While Vandegrift was concluding the briefing, a patrol of the 5th Marine Regiment encountered Japanese troops on a jungle trail near the Matanikau River, a few miles to the west. In the ensuing firefight, a Marine officer was shot and killed.
The battle for Guadalcanal had begun.
SUNDAY, 9 AUGUST 1942
ADMIRAL ISOROKU YAMAMOTO
COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, COMBINED IMPERIAL FLEET
When news of the American invasion of the Solomons reached him, Admiral Yamamoto immediately recognized the strategic significance of American control of the airfield on Guadalcanal, and made plans to expel them.
He ordered the advance force of the Japanese 2nd Fleet, as well as the carrier striking force of the newly created 3rd Fleet, to provide the naval muscle required by the Imperial Army to “clean out” the American ground and naval forces in the Solomon Islands.
The advance force of the 2nd Fleet was ordered to sail in forty-eight hours. It consisted of one battleship, five heavy cruisers, a seaplane carrier, and two destroyer squadrons. The carrier striking force of the 3rd Fleet, which would provide air support for the counter-offensive, included the Empire’s newest heavy carriers, the Shokaku and the Zuikaku, along with the light carrier, Ryujo. The carriers had a combined complement of 127 combat aircraft, and would be escorted by two battleships, two heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, and ten destroyers.
The navy’s success, however, would depend on an equally potent contribution by the Imperial Army. Unfortunately, its high command did not share Yamamoto’s views about Guadalcanal’s strategic importance. At that moment, the army was in the process of planning a ground offensive against Port Moresby in New Guinea, and considered the American thrust in the Solomons to be little more than an annoyance.
Initial reports sent to Rabaul led the army to believe the Americans were conducting a “reconnaissance in force” at Guadalcanal, not a full-scale invasion. Although Japanese pilots claimed they had sighted thirty transport ships in the invasion force, an army staff officer contended that due to the softness of American troops, they required twenty transports for a single regiment.
With no agreement on the size of the American ground force, the Imperial General Headquarters decided to allocate nine thousand troops from three different military units to retake Guadalcanal.
More than ten thousand Americans were already there. Another seven thousand held the island of Tulagi and the other initial invasion objectives. The lack of accurate intelligence by the Japanese would have serious consequences.
The only Japanese military unit available for an immediate counterattack was on the island of Guam. It was a detachment of three thousand seasoned troops commanded by an aggressive and highly decorated army colonel named Kiyonao Ichiki. He was ordered to immediately prepare his men for action.
SUNDAY, 9 AUGUST 1942
USS SARATOGA
TORPEDO SQUADRON EIGHT
1800
As the Saratoga continued steaming away from the invasion area, Swede Larsen was tallying the results of the previous two days of squadron operations. He commended Pete Peterkin and Chief Hammond for their roles in successfully preparing all the aircraft for combat. Not one plane had experienced a serious malfunction, and all of them had returned safely to the Saratoga.
In his After Action Report for the dawn mission on August 7, Swede described it as a “glide bombing and strafing attack on Langa Langa Harbor, Malaita Island, destroying observed sea plane and motor torpedo boat moorings and adjacent clusters of grass huts.”
He made no mention in his report of having sighted a torpedo boat in one of the creeks. John Taurman remained convinced that they had attacked a native settlement. Commander Felt, the Saratoga air group commander, decided to recommend Swede for the Distinguished Flying Cross for his “heroism and extraordinary achievement in aerial combat against the enemy.”
It was Swede’s first combat citation, and the first received by the squadron for the Guadalcanal operation. That Sunday, most of the pilots on the Saratoga were simply grateful to have a chance to relax after two days of constant flying.
After forty days aboard ship without reprovisioning, their monotonous diet was temporarily enhanced when the officers’ “Gedunk” bar began operating again, serving ice cream made from powdered ingredients as long as they lasted.
Smiley Morgan privately wondered whether the battle for the Solomons might already be over. It sounded to him like a lot of Japanese planes had been shot down in the first two days. Some of the fighter pilots were already declaring victory.
No one seemed to know why the American carriers were heading away from the Solomons invasion area, but the obvious reason was that they weren’t needed there anymore.
The Galloping Dragon
Wednesday, 19 August 1942
USS Saratoga
Torpedo Squadron Eight
To some of the pilots, it felt as if they had suddenly been cut off from the war, from the world itself, and had become guests aboard a tourist ship cruising the South Pacific.
The Saratoga wasn’t as elegant as a tourist ship. The food in the officers’ wardroom continued to worsen. A typical supper would be boiled rice served with canned Vienna sausage. The next night, it might be chili beans served with rice and canned corn.
In the enlisted men’s mess, those meals would have seemed like delicacies.
Each morning, Smiley checked in at the squadron office to find out if any missions had been scheduled. A few pilots from the squadron were flying daily air patrols, but he was never asked to fly one.
The task force was evidently in safe waters because the jarring klaxon of the general quarters signal had become a distant memory. Even the weather cooperated, with a succession of beautiful days in which the pilots spent hours sunbathing on the breezy flight deck.
Then the rumor mill started gearing up again. The word was that Fletcher was planning to ambush the Japanese carriers before their planned counteroffensive against Guadalcanal. John Taurman told Smiley that he thought Guadalcanal might be like Gettysburg, where no one expected a big battle to take place, but both sides kept raising the stakes after they got there until it became a deciding battleground in the war.
On August 17, Admiral Noyes flew over from the Wasp to confer with Admiral Fletcher. The latest intelligence from Pearl Harbor suggested that two and possibly three Japanese task forces carrying troop reinforcements had converged on Guadalcanal.
On August 19, the carrier USS Long Island arrived for a rendezvous at sea with the Saratoga. The Long Island’s flight deck was crammed with combat planes. It was the Marine air group that had been promised to General Vandegrift to defend Guadalcanal.
Fletcher ordered the Saratoga cleared for action. The two carriers headed north again, toward the Solomons.
Thursday, 20 August 1942
Guadalcanal
1st Marine Division
Since Dog Day, Vandegrift’s Marines had done everything they could to prepare for the Japanese counteroffensive. By August 12, 2,600 feet of packed-earth runway had been completed at the airfield. It was a remarkable achievement. In just three days, his Marines moved 7,000 cubic yards of dirt to fill the long depression left in the runway. When they were finished, it was decided to name the field after Lofton Henderson, a Marine dive-bomber pilot who had been killed at Midway.
Vandegrift was concerned that the Japanese might assault the same landing beaches along the northern coast that his own men had used. He had the Marines dig in along the beaches’ entire five-mile length.
On Dog Day, the Japanese army garrison on Guadalcanal had fled west across the Lunga River. He placed the 5th Marines along its banks to repel any counterattack from that direction. On the eastern perimeter, he put his defensive line along a stream called Alligator Creek. There he deployed the 1st Marines.
To the south of Henderson Field, there was only dense jungle. Along this less vulnerable part of the perimeter, he placed support troops, including the eng
ineers, artillerymen, and construction units.
His most precious assets were the artillery pieces that had been unloaded before the transports left. There weren’t many, mostly short-barreled howitzers, but they could stop a Japanese ground attack in its tracks. He placed the howitzers in a central position within the perimeter so their fire could be shifted in any direction. The few antiaircraft weapons were deployed north of the airfield to meet the Japanese bombers when they arrived from Rabaul.
Enemy air attacks had been constant. The Japanese came over whenever they pleased, day and night, dropping bombs and strafing positions around the airfield. At night, Japanese submarines would surface offshore and lob shells at the American positions. Without air cover, there was nothing for the Marines to do but endure it all in their trenches and foxholes.
On the night of August 12, tragedy struck. Colonel Frank Goettge, the division’s senior intelligence officer, had led a twenty-five-man patrol to the far side of the Matanikau River after a Japanese prisoner indicated that a group of Japanese soldiers there were looking to surrender.
No word was received back from the patrol until early the next morning, when a naked and bleeding Marine crawled back into the American lines and reported that the patrol had been virtually wiped out. Another survivor claimed to have witnessed Japanese soldiers hacking wounded Marines to death with samurai swords. Vande-grift immediately sent a reinforced company to recover Goettge and his patrol. No trace of them was found.
The island itself had also begun to take a serious toll on Vande-grift’s men. After one week ashore, his medical staff estimated that nearly 20 percent of the Marines were suffering from dysentery.
Another steaming hot day was coming to a close on August 20 when Marines at the airfield heard the distant drone of aircraft engines. At first, they assumed the planes were Japanese, although the enemy usually attacked at midday and from the north. These planes were coming from the east. When an officer with binoculars held them up to his eyes, he saw that the first plane in the formation had white stars under its wings.
Like Yankee fans watching a ninth-inning DiMaggio home run, the Marines started cheering. The raw-voiced howl spread across the length of the airfield and to the farthest corners of the defense perimeter as each man recognized what it meant and joined in.
When the first Dauntless dive-bomber braked to a stop in a cloud of dust at the edge of the packed-earth runway, Lieutenant Colonel Dick Mangrum, who commanded the Marine dive-bomber squadron, dropped down from the wing. General Vandegrift stepped forward to shake his hand.
“Thank God you have come,” said Vandegrift, close to tears.
Behind Dick Mangrum’s Dauntless were eleven more dive-bombers, followed by nineteen Grumman Wildcats under the command of Major John Smith. Now the Japanese could no longer fly over Guadalcanal without a fight. The Marines could finally hit back.
Prior to the invasion, American war planners had designated “Cactus” as the code name for Guadalcanal. Now, two weeks after Dog Day, the Cactus Air Force had been born.
That evening, Vandegrift personally celebrated its arrival by bathing with his men in the slow-moving Tenaru River. As he slathered himself with soap in the brown water, he glanced up to see a resolute young Marine on the riverbank cradling a thirty-caliber machine gun. Somehow it filled him with a transcendent confidence.
He went to sleep on the night of August 20 feeling secure that they were ready for whatever threat the Japanese could mount. The only remaining question was when the Japanese counteroffensive would begin.
It began five hours later.
Friday, 21 August 1942
Guadalcanal
1st Marine Division
0200
The first Japanese attempt to retake Henderson Airfield came out of the darkness at the edge of Alligator Creek on the northeastern rim of the defense perimeter held by the 1st Marines.
The attack was led by Colonel Kiyonao Ichiki of the Japanese Imperial Army. His nine-hundred-man detachment of elite shock troops had been secretly delivered the previous night by six destroyers to a position several miles east of the American lines.
Ichiki was a veteran of China and Malaya. Dedicated to the code of Bushido, his martial philosophy allowed no pity for the enemy or for himself. Time and again, he had watched Allied troops retreat in panic in the face of his fierce “Banzai” charges.
Ichiki’s orders were to attack only if he felt he had enough men to retake the airfield. Otherwise, he was to secure a position on Guadalcanal and await the reinforcements that would be delivered in a few days. Ichiki had no idea how many Americans were on Guadalcanal, but it didn’t matter. They were the same decadent breed that had surrendered at Bataan. He didn’t need reinforcements.
Ichiki’s plan was simple. His men would burst through the American line with the concentrated force of a spear point, and then drive inland to the airfield. As soon as it was in his hands, he would radio for reinforcements.
Near the mouth of Alligator Creek, a sandbar ran parallel to the beach where the lagoon met the sea. It was here that he would launch his spear thrust. At 0200, a green flare exploded in the darkness over the sandbar. Under its garish illumination, Ichiki’s first wave of shock troops came charging toward the Marine defense line shrieking, “BANZAI . . . BANZAI!”
Waiting twenty-five yards behind a strand of barbed wire at the western edge of the sandbar was a group of one hundred Marines. They were supported by three emplaced machine guns and a thirty-seven-millimeter gun. None of them had ever fought at night, or against an all-out assault by veteran troops. For most, this was their first combat action after two months of training in New Zealand.
Ichiki expected the Americans to break and run, just like the British troops had in the Malayan jungle. Instead, as his first wave of screaming attackers closed on the American line, the Marines sent back a concentrated hail of rifle and machine gun fire, cutting down many of the Japanese as they reached the string of barbed wire at the end of the sandbar.
A handful of attackers were able to breach the wire and run the last twenty-five yards to penetrate the American positions. There, the fighting became hand-to-hand until all of the Japanese were killed.
As the sound of the growing firefight reached General Vande-grift’s command post, he waited nervously by his field telephone to learn the results of the first major action of the campaign.
Seeing the failure of his first assault, Colonel Ichiki ordered two more companies forward in a second Banzai charge. It too broke under the disciplined fire of the 1st Marines. Undaunted, Ichiki ordered another company to wade through the surf to get behind the American line. They were cut down with machine gun fire as they charged up the beach.
With hundreds of dead Japanese troops covering the sandbar, Ichiki fell back with the remainder of his force to a large coconut grove. In the morning, a reserve Marine battalion got behind him and cut off any further retreat. His last pocket of resistance was reduced with mortar fire, and four American tanks rumbled into the coconut grove to force their surrender.
The remaining Japanese refused to give up, even with the outcome no longer in doubt. They fought the tanks with rifles and pistols. A wounded Japanese soldier would wait for an American medic to examine him, then pull the pin on a hand grenade to kill them both. Ichiki’s men gave no quarter, and expected none. The battle ended late on the afternoon of the twenty-first.
One Japanese soldier surrendered.
Between the sandbar and the coconut grove, nearly eight hundred Japanese soldiers lay dead, some of them half-buried by the pounding surf, others literally ground into the loamy soil under the treads of the tanks. Colonel Ichiki disappeared into the slaughter ground along with the rest of his men.
Forty-four Marines had been killed and more than seventy wounded.
For his part, General Vandegrift realized that the Japanese had underestimated the size of his defense force and the fighting caliber of his men. He doubted they would make the s
ame mistake twice.
Saturday, 22 August 1942
USS Saratoga
Torpedo Squadron Eight
0600
The Saratoga’s air group was going back into action. They were heading north toward the Solomons to intercept the biggest concentration of Japanese warships since the Battle of Midway.
Smiley Morgan was the duty officer that morning as three of Torpedo Eight’s Avengers prepared to take off on air patrol. Standing in a blustery wind on the flight deck, he watched the planes taxi up to the starting point.
The second pilot in line was his roommate, James Hill Cook. From his cockpit, Cook motioned Smiley to come over. Running across the flight deck, Smiley climbed onto the wing and leaned into the cockpit.
“I’m a little dry,” Cook shouted over the roar of his engine. “You got any gum?”
Smiley found a pack in his shirt pocket and handed him two sticks. Cook unwrapped them and put the gum in his mouth.
“Thanks,” he said.
Smiley jumped off the wing and ran back to the edge of the flight deck. The first Avenger was already taking off. Cook was next. When he revved his engines to the straining pitch, the control officer waved him forward, and the plane shot down the deck.
Smiley had watched hundreds of takeoffs. This one seemed no different from the others until he felt the ship canting over to port, and saw Cook’s plane begin to drift left. Near the end of the runway, his left wing was extended out over the side of the ship. As he attempted to gain altitude, the plane lost headway, and went over the port side.
Smiley watched it hit the water, left wing first, and quickly go under. A few seconds later, he saw one member of the crew bob back to the surface. A destroyer following behind the Saratoga picked up the lone survivor.
It wasn’t James Hill Cook. He had gone down with the plane, along with his tail gunner, C. E. Thompson. The next morning, Smiley boxed up James Hill’s personal property, including the desk photograph of Cook’s wife, Marjorie. He remembered Cook’s own words after Smiley’s gunner Nick Chorak had died back at Ford Island.
A Dawn Like Thunder Page 24