Henderson Field became a sea of flame.
Fires and explosions were visible from the darkened bridges of the Japanese ships. Sailors cried out in glee and excitement. To Admiral Tanaka the battleships’ pyrotechnic display seemed to make the famous Ryogoku fireworks show a pale candle by comparison.4
Ashore the Americans were passing through an agony not to be repeated in World War II. It was a terror of the soul. It was as though the roar of colliding planets was exploding in their ears. Self-control was shattered, strong faces went flabby with fear, men sobbed aloud or whimpered, others put their pistols to their heads. It was not possible to pray.
It was possible only to crouch in gunpits to watch, through the rectangles of the gun embrasures, a horizon quivering with gun flashes, and to hear the soft, hollow thumping of the enemy’s salvos—
Pah-boom, pah-boom. Pah-boom, pah-boom, pah …
—to feel the dry constriction of the throat and to hear the great projectiles wailing hoarsely overhead,
Hwooo, hwoo-ee,
and then to be thrown violently to earth and feel the stomach being kneaded as though by giant fingers of steel, while the eardrums rang and the head ached and the teeth were rattled by the perfection of sound, a monster clanging as though the vault of heaven were a huge casque of steel and giants were beating on it with sledgehammers, beating one-two, one-two-three, as the salvos came crashing in from two-gun turrets, three-gun turrets, and the flogged earth leaped and bucked and writhed.
It went on for an hour and a half, while Henderson Field’s airplanes were blown to bits or set afire or crushed by collapsing revetments, while Tanaka’s destroyers thickened the battleships’ fire with their own five-inch shells, while Marine shore-batteries on Guadalcanal and Tulagi bravely but vainly attempted to drive off an enemy far out of range, and while Lieutenant Montgomery’s bold little PT boats came racing out of Tulagi Harbor to challenge the intruders. Even the Japanese were astonished at these impetuous waterbugs charging at a pair of whales, although they recovered from their surprise in time to swing ponderously about and comb the American torpedo wakes. Then the destroyers turned on their searchlights and drove them off.
Kongo and Haruna bellowed on. Until, at three in the morning, a sudden quiet came over Guadalcanal.
At dawn the Americans came sleepwalking from their holes to gaze in awe upon huge baseplates and shell fragments and to congratulate the Japanese gunner who had zeroed-in on a ration dump, making mince of cases of Spam to feed it, bit by detestable bit, to Guadalcanal’s populous colony of rats. Otherwise, there was nothing to laugh about.
Forty-one men—many of them pilots—had been killed, and a score more were wounded. Many men were buried alive and had to be dug out, among them Michael, Martin Clemens’s cook, who was pulled out of a collapsed dugout with his face streaming blood.
Henderson Field was a ruin. Smoke still curled skyward from burning fuel dumps, jagged sections of steel runway matting lay hundreds of yards away from cratered airstrips, part of the hospital was wrecked, tents flapped in the wind like canvas sieves, and there were great swathes cut in the coconut groves where the trees stood in serried rows of serrated stumps.
Neither of the runways was usable. General Geiger had had thirty-nine Dauntlesses operational when he went to bed the night before, but when he tumbled groggily to his feet on this morning of horror, he had only five. Sixteen of his Wildcats were twisted ruins, and every one of the twenty-four remaining required repairs. Most of the Avenger torpedo-bombers recently arrived were useless, and the Army aviators, whose P-400s and Airacobras were still usable, received this chilling briefing from a Marine colonel:
“We don’t know whether we’ll be able to hold the field or not. There’s a Japanese task force of destroyers, cruisers, and troop transports headed our way. We have enough gasoline left for one mission against them. Load your planes with bombs and go out with the dive-bombers and hit them. After the gas is gone, we’ll have to let the ground troops take over. Then your officers and men will attach yourselves to some infantry outfit.
“Good luck and good-by.”5
Up went the Army craft beside four Dauntlesses. They found the enemy convoy and they attacked. But they failed to sink them and the Japanese ships pressed on.
Back at Henderson Field, Seabees and Marine engineers drove themselves to repair the airfields. Squadron commanders conferred anxiously with their repair officers.
“What’s left, Lieutenant?”
“You’d need a magnifying glass to find it, Colonel.”
“Well, start using one then. How about Number 117?”
“Her? Oh, she’s great—wasn’t even scratched. Except that she needs an engine change. Other than that, all she needs is both elevators, both stabilizers, the right auxiliary gas tank, right and center section flaps, right aileron, windshield, rudder, both wheels and the brake assembly. But she’s still in one piece, sir, and I guess we can get her up in six days.”
“Six days!”
“Dammit, Colonel, back in the States it’d take six months to do it!”
“All right, all right—but let’s keep those junk-pickers of yours busy.”6
Henderson’s mechanics patched up ten more bombers that day. They did it even as bombs fell upon them from twenty-five unchallenged Betty bombers which came winging in at noon; an hour later, when fifteen more bombers and ten Zeros arrived overhead, they had twenty-four fighters aloft and waiting. Nine bombers and three Zeros were shot down, at a cost of two Marine pilots and one Army flier.
And then it became clear that Cactus Air Force was out of gas.
Admiral Ghormley’s headquarters was aware of the critical situation at Henderson Field. General Vandegrift’s urgent message requesting twenty bombers “immediately” had been received by Vice-Admiral Aubrey Fitch—who had replaced Admiral McCain as commander of South Pacific Air—but the best Fitch could do was send six more Dauntlesses to Guadalcanal.
In Espiritu Santo, Admiral Turner readied another emergency shipment of gasoline. Destroyer McFarland, now converted to a seaplane tender, was loaded with 40,000 gallons of gasoline, in tanks below and in drums topside, together with a dozen torpedoes, airplane flares and supplies of 37-mm shells.
McFarland would get to Guadalcanal about the same time as the slower barge-towing convoy which had set out from Espiritu two days before.
Admiral Yamamoto was elated by Admiral Kurita’s reports of the destruction of Henderson Field. His carriers could now venture close to Guadalcanal without fear of land-based air, and he notified Admiral Kondo to move toward the island at top speed.
Kondo’s mission was to destroy the American naval forces which Yamamoto mistakenly believed to be in the vicinity, and to support General Hyakutake’s attack on the American airfield.
In the meantime, Admiral Mikawa would pick up where Kurita had left off.
Again Louie the Louse, again the flares, again the long sleek shapes gliding down The Slot—and once more Guadalcanal’s earth quivered while cursing Americans blundered blindly through the darkness toward their holes.
This time it was Gunichi Mikawa with flagship Chokai and big Kinugasa, the lucky battler of Cape Esperance. They began shelling even as six transports from the Shortlands began unloading troops and supplies off Tassafaronga, only fifteen miles west of the Marine perimeter.
Chokai and Kinugasa hurled 750 eight-inch shells into the American beachhead. Racing north unmolested, Mikawa jubilantly radioed Yamamoto that the enemy airfield was zemmetsu: wiped out.
With dawn of October 15, Marines on the southern ridges could look west past Kukum and see, with chilled hearts, the Japanese ships calmly unloading, while destroyers screened them to seaward and enemy planes patrolled the skies above them.
Behind these dispirited but not yet despairing Marines there was a ruined airfield, only three Dauntlesses that could fly, and not a drop of gasoline.
“No gasoline?” Roy Geiger thundered. “Then, by God, find so
me!”7
Then Geiger radioed Espiritu Santo to fly in nothing but fuel that day, while his startled supply officers hurried from the Pagoda to start hunting gasoline. First, they drained the tanks of two wrecked Flying Fortresses, getting four hundred gallons out of one of them, and next someone remembered four hundred drums of Japanese aviation gasoline that had been cached outside the airfield’s outer rim during the early days.
It was enough to contradict Admiral Mikawa’s estimate of Henderson Field’s fighting capacity.
“Always pray,” Lieutenant Anthony Turtora had written to his parents, “not that I shall come back, but that I shall have the courage to do my duty.”8
Shortly after daybreak on October 15, Lieutenant Turtora climbed into one of Henderson’s three flyable Dauntlesses. His motor roared and the stubby powerful ship went zigzagging down the bomb-pocked runway, struggling aloft while ground crews watched with caught breath. Then Turtora flew down to Tassafaronga to do his duty. He did not return, but after him came scores of pilots who also had the courage to do their duty.
They should not have been airborne, by every law of logic Admiral Mikawa should have been right; and yet, all day long the ragtag Cactus Air Force struck at the enemy transports. Flying on gasoline supplies which were always on the verge of giving out, until another Army or Marine transport roared in from Espiritu, the Wildcats and P-400s and Airacobras tangled with Japanese Zeros or swept in low to strafe enemy troops. Seated in the cockpits of Dauntlesses and Avengers which Henderson’s magnificent mechanics had patched together in fulfillment of their vow to salvage everything but the bullet holes, the bombers showered the enemy ships with 1000- and 500-pound eggs, or dove down through streamers of antiaircraft fire to strafe and to blast supply dumps.
Late in the day Flying Fortresses came up from Espiritu to join the Tassafaronga assault, their majestic formation provoking cries of delight from Marines atop the ridges who had been cheering on the airmen throughout the day. And then a great shout broke from their lips. They had seen a clumsy Catalina lumbering west with two torpedoes tucked under its belly.
It was the Blue Goose, General Geiger’s personal plane, and Mad Jack Cram was at the controls.
Major Cram had flown into Guadalcanal to deliver torpedoes. He had begged the use of one of them, and an ensign who had already been down to Tassafaronga told him he could have both. Then Cram gathered his crew and climbed back into Blue Goose.
He nursed the awkward Cat into the sky. He made for a rendezvous with eight fighters and a dozen Dauntlesses a few miles east of Henderson. Beneath him, Major Duke Davis and his Wildcats were cakewalking down the runway between the bursts laid down by Pistol Pete.
Blue Goose was roaring along with the Dauntlesses and Wildcats toward the transports and thirty Zeros flying cover above them. Then the dive-bombers were going over, flashing down through the flak, and big bulky Blue Goose was going over with them.
She was built to make 160 miles an hour, this Catalina, but she was diving at 270. Her great ungainly wings shook and shrieked in an agony of stress. She would surely fall apart.
Cram pulled the stick back. He leveled off at one thousand feet. Then he went over again. Blue Goose came thundering over two transports at seventy-five feet. She shuddered and bucked in their flak blasts. Cram sighted off his bow at a third transport. He yanked the toggle release. His first torpedo hit the water and began running straight and true. He yanked again, and the second fell. It porpoised, righted—and followed the first into the transport’s side.
Blue Goose had broken the transport’s back. She was done. Her skipper drove her up on the beach. Soon two more transports were beached, and the other three had turned and raced back toward the Shortlands.
Now Blue Goose was fighting for her life. Five Zeros went after her. Cram stood his big plane on one wing and raced for Henderson Field. The Zeros took turns raking his tail. Cram began roller-coastering, rising and diving, rising and diving. He came over the main strip with his ship wailing through a hundred holes. But he was going too fast to land. He made for Fighter One. He began letting down, while Marine antiaircraft gunners shot two Zeros off his tail.
Then a third came after him, just as Lieutenant Roger Haberman brought his smoking Wildcat down with lowered wheels.
Haberman shot the Zero off Cram’s tail and Blue Goose went plowing up the strip in a pancake landing. Cram and his crewmen emerged unscathed, only to hear Geiger bellow:
“Goddamit, Cram! I ought to court-martial you for deliberate destruction of government property!” Then Geiger strode into the Pagoda to write out a recommendation for a Navy Cross.
And so the “safest” run of the Tokyo Express was all but wrecked. The three beached ships would eventually be turned into charred and rusting skeletons; many of General Hyakutake’s reinforcements were lost and the remainder would have to complete the southern movement by barge, ravaged by American torpedo boats at night, scourged by their aircraft by day. In all, about 4500 men would reach Hyakutake in time for the big push. But he would not get all his supplies. Many of them were already burning and American destroyers would set other depots afire. As the day came to an end, three Japanese transports had been lost, in effect, and five Zeros and three Bettys shot down; against the loss of seven of Geiger’s aircraft.
It had been a memorable fifteenth of October, and tomorrow McFarland and the barge-towing convoy would arrive.
Early in the morning of October 15 the Japanese fleet reached a station two hundred miles north of Guadalcanal. Admiral Kondo took personal command of heavy cruisers Myoko and Maya and led them toward The Slot. Meanwhile, Nagumo’s carriers flew off scout planes to search for the American fleet. They found no carriers, but at ten o’clock in the morning they reported sighting a force of one cruiser, two destroyers, and two transports at a point a hundred miles south of Guadalcanal.
Nagumo decided to attack, even though the target was three hundred miles distant. Twenty-seven Vals and Kates roared aloft from Zuikaku, speeding toward what was in actuality the barge-towing convoy from Espiritu.
But they would find only two targets.
Nagumo’s scout plane had already made transports Alchiba and Bellatrix, destroyer Nicholas and PT-tender Jamestown conclude that it would be wise to withdraw. Fleet-tug Vireo and destroyer Meredith plowed on. Shortly before eleven they beat off a two-plane attack. Then they received word that enemy ships were close by, and they, also, decided to reverse course.
But Vireo moved too slowly, and so, Meredith ordered her abandoned and prepared to sink her with torpedoes—just as Nagumo’s warbirds came tumbling out of the sky.
They fell on Meredith.
Bombed, torpedoed, and machine-gunned, the destroyer sank almost instantly. Her men took to the life rafts. One raftful succeeded in boarding drifting Vireo. But the others could not and these rafts became floating horrors. Wounded and dreadfully burned sailors lay in the boiling sun across the gratings while salt water washed across their open cuts and burned bodies. Other men clung to the lifelines, waiting for someone aboard to die so that they could take his place.
The sharks found them. They dragged the men on the lifelines under. One great scaly beast flipped onto a raft and tore a chunk of flesh from a dying man’s thigh before his horrified comrades could seize the flopping creature by the tail and heave it back into the sea again.
After three days and three nights of agony unrivaled, eighty-eight survivors of Vireo and Meredith were eventually rescued by destroyers. But 236 were not.
Thus did the Navy suffer to keep the Marines and soldiers on Guadalcanal alive and fighting.
They were out in the Bay again.
Heavies Myoko and Maya were there, with Admiral Kondo in command, and ordeal was renewed and red again.
Parading within less than five miles of the island, Kondo’s cruisers fired a crushing 1500 rounds of eight-inch shell into the American perimeter.
In the morning, General Geiger counted fifteen ruined
Wildcats. His Cactus Air Force numbered only twenty-seven planes, and it was again out of gasoline.
Henderson Field’s only hope now rested in Lieutenant Colonel Harold (“Indian Joe”) Bauer’s fighter squadron at Espiritu Santo, alerted for movement north, and in McFarland, still bending it on for Iron Bottom Bay.
“I am your Commander-in-Chief, you are my strong right arms. Whether I shall adequately fulfill my duty to the Ancestors depends upon your fidelity … If you unite with me, our courage and power shall illuminate the whole earth.”
Tears streaming down their cheeks, the men of the Sendai Division stood outside the encampment at Kukumbona, their faces toward the Emperor and their ears filled with the familiar words of the Imperial Rescript.
They were marching against the Americans.
On this morning of October 16, while Roy Geiger contemplated the ruins of his air force, seven thousand of them prepared to march through the jungle to an assembly area south of Henderson Field.
As always, General Maruyama was supremely confident. Captain Oda and his engineers had sent back encouraging reports on the progress of the Maruyama Road. The Sendai should easily be in place by “X Day,” now tentatively set for October 22. So the general ordered his men to take only five days’ rations.
Then, stroking his thin line of supercilious mustache, he suggested to General Hyakutake that the appropriate place to receive the surrender of the American commander was at the mouth of the Matanikau River.
After which, at noon of October 16, he set out along the Maruyama Road.
A few hours later his rear guard heard the welcome sound of Japanese aerial bombs falling on American ships in Iron Bottom Bay.
Challenge for the Pacific Page 27