The Conquering Tide

by Ian W. Toll

  Admiral McCain, having been succeeded as COMAIRSOPAC by Aubrey Fitch, returned to Washington to assume command of the navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics. There he instigated a quiet campaign to relieve Arnold of his job. McCain told anyone who would listen that the USAAF “did not know how to operate over the sea, that they have not been trained for this work, and that, instead of admitting their failure, they were trying to discredit the performance of the navy’s air arm.”37 In budget talks for 1944, the two services were at loggerheads over the expansion of naval shore-based aviation. McCain believed the army would put up with aircraft carriers but was determined to control all land-based aircraft, even those engaged in attacking the enemy’s naval forces. The admirals were irritated by the USAAF’s tendency to publicize exaggerated claims of bombing success. Ten months of warfare had established that bombs dropped from altitude almost never hit ships operating at sea. In defiance of the evidence, the army’s public communiqués declared large numbers of Japanese fleet units sunk or “probably sunk” by B-17s or other army bombers. When those same ships later appeared off Guadalcanal, the navy was not amused.

  But the political winds were blowing against Arnold. Admirals King and Leahy, two of the four joint chiefs, had the ear of the president. While preparations for TORCH progressed in secrecy, the South Pacific was the only theater in which American forces were heavily engaged. As the site of the first offensive taken by the Allies in any theater, the Solomons had attained outsized symbolic and political importance. The raid on Pearl Harbor was being avenged on Guadalcanal, and the American people heartily approved. On October 23, FDR backed Leahy’s request for twenty more 7,000-ton cargo ships to resupply the South Pacific. That same day, when news reached the White House of the sinking of the Hornet, the commander in chief penned a strongly worded memorandum to his military chiefs:

  My anxiety about the S.W. Pac. is to make sure that every possible weapon gets into that area to hold Guadalcanal, and that, having held in this crisis, that munitions, planes and crews are on the way to take advantage of our success. We will soon find ourselves engaged in two active fronts and we must have adequate air support in both places even tho it means delaying our other commitments, particularly to England. Our long-range plans could be set back for months if we fail to throw our full strength in our immediate and impending conflicts.38

  After the war, Arnold acidly observed that the president, with a stroke of his pen, had upended the “Europe-first” strategy. But what could he do but swallow his pride and obey?

  “I HAD TO BEGIN THROWING PUNCHES almost immediately,” Halsey wrote Nimitz shortly after assuming command at Noumea.39 There was no transitional period, no time to attend to the details of setting up his headquarters or staff. Urgent decisions confronted him right away.

  Ghormley had never visited Guadalcanal, and Halsey was not about to make the same mistake. On November 8, he flew into Henderson Field. Vandegrift met him at the airfield and conducted him on a jeep tour of the front lines. The admiral’s uniform was nondescript khaki, so many of the marines in the trenches had no idea who or what he was until he disembarked from the jeep and stood among them.

  Security required that the arrival of such an exalted figure as COMSOPAC never be announced in advance. There was no “Potemkin village” effect—no sprucing up, no turning the men out in their best uniforms, no parade-ground reviews. Urged by his staff to stand up in the jeep or to wave as he passed, Halsey refused: “It smells of exhibitionism. The hell with it!”40 The marines were dumbstruck by the three stars on his collar, but the admiral quickly put the men at ease. He asked questions and listened. He noted their malarial emaciation and witnessed the deplorable conditions in which they lived and fought, and agreed with Vandegrift that they must be relieved by the army as soon as possible. In impromptu remarks to the island’s press representatives, Halsey first coined the bloody-minded motto that would make him famous: “Kill Japs, kill Japs, and keep on killing Japs!”41 Asked if victory would require an invasion of the Japanese home islands, he replied that he hoped so and looked forward to the carnage such an operation would inevitably entail.42

  For all his bravado, Halsey did not mind owning up to his own fear. When a Japanese destroyer in Ironbottom Sound exchanged fire with marine artillery, Halsey could not sleep. “It wasn’t the noise that kept me awake,” he wrote, “it was fright. I called myself yellow—and worse—and told myself to ‘go to sleep, you damned coward!’ but it didn’t do any good; I couldn’t obey orders.”43

  ADMIRAL TURNER RUSHED A CONVOY OF FAST TRANSPORTS, accompanied by cruisers and destroyers, out of Noumea and Espiritu Santo between November 8 and 10. Sighting reports and intelligence estimates suggested that another major enemy naval force would descend on Ironbottom Sound the night of November 12–13, and Turner wanted his ships clear of the area before they arrived. Turner’s plan depended on the rapid unloading of the transports and cargo ships—at all costs the troops and supplies must be put onto the beach by Thursday night, November 12. The cargo ships and transports were supported by two cruiser-destroyer squadrons commanded by Rear Admirals Daniel J. Callaghan and Norman Scott. In hopes of avoiding air detection, they would approach Guadalcanal by the long route south of San Cristobal. The first elements entered Ironbottom Sound in the small hours of November 11.

  Later that morning, the Enterprise threaded the intricate channel out of Noumea Harbor and put to sea. The carrier was still licking her wounds sustained in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. Her forward elevator remained jammed in the up position, her hull was taking on water, and the warren of corridors and staterooms known as “officers’ country” remained a blackened and misshapen wreck.44 In company was Task Force 64, under the command of Rear Admiral Willis A. “Ching” Lee: the two fast battleships Washington and South Dakota with supporting destroyers. By Halsey’s orders, the combined task forces (still under the overall command of Admiral Kinkaid) were designated Task Force KING. They were to take station well south of Guadalcanal, avoiding the better-traveled sea-lanes to the north in hopes of eluding submarine predators and enemy reconnaissance flights.

  On November 11 and 12, the transport fleet anchored off Lunga Point and carried out their race-against-the-clock unloading procedures. On the afternoon of the second day, a flight of torpedo-armed Mitsubishi Type 1 planes approached low over the green hills of the Nggela Islands. They fanned out into two groups, skimming over the water at an altitude of 30 to 40 feet, evidently intending to attack simultaneously from the north and south.45 The fleet threw up an antiaircraft barrage so thick that it appeared almost as a wall of black smoke. The San Francisco’s 5-inch guns, fired at near-maximum depression, took down two planes in the first salvo. The Mitsubishis veered right and left, maneuvering radically to avoid being hit. Lieutenant (jg) Flavius J. George of the Pawnee left a contemporary description of the raid in his diary: “One plane, then another and another exploded in a burst of flame or nosed over into the sea with a tremendous splash. In a matter of seconds only four were left and these launched their torpedoes wildly, and frantically banked away from the deadly fire.”46

  Of the four torpedoes dropped, none registered a hit on an American ship. One “porpoised” and then seemed to dive; another made a circular run and did not detonate; one actually rebounded off the sea and nearly struck the plane that had dropped it. Antiaircraft fire from the ships and the Guadalcanal-based fighters destroyed all the planes save one, which managed to dodge into a low bank of dark cloud. But one of the damaged aircraft suicide-crashed into the San Francisco’s superstructure and exploded in a ball of fire. The attack killed fifteen men and wounded twenty-nine, most of whom suffered grievous burns.47

  Air searches up the Slot revealed several inbound columns of enemy warships, including Kongo-class battleships. Turner pulled the fleet out through Sealark Channel at sundown. He placed his cruisers and most of his destroyers under the tactical command of Admiral Callaghan, who would be left behind to grapple with the
incoming Japanese force. Lacking battleships, Callaghan’s thirteen warships would be badly overmatched. But if they could inflict enough punishment on the enemy, they might at least spare the marines another holocaust of 14-inch bombardment. Kinkaid’s group could follow the next day to despoil the enemy’s planned troop landings.

  American officers who knew of the reported presence of Japanese battleships were none too happy. The captain of the destroyer Fletcher remarked caustically: “Seems funny to be fighting battleships with destroyers and a few cruisers.”48 Cassin Young, captain of Callaghan’s flagship San Francisco, was overheard telling the admiral that the mission amounted to suicide.49

  At exactly midnight, Callaghan’s ships crept back into Ironbottom Sound. It was a dark night, with dense overcast and no moon. There was no breeze, and the sea was as smooth as a mill pond. Men could barely make out the other ships in the column, though they were only about 500 yards apart. The glowing greenish phosphorescence stirred up by their wakes trailed away to the south. The date was Friday the thirteenth.

  The enemy revealed itself only gradually. Radar scopes showed blips in the northwest at ranges between 27,000 and 32,000 yards. The Japanese seemed to be arranged in two parallel columns of four and six ships, and Callaghan steered toward the gap between them. When the radar range had dropped to about 1,100 yards, American lookouts first perceived vague silhouettes moving across the landmasses of the islands to the north.50

  The action began when a powerful searchlight suddenly illuminated the upper works of the San Francisco. Both sides opened fire simultaneously, and the battle quickly degenerated into a general melee, with ships drifting out of position and firing indiscriminately on whatever enemy units they could bring to bear. Callaghan ordered, “Odd ships fire to starboard, even to port,” but it was often difficult to distinguish friend from foe. The scene was intermittently lit by searchlights, flares, muzzle flashes, star shells, streams of tracers, and the yellow thunderclaps of exploding ships. Lieutenant

  C. Raymond Calhoun of the Sterett was reminded of “a no-holds-barred barroom brawl, in which someone turned out the lights and everyone started swinging in every direction—only this was ten thousand times worse. Shells continued to drop all around us, star shells and flares flung overhead, tracers whizzed past from various directions, and everywhere we looked ships burned and exploded against the backdrop of the night sky.”51

  The American TBS circuits became overloaded and confused, and not all the ships heard the instructions coming from the officer in tactical command (OTC). Destroyers altered course to bring their broadsides to bear on enemy ships, deranging the American formation. The destroyer O’Bannon had to steer aggressively to avoid her sister the Sterett, but her movements placed her in the course of the cruiser Atlanta, which also had to execute an emergency turn. The San Francisco fired on and badly mauled her sister the Atlanta. At 1:51 a.m., Callaghan ordered a cease-fire and attempted to identify his own ships. The order went out by TBS: “Turn on lights for about three seconds.”52 But the circuits were badly overloaded, and in the deadly chaos the order did not get through to most American ships.

  On the whole, it was now a case of every ship for herself. “Occasionally a blinding flare and rumbling blast would indicate that some ship had blown up,” wrote Lieutenant George in his diary, “and we would catch momentary glimpses of black and smoke shrouded shapes belching flame.”53 An observer on the beach at Guadalcanal thought the scene “resembled a door to hell opening and closing, opening and closing, over and over.”54

  The San Francisco headed off to starboard and became separated from her sisters, and then found herself staring down the giant 14-inch barrels of the battleship Hiei. She opened fire and struck first, and the Hiei was slow to respond, possibly because she could not depress her guns quickly enough. Several American destroyers also crossed paths with the leviathan. The Cushing fired six torpedoes at the Hiei from a range of 1,200 yards, scoring perhaps three hits. The O’Bannon added three more torpedoes. The Laffey crossed the Hiei’s towering bow with barely a few yards to spare, and was almost overrun by the monstrous ship. She fired two torpedoes, which failed to arm before they were stopped by the Hiei’s hull, then followed with several 5-inch rounds fired into the battleship’s bridge structure.

  From a range of 1,000 yards, the Sterett poured nine salvos of 5-inch into the Hiei’s bridge—thirty-six shells—and every one hit. The Sterett crossed her bow at a range of only about 500 yards, close enough that the crew could see Japanese sailors running along the deck with their clothes on fire. The Hiei burned brightly from stem to stern; explosions rippled along her length; men leapt from her decks into the sea; and burning debris rained down on ships all around her.

  The abandoned Cushing drifted and burned out of control. The O’Bannon steered wildly to get out of the way of her sister, the badly stricken Laffey. A torpedo struck the destroyer Barton and tore her in half. Her bow section bobbed one way, her stern the other, and both sections sank within seconds. About forty of her crew survived and swam through her debris and the oil slick she had left on the surface. Some were overrun and drowned by other ships, or killed or injured by depth-charge explosions in the water nearby.

  Both the Portland and the Juneau were struck by torpedoes and made their way out of the action as best they could. The Portland circled aimlessly, her steering and propellers damaged, but she still managed to fire a few salvos at a damaged Shiguri-class destroyer south of Savo Island. The Helena, in better shape than most of her sisters, fired at strange ships off her starboard beam.

  The San Francisco drifted through the center of the action, bruised but not knocked out, firing everything she had at the Hiei. In turn, however, the Hiei planted several large-caliber shells on the San Francisco, including one that struck the bridge on the starboard side and killed Admiral Callaghan and most of his staff. Both Captain Young and his executive officer were grievously wounded and died within a few hours. One of the senior surviving officers went up to the navigation bridge and found not a living soul, then went looking for Admiral Callaghan or his staff and “found them all in one heap on the starboard side of the signal bridge, all apparently dead.”55 Lieutenant Commander Bruce McCandless, officer of the deck, took the conn and made for Cape Esperance, taking the badly mauled cruiser out of the line of fire. But the San Francisco’s main battery continued pumping out one salvo after another until the Hiei silenced her entirely.

  Dawn revealed an awful scene. Ironbottom Sound was littered with burning wreckage, oil, and floating bodies. Hulks of ships drifted and burned, their smashed superstructures leaning drunkenly over the sea, their gun turrets collapsed and hanging over the hulls. Hundreds of oil-saturated survivors clung to debris and called for assistance. Small boats plied to and fro, picking them up. With rare exceptions, the Japanese sailors in the water refused to be picked up, and some attempted to drown themselves rather than be taken prisoner. The Hiei was seen brightly afire, moving slowly north of Savo Island, apparently without control of her rudder, accompanied by several smaller ships. Lieutenant George of the Pawnee, detailed to take survivors off the Atlanta, described the mortally wounded ship: “Her entire superstructure had been shot away and her three forward turrets were like shattered egg crates out of which stuck distorted and twisted guns. Her main deck was almost awash and on it huddled the grimy and dazed remnant of her crew.”56 The survivors were taken off by landing boats, and a demolition party went aboard to set charges in the engine room. She sank shortly after 8:00 a.m.

  The Helena, least damaged of the American cruisers, led a column of six smashed ships toward Sealark Channel. The San Francisco appeared so badly maimed that it seemed incredible she could make way at all—one witness on another ship counted twenty-six shell holes in her side.57 Dead men were buried at sea in hasty ceremonies. Crewmen, utterly exhausted, snatched short periods of sleep wherever they could find a place to stretch out.

  The Juneau was running low in the water, her d
ecks almost awash. She could make only 13 knots and was slow to answer her helm.58 At 11:01, some miles east of Guadalcanal, a torpedo fired by Japanese submarine I-26 struck the ship in the port side and touched off the torpedo warheads in her magazine. The blast was so powerful that it blew men standing on the San Francisco flat on the deck.59 Men glancing up from the other ships saw entire 5-inch gun barrels and large sections of the Juneau’s superstructure hurled high into the air. An enormous cloud of mostly yellow smoke hung there for several minutes, obscuring her position. Gradually, as the cloud rose off the surface, observers on the other ships scanned the sea and saw nothing. “There was not a stick, or a spar, or a boat, or a life buoy; nor was a single man visible,” recalled an officer of the Sterett. “I strained to see a head, or a body; but as the smoke cleared, I could see absolutely nothing.”60 Lieutenant Graham C. Bonnell of the San Francisco agreed: “I looked over to the spot where the Juneau had been and saw only a large cloud of smoke. . . . And in a short space of time this smoke had completely cleared and you could see nothing but a wake going along and immediately stopping.”61

  The destroyers could establish no sonar contact on the submarine, nor was there any sign of it. Captain Gilbert Hoover of the Helena, eyeing the danger posed to the other ships, made the hardheaded decision to keep the remnants of the task force on course and underway. Officers would later say that they did not believe a single man on the Juneau could have survived the attack, and that impression was echoed by dozens of witnesses. In fact, 120 of her crew did survive the sinking. They drifted at sea for five days, clinging to three rafts connected by life nets, and dying one by one. Ten survivors washed up on Santa Catalina Island on November 18.