The Conquering Tide

by Ian W. Toll

  ROOSEVELT HAD PLEDGED TO RENDER no military decision for the sake of domestic politics. But he was beset on all sides by amateur “typewriter strategists” who aired their unsolicited advice in public, and he repeatedly warned that the war could not be waged by referendum. Even after the Battle of Midway, a vociferous segment of public opinion wanted to intensify the campaign against Japan. William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers demanded a rebalancing of American military power from Europe to the Pacific, for “the war in the Pacific is the World War, the War of Oriental races against Occidental races for the domination of the world.”17 The congressional delegations of Washington and Oregon were distressed by the presence of some 10,000 Japanese troops on two outer islands of the Aleutian archipelago. The Japanese must be driven off the islands at once, they warned, lest they storm into Alaska and imperil the entire West Coast. (Professional strategists knew the scenario was impossible, given Japan’s military and shipping limitations, but they could not say so in public without tipping off the enemy to their indifference.) Others looked toward Europe, especially to southern Russia, where the Red Army was fighting a desperate stand against the Wehrmacht on the outskirts of Stalingrad. The Allies had agreed to a “Europe-first” policy, but the United States had not yet directly engaged the forces of the Third Reich. Wendell Willkie clamored for a second front against Hitler to relieve the pressure on Russia. In a single week Willkie called for an urgent increase in military aid to Russia and China. Eyes rolled in the White House—did Willkie suppose ships and armaments grew on trees?

  Nevertheless, the Russian apprehensions were well founded. A collapse of the Red Army would be an unmitigated disaster. Stalin had demanded a second front in France, and the Allies had thus far failed to supply one. Twenty-five years earlier, the Bolsheviks had sued for peace with Germany. A similar armistice in 1942 would permit Hitler to redeploy more than a hundred divisions to Western Europe. “The biggest question mark in the latter half of 1942,” Leahy wrote, “was can the Russians stop the Germans, and when?”18 In the White House Map Room, small black pins edged left to right across the huge wall-mounted map of the Atlantic. The pins, whose locations were updated hour by hour, marked the locations of the all-important Allied convoys to Murmansk as they ran the gauntlet of Germany’s submarine wolf packs. Harry Hopkins often ducked into the room to observe their progress, and McCrea later recalled that the president’s gaunt consigliere always seemed to know exactly what armaments each ship carried in its hold. The hopes of the Red Army, and by association the entire Allied cause, seemed to depend on the convoys’ getting through to Murmansk.

  With circumstances in Europe pressing so heavily on their minds, it is remarkable that Roosevelt and his advisers had not only agreed to WATCHTOWER in the first place, but also continued to send reinforcements to the South Pacific in the critical months of August and September 1942. Since Pearl Harbor, the Allied high command had found itself sharply divided over the question of how and when to come to grips with Germany. The Americans had committed to a massive buildup of ground and air forces in Britain (Operation BOLERO). In negotiations that spring, the American chiefs had pressured Churchill to agree to a direct assault across the English Channel by mid-1943 (ROUNDUP). Marshall had further proposed an emergency contingency if the Soviet Union seemed on the verge of collapse—a landing of six divisions (mostly British) on the French coast in September 1942, code-named SLEDGEHAMMER.

  The British had first agreed to ROUNDUP and paid lip service to SLEDGEHAMMER, but with no intention of supporting it. At successive Allied conferences (Washington in June, London in July) the British had stiffened in their opposition to SLEDGEHAMMER and voiced increasing skepticism about ROUNDUP. General Sir Alan Brooke, the acerbic chief of the British Imperial General Staff, left some choice observations in his diary on the subject. Even if an Allied expeditionary force could get ashore safely, he had asked Marshall on April 15, what would they do? “Whether we are to play baccarat or chemin de fer at La Touquet, or possibly bathe at Paris Plage is not stipulated! I asked him this afternoon—do we go east, south or west after landing? He had not begun to think of it!”19 The expedition was almost certainly doomed to fail, and a failed invasion could do nothing to help the Russians. Why rush into a campaign that entailed such grave risks, when the Wehrmacht was being bled white on the eastern front and the American war mobilization had not yet reached its high tide? “Marshall had a long time to go at that time before realizing what we were faced with,” Brooke later commented.20

  On July 8, Churchill cabled Roosevelt with definitive notice that the British would not consent to a landing in France that year: “No responsible British general, admiral, or air marshal is prepared to recommend SLEDGEHAMMER as a practicable operation in 1942.”21

  SLEDGEHAMMER was always a chimera, and British arguments effectively demolished the American position on the merits. But Marshall, backed zealously by King and Secretary of War Henry Stimson, held out for the implausible operation even to the point of threatening to abrogate the American commitment to “Europe-first.” In what must be reckoned as one of the most peculiar episodes of the war, Marshall and King sent a joint memorandum to Roosevelt on July 10, 1942:

  If the United States is to engage in any other operation than forceful, unswerving adherence to full BOLERO plans, we are definitely of the opinion that we should turn to the Pacific and strike decisively against Japan. In other words, assume a defensive attitude against Germany, except for air operations; and use all available means in the Pacific. Such action would not only be definite and decisive against one of our principal enemies, but would bring concrete aid to the Russians in case Japan attacked them. It is most important that the final decision in this matter be made at the earliest possible moment.22

  Roosevelt was not interested in reorienting the global war toward the Pacific, however, and slapped the suggestion down: “It is of utmost importance that we appreciate that defeat of Japan does not defeat Germany and that American concentration against Japan this year or in 1943 increases the chance of complete German domination of Europe and Africa.”23

  In fumbling toward some sort of plan to attack German forces, the Americans had been pitted against the British, the Army Air Forces against the army ground forces, and MacArthur against everyone who did not share his view that he should immediately receive more ships, troops, and planes regardless of what was happening elsewhere. Admiral King, while pressing his plans for WATCHTOWER, had loyally backed Marshall’s determination to invade Europe.

  Out of these astringent deliberations came Operation TORCH, the invasion of North Africa. The proposal originated with Churchill, who was well aware that his American allies were determined to come to grips with Germany in 1942 and must have an option to do so. British fortunes in North Africa had been battered by General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps throughout the spring and early summer, culminating with the surrender of 33,000 troops at Tobruk on June 21. Churchill now argued that the Allies had much to lose in the theater unless the rampaging German armies could be stopped. Roosevelt listened. The president had decreed that his forces must clash with Germany, somewhere, in 1942. The British had ruled out a landing in France. North Africa was the only operation under discussion that fulfilled both conditions. After registering Marshall’s opposition, Roosevelt agreed to it. The first landings would occur on November 8.

  Plans proceeded in the strictest secrecy. While the president’s domestic critics clamored for action, none could be told (even in a whisper) of the planned invasion. November 8 happened to fall five days after the midterm elections. The American people would not learn of this first major counterthrust against the Third Reich until they had already visited the polls (and delivered a sweeping Republican victory).

  For the moment, in that political season of 1942, Guadalcanal was the only place in the world where major American ground forces were engaged against the Axis. The island and the 1st Marine Division inevitably loomed large in the American imagi
nation. The campaign received fulsome press coverage, thanks to the presence on the island of more than half-a-dozen gifted military and civilian correspondents. Dick Tregaskis, whose lucidly detailed stories were published by the International News Service, would win fame with the publication of his bestselling Guadalcanal Diary in 1943. Hanson Baldwin, a navy correspondent, filed stories for the New York Times. Tom Yarbrough wrote for the Associated Press, Bob Miller for the United Press, John Hersey for Time and Life, Ira Wolfert for the North American Newspaper Alliance, Sergeant James Hurlbut for the Marine Corps, and Mack Morriss for Yank magazine. Vandegrift published no communiqués, but he encouraged the reporters to go wherever they liked and write whatever they wished. Lieutenant Herbert L. Merillat, the 1st Division public relations officer, provided able service to that pack of willful newshounds while also submitting stories of his own—many of which appeared, unbeknownst to him, under banner headlines in newspapers across the United States.

  “Solomons Action Develops into Battle for South Pacific” was the front-page, above-the-fold headline in the New York Times on September 27, 1942. In a 5,000-word story, Baldwin reported that the “toughened, sunburned marines—veterans of innumerable jungle skirmishes, several large actions, and continuous bombing and shelling—still clung tenaciously to the beachhead on Guadalcanal that they seized six weeks ago.”24 When hopes of holding the island seemed dubious, Baldwin asked General Vandegrift point blank, “Are you going to hold this beachhead?” Vandegrift replied, “Hell yes, why not?”25 The exchange, as reported by Baldwin, fired American spirits. The “toughened, sunburned” marines would not know it until months later, but Guadalcanal was a household name across the United States, and the people at home were fervently wishing and praying for the survival and triumph of the beleaguered 1st Marine Division.

  TO BE AT HENDERSON FIELD IN THE FALL OF 1942 was to live life constantly under fire. Japanese infantry units were concealed in the hills and forests, some as close as 300 yards to the western end of the strip. Snipers crept in close to the perimeter and shot at men who stuck their heads up. Japanese artillery pieces lobbed 75mm shells into the bivouac and aircraft parking areas. “Every now and then you hear a dull ‘ka-boom’ off in the distance,” a torpedo plane pilot recalled, “and then would come a little screaming and ripping noise, and a shell would explode in the field. It didn’t make anybody very happy.”26 Flights of G4M bombers arrived from Rabaul nearly every day at about noon and dropped their sticks of bombs across the heart of the marine perimeter. Very often, at night, Japanese destroyers or submarines lobbed shells into the field from Ironbottom Sound. No one got enough sleep; the enemy made sure of that. The Japanese cruiser floatplane they called “Washing Machine Charlie” circled overhead most nights after midnight. The plane’s single rattling engine awakened the marines and kept them awake. “Charlie” usually dropped only one or two small bombs, which rarely took any lives or did any noteworthy damage, but he kept the Americans on edge and deprived them of rest. As soon as the engine was heard each night, each man awoke, took his rifle, and descended into his shelter or foxhole. “You never knew where Charlie would drop a bomb,” said the soldier Robert Ballantine. “Sometimes you could hear the bomb-bay door kind of click open. You sure could hear the bombs coming down. If it makes a kind of swooshing, whirling noise the bomb is by you and will miss. If it’s hissing it’s going to be close, and you might have to change your underwear.”27

  The tedious daily cycle spun without respite: long sleepless nights yielding to drowsy dawns, heavy airstrikes each midday, firefights and artillery duels all day long—an endless lethal routine of sniping, strafing, bombing, and shelling. When it rained, it rained hard and long, and the foxholes and trenches flooded and made everyone miserable. When the rain let up, the ground dried and clouds of dirty gray dust rose from the airfield and got into eyes and lungs and made everyone miserable. The men ate two meals a day and were always hungry. The food was awful—cold C rations, stale biscuits, powdered eggs, dehydrated potatoes, soggy boiled fish, and canned Australian sheep’s tongue. They drank green, bitter coffee brewed in a rinsed-out fuel drum. Everyone lost weight, often at an alarming pace. Told to remain close to their planes, pilots tried slinging hammocks underneath the wings. In the middle hours of the day, the machines baked in the sun and a man could burn himself by touching the aluminum surface. For lack of enough ground personnel, the pilots had to learn how to do some of their own maintenance, but as one squadron leader recalled, most of them “didn’t even know how to gas their airplanes.”28

  Long-range airstrikes from Rabaul were a daily ordeal, but the Americans usually received two hours’ warning from coastwatchers on Bougainville. Jack Read, from his fine vista at Porapora, scrutinized the Japanese formations as they were still climbing to altitude overhead. He would radio directly to Hugh Mackenzie’s station KEN, located in a bunker on the edge of Henderson Field. On August 29 at 8:25 a.m., for example, this message came through: “18 TWIN-ENGINE BOMBERS, 22 FIGHTERS NOW HEADING SOUTHEAST.”29 Mackenzie relayed the contact by field telephone to Air Control, located in the pagoda-style administrative building a few hundred feet north of the airfield, and to “D-2,” Vandegrift’s intelligence staff. A white flag went up, signaling “condition yellow.” The Wildcats usually took off about fifty minutes before the enemy’s expected arrival—enough time to climb to 30,000 feet, an altitude from which the heavy fighters could make diving attacks on the intruders. Two hours after the Japanese had come and gone, Read was back on the radio to report how many survivors had passed overhead en route back to Rabaul. In the second week of September, the marines finally installed an air search radar on Guadalcanal. But it was effective only to a distance of about eighty miles, and it did not provide ample warning to allow the F4Fs to claw to altitude. It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of Jack Read’s coastwatching reports to the success of the air war over Guadalcanal.

  Most of the interception work was done by Marine Fighter Squadron 223 (VMF-223), commanded by Captain John L. Smith. Smith’s F4Fs took position at very high altitude, a few miles northwest of Henderson. The big formations of G4M “Betty” bombers generally arrived at about 25,000 feet. The Wildcats attacked in two-plane sections—diving runs from overhead, at an angle that kept them out of the G4M’s machine-gun turrets’ line of fire. The G4M was not nearly as tough as the B-17 Flying Fortresses or other American heavy bombers. The pilots soon learned to aim their .50-caliber fire into the engines or the wing root, where a short burst normally sufficed to set the aircraft afire or even blow it apart.

  Zeros flew high cover over the G4Ms, but they were often positioned too far behind the bombers to interfere with the Wildcats’ initial diving attacks. Day after day, the Zeros entered the fray only after the Americans had sent several bombers down in flames. Joe Foss, a marine fighter ace, scratched his head at the tactics employed by his Japanese counterparts. Most were obviously highly skilled, but they failed to adapt to changing tactics and became predictable: “They tried the same thing all the time.”30 The Americans had long since learned to avoid “chasing tails” with the quick and maneuverable Zeros, and did not hesitate to dive out of a dogfight if the enemy gained an advantage. Foss praised the sturdy construction of the F4F and noted that many Americans claimed aerial victories after their planes had been shot up. “We were hit with Japanese cannons as well as their machine guns,” he said. “This was unable to knock us down unless it happened to hit the oil cooler or some oil line or gas line in the motor. On a head-on run at each other, we would usually blast the opponent out of the sky and when he was on our tail our armor plating kept the pilot from getting injured, and at no time did any Grumman blow up.” The Zero, by contrast, was agreeably easy to destroy: “At any time that you got a direct hit at the base of the wings, the plane exploded like a toy balloon.”31

  For most of the six-month air campaign over Guadalcanal, the Japanese airstrikes flew all the way from Rabaul and back, covering more
than 600 miles each way in a single combat flight. It was too much time in the cockpit, too wearing on the Japanese pilots. “My God!” exclaimed Alex Vraciu, a navy fighter ace with Fighting Squadron Six (VF-6). “That’s one thousand miles total both ways, plus any air action over the target area. That’s a lot of time. Fighter pilots don’t like to sit on their seats for too long a stretch. Three hours in a combat air patrol is enough.”32 Some of the Zero pilots behaved strangely and even seemed to avoid combat. They flew inexplicably acrobatic maneuvers, almost as if they were trying to impress their foes. “Oh, they put on lots of acrobatics, slowovers, loops,” Foss said. “The only reason that we could figure out for their doing all those stunts, they wanted to show us just how ‘hot’ they were. So, we showed them how hot we were, and shot them down.”33 One afternoon over Ironbottom Sound, Jack Conger of VMF-223 had a Zero riding his tail and thought he might be finished. But then:

  he did the damnedest thing you ever saw. He came down from above and behind, and instead of riding it out on my tail and filling me full of bullets, he let himself go too fast so that he went by me. He should’ve dodged off to one side and got out of there, but instead of that the fool rose right up under my nose and did a roll. What was he trying to do? Impress me with his gymnastics? I don’t know. Apparently those fellows have been told that they were the best flyers in the world, and so they were like little children with toys; they had to show their tricks when they had an audience. Or maybe he thought I couldn’t hit him if he kept his plane tumbling like that. As a matter of fact, he was just making himself a bigger target. I used a three second burst, and he was dead before I stopped firing. . . . He made a splash no bigger than a porpoise. Then he was just part of the soup.34

  Zeros sometimes flew surprise strafing runs at treetop altitude directly over Henderson Field. Men scattered and dived into the nearest foxhole; some were inevitably cut down in their tracks. Strafing runs also damaged or destroyed parked aircraft. On August 23, eight Zeros suddenly strafed Henderson, sending men running for cover. Eventually, these runs were effectively countered by P-400s of the Army Air Force’s 67th Fighter Squadron. The P-400s—a slightly modified version of the P-39 Airacobra—were practically useless at altitude, but they were fast and maneuverable close to the ground. Marine Clifford Fox was driven into his trench by a strafing Zero when a P-400 appeared suddenly over the trees and “caught the Jap plane with his cannon and the Zero disintegrated in the air. It floated right down into this ravine in the jungle in front of us. You could see the pilot and the engine of this Zero coming down together. They were the heaviest objects and going forward the fastest. The rest of the plane was sort of floating earthward, shot to smithereens. We were all cheering.”35