A Dawn Like Thunder

by Robert J. Mrazek

  Truk Island

  Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

  At Shetland Harbor near Bougainville, ten thousand Japanese soldiers, one-third of the newly committed troop reinforcements, began boarding a flotilla of transports for the run to Guadalcanal.

  In conjunction with their arrival, Admiral Yamamoto had ordered two Japanese battleships, the Hiei and the Kirishima, to conduct another bombardment of Henderson Field. It would repeat the success of the battleships Kongo and Hiruna when they had destroyed most of the Cactus Air Force in a similar bombardment on the night of October 13.

  The shelling would hopefully disrupt American air operations long enough to assure the safe delivery of the ten thousand reinforcements reaching Guadalcanal that same night.

  Friday, 13 November 1942

  Savo Island

  Japanese Battleship Hiei

  0030

  The battleships arrived in post-midnight darkness, approaching Guadalcanal from Savo Island after passing silently over the graves of the many American and Japanese warships that now littered Iron Bottom Sound.

  The fourteen-inch gun batteries of the Hiei and the Kirishima were loaded with the same delayed-fuse bombardment shells that had wreaked such havoc on Henderson Field exactly one month earlier. The two battleships were escorted by the cruiser Nagara and eleven destroyers.

  American search planes had spotted the two battleships heading toward Guadalcanal the previous evening. Unfortunately, the American Navy had no battleships to face them on equal terms, although a blocking force had been hastily assembled that consisted of two heavy cruisers, the San Francisco and the Portland, three light cruisers, and eight destroyers.

  The Americans headed north to meet the enemy knowing this would be strictly a naval battle, its outcome determined by gut-busting gun batteries and ship-launched torpedoes rather than the carrier planes that had usually decided the previous encounters.

  The task forces collided at 0150 south of Savo Island. The opposing ships quickly became intermingled, swinging wildly about in the darkness, opening fire at one another at almost point-blank range.

  On Guadalcanal, the booming reverberations brought hundreds of men down to the beach. Pete Peterkin watched in awed silence as star shells lit up the northern horizon.

  In the first few minutes, the American cruiser Atlanta was hit by a salvo of fourteen-inch shells from the Hiei, followed by a Japanese Long Lance torpedo that knocked out its engines and brought the ship to a dead stop.

  A Japanese destroyer was then hit by a salvo of American fire. It blew up and sank, quickly followed by an American destroyer, which exploded as its crew was abandoning ship.

  Still without power, the Atlanta unwittingly drifted into the line of fire of the cruiser, San Francisco. In the chaotic melee, the gun batteries of San Francisco fired into the Atlanta, killing Admiral Norman Scott and most of his senior officers on the bridge. It was the coup de grâce for the sinking cruiser.

  Three American destroyers bored in on the battleship Hiei. Although their five-inch shells could not penetrate the behemoth’s armor shield, they were able to rake her bridge and superstructure, slightly wounding Admiral Hiroaki Abe, who was commanding the Japanese task force, and knocking out several of the battleship’s antiaircraft batteries.

  The American heavy cruiser Portland was then struck by a Japanese Long Lance torpedo. It slammed into her stern, blowing off the starboard propeller, after which the ship could only steam in clockwise circles.

  When the San Francisco came within range, the Hiei fired successive salvos at her with its fourteen-inch guns, smashing the bridge and superstructure, and killing the overall American task force commander, Admiral Daniel Callaghan, as well as the ship’s captain, and many of its senior officers. Other shells knocked out the ship’s control networks, and disabled several of her guns.

  Before retiring, San Francisco was able to fire a desperate salvo back at Hiei. One of the shells hit home at a vital spot, penetrating the battleship’s armor plate and flooding its aft steering room, which dramatically reduced her speed and maneuvering ability.

  The savage engagement came to an end just forty minutes after it began. In the final moments, three more American destroyers were blasted out of the water, and the American light cruiser Juneau was hit by two torpedoes. She slowly crept away from the scene of carnage.

  By any measure, it was another Japanese tactical victory. The Americans had lost a cruiser, four destroyers, and more than a thousand men. Without its starboard propeller, the Portland was crippled. Later that morning, the Juneau was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and went down with an additional loss of six hundred men.

  Only the light cruiser Helena and one destroyer now prevented Admiral Abe from completing his mission to deliver the devastating bombardment to Henderson Field. Once the Cactus Air Force was suppressed by a rain of his fourteen-inch shells, nothing could prevent the Japanese transports carrying the ten thousand Japanese troops from safely unloading their precious cargo.

  Admiral Abe’s second battleship Kirishima was undamaged. In concert with the cruiser Nagara and four destroyers, he could still carry out the massive bombardment of the airfield virtually unmolested. He had a conclusive victory within his grasp, and one that could potentially alter the entire Guadalcanal campaign.

  Instead, Abe, his will apparently sapped by the intensity of the night battle, lost his nerve. He decided to abandon his mission and withdraw the task force. Transferring his flag to the destroyer Yukikaze, he left the damaged Hiei behind to retreat after the rest of his ships at a speed of just five knots.

  Upon learning of the withdrawal, an enraged Admiral Yamamoto ordered that Abe be immediately removed from command. With the Cactus Air Force unsuppressed by the battleship’s devastating bombardment, Yamamoto reluctantly ordered the convoy carrying the ten thousand soldiers to return to Shetland Harbor before daylight.

  Henderson Field, Guadalcanal

  0600

  Swede wanted the stricken battleship.

  Just before dawn, a Wildcat pilot had taken off to see the results of the night naval action. Beyond the sinking ships he saw near Savo Island, he reported sighting a damaged Japanese battleship attempting to retire north.

  Although Swede had not been officially relieved yet, he had already discovered that Captain George Dooley, the Marine officer commanding the first six Avengers from the Marine squadron, was no pushover.

  From the moment Dooley arrived, Swede hadn’t been shy in attempting to lecture him on everything a new squadron needed to learn before it could make torpedo hits. Implying that Dooley and his pilots were too green, Swede offered to lead the first strike against the battleship off Savo Island.

  Dooley was not about to kowtow to anyone. A veteran flier, he had once nearly died in a midair collision, and been forced to endure repeated operations to rebuild his horrifically burned face. He was no less resolute than Swede, and determined to make his mark as a combat aviator.

  When orders were issued for the strike, it was Dooley, not Swede, who was given the first opportunity to go after the Hiei, and he took off in command of a four-plane formation of his unblooded Marine pilots. They followed five Dauntless dive-bombers.

  Flying through the gloom above Savo Island, Dooley could see the burning hulks of American and Japanese destroyers drifting aimlessly across the debris-littered sea. The crippled Portland continued to steam in a slow circle. Hundreds of survivors of the Atlanta were floating in their life jackets off Lunga Point.

  The pilots quickly came up on the gigantic Hiei as it crawled northward from Savo Island under reduced power. She was escorted by five destroyers, which immediately began throwing up a screen of antiaircraft fire as the planes came in to attack.

  At 0615, a Dauntless made the first hit on the Hiei, its thousand-pound bomb landing directly amidships and setting off a tremendous explosion. Dooley’s four Avengers went in next. One of their torpedoes also hit home, further slowing down the battleship.r />
  After Dooley’s flight returned, Swede requested to go up with the three Avengers still under his command. The request was denied. As soon as Dooley’s planes were rearmed, he led the next mission. In his second strike against the now burning Hiei, Dooley was again successful. Penetrating to within five hundred yards, his torpedo slammed into the battleship’s midsection, igniting another column of flame and debris.

  At 1015, another group of Avengers dispatched from the carrier Enterprise arrived off Savo Island, and launched their own attack. The carrier’s torpedo squadron claimed three more torpedo hits on the battleship.

  They were followed by a group of B-17s. The Fortresses dropped fifty-six bombs from high altitude, earning one near miss for their efforts. At 1120, six Dauntlesses from Henderson Field attacked the Hiei. Those pilots claimed three more hits.

  As midday approached, the Hiei was barely making headway in its desperate quest to escape. Fires burned everywhere above the waterline and the ship was covered in a dense cloud of black smoke.

  At 1145, Swede was finally given his chance. He led up a flight of six Avengers, two of them piloted by Captain Dooley’s Marine pilots. Dooley had allowed Bob Evarts to fly one of his squadron’s new aircraft. Larry Engel had arrived and would pilot the fourth.

  Swede went in first from the port side. His torpedo made a direct hit amidships, sending up a great cloud of debris. Bob Evarts scored, too, although the two torpedoes in the patchwork Avengers failed to drop.

  Swede had done it. Regardless of what happened afterward, he had helped to nail a Japanese battleship. Returning to Henderson Field, he celebrated his mission with the other victorious pilots.

  The air attacks continued until bad weather forced the field to shut down. Later that night, under the cover of rain and darkness, Hiei, a ship that had once been honored by the presence of Emperor Hirohito at the last grand review of the Imperial fleet, succumbed to everything it had endured, and sank to the floor of Iron Bottom Sound.

  Saturday, 14 November 1942

  Truk Island

  Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

  Admiral Yamamoto knew that time was not on the side of the Japanese Empire. He fully appreciated America’s rapidly growing industrial capacity to wage war. He knew it was critical that the thirty thousand Japanese troops and their equipment reach Guadalcanal as soon as possible. The campaign would be doomed without them.

  Even as the Hiei was still fighting its death struggle, Yamamoto issued new orders to complete the mission Admiral Abe had failed to carry out the night before. On the night of November 14, the battleship Kirishima would deliver a crushing bombardment of Henderson Field in concert with two heavy cruisers. That same night, Yamamoto’s twenty-three-ship convoy carrying the first ten thousand men of the Japanese 38th Infantry Division from Bougainville would arrive at Guadalcanal.

  Henderson Field, Guadalcanal

  Torpedo Squadron Eight

  To the applause of the men assembled at the airfield, Swede Larsen accepted the official relief of his squadron by Lieutenant Colonel Paul Moret of Marine Air Squadron 131. In “surrendering the reins,” Swede vowed that he would soon be back on Guadalcanal to take up the fight again, and that when he did, he planned “to see it through.” He was the only one to make the pledge. The others were grateful to finally be going home. They never wanted to see Guadalcanal again.

  Chief Hammond turned over the squadron’s three aircraft. After inspecting the two patchwork Avengers with their out-of-kilter wings, jury-rigged control systems, and missing instruments, one of the Marine mechanics openly wondered how the planes had ever gotten into the air. Both planes were officially decommissioned and sent to the boneyard to be cannibalized for spare parts.

  Swede and Pete Peterkin were packing to fly back to Espiritu Santo when the news arrived. Something big was developing up the Groove. A search plane pilot had reported sighting an enemy task force of four cruisers and three destroyers just 140 miles northwest of Guadalcanal. Another search plane pilot who was flying farther north over New Georgia spotted a convoy of twenty-three enemy ships, including eleven heavily laden transports. The big Japanese push was on, and they were coming in broad daylight.

  In a whirlwind of activity, every flyable Dauntless, Avenger, and Wildcat was armed, fueled, and sent off. Their first target was the cruiser and destroyer force less than an hour’s flying time away.

  Swede could only wait in frustration as reports came back that the Cactus fliers had succeeded in sinking one cruiser and badly damaging a second one. As soon as the attack planes returned, they were refueled and rearmed by ordnance men for the next strike.

  As badly as Swede wanted to go up again, he knew his request would be rejected. It was an all-Marine show now. He no longer commanded a single plane. He and Pete Peterkin could only watch the Dauntlesses, Avengers, and Wildcats take off from Henderson Field to intercept the transport ships.

  The air group found the twenty-three-ship convoy near New Georgia Island. Its twelve escort destroyers sent up an intense barrage of antiaircraft fire as they made smoke and zigzagged wildly to try to confuse the attackers. The slower transports, their decks crammed with thousands of soldiers, couldn’t maneuver easily.

  The fighters went down to strafe them while the Dauntlesses and Avengers got into position to launch their attacks. One by one, the transports were hit by bombs and torpedoes. The Nagara Maru went down first, followed by the Canberra Maru. When the air group withdrew after expending its bombs and torpedoes, more than a thousand Japanese soldiers lay floating in the oil-covered sea. Five hours still remained before the convoy would be hidden under the cloak of darkness again. Five hours to determine the course of the Guadalcanal campaign.

  A second strike was organized as soon as the planes returned to Henderson Field. They were on the ground less than thirty minutes. Flying back up the Groove, they found the troop convoy continuing resolutely toward Guadalcanal. This time they sank the Brisbane Maru.

  As soon as they withdrew, eight Dauntlesses launched from the newly repaired carrier Enterprise intercepted the convoy and sank the Shinanogawa Maru and the Arizona Maru. The attacks continued without respite all afternoon. The Nako Maru went down with the setting sun.

  For a hundred miles along the convoy’s tortuous route, debris fields full of dead and dying soldiers and sailors covered the sea. When darkness fell, six of the eleven transports had been sunk or abandoned. A seventh, the Sado Maru, the ship carrying the 38th Infantry Division’s senior army officers, had been so badly damaged that it had fled northward.

  Only four transports were left.

  Admiral Yamamoto remained intransigent. At 1740, the Japanese convoy commander received orders from combined fleet headquarters to continue on to Guadalcanal, disembarking the troops and equipment as soon as they arrived.

  Savo Island

  Japanese Battleship Kirishima

  2200

  At midnight, the battleship Kirishima and its escort force arrived off Sealark Channel to begin their bombardment of Henderson Field. Lookouts aboard the Japanese ships in the vanguard of the formation were startled to observe what appeared to be two American battleships in their path.

  Admiral Kondo, who commanded the fourteen-ship Japanese task force from the bridge of the heavy cruiser Atago, refused to believe that American battleships could be there, stubbornly holding to the view that they must be cruisers.

  To Kondo, heavy cruisers were of little consequence to a Japa-n-ese main body that included the Kirishima, his own heavy cruisers Atago and Takao, the light cruisers Nagara and Sendai, and nine destroyers.

  But Kondo was wrong. The battleships USS Washington and USS South Dakota were there. They had just arrived after steaming at flank speed for almost four hundred miles to intercept the Japanese bombardment force.

  The two American battleships had a combined complement of eighteen sixteen-inch guns, and their armor-plated sides were virtually impervious to the Kirishima’s smaller fourteen-inch guns
. Four destroyers were escorting the battleships, the Benham, Gwin, Walke, and Preston.

  Yet, the Japanese drew first blood.

  Their fire was far more accurate. A combination of guns and Long Lance torpedoes quickly sank the Preston and Walke. The Gwin and Benham were hit with a combination of shells and torpedoes and forced to retire, the Benham mortally damaged. Their withdrawal left the two battleships to confront the fourteen-ship Japanese task force.

  Still convinced that he wasn’t facing enemy battleships, Admiral Kondo ordered the battleship Kirishima to head toward Lunga Point to begin the bombardment of Henderson Field.

  The South Dakota was firing its first telling salvos when a powerful searchlight on one of the Japanese cruisers found the battleship, exposing its distinctive lines. The five Japanese cruisers and destroyers within firing range began pouring fire at her.

  Although South Dakota’s armor plate prevented serious damage to the hull, the shells disabled the ship’s radar-controlled guns, and ignited major fires on its superstructure. The Washington attempted to divert some of the Japanese fire, but after sustaining further damage, South Dakota swung away from the battle area.

  The Washington now faced the fourteen-ship task force alone.

  While the Japanese were concentrating their fire on the South Dakota, the Washington’s Captain Glenn Davis skillfully maneuvered his ship closer to the Kirishima, unleashing his sixteen-inch guns at nearly point-blank range.

  The resulting damage was devastating. The Washington’s barrage disabled two of Kirishima’s four gun turrets and pierced her hull belowdecks, jamming the battleship’s rudder to starboard, and flooding the steering compartment.

  Aboard the Atago, Admiral Kondo ordered his escort vessels to pursue and destroy the Washington. Over the next hour, Captain Davis continued to maneuver away from them, narrowly avoiding a succession of Long Lance torpedoes, while keeping the Japanese from completing their mission to bombard Henderson Field.