v1.0.6 / chapter 1 of 2 / 01 oct 10 / greg goebel / public domain
* The Guadalcanal campaign began with green American sailors and Marines taking the fight to an aggressive enemy that had given the US a succession of thorough and humiliating beatings through much of the previous year. The action took the Japanese off guard, and they were slow to respond to the threat. The fight would go on for months before either side knew what they were up against.
* After the Japanese attacked the US Navy base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on 7 December 1941, Imperial Japan appeared unstoppable. The Americans were quickly crushed in the Philippines, the British were run out of Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, and the Dutch East Indies were overrun. The Japanese seized a widespread network of islands in the Pacific to provide bases to protect their new empire, and pushed southeast to the northern coast of New Guinea, as well as the Solomon Islands chain that flanked Australia to the northeast.
The Japanese push towards Australia was halted in early May 1942, when a naval thrust intended to extend Japanese control southwest of New Guinea was blunted and forced to turn back in the Battle of the Coral Sea. The US Navy got somewhat the worse in the fight, but it was a strategic victory, and it also demonstrated that the US could hold its own in a fight with the Japanese. The Japan's war machine then suffered a major blow in early June 1942, when their fleet suffered disastrous losses in a confrontation with the US Navy near Midway Island. Checking the Japanese drive was not enough. It had to be put into reverse. The first clear opportunity and need to deliver a counterstroke finally became apparent not long after the Battle of Midway.
* Beginning in 1919, the Royal Australian Navy had organized a network of volunteer observers on the coast of Australia. These "coastwatchers" reported any strange incidents, such as the appearance of foreign or unknown vessels and aircraft. In 1939, in response to reports that the Japanese seemed unusually interested in the islands to the north, the Australians expanded the coastwatcher network to those islands. The island coastwatchers were recruited from local traders, government workers, planters, and missionaries who knew their surroundings well and had good relationships with the locals. The coastwatchers were given radios and special codes for sending information back to the Australian intelligence network. They were instructed to avoid combat, and hidden emergency stations were set up where they could continue to operate even if their islands were captured.
In January 1942, the Japanese had occupied the island of New Britain, meeting little resistance. New Britain is a large island, over 320 kilometers (200 miles) long, off the northeast coast of New Guinea. At the north end of New Britain is the town of Rabaul, which the Japanese proceeded to turn into their major advance base in the region.
The Solomons chain stretches southeast of New Britain. Looking at a map of the Solomons doesn't give a good idea of their extent. The chain is about 1,450 kilometers (900 miles) long, about the length of a drive up the American West Coast from the Mexican border to the Canadian border. There are many islands in the Solomons chain. The largest are, from the northwest to the southeast, Bougainville; Choiseul; New Georgia; Santa Isabel; Guadalcanal; Malaita; and San Cristobal. Bougainville is the largest, a little over 160 kilometers (100 miles) long, about the size of the US state of Massachusetts. Guadalcanal is slightly smaller.
Directly east of the Solomons are the Santa Cruz Islands; a turn to the south leads to the New Hebrides, and then a curve back southwest leads to New Caledonia. Across the wide Pacific to the east of this constellation of islands lie other island chains: the Fijis, Samoa, the Cook Islands. Far to the south lies New Zealand.
* After the capture of New Britain, in February the Japanese began to conduct air raids against Port Moresby, the Australian naval station on the southern coast of New Guinea. In March, the Japanese landed on the northeast coast of New Guinea and quickly established bases there. Rugged mountains run down the length of New Guinea and the jungles of the interior are nearly impenetrable, so the southern coast of the island was safe from direct attack for the moment. The Japanese threat to all of New Guinea and Australia proper remained immediate and serious, since they also moved to occupy the Solomons, which made a convenient set of stepping stones for further moves that would eventually cut the sea lanes between Australia and America.
North of Guadalcanal is the smaller Florida Island, which possesses a fine natural harbor on its south coast, protected from the open sea by the tiny island of Tulagi. The British administrative capital of the Solomons was on Tulagi, and in May 1942 the Japanese moved in and occupied the little island.
In June, coastwatchers reported that the Japanese had also occupied the northwest coast of Guadalcanal opposite Florida Island and were building an airstrip there. From there, the Japanese would be able to stage air and sea attacks on Allied bases in the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, the Fijis, and Samoa, and interfere with shipping between the US and Australia. If Tulagi and Guadalcanal were not retaken quickly, the Japanese would improve their chokehold on Australia and make countermoves all that much more difficult in the future.
* Military operations in the South Pacific fell to the Americans. The US Army was committed to a "Europe First" strategy in which America focused on defeating Nazi Germany, while performing holding actions in the Pacific until that was accomplished. The US Navy had misgivings about this strategy, but ironically the push for taking action in the Pacific came from Winston Churchill. The Australians and New Zealanders were supporting the British war effort in North Africa and elsewhere. Under threat of Japanese invasion, the Australian government wanted to pull half their forces back to Australia for home defense. It made no sense to withdraw Australian forces from existing military operations and then wait for the Americans to fill the vacuum in the war against the Nazis. It made perfect sense to leave the Australians where they were and send new American units to the South Pacific to defend Australia.
Small American Army units were sent to Christmas Island, south of Hawaii just above the equator, and Canton Island, in the Phoenix group to the southwest. The US Navy set up a base on Bora Bora in the French Polynesia group, and sent Marines to reinforce Samoa. Since there were critical supplies of chromium and other metals on New Caledonia, a full new US Army division was formed up there from smaller units, and given the named of the "Americal" division, for "Americans in New Caledonia".
* Simply deploying these forces defensively wasn't enough. America was collectively enraged at the Japanese for the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, and failing to take the fight back to the Japanese would further demoralize a public that had been living largely on reports of defeats for much of the past year.
Back in Washington, a political struggle was underway. Technically, the Solomons fell under the responsibility of Army General Douglas MacArthur, who in March had been assigned command of the "Southwest Pacific Area". This included an enormous arc of territory, curving down from the Philippines, through Southeast Asia and the East Indies, and then into Australia, New Guinea, and many of the island chains in the area. MacArthur directed operations from his headquarters in Melbourne, Australia.
The Pacific to the north and east of MacArthur's command was similarly designated the "Pacific Ocean Areas", and was the responsibility of Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, operating from his headquarters in Honolulu. His domain included the Marshalls, the Carolines, the Marianas, the Fijis, Samoa, New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, and New Zealand.
Both MacArthur and Nimitz felt that the only way to eliminate the Japanese threat to Australia was to retake Rabaul. MacArthur wanted to attack Rabaul directly, using two of Nimitz's carriers and the 1st Marine Division to help do the job. MacArthur felt he could drive the Japanese out of the area in a few weeks. Although in hindsight such a proposal was a fantasy, even the moderate Army Chief of Staff, General George Marshall, was enthusiastic enough to press the idea with his opposite number, Navy Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Ernest J. King.
The Navy was appalled at the idea. The Navy's precious carriers would have little room for maneuver in the approaches to Rabaul and would be subject to persistent attacks from Japanese aircraft based there. MacArthur's extreme egotism and overbearing style did nothing to ease Navy fears. The Navy wanted to take Guadalcanal first, and insisted that it should be a Navy operation, since all the American resources involved were Navy. Admiral King was every bit as big an SOB as MacArthur and rejected the Army's plans in blunt terms. MacArthur exploded, sending angry messages back to Washington that accused the Navy of trying to take over the whole show.
The diplomatic Marshall sat down with King and talked it out. King was not a pleasant person to deal with, but he was far from stupid and Marshall's credibility, coolness, and sensibility were enough to allow them to come to an agreement. To resolve the dispute, the Joint Chiefs of Staff adjusted the border between the domains of MacArthur and Nimitz. Nimitz would get his assault on Guadalcanal and Tulagi. MacArthur was assigned to move against the Japanese in eastern New Guinea; Rabaul; and the western Solomons.
The plan was approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 2 July 1942. At the time, the military situation for the Allies was extremely desperate. The Germans had just seized Sebastopol in the Crimea, the British were in full retreat back to Egypt in North Africa, and German U-boats were sinking Atlantic convoy shipping at an appalling rate. Marshall regarded it as "a very black hour."
* Resources were scraped up for the assault on Tulagi and Guadalcanal, codenamed Operation WATCHTOWER, under the overall command of Vice Admiral Robert L. Ghormley, operating from the US Navy base in Noumea on New Caledonia. Ghormley assigned tactical control of the operation to Vice Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, who had fought at the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway. The main assault force was to be the 1st Marine Division, then assembling in Wellington, New Zealand, under the command of Major General Alexander Archer "Archie" Vandegrift. The Amphibious Force that would carry and land the Marines was under the command of Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner.
The 1st Marine Division had been scheduled for six months' training before going into combat, but now they were to be in action in about a month, in early August. Making preparations proved nightmarish. It was effectively winter in the Southern Hemisphere, the weather was cool and relentlessly rainy, and sick lists were long. Supplies were arriving by sea, but the shipments had not been well organized or planned, and the result was a confused mess on the docks. Vandegrift put his troops to work in shifts, unloading and sorting the material on the waterfront, and gave orders to focus only on the absolute necessities of fuel, ammunition, and supplies needed for combat operations. There wasn't enough of it all for comfort. The Marines renamed the effort SHOESTRING.
On 26 July, Vandegrift and Turner met with Fletcher at sea on board Fletcher's flagship, the carrier SARATOGA. Fletcher had little faith in the operation and was more concerned with protecting his carriers. There were only four US carriers in the Pacific, and three were committed to WATCHTOWER. Fletcher bluntly told Vandegrift and Turner that the carriers would only remain in the combat area for 48 hours after the first landing. Normal amphibious warfare doctrine was to keep the fleet around until the landing force was established -- and absolutely no longer, since during that time it was a sitting duck for air and naval attacks. Fletcher was cutting it much too thin for Vandegrift's and Turner's liking, but they were not being asked, they were being told, and there was nothing they could do about it.
* The Japanese remained almost entirely ignorant of these preparations. Many of the Japanese military command were suffering from "senshobyo (victory disease)". They had easily won almost every battle they had fought, and they had no reason to believe they would not win just as easily in the future. The defeat at Midway had not been made public and did not disturb this belief. Few senior military officers believed there would be a serious Allied counterstroke against Japan until well into 1943.
There were those among them who were more realistic in their thinking, including Lieutenant Commander Itoo Haruki of the Naval Intelligence Center in Tokyo. In late July, his unit identified two new Allied radio callsigns, both operating on the 4.205 megahertz band and communicating with Pearl Harbor. On 1 August, Japanese radio direction finders pinpointed the location of the stations as Melbourne and Noumea. Itoo correctly guessed these were headquarters for Allied operational forces, massing for an attack on New Guinea or the Solomons. He relayed an urgent warning to Truk, the main Japanese base in the central Pacific, and Rabaul. The warning was ignored.
* Before the end of July, US Navy Task Force 61 was under way, with 82 vessels carrying or protecting the 19,000 men of the 1st Marine Division. The Tulagi landing force was carried on four transports and four destroyers in service as assault transports. The Guadalcanal landing force was carried on a total of 15 transports and cargo vessels. The transports were escorted by eight cruisers -- three of them Australian -- and a destroyer screen. The carrier force remained about 160 kilometers (100 miles) to the south, and consisted of three carriers, one battleship, five heavy cruisers, sixteen destroyers, and three oilers.
On the night of 6 August, the Marines began their preparations for the landings. The carrier force moved to waters south of Guadalcanal, while the assault force steamed around the western end of the island.
Guadalcanal has a roughly oval shape, twisted north at the western end and south at the eastern end. The northwest tip is Cape Esperance, with the north coast running southeast until it reaches Tassafaronga Point, where it turns flat east until it reaches Taivu Point, then turns southeast again. The island's terrain is very rugged, with a spine of mountains running down the center and extending their reaches to the southern shore. The northern shore has level areas and hills, and is the only area practical for major military operations.
The airfield that the Japanese were building on the island was about halfway between Tassafaronga Point and Taivu Point, behind a place called Lunga Point. The airfield was flanked by the Ilu River to the east and the Mataniko River to the west. Well to the south of the airfield was a rugged peak named Mount Austen.
Directly north of Cape Esperance, about 15 kilometers (10 miles) offshore, is Savo Island, an oval a few kilometers wide. Florida Island is about 32 kilometers (20 miles) away, farther east, and is about 32 kilometers (20 miles) long. Its fine natural harbor faces Guadalcanal, protected from the sea by little Tulagi and a few other islets, including Tanambogo and Gavutu.
* When the sun came up on 7 August 1942, the Japanese on the islands were confronted by a huge fleet that had come out of nowhere. A Japanese radio operator on Tulagi keyed off a message to Rabaul: LARGE FORCE OF SHIPS, UNKNOWN NUMBER OR TYPES, ENTERING THE SOUND. WHAT CAN THEY BE?
He found out soon enough, since naval gunfire began to hit Japanese positions on Tulagi. He concluded with a final message: ENEMY FORCES OVERWHELMING. WE WILL DEFEND OUR POSTS TO THE DEATH, PRAYING FOR ETERNAL VICTORY. Then the shelling silenced the radio.
The radio operator spoke truly. For 31 hours the Japanese on Tulagi held out against the Marines, charging the Americans suicidally over the old cricket field and then firing on them from caves until the Marines blasted them out with explosive charges. The Japanese put up a similarly stubborn fight on Gavutu and Tanambogo, assisted by the fact that the two little islands were surrounded by coral reefs and the only places to land were fearfully exposed to fire.
The Marines lost 144 men killed and 194 wounded. There were about 800 Japanese on the three little islands. About 700 of them were killed, with only 23 captured, and only three of those voluntarily surrendering. The survivors fled to Florida Island; cleaning them out would take several weeks.
The landing on Guadalcanal itself was unopposed and there were no Marine casualties. The Japanese on the island were mostly poorly-armed construction engineers, many of them conscripted Korean laborers, and took off into the jungle in surprise. Things didn't remain quiet for long. Two hours after the first landing, the invasion fleet received a message from Paul Mason, an Australian coastwatcher on Bougainville, that 24 Japanese torpedo bombers were headed their way.
Actually, the raiding force consisted of 27 Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" twin engine bombers, plus an escort consisting of Mitsubishi Zero fighters. They had been preparing for a raid on New Guinea from Rabaul, but were hastily reassigned to attack the American fleet instead, even though Guadalcanal was 1,050 kilometers (650 miles) away and they were certain to run out of fuel. The Japanese aircraft were loaded with bombs and not torpedoes, making attacks on ships difficult, but they did what they could against the twisting and turning Allied vessels, antiaircraft fire, and Grumman F4F Wildcat carrier-based fighters.
A second wave of Japanese bombers followed two hours later, but though the attacks sent the Allied ships into wild maneuvers, disorganizing the landing, the bombers did no serious damage. Air battles would continue through the next day, with the Japanese losing 42 aircraft, many of them simply running out of gas, with the US Navy losing a destroyer and a transport, plus 21 fighters.
* The Marines suffered no casualties on Guadalcanal all through D-Day, and by the evening of 7 August there were 11,000 of them ashore. During the night, the inexperienced Marines were easily spooked by strange jungle sounds and prone to fire into the bush at nothing in particular. The next day, they moved inland against Henderson Field itself and captured it with little resistance.
The airfield was actually almost complete. The Marines had arrived just at
the right time to steal it from the Japanese. The Japanese had been too
surprised to destroy their equipment and supplies before they were evicted,
so the Marines also obtained trucks and construction equipment; fuel,
construction materials, and large stocks of food; and even an ice-making
machine. The Marines put up a sign:
TOJO ICE FACTORY -- Under New Management
The Marines had taken Guadalcanal easily. Keeping it was not going to be as
easy.
* When the news of the invasion of Guadalcanal reached Rabaul on 7 August. Lieutenant General Hyakutake Harukichi, commander of the Imperial Japanese 17th Army there, believed that the main Allied counterstroke would fall on New Guinea and that the Guadalcanal operation was merely a diversion.
Vice Admiral Mikawa Gunichi of the Imperial Navy strongly disagreed, correctly recognizing the landing as a serious offensive. The interservice rivalries between the Imperial Army and Navy were so bad that they made relations between the US military services look friendly in comparison, and Mikawa made little or no attempt to argue the matter with the Army. Instead, Mikawa threw together a scratch force of sailors and sent them immediately to Guadalcanal. He then asked the Navy General Staff in Tokyo for permission to launch a surface attack on the Allied fleet.
Navy Chief of Staff Admiral Nagano Osamu did not like the idea, believing that Mikawa might well be steaming into a trap. Nagano was overruled by his superior, Combined Fleet Commander Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, the military genius who had planned the Pearl Harbor attack. Yamamoto had faith in Mikawa's good sense and judgement and gave him the go-ahead.
That evening, Mikawa led a force of eight warships out of Rabaul harbor, with himself in command of the heavy cruiser CHOOKAI. There were eight vessels in the strike force, consisting of five heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and a destroyer. Mikawa hoped to obtain surprise by moving mostly at night, but his force was immediately spotted and reported by the US Navy submarine S-38, lying in secret outside Rabaul harbor.
Mikawa's fleet reached Bougainville at sunrise and dispersed to keep from attracting attention, while his search planes pinned down the location of the US fleet. However, in mid-morning the CHOOKAI was spotted by Australian Lockheed Hudson patrol bombers. Mikawa changed his mind and decided to proceed in daylight anyway. He reformed his column and set course towards Guadalcanal.
Mikawa's scout aircraft reported the Allied fleet was divided into two components -- but the carrier force wasn't part of either of them. Since Mikawa had no air cover himself, he was completely vulnerable to air attack, and he was not comfortable with the fact that he didn't know where the American carriers were. He planned to steam in quickly and hit the enemy fleet at about midnight, then withdraw in the dark before the sun came up and the carriers could launch strikes against him.
Luck, as the saying goes, favors the bold. Reports of Mikawa's movements by the S-38 and the Hudsons were fumbled. Admiral Turner had ordered a PBY Catalina to fly up the Solomons to scout out reported Japanese fleet movements, but the PBY never left; Turner wasn't told; and he was too busy trying to sort out the confusion caused by the air attacks to double-check. B-17s operating out of the New Hebrides simply missed Mikawa's force. The Allied amphibious force was sitting off Guadalcanal complacently, unaware of danger bearing down on it.
* If Mikawa had known exactly what was going on with the Allied fleet as his strike force closed on Guadalcanal, he would not have been able to believe his good luck. The landing force was not only unprepared, it was being deprived of air cover.
On the evening of 8 August, Turner summoned General Vandegrift to a conference on board Turner's flagship MCCAWLEY. Vandegrift took a small boat to the ship at around 2300 hours, and when he got there he was given very unpleasant news. Turner informed him that a Japanese surface fleet was on its way from to Guadalcanal from Rabaul, though Turner had muddled ideas about the composition and proximity of that force. He then followed this bad but not surprising news with something more startling: Vice Admiral Fletcher had become worried over aircraft losses and the vulnerability of his three carriers, and so he was pulling them out of the battle.
This was a shock to Vandegrift, but Fletcher's decision had been approved by his boss, Vice-Admiral Ghormley. Turner then followed this blow with another one: having lost air cover, he was pulling out his transports, even though 1,400 Marines and half the division's supplies were still on board. Vandegrift felt that Fletcher was "running away", but once more he was simply being told, and there wasn't much he could do about it except have his men unload as much as possible before the transports left and dig in until relief arrived, whenever that might be.
The meeting was also attended by Admiral Victor A.C. Crutchley, an easygoing red-bearded Briton who had received the Victoria Cross for his conduct during the Battle of Jutland in the First World War. Crutchley was in charge of the American and Australian cruisers and destroyers in the escort force. His presence at the meeting was to have serious consequences.
When Crutchley was summoned to the meeting, he went in his flagship, the cruiser AUSTRALIA, for reasons of speed. His command was patrolling in two separate groups. The northern group was under command of Captain Frederick L. Riefkohl of the cruiser VINCENNES. The southern group was in principle under command of Captain Howard D. Bode of the cruiser CHICAGO. It appears that Crutchley's force, having been put together in haste, was unsurprisingly not used to working together, and the command and control arrangements were poorly defined and confusing.
Even as the meeting was going on, Japanese scout floatplanes flew over the escort force. They were regarded as friendlies because their running lights were on and no alert had been received. Crutchley was not informed of the appearance of the scout planes, even though he would have known what they meant. Mikawa's fleet closed towards Guadalcanal in the darkness. Radio intercepts indicated the presence of the US Navy carrier force, but Mikawa still had no idea of its location or, fortunately for the Americans, its intentions.
At 0100 hours on 9 August, Mikawa's strike force cruised through the channel between Savo Island and Guadalcanal. They encountered a destroyer, the BLUE, on picket duty, but even though the BLUE had radar and the Japanese did not, it failed to notice the intruders and turned away. At 0136 hours a Japanese lookout spotted the core of the Allied southern force, consisting of the cruisers CHICAGO and CANBERRA and the destroyers PATTERSON and BAGLEY. Mikawa passed out a command, transmitted with hooded blinker lights from ship to ship: COMMENCE FIRING.
This meant launching torpedoes, since the Japanese relied heavily on their superb long-range "Long Lance" torpedo, superior to any weapon of its type in the world and far superior to American torpedoes, plagued by bugs that wouldn't be fixed for another year. Even though the Americans had taken a bitter taste of the Long Lance during the sea battles for Java, they still didn't really understand what they were up against.
Mikawa followed with another order: ALL SHIPS ATTACK. At 0143 a lookout on the PATTERSON spotted the Japanese strike force and radioed an alarm. It was too late. Long Lance torpedoes were already making tracks toward the Allied ships, and then flares dropped by Japanese scout planes lit up the night. The CANBERRA was put out of action immediately, hit by two torpedoes, followed by hits from Japanese shells. The cruiser listed, dead in the water, burning, wracked by explosions.
The two destroyers tried to fight back, but the PATTERSON was bracketed by searchlights and hit, putting it out of action. The BAGLEY got into position to fire torpedoes, but her torpedomen found their weapons had no firing primers. Captain Bode of the CHICAGO had been asleep and was running to the bridge just as Mikawa's warships singled her out. A torpedo struck the cruiser's bridge and the vessel was hit by a shell.
There was mass confusion among the Allied ships. On board the MCCAWLEY, Turner had no idea of what was going on. He could only think for the safety of his defenseless transport vessels. Crutchley and the AUSTRALIA were too far from the action to help, and in the chaos his broadcast orders were garbled, confusing matters further.
After about six minutes of pounding the southern force, Mikawa swung north to deal with the northern force, consisting of the cruisers VINCENNES, ASTORIA, and QUINCY, as well as two destroyers. By accident, Mikawa's column had split in half, but this had the useful effect of catching the Allied northern force in a crossfire.
At 0148, lookouts on the ASTORIA saw torpedoes pass by, a miss. General quarters were sounded and the ASTORIA tried to fire back. The ship's captain was confused, at first thinking he was being fired on by friendlies, then deciding to shoot back, friendlies or not. The defense was futile, since the CHOOKAI's guns bracketed the ASTORIA and smashed it, bringing the cruiser to a halt and setting it ablaze.
The captain of the QUINCY tried to charge the attackers with his ship, but was caught in the murderous crossfire. A shell wiped out the bridge, killing most of the crew there, including the captain. The QUINCY stopped and began to sink. On board the VINCENNES, Captain Riefkohl had no idea he was in a fight until shells started falling. The VINCENNES took torpedo and shell hits.
Riefkohl was thinking of ordering ABANDON SHIP at 0215 when the firing stopped. Mikawa felt he had done enough damage, the CHOOKAI had taken three hits herself, and his strike force was disorganized. The American transports were still there, but Mikawa wanted to be long gone before sunrise. He was worried about his lack of air cover, and when daylight came he assumed that American carrier-based planes would arrive, looking for revenge. Based on the intelligence available to him it was a sensible decision, though in fact he missed a great opportunity.
There was another reason Mikawa decided to leave. Although he was a cool and calculating warrior, even he had been indirectly infected with the victory disease. The Army had assured him that American soldiers were worthless. They weren't worth risking his precious and irreplaceable cruisers.
The QUINCY went down shortly after Mikawa left, followed soon after by the VINCENNES. The CANBERRA struggled on until morning, when it was finally sunk by the surviving ships in the force, while the ASTORIA sank shortly after noon. The CHICAGO and the PATTERSON were badly damaged. The four sunken vessels would be joined by others in the coming months, until the sea to the north of Guadalcanal became known as "Iron Bottom Sound".
1,077 Allied sailors were killed and 700 were injured, left floundering in the sea. Captain Riefkohl lived on to be a broken man. Captain Bode killed himself. Admiral Turner chalked up the defeat to a bizarre US Navy version of the victory disease, based on contempt for the "Japs", judged backwards and incapable despite very strong evidence to the contrary, leading to a lack of readiness. US Navy officers also hadn't yet realized that their prewar training doctrine, on which they placed great faith, was largely unrealistic. There was a failure to realize that neat setpiece exercises had very little relationship to the ugly, chaotic, savage brutality of a real battle.
Mikawa would be severely criticized by Admiral Yamamoto for his failure to wipe out the American transports. That was the only small consolation to the US Navy in the Battle of Savo Island, one of the most humiliatingly one-sided defeats in American naval history. It was of very little consolation to Vandegrift. When the sun came up, the transports picked up survivors and headed out to sea towards New Caledonia with what was left of the escort force. The Marines were now completely on their own.
* For the moment, the Japanese Navy felt satisfied with their victory at Savo Island, but there remained the small matter of the American landing force. The victory disease also infected Imperial Navy intelligence, resulting in an estimate of only 2,000 US Marines on Guadalcanal. The Navy asked the Army to clean them out, and appropriate orders were relayed to General Hyakutake, commander of the Japanese 17th Army in Rabaul.
6,000 men were available for operations against Guadalcanal, including a 500 man Special Naval Landing Force; an army detachment of 2,000 men under Colonel Kiyono Ichiki; and 3,500 men under General Kawaguchi Kiyotake. In reality, there were 11,000 Marines on Guadalcanal and 6,000 on Tulagi. Their numbers were offset by the fact that they had been left with barely enough food for a month, and inadequate ammunition and other supplies. Most of the heavy weapons and equipment hadn't been unloaded from the transports before they left.
The Japanese bombed the Marines every day at noon, and Japanese destroyers and cruisers often steamed off the coastline and fired their main guns inland. Even without the bombardments, conditions were difficult. Guadalcanal looked like a tropical paradise from a distance, but up close it was a hot stinking jungle that smelled like a cesspool. It was populated by spiders, centipedes, leeches, clouds of malarial mosquitoes, and other vermin of which the Marines had never seen the like. The flies were so thick it was difficult to eat without swallowing them with each spoonful.
The Japanese who had run away during the landing were now becoming a more tangible threat as well. On 12 August, a patrol of 26 Marines took a boat up the shoreline to follow up a hint by a Japanese prisoner that there were some other Japanese who might want to surrender. They found Japanese, but not ones who were in any mood to surrender. Only three of the patrol survived, managing to swim away to safety.
The hardships motivated rather than demoralized the Marines. To survive, they would have to dig in and get the airfield finished. They named it Henderson Field, after Major Lofton R. Henderson, a Marine pilot who had been lost at Midway. They only had a single bulldozer, and only its operator, Private Roy F. Cate, was allowed to touch it. It worked until it fell to pieces. The Marines also used the tools and supplies left by the Japanese to get the job done.
The Marines found they had help from the locals, under the supervision of the resident coastwatcher, a Briton named Martin Clemens, who walked into Marine lines on 15 August with an escort of natives. Assistance was also starting to come in by sea again, with four destroyer-transports showing up on the same day with supplies for the air base.
By 20 August 1942, Henderson Field was ready for use. That evening, as General Vandegrift wrote later: "From the east, flying into the evening Sun came one of the most beautiful sights of my life -- a flight of 12 SBD dive bombers." The bombers were under the command of Marine Major Richard D. Mangrum. Vandegrift wrote, with a bit of sentimentality not normally associated with a US Marine general: "I was close to tears and I was not alone, when the first SBD taxied up and this handsome and dashing aviator jumped to the ground. 'Thank God you have come,' I told him."
The dive bombers were followed by 19 Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters, led by Marine Captain John L. Smith. The aircraft had flown from the carrier LONG ISLAND, which was about 320 kilometers (200 miles) south of Guadalcanal at the time. Since the code name for the island was CACTUS, the aircraft became the core of the "Cactus Air Force". The isolation of the Marines was ending. The timing was just about perfect: the Japanese were preparing to retake Guadalcanal.
* Just before midnight on 18 August, six Japanese destroyers dropped off Colonel Ichiki Kiyonao and 915 of his men at Taivu Point, 32 kilometers (20 miles) east of Henderson Field. Ichiki had been ordered to wait for the rest of his men, who would arrive the next week, but he was confident of victory and set off for Henderson Field immediately, leaving behind a detachment of 125 men to guard the beach.
Marine lookouts heard the ships go by. General Vandegrift also received reports of a landing to the west, which in fact was the 500 man Special Naval Landing Force. While this smaller unit would never take significant actions against him, Vandegrift was concerned that the Japanese were organizing a counterattack and sent out patrols to locate the enemy.
Ichiki's men had combat experience in China and he felt they could easily defeat the soft Americans. He made little attempt to determine their strength. Colonel Ichiki was so confident that he wrote in his diary ahead of time: "21 August. Enjoyment of the fruits of victory."
In fact, the Marines were waiting for him, since a Marine patrol had run into a Japanese patrol on the 19th. The Marines all but wiped out the Japanese, and inspections of the dead showed them carrying maps and diaries that suggested an attack was imminent. Martin Clemens' local scouts also proved useful, and in some cases courageous. A local named Jacob Vouza led a group of his fellows on a search and managed to locate Ichiki's force, but when Vouza tried to crawl close to learn more, he was captured by the Japanese. Vouza was tied to a tree for interrogation, beaten to a pulp with rifle butts, stabbed twice with bayonets in the chest, and when he still refused to talk, stabbed in the throat and left for dead. Incredibly, he survived and managed to chew through his ropes that night. He crawled back to Martin Clemens and warned that hundreds of Japanese were preparing to attack them. "I did not tell them," he said before he passed out. Vouza would recover, and would be awarded the Silver Star and even be granted the rank of sergeant-major by the Marines. However, by the time he had informed Clemens of the impending attack, it was already in progress.
* In the dark hours of the morning of 21 August, Ichiki led his men in an attack on Marine positions on the western side of the Ilu River, mismarked on Marine maps as the Tenaru River, a stream that ran north across the western approaches to Henderson Field. The main attack was across a sandspit at the mouth of the Ilu and jumped off from a coconut grove on the east side of the river.
The Marines were dug in, waiting, and simply slaughtered Ichiki's men. They were hit by Marine 37 millimeter antitank guns firing canister rounds; tripped and tangled by barbed wire; mowed down by Marine machine guns and Springfield rifles. The Japanese managed to break through the Marine lines in a few places, leading to vicious hand to hand fighting, but Marine reserve platoons counterattacked and drove them back. The Japanese continued their futile assault until sunrise. Vandegrift, seeing that his defenses were solid, ordered a counterstroke, sending a reserve battalion upriver to cross over and hit the Japanese from the flank and rear.
The Japanese had fought with reckless courage during the night, but had suffered terribly. They had not been expected such savage resistance, and when the counterattack hit them, they broke and ran. Marine aircraft strafed and bombed them as they fled up the beach.
Early in the afternoon, Vandegrift's encirclement trapped most of them in the coconut grove. Their position was hopeless, but they would not surrender. Vandegrift decided he had to simply exterminate them, sending five M-3 Stuart light tanks across the sandspit into the coconut grove. The tanks pushed through the grove, striking down the Japanese with canister and machine guns, or simply running them down until, as Vandegrift wrote, "the rear of the tanks looked like meat grinders." The Japanese managed to blow a track off one the tanks, but the others simply closed ranks with the disabled vehicle, rescued the crew, and resumed their slaughter.
At dusk, Colonel Ichiki ordered the regimental colors burned. This attracted the attention of one of the tanks, but before he could be cut down, Ichiki committed seppuku -- ritual suicide by disembowelment. Only two of Ichiki's assault force survived, by hiding in the water until the sun went down, allowing them to escape to rejoin their colleagues at Taivu Point. Almost 800 Japanese were dead, at the cost of 35 dead and 75 wounded Americans. Pictures survive of some of the Japanese slain at the sandspit, sad-looking bundles lying half-buried by the tide; their faces look strangely peaceful.
The complete defeat of Ichiki's bungled assault was a wake-up call to the Japanese Army and Navy commands. They were beginning to realize that the battle for Guadalcanal was going to be no sideshow, and that they were up against an enemy that was willing and able to fight. The Battle of the Ilu River was also a wake-up call to Vandegrift and his Marines. Vandegrift wrote to a colleague a few days later:
BEGIN QUOTE:
General, I have never heard or read of this kind of fighting. These people refuse to surrender. The wounded wait until men come up to examine them .., and blow themselves and the other fellow to pieces with a hand grenade.
END QUOTE
The Japanese showed little mercy and expected little in return. To the extent the Marines thought of taking prisoners, they soon decided not to bother.
* Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku wanted to make Guadalcanal the bait for the decisive naval battle with the Americans that the Japanese hoped would finally resolve the war in the Pacific.
The remainder of Ichiki's troops had been en route to Guadalcanal in transports when the news of the defeat at the Ilu River arrived. The transports regrouped and joined up with an escort force consisting of a cruiser and several destroyers, with the convoy under the general command of Rear Admiral Tanaka Raizoo. This amounted to an independent component of a larger naval attack force under Vice Admiral Kondo Nobutake steaming eastward of the troop convoy to find the American fleet. The attack force included the two heavy carriers ZUIKAKU and SHOKAKU, the light carrier RYUUJOO, two battleships, 11 cruisers, and 19 destroyers.
Admiral Ghormley was ready to do battle and dispatched Fletcher with Task Force 61 to meet the Japanese. Task Force 61 consisted of the carriers SARATOGA, ENTERRPRISE, and WASP, along with seven cruisers and 18 destroyers. By sunrise on 23 August, Task Force 61 was in position some 240 kilometers (150 miles) to the east of Guadalcanal. Later that day, American patrol aircraft spotted Tanaka's little fleet of transports and their escorts, but Tanaka abruptly changed course that afternoon to (successfully) throw the Americans off the scent, and Kondo soon did the same with similar results.
Fletcher believed that the abrupt disappearance of the Japanese meant an engagement wasn't imminent, and sent the WASP and its escorts south to refuel. In fact, the Japanese were simply maneuvering to lure the Americans into a trap. The light carrier RYUUJOO and its escorts were sent out separately as a diversion. At about 0900 hours on 24 August, an American patrol plane spotted the diversionary group, about 450 kilometers (280 miles) to the northwest of Task Force 61. Fletcher hesitated until RYUUJOO launched air strikes against Henderson Field early that afternoon.
Fletcher immediately launched 30 SBD Dauntless dive bombers and eight Devastator torpedo bombers against RYUUJOO. In mid-afternoon, the American found the little carrier and hit it with about four bombs and a torpedo. The carrier went dead in the water and soon sank. However, the attack alerted the main Japanese force to the location of Task Force 61, and Japanese carriers launched air strikes of their own. Aichi D3A dive bombers managed to penetrate the Wildcat fighter screen and scored three hits on the ENTERPRISE. Although the ship's damage control teams responded quickly and effectively, 76 sailors were killed and the ENTERPRISE had to return to Pearl Harbor for major repairs that would require months.
Fletcher now had only one carrier available for battle. Not only did that reduce the number of aircraft available for a fight, but if the SARATOGA were hit, his fleet would be left without air cover. He decided to withdraw.
The Battle of the Eastern Solomons, as the incident would be known, was more or less a draw in terms of naval damage, but the Japanese lost about 75 aircraft, while the Americans lost about 25. The Americans could easily make good their losses while the Japanese could not, with replacement of skilled aircrew presenting a particular challenge. Japanese pilots returning from their strikes were exuberant, however: while it is common in the confusion and exuberance of battle to exaggerate damage inflicted on an enemy, the pilots reported sinking or badly damaging a dozen warships, including three carriers and a battleship.
* Although the main Japanese fleet retired as well once Task Force 61 left the battle, Tanaka's troop transport convoy continued on into the darkness on 24 August. Tanaka was aware that he was vulnerable to air attack, but he sent his destroyers ahead to pound Henderson Field and hopefully suppress Marine air strikes.
Fortune does not always favor the bold. In mid-morning on 25 August, the convoy was discovered by a roving patrol of eight Marine Dauntless dive bombers. The bombers badly damaged the cruiser JINTSU and sank a transport. While the destroyers were engaged in rescue operations, they were attacked by US Army Air Forces (USAAF) B-17 Flying Fortress bombers out of Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides. Prewar USAAF doctrine had envisioned precision high-altitude bombing against naval targets, but combat experience was gradually showing it to be ridiculously ineffective; however, one of the B-17s scored a wildly lucky hit on a destroyer and sank it, much to the surprise the captain of the destroyer.
Even with this upset, Tanaka was determined to continue, and would have done so if he had not received orders radioed to him from Rabaul. He was ordered to return to Shortland Island, a small island off Bougainville that was being used as an advance staging area for operations against Guadalcanal. Ichiki's reinforcements never arrived.
* By this time, supplies were flowing in quantity to the Marines on Guadalcanal, but the island was grinding them down. The heat and vermin were mere nuisances compared to dysentery, malaria, and fungal infections. Many of the Marines were still reluctant to take atabrine, an anti-malarial medicine, since they believed it would make them impotent. Medics were ordered to stand in chow lines and watch each man swallow an atabrine pill before allowing them to eat.
The Japanese did not intend to make life any easier for them. They sent in bomb raids and fighter sweeps, and Marine units skirmished with Japanese infantry. Nighttime destroyer runs ferried Japanese reinforcements and supplies to the island, operating on such a regular basis that the Marines started calling the nighttime runs the "Tokyo Express".
There were bigger things in the works. General Kawaguchi had arrived at Shortland with 3,500 men and wanted Admiral Tanaka to get them to Guadalcanal immediately. Tanaka was in agreement with Kawaguchi's goal, but the two men disagreed on the means of accomplishing it. Kawaguchi wanted to transport his men in barges to ensure that they could bring along adequate food, equipment, and supplies, since the lack of such essentials had been a major factor in Ichiki's disastrous defeat. Tanaka had received a nasty taste of what it was like to try to run ships to Guadalcanal in the face of Allied air attacks, and insisted on using destroyers to make fast runs under cover of darkness.
Kawaguchi finally suggested a compromise. He and 2,400 men would be carried by destroyers to Taivu Point, while 1,100 of his men would be sent by barges to Kokumbona, a village about 16 kilometers (10 miles) west of Henderson Field. This detachment would be under the command of one of Kawaguchi's regimental commanders, Colonel Oka Akinosuke.
Oka believed the barges would work. He didn't like the odds of making the run to Guadalcanal in Tanaka's destroyers, and felt that the motorboats could survive by skipping from island to island in the dark and hiding out during the day. Tanaka agreed to the plan and it was set in motion. General Kawaguchi was a thoughtful man, possibly too thoughtful for the liking of his superiors, and he had misgivings about the operation. The night the Japanese departed Shortland, he told a friendly war correspondent that intelligence showed the US Marines on Guadalcanal were well dug in and well supplied. Kawaguchi told the correspondent: "When we come to think of such things, it seems extremely difficult for a small unit like ours to retake the airfield. Wouldn't you think the destruction of the Ichiki Detachment would be lesson to us? But Imperial Headquarters belittles the enemy on Guadalcanal and declares that once we land successfully, the Marines will surrender."
On the evening of 31 August, eight of Tanaka's destroyers dropped Kawaguchi and his men off at Taivu Point. There they met with the survivors of Ichiki's force, who were ragged and starving. They told the newcomers that they had been under continuous attack by American aircraft.
Kawaguchi moved westward to an abandoned village that night, and the next day they found out that Ichiki's men weren't exaggerating the air attacks. Marine Wildcats and Dauntlesses, plus newly arrived USAAF Bell Airacobras, searched for Kawaguchi's men. The Japanese remained hidden for the day, but at night on 1 September the second group of 1,000 of Ichiki's men that not reached Guadalcanal was finally dropped off. There was a communications mixup, and Kawaguchi's men fired on them, killing two and wounding eight. That was unfortunate, but much worse the firing alerted the Americans to Kawaguchi's position and aircraft began to pound the Japanese mercilessly.
* Despite the air attacks, Kawaguchi remained where he was, waiting for word that the Oka's detachment of 1,100 men who were being transported by barge had arrived west of Henderson Field. The barges had proven to be a bad idea and Kawaguchi realized it, since he didn't receive word from Oka that he was preparing to land until 4 September.
Kawaguchi sent out a lieutenant with three men to circle around Henderson Field with instructions for Oka to participate in a coordinated attack. Kawaguchi waited two days, and then set out with 3,100 men on 6 September, leaving a rearguard behind. He planned to loop through the jungle and attack the airfield from the south, while Oka launched a diversionary attack from the west.
The Marines were not sitting idly, waiting to be attacked. On 7 September the 1st Marine Raider Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Merritt A. Edson, known as "Red Mike" for his red hair, hit the beach above the village that Kawaguchi had just abandoned. The Japanese rearguard fought back for a short time, killing two Marines, and then faded into the jungle. The Marines captured intelligence information, as well as Kawaguchi's dress uniform. One Marine commented: "The bastard must have been planning to shine in Sydney society." They wrecked everything they could -- even pissing on the food supplies left behind by the Japanese -- packed up on tins of crab and beef, and departed. One of the Japanese survivors wrote with a certain grudging admiration: "It is maddening to be the recipients of these daring and insulting attacks."
The Americans were by no means having things entirely their own way, however, with the Tokyo Express proving a significant nuisance, shelling Henderson Field almost every night. The Solomons are arranged in roughly two rows of islands, and the destroyers had to run down between the rows. The Americans called this channel "The Slot", and it was an avenue for running clashes. Early on the morning of 5 September, the destroyer-transports LITTLE and GREGORY went after what they thought was a Japanese submarine outside of Tulagi Harbor. They ran into the Tokyo Express instead; the two lightly-armed vessels were hammered to pieces and sank immediately.
* Kawaguchi assumed that Oka's force was intact, but that was not the case. The trip in the barges had been a disaster, with Oka losing 650 of his 1,100 men to air attacks and storms. The survivors had little food or ammunition and were no longer an effective force. The trek through the jungle was a nightmare. The Japanese were poorly fed and were increasingly suffering from malaria and other diseases. They struggled through the dark and tangled forest, carrying heavy and exhausting burdens of weapons and ammunition.
Although the Japanese offensive was not starting out well, General Vandegrift was still uncertain that he could hold Henderson Field. His Marines were stretched thin, attrition had whittled down the Cactus Air Force, and Admiral Ghormley was waffling on naval support. The Lunga river curved south and west of Henderson Field, and to the south was overlooked by a long, low ridge. Vandegrift decided correctly that the Japanese would attack him along this ridge, and sent Edson and his Raider battalion over to the far slope of the ridge to hold it.
Kawaguchi, however, believed he had the element of surprise. He also underestimated the number of Americans around Henderson Field by a factor of two to three. The team that he had sent to contact Oka did in fact make contact with the western detachment at the last moment, though the four soldiers were weak with starvation. They likely wouldn't have made it if they had not found discarded American field rations.
The Japanese attack jumped off at about 2100 hours on 13 September, led by shelling from naval artillery. The Japanese outnumbered the Marines on that line by about three to two and the Americans were pressed hard by the attack. Edson pulled his men back to tidy their lines and called in artillery fire in front on them, breaking the Japanese attack. When some of his men wavered and started to fall back on their own, Edson told them in his raspy, quiet voice: "Go back where you came from. The only thing they've got that you haven't is guts."
The Japanese regrouped and charged again. The Marines fell back to the top of the ridge and hit the Japanese with machine gun fire, grenades, mortars, and artillery. The Marine defense solidified and held, while the bodies of the attackers piled up. The next morning the Marines found about 600 dead Japanese in front of them. 40 Marines had been killed as well. Japanese stragglers made courageous but doomed attacks through the morning, with three charging General Vandegrift in front of his command post; the three were shot down immediately.
Colonel Oka threw his men into the fight the next afternoon. The action was futile and quickly crushed. That evening, Kawaguchi led another assault. He had little hope of it succeeding, and he and his men were pinned down in a storm of metal. The survivors managed to creep away in the darkness. They suffered through a misery march, characterized by more disease and starvation, looping west to where Oka had landed. The ridge where they had come to ruin became known as "Bloody Ridge". They had lost roughly 800 men, while the Marines lost about 100 men killed and 220 wounded. The reckless courage of the Japanese soldiers could not compensate with the incompetence of their leadership in failing to assess enemy defenses, and in performing attacks in a piecemeal fashion.
The Marines had scored a significant victory over the Japanese at Bloody Ridge, but the battle was not decisive. Naval support for the Marines was still precarious. The damaged carrier ENTERPRISE was out of the battle. A week later a Japanese submarine put a torpedo into SARATOGA, also damaging it badly enough to take it out of action for some time. There were a number of relatively minor injuries from the hit, with Admiral Fletcher gashing his forehead. WASP had been joined by HORNET, but on 14 September two Japanese submarines penetrated the destroyer screens and put several torpedoes into the WASP, and also hit the battleship NORTH CAROLINA and a destroyer. The WASP went down that afternoon.
Despite these reverses, Vandegrift was now receiving regular supplies and reinforcements. He was feeling confident, and became angry when a reporter told him that there were grave doubts about the operation in Washington and in Ghormley's headquarters in Noumea. The reporter asked: "Are you going to stay here?"
"HELL yes! Why not?!"
