FOR THE first time since the Japanese garrison on Tulagi had sent its last, heartbreaking message, “Praying for everlasting victory,” Japan’s Army and Navy had drawn up a plan that was concentrated rather than dispersed, detailed rather than complicated.
Admiral Yamamoto had placed Vice-Admiral Nobutake Kondo in command of an armada of two aircraft carriers, four battleships, eleven cruisers, forty-nine destroyers, eleven transports, and 14,000 men.
The troops were to augment General Hyakutake’s 17th Army, which, in mid-November, at last outnumbered Vandegrift’s forces by 30,000 to 23,000. Some 3000 of the reinforcements comprised a Combined Naval Landing Force, while the remaining 11,000 formed the main body of the 38th Division.
They were to land on the morning of November 13, after Henderson Field had been bombarded night and day. The first barrage was to be delivered on the night of November 12–13 by Vice-Admiral Hiroaki Abe with battleships Hiei and Kirishima, cruiser Nagara and fourteen destroyers. Gunichi Mikawa, with six cruisers and six destroyers, would bombard during the daylight of November 13 while a convoy of eleven high-speed Army transports, escorted by twelve Tokyo Express destroyers under Tanaka the Tenacious, put the troops ashore at Tassafaronga.
Throughout this operation, Admiral Kondo with carriers Hiyo and Junyo, battleships Haruna and Kongo and other ships would sail in distant support about 150 miles north of Savo. Hiyo’s and Junyo’s airplanes would, of course, bomb Henderson Field in concert with the eagles from Rabaul.
Thus the major assault-and-landing plan, simplified at last, with the knockout blow to be delivered “all at once, in big ships,” as Gunichi Mikawa had argued in that late August of long ago. And among its details, finally, was the destruction of the Allied coast-watching network on Bougainville.
Japan now knew to what disastrous degree her movements of ships and aircraft had been made known to the Americans. Because she did, aircraft from Rabaul or New Ireland rarely flew above The Slot, now, and ships sailed south on three different routes.
Nevertheless, coastwatchers continued to operate close to fields such as Buin and it was very difficult to conceal the gathering of a great armada from those numerous native scouts who, as the Japanese also now realized, were not harmless “civilians” in lap-laps but rather very dangerous enemy spies. Since trapping the scouts themselves was obviously impossible, or at least impractical, the Japanese decided to strike at the organizing brains behind them.
Jack Read in the north of Bougainville and Paul Mason in the south at Buin were to be caught and killed.
Hunting dogs were shipped into Buin and kept there in a wire cage while a patrol of a hundred soldiers was brought up from the island’s southern tip at Kahili.
Mason’s scouts quickly discovered the dogs, and Mason signaled their location to the Americans. A Catalina flew over Buin and dropped a bomb.
“Killed the lot,” Mason signaled cheerfully, before departing Buin for the towering green-black mountains that ran down Bougainville’s north-south spine. After him came the Japanese patrol. Between the two moved the ever-faithful scouts, reporting every enemy movement or sending the patrol panting up the wrong slopes. Exhausted, convinced that no effete westerner could survive in such horrible terrain, the Japanese withdrew.
Paul Mason returned to his hideout in Buin. He resumed broadcasting with a report of the enemy’s failure. Then he sent this ominous message:
“At least 61 ships this area: 2 Nati-class cruisers, 1 Aoba, 1 Mogami, 1 Kiso, 1 Tatuta, 2 sloops, 33 destroyers, 17 cargo, 2 tankers, 1 passenger liner of 8,000 tons.”1
It was this message, joined to the reports of tirelessly searching Flying Forts and Catalinas, which sent the last American carrier force in the Pacific tearing north again.
Big E was coming back to battle a cripple, but coming back because Bull Halsey was throwing even half-ships and cockleshells into America’s desperate struggle to save Guadalcanal.
Since the day Enterprise had staggered from Santa Cruz into the hill-girdled harbor of Nouméa, a battalion of Seabees, all of repair-ship Vulcan’s crew, and the carrier’s own craftsmen had been working around the clock to put her back in shape. Enterprise had lain there beside the dozing little French colonial town with its dainty white replica of Notre Dame de Paris crowning the harbor, while her decks rattled to the incessant pounding of air-hammers, while even the nights winked and twinkled with the spark and sputter of welder’s torches, and while other ships sped north with the last of Admiral Halsey’s available troops.
Six thousand of them, Marines and soldiers of the 182nd Infantry Regiment, had been rushed to Guadalcanal to even the 30,000-to-23,000 numerical superiority now possessed by the enemy.
The first group, the Marines, had arrived on November 11 in a convoy commanded by Rear Admiral Norman Scott. Even as they hurried ashore, the enemy struck with the two air raids which ended the aerial doldrums and underlined Halsey’s warning to Vandegrift. The only damage was in near-misses suffered by transport Zeilin, while eleven enemy aircraft were shot down against seven Wildcats lost.
The second group led by Admiral Turner and carrying the 182nd Infantry Regiment was due to arrive the following day, November 12.
So also, Admiral Halsey learned, would the aircraft and battleships of Admiral Kondo’s huge fleet.
Only Enterprise, still needing ten days of repairs, battleships South Dakota—also crippled—and Washington, two cruisers and eight destroyers could offset this powerful enemy concentration.
Halsey ordered them back.
On November 11, Seabees and Vulcan-crew and all, Enterprise stood out of Nouméa. She made the open sea with her decks still shaking and echoing to air-hammers, with welder’s arcs still sparking, with a big bulge in her right side forward, without watertight integrity and one oil tank still leaking, and with her forward elevator still jammed as it had been since the bomb at Santa Cruz broke in half.
Fortunately, the elevator was stuck at the flight-deck level. Or at least it was thought to be. No one, not even Bull Halsey, would have dared to press the “Down” button to find out. If the elevator went down and did not come up again, there would be a big square hole in the flight deck and Enterprise would be useless.
Thus, depending on her after elevators to bring planes to and from the hangars below, Enterprise sailed back to battle only half a carrier. With her, though, were screening ships powerful enough to take on Admiral Kondo’s sluggers.
If they could get there in time.
If …
This time there would be no complicated Japanese Army timetable of attack to work in their favor. This time all depended on a favorable wind.
If it blew from the north Enterprise could launch her planes without having to turn around. But if it blew from the south, the big ship would have to turn into the wind to launch. Leaving Nouméa behind and entering radio silence, Admiral Kinkaid stood bareheaded on Big E’s bridge and saw that the luck of Santa Cruz had forsaken him.
It was a south wind.
Far to the north, the weather favored the Japanese.
At three o’clock in the morning of November 12, Admiral Abe had detached his battleships and three destroyers from Admiral Kondo’s main body. He had sailed south for the Shortlands, making rendezvous with Nagara and eleven more destroyers, among them Amatsukaze under Commander Hara.
They sped down The Slot to bombard Henderson Field, and they ran into a fortuitous rain squall.
Thick clouds clotted overhead. Rain fell in sheets. The sky darkened as though night had fallen, and Abe jubilantly ordered his ships to keep on course at a steady eighteen knots.
Some of Abe’s staff officers aboard flagship Hiei objected. Although the squall certainly would protect the ships against surprise attack, it also made it dangerous to keep plowing ahead in complex formation.
Admiral Abe had formed his fleet into a tight double crescent. Half the destroyers formed a leading arc about five miles ahead of Nagara and the other destroyers, which formed a second arc. Following in column were Hiei and Kirishima better than a mile apart. Some of Abe’s officers thought the fleet should slow down, or else risk collision in the darkness, but Abe replied:
“We must maintain this speed to reach the target area in good time.”2
Charging south almost blindly, his men sweating despite the drenching rain, Admiral Abe pressed ahead.
And the covering squall stayed with him at the same speed.
“Twenty-four torpedo bombers headed yours.”
The message was from Paul Mason at Buin, and it was acted upon immediately by the second group of American ships in Iron Bottom Bay.
Kelly Turner had brought them in early that morning of November 12. They had begun unloading hurriedly, and the 182nd Infantry was already ashore by the time Mason’s warning was received. A few minutes later the Wildcats were taking off and Turner had broken off unloading. He set his transports in two parallel columns of three ships each and sailed them toward Savo. Around them cruisers and destroyers bristled with antiaircraft barrels.
Shortly after two o’clock the Bettys were sighted circling over eastern Florida Island. They had formed two groups, north and south, to make the customary “anvil” attack from both sides. Turner deliberately baited the northern group by turning right to give them his ships’ broadsides.
The Bettys came boring in.
A ferocious storm of steel swept among them. One by one they began to crash into the sea, but many of them still dropped their torpedoes.
Turner swung his ships left. Only his narrow sterns beckoned to the Bettys, and their torpedoes ran harmlessly by either side of the transports.
To the south, Wildcats from Henderson ripped through the second group. Eight minutes after the enemy attack began, it was over and only one of the twenty-four Bettys, and five of eight escorting Zeros, had survived.
Destroyer Buchanan, damaged during that storm of American antiaircraft fire, was put out of action and sent home, while the heavy cruiser San Francisco had been slightly damaged by an enemy suicider who had deliberately crashed into the after control station.
Satisfied, Kelly Turner turned his ships around and resumed unloading.
Hiroaki Abe was jubilant. He actually chortled his delight with “This blessed squall.”3 His spirits rose higher upon receiving a report from the scout plane he had launched before entering the storm. It said: “More than a dozen warships seen off Lunga.”4
Abe smiled, and said: “If Heaven continues to side with us like this, we may not even have to do business with them.”5
Heaven, it seemed, had no intention of deserting him; for the storm still raged around his ships.
Rainfall on Guadalcanal muffled Carlson’s Raiders in their approach to an unsuspecting company of Japanese. Guided by Sergeant Major Vouza, the Raiders had moved stealthily up narrow native trails to the tiny village of Asimana on the upper Metapona River. They saw, to their satisfaction, that many of the enemy were bathing in the river. Colonel Carlson waited patiently until his men were in position. Then, he spoke one word:
“Fire!”
There were only a few minutes of massacre. Not one of 120 Japanese soldiers survived. The Raiders left their unburied bodies there to rot in the jungle, quickly resuming their pursuit of the harried Colonel Shoji.
The prospect of foul weather as a cloak to conceal the movement of the Tokyo Express did little to cheer Rear Admiral Raizo Tanaka, sortying from the Shortlands that afternoon. Aboard flagship Hayashio, Tanaka led twelve destroyers, eleven transports and 14,000 men toward Tassafaronga. But he had no faith in the fickle Solomons weather, and he also still thought that it was foolhardy to attempt to reinforce Guadalcanal in the face of Henderson’s air power. Tanaka did not think that Abe would be able to demolish the field any more than Kurita had done so a month ago, and he wondered how many of his ships were going to survive.6
As Tanaka’s ships neared Bougainville the weather began clearing.
Jack Read was on the run.
Having been warned by his scouts that the Japanese at Buka Passage were coming after him, he had notified Australia and been advised to flee, maintaining radio silence.
Read moved confidently into the high mountains on northern Bougainville. On the second day of his flight, November 12, a hot hazy morning sun turned into an afternoon downpour. Read and his scouts and the carriers bearing the teleradio slipped and swore while climbing higher to elude the pursuing Japanese.
They reached a mountain peak just as the rain stopped. Sunlight poured through a hole in rapidly dissolving clouds. The mists parted and the horizon became clear. Sailing down it in orderly formation were eleven large Japanese transports protected by twelve destroyers.
They were heading southeast.
Jack Read ordered his radio set up immediately and began broadcasting.
Although the storm was staying with Hiroaki Abe he had no reason to be so confident.
An American Catalina had sighted and reported him early that morning, even as he made rendezvous with Commander Hara’s column, and now, Jack Read had warned Kelly Turner of the Tokyo Express’s approach.
Turner realized immediately that this was the enemy’s big push.
Abe’s big ships were either out to sink Turner’s transports or bombard Henderson Field. Kelly Turner was confident that he could lead the transports, already ninety per cent unloaded, south to safety.
But what of Henderson Field?
It must not be bombarded. It must not because the planes of Cactus Air Force would then be unable to rise to intercept the enemy reinforcements—the heart of the entire Japanese operation—the planes from Enterprise would not be able to land on Guadalcanal to join them, and because one more day, at least, must be gained to allow Admiral Kinkaid’s powerful battleships time enough to enter the battle.
But to save the airfield, to gain the day, to stop the powerful enemy on this ominous and onrushing night of Thursday the twelfth and Friday the thirteenth, Kelly Turner had only two heavy and three light cruisers and eight destroyers. Nevertheless, he ordered them to halt the enemy—to stop the bombardment at all costs.
Turner gave command of this force to Rear Admiral Daniel Callaghan.
Admiral Callaghan had been Vice-Admiral Ghormley’s chief of staff. It was Callaghan who had sat in silence at the acrimonious conference in the Fijis during which Frank Jack Fletcher had curtly advised Turner and Vandegrift that they would receive minimum carrier support for the invasion of Guadalcanal. After Halsey had relieved Ghormley, bringing his own chief of staff with him, Callaghan had gone back to sea.
He belonged there. Handsome with his shock of thick white hair and his jet-black eyebrows, his large dreamy eyes and straight, strong features, he might have been an ancient Celtic wanderer sailing a tossing coracle toward some undiscovered shore. Even his men idolized him, as does not happen often in any navy, and they called him “Uncle Dan.”
But he had neither the experience nor the training for the mission given to him by Turner.
Callaghan was chosen because he was senior to Norman Scott, the victor of Cape Esperance, who was also in the Bay aboard his flag cruiser Atlanta. Scott’s very victory also seems to have had inordinate influence on Callaghan, for he formed his ships in the same sort of column which had crossed the T on Aritomo Goto a month before.
Americans had yet to learn that the column was not the best formation to employ against the night-fighting, torpedo-firing Japanese. But it was chosen because of Cape Esperance, because it made maneuvering in narrow waters less risky, and because, presumably, it made communication between ships easier. So Callaghan set his ships in column: destroyers Cushing, Laffey, Sterett, and O’Bannon in the lead, heavy cruisers Atlanta, San Francisco, and Portland, followed by lights Helena and Juneau in the center; and in the rear, destroyers Aaron Ward, Barton, Monssen, and Fletcher. Unfortunately, Callaghan did not make good use of his best radar ships. They were not in the lead; moreover, Atlanta with inferior radar was ahead of San Francisco with excellent radar. Finally, no plan of battle was issued.
Nevertheless, for all of these oversights and omissions, the Americans led by Callaghan and Scott did possess that single quality which, so often in this desperate struggle, had extricated the unwary or unwise from a defeat of their own devising.
And that was valor.
The Tokyo Express was turning around.
Shortly before midnight Admiral Tanaka received word from Combined Fleet that the landing at Tassafaronga had been delayed until the morning of November 14. Admiral Mikawa was going to follow up Admiral Abe’s bombardment by shelling Henderson Field on the night of November 13, rather than on the morning of that day.
From flagship Hayashio came the signal to reverse course and retire to the Shortlands.
There was tension on Guadalcanal. It was almost a living quality, like the gases composing the atmosphere. It was a quivering electric dread attuned to the jagged flashes of lightning flitting over the island in the wake of the clearing rain. It was brittle, like the emergent bright stars overhead.
General Vandegrift felt it. He was aware of Abe’s approach, and of the outgunned fleet which Admiral Callaghan had to oppose him. The general’s staff also knew that this was the night. They went to bed not only fully clad, as was customary on Guadalcanal, but wearing pistol belts and clutching hand grenades. Some of them expected to use these in the morning. So did all of Vandegrift’s men, crouching beside their guns or perched on the edge of their holes. They spoke in low voices, often pausing to glance fearfully at the sky or to look furtively over their shoulders. It was as though they expected the enemy from every quarter. Upon the sinking of the new moon beneath the dark mountains their voices became hushed and whispering.
Out on the Bay a nine-knot easterly breeze blew gently into the faces of Callaghan’s lookouts. At ten o’clock, Callaghan saw Turner’s transports safely out of the eastern entrance, and reversed course toward Savo. His ships were still in column. He would make no attempt to flank the approaching Abe to launch torpedoes.
It was to be a straight-ahead plunge aimed at the enemy battleships.
It was now Friday the thirteenth and Admiral Abe’s divine squall had fallen behind.
Hiei and Kirishima and their fifteen sister furies had sailed away from the storm after the admiral had reformed his scattered formation. At half-past one, one of Amatsukaze’s lookouts cried, “Small island, 60 degrees to left.”
Commander Hara looked to his left and saw the black round silhouette of Savo Island.
“Prepare for gun and torpedo attack to starboard!” Hara shouted. “Gun range, three thousand meters. Torpedo firing angle, fifteen degrees.”7
Aboard Hiei, Admiral Abe was studying reports. General Hyakutake’s headquarters had radioed that the rain had cleared on Guadalcanal. Scout planes had taken off from Bougainville. There were still no reports of enemy ships. Confident and elated, Abe ordered Hiei and Kirishima to prepare for bombardment. Type-3 shells, thin-skinned 2000-pound projectiles each containing hundreds of incendiary bombs, were stacked on the decks around the 14-inch gun turrets.
A quarter hour later, from Hiei’s own masthead lookout came the frantic shout: “Four black objects ahead … look like warships. Five degrees to starboard. Eight thousand meters … unsure yet.”
From Hiei’s bridge came the cry, “Is eight thousand correct? Confirm.”
“It may be nine thousand, sir.”8
Hiroaki Abe was stunned. He had thought to bombard Guadalcanal unchallenged. He had piled the decks of his precious battleships with huge shells that needed but a single enemy hit to detonate them and turn Hiei and Kirishima into floating holocausts.
“Replace all those incendiaries with armor piercing,” he yelled. “Set turrets for firing forward.”9 Abe staggered to his chair and waited in agony. It would take at least ten minutes to change over.
And the range between forces was closing rapidly.
The Americans had sighted the Japanese and they had sighted them first.
Cushing at the head of the column had nearly collided with onrushing Yudachi and Harusame. Lieutenant Commander Edward Parker flashed the word and turned hard left to avoid collision. Behind him, his quick turn had piled up the American column.
“What are you doing?” Admiral Callaghan asked Atlanta, directly ahead of him.
“Avoiding our own destroyers,” came the reply.10
It was then that Hiei’s lookout sighted the Americans, then that the gunners and seamen aboard Hiei and Kirishima rushed from their battle stations to haul the vulnerable Type-3 shells below, stampeding the magazines, pushing and kicking each other to get at the armor-piercing shells lodged deep inside—and it was then that confusion in Admiral Callaghan’s column became compounded.
Excited voices began crackling over the Talk Between Ships. Reports of target bearings multiplied, but no one could tell if they were true bearings or merely relative to the reporting ships. No one knew which target to take under fire or when. From little Cushingstill out in the lead came the voice of the destroyer leader, Commander Thomas Stokes, pleading, “Shall I let them have a couple of fish?”11
“Affirmative,” came the reply, but it was too late. Yudachi and Harusame had raced off into the darkness.
Four minutes had passed before Callaghan gave the order: “Stand by to open fire!” Another precious four minutes were to slip by before he bellowed, “Commence firing! Give ’em hell, boys!”
And then, with surprise squandered and opportunity lost, the Americans called upon their last resource—their valor—and went plunging full tilt toward the mastodonic foe.
One of the most furious sea fights in all history had begun.
Ashore on Guadalcanal, veterans of the campaign—Japanese as well as American—looked at each other in openmouthed, overawed incredulity. Never before had the iron tongues of midnight bayed with such a maniacal clanging. Out there giants clad in foot-thick steel were contending with one another, and never before had the thunder of their blows rolled so mightily over glistening black Bay water.
Scarlet star shells shot into the sky with the horrible beauty of hell. Searchlight beams licked out like great pale crisscrossing tongues. Ships in silhouette, big and small, plunged wildly toward each other, heeled away, dashed in and out of the smoke, blew up, blazed, vanished—or reappeared with spouts of white and orange gushing from their guns. The surface of Iron Bottom Bay was like polished black marble shot with the bubbles of torpedo wakes, swirled with the foaming trails of careening ships, splashed with the red or the yellow of burning vessels.
And above the roar and reverberation of the battle came the voice of Admiral Callaghan, crying, “We want the big ones, boys, we want the big ones!”
A trio of American destroyers was charging the big ones. They had broken through Abe’s screen and taken on great Hiei. Cushing in the van loosed a spread of torpedoes from a half-mile range, missing, but forcing Hiei to turn away. But then Cushing was illuminated in searchlight beams and enemy shells began to take her apart.
Laffey swept in so close that she narrowly avoided collision. Hiei’s pagoda-like masts swayed over the little American as she dashed past, pouring a torrent of automatic shellfire into Hiei’s decks. Fires broke out aboard the big Japanese. But then Hiei bellowed and little Laffey began to burn.
O’Bannon bored in last. She came in so close that Hiei could not depress her 14-inch guns to shoot at her. Great shells howled harmlessly over O’Bannon’s masts while her gunners raked the Japanese with guns aimed in the light of her flames. Then O’Bannonwas gone, sheering sharply left to avoid burning Laffey, tossing life jackets to sailors struggling in the water as she passed.
Now San Francisco was battering Hiei. But the enemy battleship thundered back. Fourteen-inchers tore into San Francisco’s bridge to kill Admiral Callaghan and almost every American there.
Norman Scott was also dead. Atlanta had been the first to be caught in enemy searchlights. With her port bridge clearly illuminated, bracketing warships gave her her death blows and killed the hero of Cape Esperance.
Thereafter the fight became a melee. It was a free-for-all, ship-for-ship and shot for shot, with Japanese firing upon Japanese and American upon American. Every ship but Fletcher was hit. Barton blew up, Monssen sank, Cushing and Laffey were lost, and so were the cruisers Atlanta and Juneau—the latter finished off by a Japanese submarine as she tried to stagger home from battle.
But the Japanese were fleeing.
Mighty Kirishima, late to enter the battle, was already streaking north at the head of a general retirement.
Every one of Abe’s ships had been staggered. Yudachi was sinking and so was Akatsuki. Amatsukaze had been battered. A cascade of shells had fallen flashing around Commander Hara on his bridge, cutting down his men, blowing his executive officer over the side but leaving his legs behind, and so crippling the ship that Amatsukaze had to be steered manually.
Slowly, in the dawn lighting that glassy metallic sea, dragging herself past survivors lying burned, wounded, and dazed on their life rafts, or struggling to keep afloat in oily, debris-laden, shark-infested waters, little Amatsukaze made her way home.
Off his port bow Hara saw Hiei. The great ship was dying. She was almost dead in the water, crawling, with jammed rudder, in a wide aimless circle. Marine bombers from Henderson Field were already slashing at her. They shot down the eight Zeros flying cover above the battleship while Major Joe Sailer knocked out Hiei’s remaining antiaircraft turret with a well-planted bomb, after which they bombed and torpedoed her without interruption.
But she refused to go down.
“We’ve got to sink her!” Henderson’s pilots cried, landing to rearm and refuel and to return to the attack. “If we don’t the admirals will stop building carriers and start building battleships again.”12
Again and again they struck at Hiei, but on and on she crawled, glowing like a great red gridiron, circling and circling while destroyers ministered to her like cubs caring for a wounded lioness, until, at nightfall, after survivors and Admiral Abe had been taken off, the Japanese scuttled her and she sank with a hiss and an oil slick two miles long.
But on that morning of Friday the thirteenth, the heart of Commander Hara was heavy with grief as he saw the Americans hurtling down from the skies. They came, he knew, from that Henderson Field which had not been bombarded.
Nevertheless, Gunichi Mikawa was already coming down The Slot determined to succeed where Hiroaki Abe had failed.
Admiral Halsey was aware of Mikawa’s approach, and he planned to intercept him with the battleships from Admiral Kinkaid’s Enterprise force. To send these capital ships into the narrow and treacherous waters of Iron Bottom Bay was not, as Halsey knew, consonant with accepted naval doctrine. But the safety of Henderson Field seemed to him well worth the risk of his heavies, and so, on November 13, confident that the winds favored Kinkaid, he broke radio silence to tell him to put South Dakota and Washington and four destroyers under Rear Admiral Willis Lee with instructions to lay an ambush east of Savo Island. Kinkaid replied:
FROM LEE’S PRESENT POSITION IMPOSSIBLE FOR HIM TO REACH SAVO BEFORE 0800 TOMORROW.
Halsey was stunned. Mikawa would have a clear path to Henderson Field.
In the early afternoon of Friday the thirteenth the Tokyo Express moved toward Guadalcanal again.
Tanaka’s eleven transports were in a four-column formation sailing at eleven knots with a dozen destroyers deployed to the front and either side.
Tanaka was still in flagship Hayashio, which means “Fast running tide.” The tide, it seemed to Tanaka, who had heard of the disaster which had overtaken Abe, was running fast against Japan.13
At eight o’clock that morning Enterprise was still 280 miles south of Henderson Field. But she launched planes, some of which reached Guadalcanal in time to join the attack on Hiei, and continued to steam north.
All day long Big E remained buttoned up with her men at battle stations while her scout planes fanned out in search of the Japanese carriers and her combat air patrol flew overhead. But no enemy ships or aircraft were sighted. At dusk her men were secured from General Quarters and went below. Mighty South Dakota and Washington and their destroyers slid away from the screen and vanished into the darkness ahead. They could not stop Mikawa tonight, but they would at least be in the battle zone by tomorrow.
Enterprise ran steadily north at twenty-five knots.
It was happening again. It was not supposed to happen, Callaghan and Scott were supposed to have ended it, but there it was: Louie the Louse, flares, the lethal thunder-and-lightning of the sea cannonade, and flames engulfing Henderson Field.
Admiral Mikawa had brought six cruisers and six destroyers down to Savo. With flagship Chokai, Kinugasa, Isuzu, and two destroyers, Mikawa guarded the western gate at Savo while heavy cruisers Suzuya and Maya, escorted by light cruiser Tenryu and four destroyers, entered the Bay to bombard.
They hurled about a thousand rounds of eight-inch shell into the airfield, until six little torpedo boats under Lieutenant Hugh Robinson crept from Tulagi Harbor to launch torpedoes at them and scare them off.
Mikawa sailed jubilantly north on that morning of November 14, delighted to see his success celebrated in the intercepted plain-language radio message which Vandegrift had sent to Halsey: being heavily shelled.
In Washington the news that the Japanese had once again penetrated American defenses to batter Henderson Field produced a pessimism and a tension unrivaled throughout the campaign. Upon receipt of reports that heavy Japanese reinforcements were sailing down The Slot unopposed, even President Roosevelt began to think that Guadalcanal might have to be evacuated.14
Mikawa’s guns had wrecked eighteen American planes and had churned up the airstrips. But they had not knocked out the field entirely, nor had Admiral Kondo sent any aircraft from Hiyo or Junyo down to protect Mikawa from likely pursuit. At dawn of the fourteenth, while fires still raged and ammunition dumps exploded, pilots raced to their armed planes and took off.
They found Mikawa’s ships. They put two torpedoes into big Kinugasa, leaving her to be sunk by pilots from Enterprise, who also bombed Chokai, Maya, and Isuzu. Admiral Mikawa, who had intended to provide indirect cover for Admiral Tanaka’s ships, was forced to retire to the Shortlands.
Tanaka sailed south all alone.
Since dawn, when a few Flying Fortresses had been driven off by covering Zeros, Tanaka the Tenacious had stood on Hayashio’s bridge anxiously scanning the skies. He had seen flights of enemy planes but they did not attack him. He conjectured that they had gone after Mikawa. He was positive that they had not been frightened off by the handful of Zeros circling overhead; all, it seemed, that Admiral Kondo to the north could spare from the crowded decks of Hiyo and Junyo.
At noon Tanaka’s ships were only 150 miles from Guadalcanal, and it was then that the American planes came hurtling out of the sun and the slaughter known as the Buzzard Patrol began.
They flew in from everywhere: from Espiritu Santo, from the Fijis, from Henderson Field, from the decks of Enterprise still closing Guadalcanal at high speed. They flew in to bomb or launch torpedoes or to strafe, banking to fly back to base again or to land at Henderson where cooks, clerks, typists, mechanics, Seabees, even riflemen, had formed a human chain to hand along the bombs and bullets that would shatter the Tokyo Express forever.
Wildcats and Airacobras and the newly arrived twin-tailed Lightnings went flashing and slashing among Kondo’s pitifully few Zeros and the other eagles racing to the rescue from Rabaul. They shot them down while the Dauntlesses dove or the Forts unleashed their high-level patterns or the Avengers came in low with their fish, and then they, too, went after the transports, screaming in at masthead level to rake the decks of ships already slippery with blood.
They struck five times, from noon until sunset, these pilots of the Buzzard Patrol, and they put six transports on the bottom while sending a stricken seventh staggering back to the Shortlands. Admiral Tanaka’s destroyers were powerless to protect their transports. They could only scurry among these burning, listing, sinking charges to take aboard survivors or to fish a weaponless, terrified soldiery from the reddening waters of The Slot.
They were red, and so were bunks and bulkheads glowing with heat and visible beneath decks torn open as though by a monster can opener. American pilots sickened in their cockpits to see the slaughter that they were spreading, but they did not remove their hands from gun-buttons or bomb releases. Every enemy soldier spared meant a Japanese alive to kill Americans on Guadalcanal. And the bullets continued to spurt among the bobbing heads, and bomb followed bomb into smoking, settling ships.
Tanaka the Tenacious plowed on.
He had only four of his original eleven transports, his destroyers were widely scattered by hours of evasive zigzagging, but he was nevertheless determined to make Tassafaronga. After nightfall relieved him of his ordeal, he withdrew to the north. He would wait there until morning, resuming course after Admiral Kondo had bombarded Henderson Field.
Nobutake Kondo was already rushing south with mighty Kirishima escorted by cruisers Atago, Takao, Sendai, and Nagara and nine destroyers. Kondo was infuriated by two days of disaster. He would brook no further delay, no additional losses of ships and men, and he would personally see to the obliteration of the enemy airfield. Kondo was not only spoiling for a fight, he expected one.
In this, Ching Chong China Lee would not disappoint him.
Rear Admiral Willis Lee received the first part of his alliterative nickname at the Naval Academy, and the next two parts during extensive service in China, a land in which his last name, although spelled Li, was far from rare, and where he had befriended a Marine major named Vandegrift.
On the night of November 14, Ching Lee came to Vandegrift’s aid, leading the battleships and destroyers he had detached from Kinkaid’s force the night before. Screened by destroyers Walke, Benham, Preston, and Gwin, Admiral Lee took Washington and South Dakota around Guadalcanal’s western tip. He went sweeping west of Savo, but found nothing, only the glare of Tanaka’s burning transports.
Lee’s six-ship column turned north, and then east to put Savo on the right and enter Iron Bottom Bay.
The bay was calm. Its waters gleamed faintly in the light of a first-quarter moon setting behind the mountains of Cape Esperance. Lee’s deep-water sailors could sniff a sweet land breeze redolent of honeysuckle. They could see very little, only the heights of land looming to either side. Needles on the magnetic compasses fluttered violently as they passed, in grim reminder of their purpose, over the hulks of the sunken vessels that gave the bay its name.
Ching Lee tried to raise Guadalcanal by radio. Back came the reply: “We do not recognize you.”15
The admiral thought of his friend from China, and countered:
“Cactus, this is Lee. Tell your big boss Ching Lee is here and wants the latest information.”16
No answer. But then, out of nowhere, but over the Talk Between Ships: “There go two big ones, but I don’t know whose they are.”17
Lee stiffened. The chatter was from a trio of torpedo boats to his left. He spoke quickly to Guadalcanal again: “Refer your big boss about Ching Lee; Chinese, catchee? Call off your boys!”18 And then, more sharply to the torpedo boats themselves: “This is Ching Chong China Lee. All PTs retire.”19
Over the Talk Between Ships a skeptical voice murmured, “It’s a phony. Let’s slip the bum a pickle.”20
“I said this is Ching Chong China Lee,” the admiral roared. “Get the hell out of the way! I’m coming through!”21
Startled, the tiny craft scuttled aside and the battleships went through.
Lee led them west again toward Savo, straight toward Sendai and a destroyer coming east as Kondo’s vanguard. Shortly after eleven o’clock, Washington and South Dakota’s 16-inch guns boomed, and the battle was joined.
As always it began badly for the Americans. Japanese crews quickly launched shoals of shark-shaped steel fish. Preston, Benham, and Walke took the full brunt of them, of enemy gunfire as well, and were given their death blows. South Dakota was caught in enemy searchlights and an entire Japanese bombardment force opened up on her. She shuddered under their blows. She fought back, shooting out the searchlights—but Japanese shells tore into her superstructure, sweeping away her search radars and all but one gunnery radar.
But then mighty Washington found Kirishima.
Again and again her 16-inch guns flashed and roared, again and again her five-inchers fired starshell to illuminate the enemy giant or to rip her decks. Kirishima was staggered repeatedly. Nine of those terrible 2700-pound armor-piercers tore into her vitals. Topside she was a mass of flames, she was drifting helplessly, she was done. Kirishima would join her sister-queen, Hiei, on the bottom of the sea. And like Hiei’s ladies-in-waiting, all of Kirishima’s escort, excepting sinking Ayanami, were turning to flee. South Dakota and Washington had trained their terrible guns against Atago and Takao, who were caught in friendly searchlights, and these battered cruisers led the flight to the north.
Washington gave pursuit alone, for South Dakota and Gwin had withdrawn, but she found nothing—not even the Japanese transports whom Admiral Lee was also hungrily hunting—and so Ching Chong China Lee swung south of Guadalcanal to sail back to Nouméa in triumph.
Behind him, Admiral Raizo Tanaka began shepherding his four remaining transports for a last-ditch run into Guadalcanal. He asked Admiral Mikawa for permission to beach the troopships, but Mikawa replied: “Negative.” He appealed to the retiring Admiral Kondo aboard Atago, and received the answer: “Run aground and unload troops!”22
Full steam ahead, with only Hayashio to guard them, the four transports raced toward Tassafaronga. Before the sun was up they had reached it and driven themselves hard aground almost line abreast. Tanaka the Tenacious turned to collect his scattered destroyers—many of them low in the water with rescued troops—and lead them sadly north.
And then came the dawn of November 15.
Men of the First Marine Division who had passed another of so many apprehensive and thundering nights looked west once more, and saw, at Tassafaronga, the familiar sight of enemy ships aground. But these ships were burning. American aircraft were already bombing them from the air, an American destroyer, Meade, was shelling them from the sea, and American long-range artillery was battering them from the beaches.
Air, land, and sea, it was symbolic of this savage struggle to wrest this poisonous green hag of an island from the hands of the Japanese; and now it was ending that way, for the crucial, three-day naval battle of Guadalcanal was over. The Americans had won. They had lost two cruisers and five destroyers, but they had sunk two Japanese battleships, one cruiser and three destroyers, as well as eleven precious troop transports with almost all of a 3000-man Naval Landing Force and half of the 38th Division.
Up on the ridges of Guadalcanal the Marines looked down at the beached and burning transports, and they smiled. It was full of savage satisfaction, that smile, nourished by a merciless and gloating glee. One hundred long days ago these aching, old-young men had begun this battle, and at any moment, upon any instantaneous hour, the black and bloody defeat symbolized by those burning transports could have been theirs.
But they had held, these Marines, the Army had come in, the Navy had fought back, and now, on the morning of November 15, Guadalcanal was truly saved.