatch from Admiral Kondo informed him the Advance Force was, in fact, coming to the rescue. Tanaka pulled into a cove on the New Georgia coast to finish regrouping and await the Kondo fleet. The delays meant he could not make Starvation Island before dawn. There was nothing to be done about that. As Kondo approached, Tanaka put back to sea. Shortly before midnight Tanaka’s warships saw Advance Force vessels loom out of the darkness. But the United States was out there too. And the Americans were not cruisers. They were battleships.

  The Allied airpower romp was possible because of the latest failure to neutralize newly reprovisioned Henderson Field—and the nearby presence of the Enterprise. South Pacific commanders were also blessed with good information in the form of excellent air search results that morning. These revealed not only the Mikawa force and Tanaka convoy, but also the Kondo force and even the Kakuta carrier unit. Radio fixes confirmed the information. Cactus air took advantage, but so did SOPAC. Bull Halsey had ordered Admiral Kinkaid to detach his battleship group the previous day. Rear Admiral Ching Lee and his battleships were to move in on Savo Island, thus covering withdrawal of the Allied cruisers and blocking The Slot. Halsey had been stunned to discover, when Kinkaid radioed back, that Task Force 16’s position was such as to preclude the battleships reaching the scene until morning. The detachment was in fact accomplished. Admiral Lee issued a general instruction by signal lamp: “THIS FORCE TO OPERATE SOUTHWARD OF SOLOMONS. OBJECTIVE ENEMY TRANSPORT FORCE OR THOSE ENCOUNTERED. BE ALERT FOR AN ATTACK.” By morning Lee had reached a position about fifty miles from Guadalcanal with his battleships Washington and South Dakota and four destroyers. Avoiding contact with the Japanese enemy then became important, so he maneuvered below Cactus most of the day. At midafternoon Bull Halsey instructed Lee to be in position off Savo at midnight. Here SOPAC hazarded battleships off Guadalcanal.

  A SOUTH PACIFIC EVENING

  Admiral Kondo, for his part, gathered to push through and sustain the convoy with his battleship bombardment. He summoned Captain Iwabuchi’s Kirishima. After a brief call at Shortland she left to meet the Advance Force. Kondo joined during the night of November 13–14. The Advance Force commander had been oddly quiescent during the Abe sortie. At this juncture Kondo made a further error of omission that cost him dearly. His Second Fleet included battleships Kongo and Haruna in addition to those that had already been in action. These ships were at sea: U.S. snoopers had seen them repeatedly in company with the Junyo, at Shortland, or elsewhere. Kondo, in fact, used them to help refuel his destroyers. The Advance Force had an excellent staff, including Captain Yanagizawa Kuranosuke as senior officer, Commander Yamamoto Yuji (no relation to the admiral) as operations staffer, plus Rear Admiral Shiraishi Kazutaka as boss. These were experienced men and, like Kondo, almost professional staff officers. Shiraishi had been with Kondo at the Battle of the Java Sea, where he thought Japanese tactics poor, and surely wanted to avoid those
mistakes. Yamamoto looked up to Kondo almost as a father. There must have been discussions in the flag plot of Atago on whether to include the other heavy ships, but what these were is lost to history.

  There is only conjecture as to Kondo’s reasoning. He left no account of it. Perhaps his motive was as simple as a desire to shield the Kongo, on which Kondo had twice served. Maybe he thought SOPAC’s surface forces had been effectively eliminated—yet he knew that battleships had been seen alongside the Enterprise. Kondo may have considered that carrier Junyo required heavy ships in support. It could have been a question of conserving fuel. The most likely explanation concerns mission. Since he was to bombard Henderson Field, Kondo may have thought the Kongo and Haruna not well supplied to perform that task. The special incendiary shells considered ideal for this purpose were in short supply. On “The Night,” the two participating battleships had taken the entire stock. Now, a month later, only a certain number of the new shells were available, and it is possible that Abe had had all of them. In any case, Admiral Kondo took the Kirishima and left the others behind.

  The admiral’s flotilla also included flagship Atago; another heavy cruiser, the Takao; light cruisers Nagara and Sendai; and nine destroyers. He planned to send three tin cans plus the Sendai to sweep ahead of the bombardment unit, then screen behind them. Observers of this battle frequently draw attention to the fact that the American destroyers had not served with one another before, came from different divisions, and had no unit commander. The same was largely true of the Japanese. Both of Kondo’s destroyer squadrons were composed of different ships than a month earlier. Four of the six vessels of Destroyer Squadron 10 had been in the Abe battle only the previous day. The escort had been thrown together from whatever ships were available. Commander Iwahashi Toru’s Asagumo, among the last to finish refueling, topped off from the Haruna at 5:55 a.m. on November 14.