by John Prados
The daring of Halsey’s landing at Empress Augusta Bay is demonstrated with blinding clarity by the fact that the invasion site was but a few hours’ voyage from Fortress Rabaul, all of it under the Japanese air umbrella. This would be no Tokyo Express. A Japanese Navy force could leave Rabaul at speed, engage in a surface battle, and return in the space of a single night and dawn, before the bulk of Allied airpower could respond. The other major action of L-Day illustrates the point. That was Admiral Omori’s sortie to Empress Augusta Bay.
In a fitting bookend to Guadalcanal—and Mikawa’s triumph at Savo—Omori intended to go after the invasion transports that his predecessor had missed. Indeed, at the mission briefing in the gun room of heavy cruiser Myoko, Omori referred to the earlier battle and indicated they might surpass Mikawa’s achievement. One participant was Captain Hara Tameichi, who would bring along all three vessels of his division. Hara found it far-fetched that Omori Sentaro, who had not been in battle since Santa Cruz, could perform under the new conditions. A torpedoman par excellence, Omori had passed out with a distinguished record and returned to the torpedo school as an instructor no less than three times, in all spending more than a decade familiarizing Imperial Navy officers with the intricacies of these weapons. Omori had commanded destroyers, destroyer squadrons, and big ships too, including battleship Ise and now the heavy cruiser unit. It was Omori who had led the Kido Butai’s screen at Pearl Harbor, and he had played a role in the Japanese seizure of the Aleutians. But perhaps Hara was right. What Japan needed that South Pacific evening was a Blackbeard, a pirate destroyerman along the lines of the British Napoleonic hero Sir Edward Pellew. Omori Sentaro, well-informed and conscientious, better fit the mold of Alfred Thayer Mahan.
Admiral Omori gamely accepted the mission. In addition to the heavy cruisers Myoko and Haguro he would have two destroyer squadrons, each with a light cruiser and three tin cans. Hara’s unit sailed under Baron Ijuin of Squadron 3, who was in the Sendai. Ijuin made a point of telling his captain that he would depend especially on Hara, for the baron did not trust his aged flagship, which Ijuin had left behind on many previous missions. Squadron 10, under Rear Admiral Osugi Morikazu in the Agano, added another unfamiliar unit, though his light cruiser was among the most modern in the fleet. Admiral Omori himself noted the lack of experience working together as a disadvantage when the senior officers met, but pointed out that this had also been true for Mikawa off Guadalcanal.
It was not only Imperial Navy officers who had Guadalcanal on their minds. Bull Halsey code-named the Bougainville invasion Operation “Shoestring II.”
The Omori fleet sailed from Rabaul about 4:00 p.m. on L-Day. Before he could exit St. George’s Channel, Admiral Omori learned of a delay in loading troops aboard the five destroyers that were to transport them. He was forced to mark time in submarine-infested waters, already distressing him. It was past dark when the units finally joined together. As they exited the channel there was a contact Omori understood to be a real submarine. The southerly course he adopted to skirt it further delayed the mission. The admiral’s ambition to catch the Allied amphibious ships had already been frustrated—Halsey made sure those precious craft cleared before nightfall.
Awaiting the Japanese instead was Rear Admiral Merrill with his light cruisers Montpelier, Cleveland, Columbia, and Denver, along with eight destroyers in Empress Augusta Bay. The tin cans were under Captain Arleigh A. Burke, commanding Destroyer Squadron 23, the “Little Beavers.” Burke himself led the van of the American formation. Tip Merrill’s worst problem was that Burke’s destroyers had gone to refuel, but they rejoined before midnight. Halsey had carefully saturated the channel from Rabaul and the northern part of The Slot with night snoopers. The sea was calm. It was dark and drizzly, with the moon setting early and overcast obscuring the stars except where they shone through holes in the cloud. Captain Hara estimated visibility at about 5,500 yards but thought the night murky. A fateful encounter impended.
Omori’s cruisers were barely out of the channel when they began to overhear radio contact reports. In view of the delays in loading the troop force and avoiding the submarine, and the slower (twenty-six-knot) speed of the transport destroyers, Admiral Omori recommended that the counterlanding be canceled. Kusaka agreed—but ordered Omori ahead to attack the Allied invasion fleet anyway. The dispatch came through at 11:30 p.m., with Omori less than two hours from the invasion area. The fleet commander leaped ahead at thirty-two knots.
The Americans had radar-equipped aircraft (of the 5th Bomb Group) watching from above the clouds. Tip Merrill made a point of commending the accuracy of the aerial scouts in his after-action report. Early on one plane dived to bomb the Sendai; later a bomber tried its luck against Haguro. She was hit amidships, opening up some side plates. Omori altered course to follow one mistaken sighting report, then pressed forward at a reduced speed of eighteen knots. Scouts claimed several battleships plus many cruisers and destroyers were in Empress Augusta Bay. At 1:40 a.m., a Haguro floatplane reported ships only twenty miles away.
The Omori fleet went to thirty knots after another erroneous report that U.S. transports were unloading off the invasion beaches. The admiral discovered that the Haguro’s damage now restricted him to that speed. With the conflicting reports Admiral Omori ordered a course reversal to await clarification. Rain pelted the warships. After about ten minutes Omori again headed for Empress Augusta Bay. The double course change threw the formation into confusion. Shortly after they came about the second time, Captain Hara spotted a red flare in the distance and ordered a warning message.
At about the same moment, 2:27 a.m., American radars spotted the Omori fleet, beginning with Baron Ijuin’s column. Tip Merrill intended to withhold fire with his cruisers while the tin cans executed a torpedo attack. Burke, whose estimate of when the Japanese would be seen was almost precisely correct, took his “Little Beavers” ahead immediately, and without further order launched half salvos of torpedoes. Commander Bernard L. Austin, with the trailing tin can unit, Destroyer Division 46, waited his own attack until Merrill came around to a southerly course. Omori’s task force had more difficulty detecting the Allies. Some of his ships were equipped with modified air search radars, but the admiral had little confidence in them. But Merrill watched the enemy carefully. The Japanese prompted his course change after Shigure detected warships at 2:45, and Omori began to react. All three Japanese columns turned to starboard, which Merrill interpreted as their assuming a line of battle. Admiral Omori never commented on his intentions. Hara saw the maneuver simply as turning away from torpedo water. Merrill’s cruisers opened fire four minutes later.
The Japanese fleet never regained its poise. Cruiser Sendai narrowly avoided colliding with the Shigure and became the prime target for Merrill’s cruisers. Following behind the Shigure, Lieutenant Commander Sugihara Yoshiro’s Samidare sideswiped the last destroyer in the column, Shiratsuyu. The latter’s hull crumpled under the shock. Her guns were disabled. Both ships, their speed now restricted to only fourteen to sixteen knots, simply left the battle area. Seaman Fahey on the Montpelier had a ringside seat, as only the five-and six-inch turrets were involved. He watched an inferno. “You sense a funny feeling as both task forces race toward each other,” Fahey told his diary. “It is very dark and heat lightning can be seen during the battle along with a drizzle. Our ship did not waste any time.”
Captain Shoji Kiichiro’s Sendai was surrounded by shell splashes and hit at least five times. Her rudder jammed. She coasted to a halt while the battle moved southward. Baron Ijuin signaled Captain Hara in the Shigure to come alongside and take off the crew, but the destroyer leader could not see any way to close with the blazing Sendai, and he hesitated to put his own destroyer in the American crosshairs. Hara conformed with Omori’s movement instead. Commander Austin came upon Sendai a half hour later and finished her off with torpedoes. Baron Ijuin and thirty-seven sailors were rescued by an I-boat. The rest went to Davy Jones’s locker.
Admiral Omori made the best of a bad lot. Captain Natsumura Katsuhiro’s Myoko, the flagship, saw Task Force 39 at 2:49 a.m. Natsumura ordered torpedo action to starboard, then to port as the ship circled and steadied on a southwesterly heading. At 3:07 the destroyer Hatsukaze collided with the heavy cruiser, scraping her beam to port, tearing off two torpedo tubes. The destroyer was cut in half. Captain Natsumura ordered star shells to illuminate the scene, but apparently they were duds. He opened fire with armor-piercing shells at 3:17. Myoko launched four torpedoes and the Haguro six more. Captain Matsubara Hiroshi’s Agano fired eight torpedoes from 2:51. American shells fell thick around her starting seven minutes later, and Matsubara’s evasive action confused the formation, which could not re-form until a half hour later. Squadron commander Osugi ordered torpedo action, but the Haguro now lay between Agano, her consorts, and the Americans, so Rear Admiral Osugi canceled it. Cruiser Haguro fired on Merrill’s ships. Jim Fahey saw shells falling all around. The Montpelier was struck by two torpedoes, duds at the end of their runs, which bounced off instead of opening her hull. The Denver caught a shell that fell right down a stack but apparently was a dud too. She was hit four more times. Destroyer Foote, crippled by a torpedo, lay dead in the water. The tin can Spence absorbed a shell hit without serious damage, and she too was sideswiped, by another American destroyer.
To maintain a steady course for gun laying, Admiral Merrill coolly ordered a series of simultaneous turns by his cruisers, despite his fifty-year-old navigation charts and a near collision with a U.S. destroyer. Fahey recorded, “They say the maneuvers Admiral Merrill pulled off in this sea battle would put German Admiral Scheer of World War I fame to shame. Scheer pulled his tactics in daylight off Jutland but Merrill had darkness to cope with and twice the speed.” In a display of their enormous capacity for volume gunfire, the American cruisers fired more than 4,500 six-inch shells, the Montpelier alone accounting for a third of that total. Considering that Merrill had just carried out surface bombardments of Buka and Shortland, and that his crews had gotten only two hours’ sleep, this gunnery is remarkable. The cruisers also fired 700 five-inch shells, while destroyers expended 2,600 rounds.
At 3:37 a.m. Admiral Omori ordered his fleet to withdraw. He told U.S. interrogators after the war that he based his decision on several factors. He remained uncertain of the composition of Merrill’s force, and feared it might have as many as seven cruisers and a dozen destroyers. Omori himself had already lost the equivalent of one of his two destroyer squadrons—Sendai and Hatsukaze sunk and two tin cans disabled by collision. Formation speed was down due to the Haguro’s bomb damage, Myoko had sustained structural damage in her collision, the supply of star shells had been exhausted—and Omori wanted to be beyond the range of Allied airpower, or at least under a Japanese air umbrella, before dawn. Merrill pursued until about 5:00 a.m. Omori’s battered ships entered Simpson Harbor that afternoon. The crippled destroyers Shiratsuyu and Samidare arrived the next day.
Captain Uozumi Jisaku’s Haguro absorbed half a dozen shells—Omori notes that four of them were duds—and the Myoko had been hit twice. Morison mentions hits on the Agano only as a possibility, and indeed that cruiser’s action record notes none. The Hatsukaze, crippled by her collision with Myoko, sank with all hands. In terms of breaking up the invasion, Admiral Omori accomplished nothing. The Imperial Navy’s vaunted superiority at night combat had eroded. In fact, Admiral Omori would cite a lack of training in night operations as the main reason for the hapless collisions among his vessels that night. The Japanese warships smashed into each other like kids playing at crash cars in a theme park. The Americans had perfected the marriage of technology and manual efficiency that made their radar-controlled gunnery so formidable.
Inevitably the Allied riposte went against Rabaul itself. George Kenney’s air force returned determined to make good for the weather that had bedeviled its strikes. On November 2, Kenney’s airmen executed a large-scale low-altitude attack. Using B-25 bombers adapted for strafing, skip bombing, and all the tricks in the bag, the raid aimed at Simpson Harbor, not just the airfields. This was the action Kenney recalled as his toughest. More than a hundred JNAF fighters rose to fight, half of them crack carrier pilots. The assault formations had seventy-five B-25s and eighty P-38s—Japanese plane counters tabulated more than a hundred of each.
The Slot
Imperial Navy fliers had begun calling Rabaul the “graveyard of the fighter pilots,” and this battle shows why. Captain Jerry Johnston led the P-38s. His deputy was Dick Bong. Then the Army’s leading ace, Bong had splashed two Japanese during the October 29 attack. This time he came up empty-handed. “Fate determines at birth where and when you will die,” ruminated Petty Officer Tanimizu Takeo. “Since there was nothing I could do about it I didn’t worry too much.” P-38s of the 431st Fighter Squadron had a field day. Lieutenant Marion Kirby saw Zeroes hammering a B-25 and swung in on them, flaming two. The third got behind him, but wingman Fred Champlin came from nowhere and flamed it. Elsewhere a determined Japanese trying to ram P-38s was taken on by Leo Mayo of the 432nd. Mayo’s P-38 was actually crippled when the JNAF fighter exploded in front of him, shearing off his wing. Ensign Okabe Kenji off the Shokaku, an ace since the Coral Sea, added to his score. But the heavy flak made the air as dangerous for JNAF interceptors as for the Americans. Most of the action took place between 4,000 and 7,000 feet altitude, where even light AA could be lethal. Americans claimed forty-one Zeroes destroyed plus thirteen probables (with thirty-seven more destroyed or probables by the bombers). By Japanese count their loss amounted to twenty aircraft.
It was early afternoon, so the sun blinded pilots when the enemy dived on them from above. Petty Officer Tanimizu notes, “P-38s at low altitude were easy prey…. Their weakest spot was their tail. A 20mm hit and their tails would snap off.” The Japanese kept up the fight past the end of the attack, pursuing retreating aircraft for sixty miles beyond Rabaul. But no one had a lock on accurate reporting. The Japanese claimed to have downed thirty-six B-25s and eighty-five P-38s. General Kenney admits to nine bombers and ten fighters lost.
The bombing was another matter. Omori’s flotilla, just returned from the debacle at Empress Augusta Bay, was a juicy target. Captain Hara got his destroyers under way quite quickly. His Shigure sat right under the attackers’ flight path. “The enemy planes practically flew into our gunfire,” Hara wrote. “I saw at least five planes knocked down by Shigure.” The bigger ships were equally alert. Captain Uozumi of Haguro had her on emergency standby and immediately raised anchor. He used all his guns—eighteen rounds of eight-inch fire, 158 shells from the high-angle weapons, more than 3,000 rapid-fire rounds—and claimed eight bombers. The Myoko recorded a dozen B-25s for twenty-seven heavy shells, seventy-seven rounds of high-angle fire, and 3,200 25mm and 13mm rounds. Captain Nakamura’s ship endured a near miss that cracked the cradle of a low-pressure turbine.
Major Raymond H. Wilkes, who led one of the B-25 squadrons and was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor, went in with the last attack wave. By now the Japanese were blanketing the harbor with flak. According to his citation, Wilkes blew up a destroyer with his 1,000-pound bomb, hit a transport, and then strafed a heavy cruiser to attract her fire and enable his mates to escape. Kenney claimed to have wrecked half of Rabaul, blown up depots with 300,000 tons of supplies, taken out thirty planes on the ground, and destroyed or damaged 114,000 tons of shipping. All of this in twelve minutes. George Kenney wrote, “Never in the long history of warfare had so much destruction been wrought upon the forces of a belligerent nation so swiftly and at such little cost to the attacker.” Given the evolution of the strategic balance, this hyperbole was not necessary. It was also transparent. Before Kenney wrote, developments such as the atomic bombs or the fire raids on Japan had occurred. Postwar record checks put actual losses at a minesweeper plus two small freighters aggregating 4,600 tons. Samuel Eliot Morison comments, “Never, indeed, have such exorbitant claims been made with so l
ittle basis in fact—except by some of the Army Air Forces in Europe, and by the same Japanese air force which General Kenney believed he had wiped out.”
Disputes over results aside, there could be no doubt Rabaul was besieged. If the October strikes had not made that clear, the attack of November 2 put the writing on the wall. With grim determination Combined Fleet now poured its most mobile surface asset into this cauldron. Admiral Koga believed himself following up on Omori’s achievements—to save face the latter had reported sinking and damaging cruisers and destroyers. Koga wanted to send Vice Admiral Kurita’s fleet to administer the coup de grâce. Area commander Kusaka, aghast at the vulnerability revealed in the latest attack, tried to dissuade the C-in-C. Koga let the maneuver proceed. The heavy cruisers of Kurita Takeo’s Second Fleet sailed. About to put his head into the lion’s mouth, Kurita believed in victory. The Kurita fleet weighed anchor at 9:00 a.m. on November 3, departing by Truk’s south channel.
BROKEN ARROW
Admiral Kurita’s voyage at first went without incident. Unknown to him, however, before the day was out so was his secret. In his memoir William F. Halsey makes a point of noting that the first he learned of the Kurita fleet, “the most desperate emergency that confronted me in my entire term,” was when it was sighted by a scout plane. Written soon after the war, this was for public consumption, intended to preserve the Ultra secret. In reality, as early as October 28, Halsey exchanged messages with Nimitz predicting a Japanese fleet move from Truk in response to the Bougainville invasion. Nimitz promised a carrier group to reinforce the South Pacific, but it was still on the way. Ultra furnished concrete opportunity to craft an actual plan—on November 3, with the Second Fleet barely out of Truk, the codebreakers placed Kurita at sea headed south. Better than that, they reported his time of departure and the precise composition of Kurita’s force—eight heavy cruisers plus Destroyer Squadron 2. Ultra had again broken into JN-25.
