by John Prados
In the second sortie, now known as the “Battleship Action,” Kondo held the direct responsibility. By not sailing with all his battlewagons, Admiral Kondo transformed a tactical situation where the Japanese would have held a decisive advantage into one in which the balance was much narrower. But there was more. Kondo’s one-day postponement also had a determinant effect. The same sortie carried out the previous night would have left Halsey’s battleship force too far away to intervene while his cruiser unit had been destroyed. Kondo could have demolished Henderson at leisure—before the Army convoy entered the Cactus Air Force’s kill zone. Losses to both Tanaka’s convoy and Mikawa’s cruisers would have been avoided. Kondo’s fuel shortage—his rationale for delay—cries out for much deeper investigation. Even as it was, the Japanese ended the battle with the only warships around Cactus—a success of sorts—to which Kondo responded by leaving the scene rather than pressing on to plaster Henderson.
In fairness to Admiral Kondo, it needs to be said that Japanese experience with previous cruiser bombardments (and this is what he had left after the crippling of the Kirishima) had been that these had only had limited impact. Without battleship firepower his fleet would indeed have been in peril. But what needed to be taken into account were the strategic considerations: Was it worth Kondo’s entire force to ensure the safe landing of the Army troops on Guadalcanal? After the heavy losses to the Tanaka convoy during the daylight hours, probably not. Before them, assuredly so. This intermediate observation puts additional weight on the first sortie, the Abe mission. That too could have been beefed up—and Kondo could have sailed in closer support. He did not. And his delay of the second foray had the same consequence. Failure to cripple the Cactus Air Force brought Yamamoto’s entire Z-Day strategic plan to naught.
The common denominators in all of Kondo’s actions and omissions are two, both subsumed in his defense of leaving the Battleship Action: fear of airpower, and the sense that the Navy was a limited, irreplaceable quantity. Allied airpower could not be discounted. World War II brought the ascendancy of the warplane, and sailors ignored that at their peril. In the Battleship Action too, the distant presence of the Enterprise functioned as a wild card—Henderson Field was not the sole Allied asset. But that brings back the consequences of failed pursuit at Santa Cruz. Had Kinkaid’s remaining carrier—the Enterprise—been trapped there, Halsey would have had no wild card now. On one (tactical) level Kondo’s respect for aircraft was healthy, but strategically, in this situation, caution played against Japanese purposes. And Kondo Nobutake, as C-in-C Second Fleet, was a strategic commander.
Admiral Kondo’s sense of the Imperial Navy as a limited quantity was also accurate on one level but detrimental at another. Starting from Pearl Harbor, Japanese strategy recognized that the Allies, in particular the United States, had far superior productive capacity. The essence of Japan’s maneuver had been that its force be used to secure a predominance to play upon during the near term. The Solomons was the first big Allied offensive and Guadalcanal its opening act. To defeat that would set back the enemy’s rising curve. If nothing else it would gain time for the weapons designers and shipyards to introduce the new plane designs and aircraft carriers that might give the Navy a fighting chance. The Japanese Empire hung in the balance. From a Japanese perspective, this was the time and here the place to hazard everything. Tokyo’s chances would never again be as good. This was as true for the warships Kondo so zealously guarded as for the quality of Japanese pilots or their numbers relative to the Allies.
In short, the month from Santa Cruz to the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal should be seen as the instant when the pendulum began to swing in the Pacific war—and Admiral Kondo Nobutake was central to that development. Japan’s inability to capitalize on success at Santa Cruz set the downward trend in motion.
These are judgments of history. At the time Imperial Navy officers, perhaps carried away by outlandish claims of the size of the enemy fleet and those for damage inflicted, seem to have thought the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal some kind of a victory. If so, they indulged in the same sort of misplaced pride as Americans who claimed too much for Santa Cruz. Perhaps the two acts of assertion cancel each other out. But for Japanese who considered the engagement a victorious one, it must have been shameful that immediately afterward the fleet needed to shift into emergency mode to funnel mere scraps of food onto Starvation Island. Had the result been as advertised, a triumphant Navy ought to have been able to succor Guadalcanal with impunity.
On the American side there were no doubts—immediately afterward William F. Halsey was promoted to four-star admiral, breaking a tradition that there be only a certain number at this rank in the U.S. Navy. Halsey sent his old stars to the widows of admirals Callaghan and Scott with testimonials that their husbands had won him his new ones.
Kondo Nobutake faced no consequences for his actions or the lack of them. Six months later Kondo still led the Second Fleet. His treatment contrasts vividly with that doled out to subordinates Abe Hiroaki of the battleship division and Nishida Masao of the Hiei. Abe was relieved in December, not surprising, since both his warships lay at the bottom of the sea. Yamamoto and Ugaki had previously lobbied the Navy Ministry for better treatment of officers whose vessels were sunk—Japan could not fight effectively if every captain knew he had to go down with his ship or commit seppuku once having lost it. But neither admiral lifted a finger to block the ministry when it convened disciplinary boards to investigate Abe and Nishida. Abe could retire. Captain Nishida was exiled to the small Chinese port of Amoy as a local force commander. By way of another comparison, Captain Iwabuchi of the Kirishima was immediately reemployed to lead naval troops on New Georgia and later given an important base force command at Manila, which he defended against the Allies when MacArthur returned to the Philippines. Iwabuchi received posthumous promotion to Vice Admiral, plus the Order of the Golden Kite, First Class.
At Truk on November 22, the Combined Fleet reviewed this sequence of battles. The exaggerated claims for losses were still credited. Commanders and staff, to include Admiral Ugaki, argued that the Imperial Navy had been at a disadvantage in all these actions and had done reasonably well. Admiral Kondo commented that officers could not rise above their conscious knowledge so the best training remained necessary to ensure that when the test came leaders would instinctively choose the right course. Ugaki was more practical. It had to be recognized that the reinforcement mission had failed, and Japanese forces now faced acute difficulties. Steady supply could be ensured only by positioning air forces at new forward bases. The Japanese were already attempting to install them.
THE PENDULUM AND THE PIT
Perfectly predictable, the aftermath of Admiral Kondo’s withdrawal from battle brought great pain to the Japanese. The Cactus Air Force and American artillery pulled out every stop to blast the transports their adversary had fought so hard to get to Guadalcanal. Stacks of stores landed from the beached ships were also shelled. Commander Emura reported through the day on November 15: At 9:00 a.m., two of the beached transports were burning; at 10:15 all of them were aflame; later several Allied destroyers were bombarding the area. A certain number of troops joined General Hyakutake, but not as a fresh infantry division in battle trim. Messages reported the salvage of 360 cases of ammunition for field guns and 1,500 bales of rice—just a few days’ supply. On November 20 senior staff officer Kuroshima returned from a visit to the front. Captain Kuroshima warned that men at Rabaul were in despair. The pendulum hovered and Japanese were in the pit.
Americans on Guadalcanal, if not despairing, at least continued to feel themselves beset by the enemy. At the Cactus Crystal Ball, radioman Philip Jacobsen insists that through the end of the campaign the South Pacific bastion never experienced a moment of diminished threat. But in the map rooms of the high command, the tense atmosphere softened into one of opportunity, not desperation. There is an almost palpable sense of elation. Here is the CINCPAC war diary for the day after Kondo’s
battle: “It is now definite that the enemy offensive was completely stopped…it appears that now is the time to move in supplies and to relieve the tired Marine amphibious troops.” Pearl Harbor knew that carrier Saratoga was crossing the equator on her way to SOPAC. With her was the battleship North Carolina. Both had been healed of their wounds. The older battlewagons Colorado and New Mexico lay at Fiji. Another new battleship, the Indiana, was transiting the Panama Canal. Two new escort carriers, two cruisers, and a passel of destroyers in the Atlantic had been alerted for Pacific duty. Aircraft reinforcements were arriving in increased numbers. The war had begun shifting in Allied favor.
The admirals had no difficulty attributing the margin of difference to the pillars of intelligence. At Pearl Harbor, Nimitz issued a commendation, perforce sent over the classified Copek circuit:
ONCE AGAIN RADIO INTELLIGENCE HAS ENABLED THE FIGHTING FORCE OF THE PACIFIC AND SOUTHWEST PACIFIC TO KNOW WHERE AND WHEN TO HIT THE ENEMY. MY ONLY REGRET IS THAT OUR APPRECIATION, WHICH IS UNLIMITED, CAN ONLY BE EXTENDED TO THOSE WHO READ THIS SYSTEM.
From COMINCH in Washington, Admiral Ernest J. King added, “Well Done.”
The contrasting desperation among the Japanese is evident in the sudden switch of Imperial Navy submarines to supply work. Starvation, now rampant on Guadalcanal, demanded no less. The I-boats had been some of the Navy’s best weapons—contrary to the impression of the Japanese submarine force as ineffectual, subs had sunk an aircraft carrier and two cruisers, and crippled another flattop and battleship, results on a par with those of the Kido Butai. In using subs for supply purposes, the Combined Fleet weakened its blockade of Torpedo Junction, advantaging the Allies. This diversion of combat forces shrank Japanese naval power without the Allies doing anything at all, virtual attrition akin to the reduced capability that followed the use of destroyers on the Tokyo Express. Combined Fleet issued the order to cut back the blockade and use the submarines for supplies on November 16. That date, immediately after the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, testifies to Yamamoto’s realization of the changed balance. Four days later the fleet learned of a new Allied convoy steaming through Torpedo Junction to Cactus. It was unable to respond. That furnished yet more evidence of the new conditions.
The Sixth Fleet, Japan’s submarine force, was loath to accept supply duty. With his flag in light cruiser Katori at Truk, Vice Admiral Marquis Komatsu Teruhisa convened his senior officers to consider the task. Submariners uniformly opposed halting war patrols to become underwater trucks. Komatsu’s staff, led by Rear Admiral Mito Hisachi and Captain Kanaoka Tomojiro, participated in the heated discussion. Komatsu finally held up his hand. “Our Army troops…are starving on Guadalcanal. They used the last of their rations several days ago. More than a hundred men are dying from hunger daily. Many of the rest are eating grass. Very few men are fit for fighting.” Komatsu looked around the wardroom. “What are we to do,” he asked, “let our countrymen starve to death in the jungle?” The answer was obvious: “We must help them, no matter what sacrifices must be made in doing so!”
Use of the subs proved awkward from the start. I-boats were not designed as cargomen and lacked storage capacity or such equipment as cranes—except those designed to carry seaplanes. Diverting those, of course, meant cutting into Japanese scouting potential. Manhandling the cargo was slow, cumbersome, and, when subs were unloading at Guadalcanal, with the Cactus Air Force close by, dangerous. But each boatload meant two days’ sustenance for men on the island. The one distinct advantage of undersea transport was that vessels could approach shielded from attack until the last moment.
Supply specialists quickly hit upon a new technique: cleaning out oil barrels, loading them half-full with rice or matériel, then resealing them. The drums had buoyancy and would float. Sailors aboard Yamato experimented and confirmed feasibility. The drums could simply be tossed overboard for collection by men onshore or in motorboats. This limited the necessity to anchor and reduced vulnerability. It simplified unloading, though it also introduced supply collection difficulties—drums could drift away, and improperly sealed ones would sink. The men on Starvation Island also did not always have boats available for the recovery task, and sometimes lacked the strength to handle barrels on the beach. A further innovation greatly eased the unloading problem—strings of fifty drums could be tied together and lashed to the deck. Then submariners needed only emerge, cut the lashings, and the drum strings would float as the I-boat submerged. It was not long until the drum strings were in use on both subs and destroyers. Then Buna, on New Guinea, was added to the destinations. Tin cans, which quickly adopted the method also, typically carried four of the drum strings. Motorboats would recover them; then work parties of 200 men would roll them ashore.
The first submarine supply mission was carried out by Commander Nishino Kozo’s I-17. She stopped to load at Rabaul and then headed for Guadalcanal. Orbiting aircraft and nearby PT boats stymied his initial attempt on November 24, but the next night Nishino succeeded in delivering about eleven tons at Kamimbo. Each night thereafter brought another sub. The procedure soon became loading at Buin and sailing to the western tip of Guadalcanal. The subs typically carried twenty to thirty-two tons, and sixteen trips succeeded in the first month. The chief of staff of the Seventeenth Army, Lieutenant General Miyazaki Shuichi, estimated that more than 20,000 supply drums were carried to Guadalcanal, but only 20 to 30 percent of them actually reached the troops. Postwar inquiries determined that approximately 300 tons of supplies were delivered to Guadalcanal in this fashion. Other studies find submarine transports conveyed 1,115 tons to the island—very close to Miyazaki’s estimate.
Despite every precaution, submarine supply remained dangerous. The very first sub delivery had been cut short by the approach of American destroyer McCalla, which shot up the barges off Kamimbo and shelled the midget submarine base there. On the night of December 9, Lieutenant Jack Searles in the PT-59 was on patrol off Kamimbo when he saw a surfaced I-boat, with barges shuttling from the shore. Commander Togami Ichiro’s I-3, on her fourth supply run, was out of luck. Searles fired a pair of torpedoes. One crumpled the sub’s stern. Togami’s boat sank with all hands. Before the end of the campaign at least three more submarines would be lost on Guadalcanal supply sorties, off the beach or while returning from their missions. PT boats also routinely looked for floating drums, which they sank with machine guns and automatic cannon.
The I-boat gambit can only be seen as an expedient. Submarines could never move the quantities required for subsistence, much less to wage battle. That could be done only by surface ships, hence the Tokyo Express. It did not take Admiral Mikawa long to realize this, and he promptly ordered new destroyer missions. Mikawa had a free hand, since, during the last part of November, Combined Fleet was preoccupied with the fighting at Buna. The Eighth Fleet commander assigned Rear Admiral Tanaka to the effort, and planned a series of five Tokyo Express runs at three-day intervals to be confined to delivering supply drums. The critical inaugural sortie would establish the method.
Admiral Tanaka recalled destroyers on the Buna run and began preparations for his Tokyo Express. A practice exercise showed that the drum strings could be pushed overboard and recovered by barge operators. Tanaka summoned his officers to go over the mission. Briefings indicated that the Army had consumed its staples and would exhaust its supplies before the end of the month. Tanaka planned to take eight destroyers, six loaded with barrel strings, in all 1,089 drums. He himself would sail in Commander Kumabe Tsutae’s ship Naganami. There would also be a guardship, the Takanami. Both would carry full armament and be prepared to fight. The other vessels were stripped of torpedo reloads to reduce weight and free space for the drum strings. The Tokyo Express left Shortland soon after midnight on November 29–30. To outfox snoopers, Tanaka spent the morning steaming east before setting course for Cactus and Kamimbo Bay. Sure enough the aerial scouts kept watch. About noon the Tokyo Express changed its heading and went to twenty-four knots, and, hidden under ra
in clouds at midafternoon, accelerated to thirty knots.
SOPAC prepared a hot reception. Bull Halsey had reconstituted his cruiser-destroyer force as Task Force 67 under Admiral Kinkaid. The latter, finding the old problem of scratch units of ships that were strangers, had begun to whip them into shape when Nimitz suddenly recalled Kinkaid for the North Pacific command. Rear Admiral Carleton H. Wright succeeded him at the head of Task Force 67. In between exercises at Espíritu Santo, he compiled a generic battle plan. At 7:40 p.m. on November 29, Admiral Halsey ordered Wright to raise steam to intercept a Japanese force of eight destroyers and, possibly, half a dozen transports. At 11:00 p.m. SOPAC sent the execute order, telling Wright to place his ships off Cape Tassafaronga twenty-four hours later.
Although research has yet to uncover the actual intercept, this information had to be from radio intelligence. The precision of the notice, enumerating Tanaka’s exact force and its expected position a day in advance, leaves no room for doubt. Even the error in the warning—the mention of transports—suggests that the codebreakers, whose garble had the correct numbers for both the overall force and the loaded ships, but mistook cargomen for destroyer-transports. Halsey’s staff, well aware of previous Japanese attempts to get convoys to Cactus, filled in the blanks. The American PT boats at Tulagi were also ordered to stand down in the expectation that heavy ships would slug it out in Ironbottom Sound—more evidence of advance knowledge. Ultra had struck again. Wright left Espíritu only an hour later than Tanaka departed Shortland. By 3:00 a.m. on November 30, Wright’s Task Force 67 was at twenty-seven knots on its way through Torpedo Junction, where Japanese submarines had been thinned out.
