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SOME OFFICERS SAW SUCCESS AND FAILURE AS PRODUCTS OF TEAMWORK. “No one man was responsible for our success in the Pacific,” wrote Charles W. Weaver, Ghormley’s assistant operations officer. “It was a team effort by many good men. Others, of lesser stature, are scrambling now in their memoirs to remind posterity that they won the war.” The Navy was now well along chasing something else: accountability from those who had marred its successful campaign with an avoidable defeat in the Battle of Savo Island.
The fleet seemed to find it irresistible to refight the battle. Retrospectively, wisdom abounded as to what commanders should have done, what risks they should have embraced or avoided. It had always been so. As a Roman general, Lucius Aemilius Paulus, observed in 168 BC, “In every circle, and, truly, at every table, there are people who lead armies into Macedonia.”
Admiral King’s flag secretary, Captain George L. Russell, noted that the exercise was significantly academic in nature. “The deficiencies which manifested themselves in this action, with particular reference to communications and the condition of readiness, together with erroneous conceptions of how to conduct this type of operation, have long since been corrected,” he wrote. Long after it had ceased to matter, the Navy would deliver a verdict on its failings. As salve for its own institutional pride perhaps, or for bereaved relatives still mourning their losses, Admiral Hepburn would find his “culpable inefficiency.”
A critic could find a long list of candidates to blame for the many errors of the Guadalcanal campaign: Riefkohl for failure to keep watch and his mystifyingly persistent belief that Mikawa’s cruisers were friendly. Turner for not understanding the limits of the radar he relied on. Crutchley for removing the Australia from her patrol station without communicating his intentions up or down the chain of command. McCain for failing to report the cancellation of a critical air search. Fletcher and his superiors for the inability to mediate, arbitrate, or otherwise control a serious disagreement about the use of the carriers on the eve of a critical operation. Ghormley for his absorption in detail and absence in body and spirit from the combat zone. Halsey for his spendthrift way with his carriers in October, and for his miscommunications with Kinkaid that prevented Willis Lee from moving north with the Washington in time to help Callaghan’s cruisers on the night of November 13. Callaghan and Wright for not exploiting a radar advantage against a surprised foe. The journalist and critic I. F. Stone would call the state of mind that permitted the Pearl Harbor attack “sheer stodgy unimaginative bureaucratic complacency.” That syndrome was at work on August 9, and the result was another virtuoso performance by the blitz-minded Imperial Japanese Navy.
The day before his relief by Halsey, Ghormley prepared a commentary that cast the defeat at Savo Island as a result of flawed battle doctrine. His preliminary conclusion was that Kelly Turner’s instructions to Crutchley’s screening force were “too indefinite in regard to what the units of that group were to do and how they were to accomplish their tasks.” Though Turner had written to Hepburn, “I was satisfied with arrangements, and hoped that the enemy would attack,” Ghormley observed that those arrangements were woefully inadequate. “No special battle plan was prescribed to cover the possibility of a surface ship night attack,” he wrote, also observing that Turner’s instructions to the two radar pickets, the destroyers Blue and Ralph Talbot, “were faulty in requiring them to ‘shadow’ an enemy force and report them frequently. Time and space did not permit the employment of tactics of this nature.” Neither Turner nor Crutchley, Ghormley observed, had decided how the two cruiser groups on patrol that night might coordinate in the event of enemy contact.
Stickling and insistent in some matters, Hepburn was laissez-faire in others. He didn’t worry about the lack of a battle plan: “Only one plan of battle was practicable, viz., bring batteries to bear as quickly as possible,” he wrote in his fifty-four-page “informal inquiry.” He continued, “In my opinion, the important causes of the defeat suffered in this action are to be found in reasons other than those discussed above, and which fall within the general category of ‘Readiness for Action.’ ”
Turner would angrily rebut the accusation that he had been passive in the face of Mikawa’s threat. “I have been accused of being and doing many things but nobody before has ever accused me of sitting on my arse and doing nothing,” he would tell his biographer. “If I had known of any ‘approaching’ Jap force I would have done something—maybe the wrong thing, but I would have done something.… What I failed to do was to assume that the g.d. pilots couldn’t count and couldn’t identify and wouldn’t do their job and stick around and trail the Japs and send through a later report. And I failed to assume that McCain wouldn’t keep me informed of what his pilots were or were not doing. And I failed to guess that despite the reported composition of the force, and the reported course, and the reported speed, the Japs were headed for me via a detour, just like we arrived at Guadalcanal via a detour. I wouldn’t mind if they said that I was too damned dumb to have crystal-balled these things, but to write that I was told of an ‘approaching force’ and then didn’t do anything, that’s an unprintable, unprintable, unprintable lie.
“Nobody reported an ‘approaching force’ to me. They reported a force which could and did approach, but they reported another kind of force headed another kind of way. It was a masterful failure of air reconnaissance and my fellow aviators.”
When misfortune came, no one’s career was safe from a sudden change in the weather. Gilbert Hoover lost his seagoing career in Halsey’s storm. Even Admiral Raymond Spruance, Nimitz’s chief of staff and widely considered one of the Navy’s most capacious minds, had taken lumps for what some critics deemed his excessive caution in the Battle of Midway. The experience soured him on second-guessing: “I have always hesitated to sit in judgment of the responsible man on the spot, unless it was obvious to me at the time he was making a grave error in judgment. Even in that case I wanted to hear his side of the matter before I made any final judgment.”
Hepburn acknowledged some of this. “There is generally a twilight zone lying between culpable inefficiency on the one hand and a more or less excusable error of judgment on the other.” But when he released his report on May 13, five weeks after finishing his interrogations and resuming his duties as chairman of the General Board, Hepburn’s conclusions shone like a harsh ray through that twilight.
“In my opinion the primary cause of defeat must be ascribed generally to the complete surprise achieved by the enemy,” he began. It was in the specific reasons for this surprise that culpable inefficiency lay. In order of importance, those reasons were: an inadequate condition of readiness on all ships to meet a sudden night attack, a failure to understand the telltale presence of enemy planes beforehand, a misplaced confidence in the radar pickets, delayed reports of enemy contact, and a communications breakdown regarding the canceled air-search mission. As a “contributory cause,” Hepburn cited Fletcher’s withdrawal of the carriers on August 9, which made necessary Crutchley’s departure to the conference, which enabled the confused command arrangement for the southern cruiser group.
Though Captain Riefkohl’s leadership of the northern cruiser group was “far from impressive,” plying a box-shaped patrol course that Hepburn deemed poorly conceived, “there is only one instance in the circumstances immediately attendant upon the Savo Island Battle in which censure is definitely indicated and in which the foregoing considerations”—about the “twilight zone”—“did not apply. That was in the action, or inaction, of the Commanding Officer of the Chicago.”
Hepburn thought Howard Bode culpable on two counts: the decision to remain at the rear of the formation—“a severe indictment of his professional judgment”; and to steam away from the battle zone for thirty-five minutes—“unexplainable.” Hepburn’s criticism was oddly self-canceling. He allowed that “it would be difficult to sustain a charge that his decision, or lack of decision, resulted in greater damage than actually occurred.” He also saw that the most likely result, had Bode made the choices that presumably Hepburn would have made, would have been largely the same—“the Chicago would have been sunk instead of the Canberra.” Nonetheless, Bode in the end was the only officer deemed culpably inefficient by the Navy’s lone inquisitor and judge.
Afterward, in his endorsement to Hepburn’s report, King wrote to James Forrestal: “Granting that the immediate cause of our losses was the surprise attack, the question is whether or not any officer should be held accountable for failing to anticipate it. Considering that this was the first battle experience for most of the ships participating in the operation and for most of the flag officers involved, and that consequently it was the first time that most of them had been in the position of ‘kill or be killed,’ the answer to that specific question, in my judgment, must be in the negative. They simply had not learned how and when to stay on the alert.” King specifically exonerated Turner and Crutchley for the way they had deployed the cruisers. Regarding Bode in particular, King was silent.
Captain Russell wasn’t having any of it. Admiral King’s flag secretary wrote, “It does not necessarily follow that because we took a beating, somebody must be the goat. The operation was undoubtedly hastily planned, and poorly executed, and there was no small amount of stupidity, but to me it is more of an object lesson in how not to fight than it is a failure for which some one should hang.”
Bode didn’t hang. He was assigned to command the 15th Naval District, headquartered at the Balboa Naval Station in the Panama Canal Zone. His transfer to such a backwater would brand him forever as having fallen short of the mark.
He had aspired to flag rank and had always seemed to carry himself as if he would get there. His strict and severe manner might have been an attempt at redemption for a lapse that marred his early career. As a midshipman at the Naval Academy, he had gotten into trouble with three other upperclassmen for hazing. It was a mild offense and typical of the time, but because Bode was caught at it shortly after the superintendent had issued a warning, Bode got a hundred demerits, was confined to academy premises, and lost the privilege of attending the Army–Navy football game. The episode and its aftermath were page-one news in the Sunday New York Times in the autumn of 1910.
From his first day in Panama, Bode “seemed to be under some sort of a strain, and it was very noticeable to me and to the officers,” a reserve lieutenant commander said. “He talked a great deal about wondering why he had been sent here, and before he got out of the plane asked a number of questions as to what kind of a place he was coming to, and couldn’t understand why he had been ordered here because he was a combat man.
“He told me a number of times that he did not contemplate being here very long, and shortly after he arrived, within a day or so, he told me he would be out in about two weeks.” That was when Admiral Hepburn came calling, summoning him to Corpus Christi.
The interrogations, which took place on April 2–3, did not go well for Bode. No one saw him for about a week. When he came back, he had a much more sanguine outlook. He was conversational and seemed acclimated to his new assignment. He invited younger officers to visit him and enjoy some scotch. “It was one of the most pleasant talks I had had with him since he had been attached to the Station,” the officer said. The only thing he saw fit to complain about was the speed with which his letters home were reaching his wife.
Bode knew from the tone of Hepburn’s questioning that his conduct was under scrutiny. But an inquiry, if undertaken in the right frame of mind, can be a motivator to change and redemption. Guadalcanal was supposed to have been his chance to redeem the loss of the Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor. (Bode was blameless for being ashore that morning, but captains never fully escape their responsibility.) Now he needed redemption for Guadalcanal, too, a double dose.
After returning to Panama from Texas, Bode wrote to Hepburn twice, explaining his decisions that night in greater clarity than he had mustered in his stunned state during the interrogation. He had lost track of the Chicago’s course heading after maneuvering to avoid torpedoes, he said. He had thought he was standing out to the northwest and hoped to rendezvous with the Vincennes group and reengage the enemy to seaward. When he noticed the quiet night around him and suggested reversing course, his navigator advised against it. “Although there are probably other minor details which might promote a fuller understanding, I think the above will clarify the situation attending the two points of criticism. I do hope that your cold is better,” he closed, “and that you had a comfortable trip from New Orleans.”
In the quiet of his new command, Bode had the chance to reflect more deeply on the Guadalcanal campaign. His further ruminations led him to write Hepburn a third time on April 18. “Within the past two weeks, I have had an opportunity to read the analysis of the Savo Island battle. From it I perceived that I had committed a grievous error of judgment in the very beginning, although the decision (to continue the formation) seemed sound and logical at the time and has since until the logic of cool analysis throws a different light upon it. That error has just been brought to realization. Although I can find a great deal to justify that decision even now, I do feel that I acted with too great a degree of assurance of the correctness of my estimate of a general and specific situation.”
Though he was never reputed to change his mind much, it was clear he had been changed by this ordeal. “Some time recently I had an opportunity to clarify by amplification of information, effectively and conclusively, I believe some other points, which for purposes of analysis clarified other phases of the situation. I have now carefully considered what my course of action should now be. I have decided that the only honorable course is to atone for my errors of judgment in the only way I can.”
First thing the next morning, he checked his laundry, then asked after the morning paper. The steward on duty gave it to him. Bode took the paper to the restroom, and ten or fifteen minutes later the steward heard a whoom.
“I am writing a letter to be delivered to my wife,” his April 18 letter to Admiral Hepburn continued, “which I hope you will forward as soon as practical. Although she is a very courageous and competent person she should have knowledge of the why and wherefore, or a reason for this totally unexpected tragedy descending upon her.
“I can find no expression to convey to you my regret that the District you command is to be hindered with the culmination of the unfortunate situation in which I find myself. But I am sure that you will be able to understand the reaction caused by a sudden reversal of the path of life and hope and achievement I had been following.”
The cook asked two janitors if they had heard the noise. They said they had. He came back and checked the laundry and the bedroom door twice, then went downstairs again and asked the two boys again if they were sure they had heard a noise. “Don’t be afraid, there are no bombs here,” one of them said.
Knocking on doors, calling for the captain, the cook told one of the janitors to climb a ladder and look through the bathroom window. When he came down the janitor said there was a figure lying on the floor, a woman, he thought, because it was wearing a blue bathrobe. Next to the body was a .38 caliber round that had done its work and lay there, bent on the floor.
“I am sure that the affairs of the Station will progress smoothly and effectively as long as necessary for the arrival of a relief,” Bode wrote to Hepburn. “With assurance of my deep gratitude for your uniformly courteous consideration and the pleasure of my brief service under you. I am sincerely, Howard Bode.”
“It is the opinion of the convening authority,” the commandant of the 15th Naval District would conclude, “that although all of Captain Howard D. Bode’s conduct up to his last act indicated that he was entirely rational, his reaction to criticism of his professional judgment and conduct as commanding officer of the USS Chicago during the first night action off Savo Island, resulted in a depression and unbalanced mental condition which was the direct cause of his death.”
The chief of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery supported that conclusion in its endorsement to Admiral King. “This Bureau concurs with the opinion of the Convening Authority and the Judge Advocate General that the death of Captain Bode occurred as a direct consequence of a severe mental illness characterized by depression, and accordingly is of the opinion that it should be considered not the result of his own misconduct.”
A notation at the end of his personnel file indicates, apropos of nothing in particular, “Not a war casualty.”