A Dawn Like Thunder

by Robert J. Mrazek

  Pete Peterkin had already written about the depths of the Guadalcanal darkness in his journal. “It is impossible to believe how black the nights can be in these islands,” he wrote. “Darkness closes in so tightly that it is almost suffocating.”

  When the three Avengers arrived over Cape Esperance, the pilots made their bombing runs at less than a thousand feet, hoping to drop the payloads where they would do the most good. As Esders pulled out of his run, a huge explosion lit up the area behind him. Apparently, he had hit an ammunition dump. The other pilots dropped their bombs in close proximity to it, and made their escape.

  The black night closed in again as they headed for home. Esders and Doggett were flying together on a southerly course when Red radioed to say that he couldn’t see a thing and was going to drop lower to regain his bearings.

  He had already begun shedding altitude when Esders suddenly saw the glowing reflection of his exhaust flame on the surface of the ocean and realized they were already too low.

  Esders was calling Doggett on the radio when Red’s Avenger slammed into the ocean, careened upward about a hundred feet into the air, and then spun back down again into the dark sea.

  Esders circled the area, waiting for a flare or other signal that the crew might still be alive. There was none. Doggett was dead, as were his two crewmen, Charlie Lawrence and J. D. Hayes, the little tail gunner who had pulled his forty-five on Swede Larsen less than two weeks earlier.

  After his own bombing run, John Taurman became separated from the rest of the flight, and tried to make it back to Henderson Field alone. Aside from his compass, he had no navigational instruments to find his way.

  Pete Peterkin was in the Pagoda when Taurman’s voice came over the radio and Bruce Harwood tried to talk him home. Not knowing where Taurman was, there was no easy way to vector him back to the field.

  Harwood had the airfield searchlights turned on and aimed in different directions, but Taurman couldn’t see the lights from wherever he was. Harwood then decided to take off in his own Avenger to find him and lead him back to the field.

  With Harwood in the air, Peterkin continued to talk to Taurman on the radio. Then radar operators picked up a Japanese air attack coming in toward the field. The searchlights were turned off, and Peterkin was forced to shut down radio communication until the Japanese were gone.

  By the time Pete was able to reach Taurman again, Harwood had landed back at the field. Taurman had been in the air for five hours, and he sounded subdued. His voice was down to a whisper. At that point, he knew he was over the ocean, and thought he was near the southern coast of Guadalcanal.

  In his last radio transmission at around 0315, he told Pete Peterkin that he was running out of gas and going to land in the water. He had experience doing that, he joked, so they should be all right.

  At dawn, search planes went out looking for him and his crew, but found nothing. No word was received until a few days later when a member of Taurman’s crew emerged from a native village to relate what had happened.

  Taurman had put the Avenger down safely in the sea. He and his two crewmen, Russ Bradley and Johnny Robak, had inflated the raft and climbed aboard. As dawn approached, they heard a plane overhead and Robak, the radioman–tail gunner, attempted to fire a flare to reveal their position.

  The flare gun discharged while pointed downward, putting a big hole in the raft and injuring Robak. When dawn broke, they found themselves two miles from shore. Bradley suggested that he swim in and send back help. Taurman, who was a strong swimmer himself, said he would stay with the injured Robak, who didn’t know how.

  That was the last time Bradley saw them. When he finally made it to shore, he fainted from exhaustion. By the time he got to a native village and they sent out canoes to search for the others, no trace of Taurman or Robak was found.

  The other pilots were deeply saddened when the news arrived. John could have been back in the States on survivor’s leave, and married to his girl, Peggy. Instead, he had chosen to stay with the squadron and had paid for it with his life.

  Gene Hanson wrote a letter to Taurman’s mother.

  Somehow, in my own mind, I refuse to believe that John is lost. . . . I know that nothing I can say will alleviate your great anxiety and sorrow. But I share your loss as though John were my own brother. Having flown with him for almost a year, he is one of the greatest guys I have ever known or can ever hope to meet.

  Thursday, 8 October 1942

  Guadalcanal

  Torpedo Squadron Eight

  1700

  At Espiritu Santo, Swede was recovering from a bout of dengue fever. It had kept him bedridden for days, but after receiving the report of the squadron’s latest losses, he decided to fly back up to Guadalcanal immediately. Two replacement aircraft were ready to go. He told Bert Earnest to pack his gear. He would fly the second plane.

  When they arrived at Henderson Field, Swede went up to the Pagoda to check in with the air staff. The message he received was clear. Their top priority was to sink the Japanese warships still bringing reinforcements down from Rabaul.

  They also told Swede that General Vandegrift was planning to personally reward the next Avenger or Dauntless pilot who made a direct hit on an enemy ship with a Japanese ceremonial sword taken from the body of an officer killed during the Battle of Edson’s Ridge.

  That afternoon in the ready tent, Swede briefed the pilots going out with him. Along with the four Avengers, the group would include seven Dauntlesses and eleven Wildcat fighters. Flying with Swede were Bert Earnest, Fred Mears, and Aaron Katz.

  It was the first time Swede had flown a combat mission with Katz, and he took the opportunity to needle him right up to takeoff. With everything they might be facing over the next few hours, it made no sense. Baiting Katz certainly wouldn’t increase his confidence. Fred Mears concluded that his tent mate was Swede’s anathema.

  It was approaching dusk when the air group took off and headed northwest.

  The Japanese warships were almost exactly where Geiger’s air staff had plotted them to be. Coming up from the southeast, Swede saw the flotilla spread out in an open horseshoe configuration, with four destroyers surrounding what appeared to be a heavy cruiser.

  As the dive-bombers began making their runs, Swede brought the Avengers in low to make their attack on the cruiser’s port bow. In order to reach the bigger ship, they had to go through a screen of destroyers that were already throwing up heavy antiaircraft fire.

  The cruiser was emerging from a thick smoke screen as Fred Mears came in for his approach. With his usual sense of detachment, he thought it looked like a dragon coming out of its cave. The antiaircraft fire the dragon was sending toward him was the most intense he had ever experienced.

  Fred suddenly heard four sharp reports as machine gun bullets flashed by the cockpit. Then he launched his torpedo and took off with the throttle shoved wide open. Bert Earnest had followed him down. He waited to launch his torpedo until the side of the ship filled the cockpit windshield. Swerving away, he shoved his own throttle forward and escaped south. Together, he and Fred returned to Guadalcanal.

  Back at Henderson Field, the pilots and crews assembled again to discuss the mission. Swede was livid at the lack of strafing fire. Turning to Katz, Swede demanded to know whether his crew had strafed. Katz’s two gunners on the mission had been Bob Steele and Frank Balsley. Ordinarily in the turret, Frank had flown this mission as a tail gunner.

  Balsley told Swede he hadn’t strafed. Swede demanded to know why. Balsley explained that he hadn’t been properly strapped in, and that because of Ensign Katz’s good evasive maneuvers, he was bouncing all over the compartment.

  “You’re grounded,” Swede told him.

  Grounded? That was a punishment? Balsley wondered.

  None of the dive-bombers on the mission had scored a hit. Three of the pilots agreed that Bert’s torpedo had slammed into the side of the cruiser and exploded. Swede gave him credit for the hit and told Bert
to go to General Vandegrift’s command post to receive his reward.

  Walking over, Bert felt as tired as he had ever been in his life. When he got there, they seemed to be expecting him. A colonel came up to shake his hand. Somehow, the colonel knew that Bert had gone to VMI, and said that he had gone there, too. Then he was being walked over to General Vandegrift, who was talking to several other members of his staff.

  When they were introduced, the general smiled up at him, shook his hand, and said he appreciated what Bert had done in slowing down the Tokyo Express. Bert wasn’t really sure whether his torpedo had exploded. All he knew was that he had lined up the approach pretty well and had made a good run.

  The general proposed a toast to celebrate the hit. For the first time, Bert noticed a bottle of scotch whiskey on the table behind the general, along with some tin mugs. The general poured a small splash of the whiskey into each one and passed the mugs around to the officers. When everyone had one, he congratulated Bert again, and they all drank.

  This isn’t half bad, thought Bert. I could do that again. But the general didn’t offer him a refill. Instead, he put down his mug, picked up a sword from the table, and handed it to Bert. “You earned this,” he said.

  The sword was a beauty. It was nothing like the ones the guys had bought as souvenirs after the September battles. This one was covered with medieval-looking mesh over the handle to protect the warrior’s hand. The scabbard was made of polished leather, and there were shark’s teeth embedded in the grip along with little hand-carved rosettes like chrysanthemums.

  Someone had told the general that Bert had gone to VMI. “You know,” he said, “my son went there, too.” Bert remembered him. The general’s son had been a first classman when Bert had been a rat.

  “Keep up the good work,” said General Vandegrift. Bert promised he would.

  Saturday, 10 October 1942

  Guadalcanal

  Torpedo Squadron Eight

  The squadron was now down to four planes. They had started out with eighteen. There were two left at Espiritu Santo. The rest were lying in the boneyard at the end of the runway, or scattered across the bottom of the sea. Swede had requested replacement planes, but there were none to be had.

  On October 9, Swede radioed Gene Hanson and Jack Barnum to fly the last two Avengers to Henderson Field right away. That would give him six aircraft for what was shaping up to be the next big battle for control of the Eastern Solomons.

  Later that day, he gathered his pilots in the ready tent to say that a big group of enemy warships had just been sighted coming down the Groove about a hundred seventy-five miles northwest of Guadalcanal. He told them that the Japanese were no longer waiting for darkness. They were coming down around the clock to put the last pieces in place for their upcoming offensive.

  Torpedo Eight would be part of the largest strike group yet assembled from Henderson Field to go after the warships. It included fifteen Dauntlesses, twenty-three fighters, and all six of the remaining Avengers.

  They took off at dawn and flew northwest. Near the island of New Georgia, the formation came up on a large enemy force. It included two light cruisers and four destroyers.

  Their subsequent attack was an embarrassing failure. Although the Wildcats succeeded in shooting down four Japanese floatplanes that were flying high cover over the enemy task force, no hits were made on any of the warships in the ensuing dive-bombing attacks. After all the dive-bombers missed, Swede ordered the Avengers to launch their torpedoes against the port side of the first cruiser. When the ship suddenly turned to starboard, all of them missed, too.

  One Dauntless and one fighter were lost in the strike.

  Sunday, 11 October 1942

  Guadalcanal

  Torpedo Squadron Eight

  It was obvious to Pete Peterkin that the Guadalcanal campaign, or at least their part in it, would soon be coming to an end, one way or another. There were plenty of Dauntless and Wildcat squadrons at Henderson Field, but Torpedo Eight was the only torpedo squadron in the whole Cactus Air Force, and it was played out.

  The remaining pilots were nearly spent, both physically and emotionally, after a month of air combat interspersed with the nervous strain of the nightly bombings and shellings. After taking daily doses of Atabrine to prevent malaria, their eyes had turned yellow, followed by their skin. Half of them were suffering from dysentery or ringworm, and from recurrent fevers.

  The ground personnel weren’t in much better shape. Although they didn’t have to fly missions almost every night, the crews had worked around the clock to keep the battered Avengers in the air after they came back from missions with cannon holes in the wings and tails, with the radio or the hydraulics shot up, or with their instruments no longer working.

  Swede had a simple policy when it came to a plane’s airworthiness. He told Peterkin that if the engine was working and the controls weren’t shot away, mark it “up,” or available for a mission. That was becoming increasingly hard to do.

  General Geiger’s staff believed that October 11 would mark the beginning of the long-awaited Japanese offensive to wrest control of the Guadalcanal airfield from the Americans. All of their intelligence pointed to a powerful combination of land, sea, and airpower.

  At around midday on the eleventh, the largest concentration of Japanese attack planes to ever hit Henderson Field came over the field in two waves of ninety aircraft. Coast watchers had failed to give early warning of their arrival, and the Wildcats were late in scrambling to intercept them. Fortunately, low cloud cover kept the enemy bombers from giving the field a devastating blow.

  The first phase of the ground campaign began that day, too, with the Japanese occupying positions near the Matanikau River, from which they could launch artillery strikes on Henderson Field.

  That night, the Japanese navy set in motion two operations designed to further support the upcoming ground offensive. In the first operation, they dispatched two seaplane carriers escorted by six destroyers to deliver another large contingent of troops along with howitzers, artillery pieces, antiaircraft guns, ammunition, and food supplies.

  In the second operation, they sent three heavy cruisers and two destroyers to deliver a late-night shelling attack on Henderson Field, using shells with fuses designed to spray a lethal rain of shrapnel in every direction.

  The American Navy, which had been reluctant to commit its depleted forces after the loss of the Wasp, decided to counter the nightly attacks. Gambling that the Japanese wouldn’t be expecting them, they dispatched a task force of five cruisers and four destroyers to ambush the Tokyo Express.

  The first Japanese operation went forward unhindered. Its task force’s vital cargo of men and equipment was unloaded without incident near Cape Esperance. Shortly after midnight, the second Japanese task force arrived off Savo Island. It headed down Sealark Channel to begin its bombardment of Henderson Field.

  The American cruisers and destroyers were waiting for them.

  The battle lasted only thirty minutes. Firing salvo after salvo from their heavy gun batteries, the American cruisers delivered a rain of fire on the completely surprised Japanese.

  Lying in his tent, Pete Peterkin heard the distant blasts, and ran down to the beach. At Lunga Point, he watched the continuous explosions of naval gunfire light up the sky near Savo Island.

  When it was over, one Japanese cruiser was on the bottom of Iron Bottom Sound along with one destroyer. Two American cruisers and one destroyer had absorbed damage. One destroyer was lost.

  The Japanese task force turned back without accomplishing its mission.

  Monday, 12 October 1942

  Guadalcanal

  Torpedo Squadron Eight

  0600

  Early the next morning, Swede said they were going out again, heading up the Groove to knock off more Japanese warships. Along with their six Avengers, the strike force would include seven Dauntlesses and fourteen Wildcats.

  In addition to Swede, the pilots selected
to go were Bert Earnest, Fred Mears, Gene Hanson, Bob Evarts, and Aaron Katz. Machinist’s Mate Frank Balsley had been reinstated to duty after Swede grounded him, and was flying as Katz’s turret gunner.

  The strike group took off from Henderson Field shortly before 0630. As they passed over Savo Island, the pilots and crews could see oil slicks in the water from the ships that had been sunk in the previous night’s battle, as well as a debris field full of bodies floating in brightly colored life vests.

  The formation flew two hundred miles northwest under a clear blue sky. As they neared the southern coast of New Georgia, one of the pilots spotted two enemy warships. They were heading north away from Guadalcanal, and traveling at flank speed.

  The fighters went down to strafe the ships’ antiaircraft batteries to suppress their fire. Then the Dauntlesses nosed over and made their bombing runs, scoring several near misses.

  Swede led his six Avengers down to their attacking altitude of two hundred feet. Splitting up, they bored in on the same ship from both port and starboard. If the fighters had suppressed the level of the enemy antiaircraft fire, it wasn’t apparent to the Avenger pilots. They all began taking hits as they came within range of the naval guns.

  Aaron Katz was flying on Gene Hanson’s wing. They would be launching their torpedoes from the port side. Aaron suddenly heard a loud bang in the nose of his plane. Glancing at his instruments, he saw that his oil pressure was dropping. One of the cannon rounds had hit his engine. He immediately radioed Swede to report it.

  Katz thought about breaking off the attack, and heading back to Guadalcanal. If he continued losing oil and his engine seized up while he was going in at an altitude of two hundred feet, they wouldn’t have a chance. Even if they survived a ditching, the whole area around New Georgia was enemy-held.

  He was still trying to make up his mind what to do when Gene Hanson turned away to make his attack. Aaron decided to follow him. His engine never faltered. It turned out to be a good run, maybe the best he had ever made, and he fired his torpedo at a distance of about seven hundred yards.