by John Prados
Kondo’s Advance Force headed toward Guadalcanal before dawn. SOPAC airpower, engaging its forces to destroy Tanaka’s convoy, paid no heed. Kondo’s flagship Atago, however, had to evade torpedoes from the U.S. subs Trout and Flying Fish in the afternoon. Ensign Nakamura Toshio in the Asagumo watched as three torpedo tracks came right at him. The tin fish passed underneath the Asagumo at 4:35 p.m. The American sub had apparently set torpedo depths to strike the heavy ships. Commander Iwahashi’s destroyer counterattacked with depth charges. The American sub escaped.
About a half hour earlier, Red Ramage of the Trout had sent a contact report in such haste he did not encode it. Kondo’s radio monitors intercepted the message. By late afternoon Kondo knew the enemy would oppose him. The flotilla sent floatplanes for a final daytime probe, but they reported only cruisers and destroyers. So the admiral warned his fleet to expect a few cruisers. He signaled Tanaka at 7:00 p.m. that he would clear away the enemy so the Army convoy could finally reach Cactus.
Kondo received an R Area Force contact report that misidentified Lee’s battleships at 8:45 p.m., and later one that mistakenly took the Tanaka convoy for another U.S. cruiser force. Admiral Kondo could have had three battleships to Ching Lee’s two, but his decision had reversed the odds. There would be two American battlewagons to one Japanese. In the darkness off Guadalcanal, battleships would meet in surface combat for the first time in the Pacific war.
Willis Lee’s behemoths were on the scene. Admiral Lee fully expected to grapple with the enemy. The previous night, still miles away, Ching Lee and Glenn Davis, captain of battleship Washington, had had a confab with ships’ officers in the wardroom where the leaders went over every aspect of the coming engagement. Captain Davis asked his navigator, a new fellow, whether he was up to the job. At dawn the Washington went to general quarters. Davis appeared on the bridge, as did the navigator. In the U.S. Navy it was customary for the navigator to control the helm when the ship went to battle stations. At other times the officer of the deck had the conn. That morning Lieutenant Raymond P. Hunter was officer of the deck, nearing midwatch, and looking forward to action. Hunter was the gun captain of the number two sixteen-inch turret and the man responsible for the main battery gang overall. But Captain Davis asked Hunter to stay on the helm. Lieutenant Hunter would have the conn throughout the day—and the battle—steering the Washington for more than twenty-four hours. Other preparations proceeded. Sailors removed paint from ship’s surfaces. Every potential flammable substance was being minimized. The other warships did the same.
Bridge lookouts aboard Washington first glimpsed Cactus soon after dawn of November 14. Admiral Lee altered course to the west and steered to stay hidden under rain squalls. There were numerous radar contacts with bogeys, and flak fired at one JNAF snooper late that morning. A dispatch from Halsey during the afternoon gave Lee complete freedom of action. Shortly before sunset the force assumed a heading that would take it to Savo Island. The horizon to the northwest was lit by flashes from the last bit of the Tanaka convoy battle. Ching Lee posted his four destroyers in line ahead of the battleships, which steamed with the Washington first and South Dakota in trail. Admiral Lee suffered from the same weakness as previous U.S. flotillas—and Kondo’s: lack of experience working together. His tin cans were simply the four destroyers with Kinkaid that had had the most fuel when Lee detached for his mission. The force steamed due north. Near Savo, Admiral Lee shifted to an easterly course. The sea was dead calm and the sky lit by a bright last-quarter moon.
As he looked for trouble, Lee almost got some. Radiomen heard English-language chatter, uncoded or in codes they did not have. One message reported two battleships, nationality unknown. Ching Lee realized the transmissions were about his own vessels. PT boats were on the prowl and could attack the American fleet at any moment. Lee’s nickname, “Ching,” came from prewar service in China, where he had been renowned for love of Peking opera and had befriended Marine officer Alex Vandegrift. Admiral Lee now radioed Cactus and got Vandegrift to call off the PT boats. As it happened, this ought not to have been necessary: Several hours earlier Radio Cactus had informed the Tulagi PT base that Task Force 64 could be in the area that evening. Now it was about 9:45 p.m.
Vice Admiral Kondo entered Indispensable Strait at nine o’clock. An hour later, with no sign as yet of Allied warships, Kondo ordered his vessels into tactical array. Expecting cruisers, the admiral provided for his destroyer groups to mass ahead of his main body rather than screen it. With tin cans clearing the way, Kondo would follow and execute his bombardment. Rear Admiral Hashimoto, in the Sendai, took three destroyers to make the preliminary sweep past Lunga Point. They would enter east of Savo. Rear Admiral Kimura would skirt the western side of the island with Nagara and four destroyers. Kondo kept a pair of tin cans to bring up his rear, and led with his flagship, then Takao, followed by Kirishima.
On the American side, Rear Admiral Lee had decided to troll for the enemy. He circled Savo, set course toward Lunga, and, at 10:52 p.m., Lee came around to steam along the south side of Savo. To judge from the track charts Imperial Navy officers prepared for U.S. intelligence experts after the war, the Japanese spotted the Americans above Savo while still approaching themselves. At 11:13 the Sendai glimpsed ship silhouettes, and she went to battle stations five minutes later. By 11:28 Hashimoto was confident he was looking at two heavy cruisers, and minutes later four tin cans as well. There are claims the Atago made visual contact early, but her record is silent on this, and Admiral Kondo took no action. The Japanese chart notes the sighting at 11:17 p.m.
So Rear Admiral Hashimoto’s Destroyer Squadron 3 saw the Americans before Lee’s radars detected him. The Americans turned west shortly before 11:00. Moments later the Washington’s radar detected light cruiser Sendai with her destroyers steering past Savo, about nine miles distant. Lee, probably the U.S. Navy’s senior expert on electronic systems, elected to await visual contact, which came fifteen minutes later. At 11:16 he signaled his warships to fire when ready. Upon receiving word of the Sendai sighting, at 11:15 Kondo changed course to stay north of Savo Island. Kondo clearly intended to keep Savo between his big ships and the U.S. radars until he saw what developed. Captain Morishita Nobue’s Sendai confirms the Americans opened fire at 11:16. Admiral Hashimoto wasted no time. One minute later he ordered full left rudder, made smoke, and retired to the north. Hashimoto’s principal role became one of keeping Lee’s gunners busy. They focused on him until their attention was drawn away. The only ship the Americans touched was Commander Sakuma Eiji’s Ayanami, engaged by Commander Thomas E. Fraser’s Walke at 11:22. Lee’s battleships checked fire. The Ayanami was crippled in less than twenty minutes, though not without launching dreaded Long Lance torpedoes. Destroyer Uranami went alongside, took off her crew, and scuttled the Ayanami with two tin fish. Sakuma and several dozen men took cutters and went to join the fight on land.
Admiral Kimura’s unit did most of the fighting through the first part of the action. Kimura’s sailors first launched torpedoes, then opened fire. With the dark fastness of Savo behind the Japanese, Lee’s ships at first believed they were engaging shore batteries, but as Kimura maneuvered, the Americans realized the truth. The Preston fired on Kimura’s flagship until the torpedoes began to strike. At 11:36 Commander Max Stormes of the Preston had to abandon ship. The Gwin had already been hit in her engine room. In moments Ching Lee’s destroyers had fallen to hammer blows. A dozen minutes after Stormes evacuated Preston, Lee ordered them to leave. By then only two could respond, and one later sank. Only the damaged Gwin, under Lieutenant Commander John B. Fellowes Jr., was to survive.
The battleship action became the main event. By 11:30 Vice Admiral Kondo understood that the U.S. force, if not confronted—he believed, even now, that only cruisers were involved—would pass behind him. Once that happened the Americans would be free to take the approaching Tanaka convoy. A large-scale exchange of gunfire was reported off Savo. Kondo changed to a southwesterly c
ourse and ordered battle stations. At 11:35 he received more reports—of a “cruiser” and three destroyers. A few minutes later Kondo altered course to close with the enemy, and at 11:50 he came around to the northwest to parallel them.
At this point the Americans suffered a disaster that was a blessing in disguise. Captain Gatch’s South Dakota commenced fire at 11:17 on the Shikinami, the second ship in Hashimoto’s line—and thought her sunk—but after a half dozen salvos the American guns fell silent. South Dakota’s chief engineer had tied down the circuit breakers, which put the entire electrical system on a single circuit, instead of many working in parallel. The effect of vibration from firing her own main battery plus the impact of Japanese five-inch shells on South Dakota’s superstructure suddenly broke the circuit, and the ship lost all electricity. It was 11:30. Gatch restored power in eight minutes and resumed shooting, while Lee’s Washington was concealed just behind the tip of Savo when Kondo straightened on his new course. Because she was not firing at that moment, the Japanese did not see her. They had eyes only for the South Dakota. Captain Davis’s Washington would be like a fox loose in a chicken coop.
Kondo received a message sent by the Ayanami before her demise. It seemed as if the Long Lance torpedoes were up to their deadly work. The admiral determined to resume his planned bombardment of Henderson Field and led the fleet around to the southeast. Kondo was making between twenty-eight and thirty knots. Within five minutes beginning at 11:52, lookouts on the Takao, the Nagara, and the flagship all reported U.S. battleships in sight. The Nagara accurately observed that there were two. Vice Admiral Kondo professed himself stunned. “The sudden appearance of enemy battleships in that area was utterly beyond my consideration,” Kondo later wrote. “Otherwise, I ought to have prepared to launch a systematized night action.” As it was, Kondo believed himself overextended. His order for the bombardment had sent Hashimoto’s destroyer group ahead on its sweep—the Sendai would be off Lunga an hour and a half later—and Kondo’s other ships had their hands full with Ching Lee.
Still confused as to the Americans’ identity, Vice Admiral Kondo ordered a searchlight lit. Captain Baron Ijuin Matsuji of the Atago—another Japanese nobleman in the fleet—opened the shutters of one of his lights a minute after midnight. It focused on the South Dakota. The light immediately settled all doubts—but it also brought on the hurricane of Lee’s sixteen-inch guns. And Ching Lee had no doubts: he had detected the Kirishima in Kondo’s line and all the U.S. guns targeted her.
Baron Ijuin’s Atago and Captain Asakura Bunji’s Takao both shot at the South Dakota, as did Iwabuchi’s Kirishima. Captain Iwabuchi actually believed his ship had done well, somehow thinking she had hit the South Dakota twice on the first salvo and scored at least eight more times, including destroying the target’s bridge. Kirishima’s gunnery officer even prepared to shift targets after one more salvo. The American battleship was peppered with Japanese shells, but there was only a single fourteen-inch hit on her from Iwabuchi’s ship. That would have surprised Lieutenant Commander Tokuno Hiroshi, Kirishima’s assistant gunner, who recounted that although his ship had no gunnery radar—only one of the cruisers present had radar, and that a primitive search type—she picked out the South Dakota and piled on. Tokuno too thought the American battleship badly hit. But the lighter weapons of Kondo’s cruisers and destroyers could not penetrate South Dakota’s armor. Captain Gatch’s vessel suffered all kinds of topside damage yet no critical hits. Sailors aboard her—like young Ensign R. Sargent Shriver—were astonished at the pounding their ship endured. Wounded by flying shrapnel, Ensign Shriver earned the Purple Heart. Ten minutes after midnight, Gatch decided to withdraw and preserve his ship. Meanwhile, Glenn Davis’s Washington completed the destruction of the Kirishima.
Kondo’s diffident handling of his fleet became the determining factor. He had Ijuin cease fire after just five minutes—Atago expended only fifty-seven eight-inch shells. Commander Hideshima Narinobu, her gunnery officer, believed that the target (South Dakota) was already sinking. The Takao fired so little she did not bother recording consumption. The fleet commander’s idea was apparently to regain the advantage of darkness to afford him the chance of a torpedo attack, and beginning at 12:14 a.m. both cruisers unleashed torpedoes. Atago actually fired nineteen of them. Admiral Kimura’s Nagara plus destroyers were also pursuing the Americans, as was a division of destroyers that Tanaka sent forward from his convoy. The long-range torpedo attacks—exactly like the Java Sea battle—achieved little. Chief of Staff Shiraishi should have been mortified. The Washington turned to evade torpedoes at 12:33. Fearing additional attacks, Ching Lee left the area, abandoning any further effort to defend Henderson Field.
Kimura’s destroyers could still see the Washington for more than an hour after she began her retreat, but Kondo did not order any action. Instead, at 12:32 a.m. he canceled the Henderson bombardment. Fifteen minutes later the admiral advised Combined Fleet in a dispatch: “GUADALCANAL ATTACK FORCE AND THE REINFORCEMENTS ARE ENGAGING WITH TWO NEW TYPE ENEMY BATTLESHIPS AND SEVERAL CRUISERS AND DESTROYERS OFF LUNGA…TONIGHT’S SHORE BOMBARDMENT CALLED OFF.” At 1:04 Kondo ordered his pursuit ships to execute torpedo attacks and withdraw. By then the Washington had disappeared. An hour afterward the Sendai group turned to assist Kirishima, but at 2:43 a.m. that effort was suspended and Rear Admiral Hashimoto headed north.
The final act of this terrible drama was the demise of the Kirishima. Iwabuchi’s battleship had been smitten early in the action, her steering spaces so badly damaged she lost rudder control. The battleship turned in circles. Captain Iwabuchi slowed his vessel and attempted to steer with the engines, but that proved futile. Lieutenant Commander Tokuno estimated nine sixteen-inch hits and more than forty from five-inch guns. There were fires everywhere; 90 percent of the engine room gang were dead; leaks aft, though briefly stopped, then disabled all but one screw. Fires approached the forward magazines, which had to be flooded. Eerily, as had happened with Hiei in these very waters just two days before, the jammed rudder stymied a perfunctory effort to beach the vessel. Admiral Kimura refused to rig a towline from the Nagara. Iwabuchi appealed to higher command to order that the ship be saved, but the progression of flooding mooted that possibility. During the predawn hours Kirishima capsized and sank. Iwabuchi and 1,128 seamen were evacuated. Another 300 never came back.
Vice Admiral Kondo’s force entered Truk early in the morning of November 18. He estimated nine torpedo hits against U.S. battleships (none were actually made), along with two heavy cruisers and two destroyers sunk, plus another cruiser and a destroyer badly damaged. The Japanese had lost the battleship Kirishima and the destroyer Ayanami. Actual American losses amounted to three destroyers plus damage to the South Dakota, which would return to the United States, out of the war until February 1943. Continuing Japanese confusion as to what had happened—and an implicit claim to heroics—is inherent in the estimate of the Allied force in this battle: Kondo assessed Lee’s strength as four battleships, two heavy cruisers, and two destroyers. Not only was the estimate considerably larger than Lee’s actual force, but the claimed destruction of Allied cruisers included more than the Japanese themselves believed present.
In the propaganda war, the battle of the communiqués continued apace. The U.S. Navy issued a fairly detailed description of the cruiser action but very little on the battleship engagement. In fact, only on November 19 did the Navy admit that American battleships had participated at all. The Japanese description, issued on November 18, modified Kondo’s claims but followed his essential description:
On Nov. 14, while escorting our transport fleet in the face of a fierce counterattack by enemy aircraft, the Imperial naval forces encountered an enemy reinforcement fleet with two battleships and more than four large-size cruisers at a point northwest of the island and at night, after a heated encounter, destroyed the major part of the enemy auxiliary units and heavily damaged two large battleships, routing the enemy fleet in a southerly directi
on.
Through the sequence of battles from November 12 through 14, the Japanese admitted to the loss of a battleship, a cruiser, and three destroyers, and to sustaining damage on a second battleship and a cruiser. The U.S. Navy texts covering these two battles claimed to have sunk a battleship and damaged two more, sunk eight cruisers and damaged another, and sunk six destroyers while damaging seven more. Both sides could lie with statistics.
Kondo Nobutake explains his decision to terminate the battle in terms very different from his damage claims. The fleet had almost exhausted its torpedoes. He considered that he had achieved substantial results against two battleships, either sinking them or leaving them in a sinking condition. Yet, “[A] continuance of that night engagement in the face of still sound enemy battleships as well as land-and carrier-based air forces, would cause us to subject our fleet to powerful enemy air attacks from early morning…[and] consequently would result in sacrificing our important striking force which could hardly be supplemented afterward.”
Writing of World War I, Winston Churchill once famously named the commander of Britain’s Grand Fleet as the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon. That person, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, was inclined toward caution, and Churchill sought to explain his attitude. Kondo Nobutake could not make an equivalent claim to importance. Admiral Kondo could not lose the war in an afternoon, so the enormity of stakes did not justify his caution. Moreover, Jellicoe won his war, whereas Kondo and his nation went down to defeat. And while Kondo could not have lost in an afternoon, it might be that Kondo Nobutake did lose Japan’s war in a month, the month starting at Santa Cruz and ending with the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal.
As seen earlier, at Santa Cruz, Admiral Kondo’s halfhearted pursuit of a defeated U.S. carrier force had left the victory incomplete. At the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, in his capacity as overall tactical commander, Kondo had exercised weak leadership over Vice Admiral Abe Hiroaki during the first inning of this multiday match. Here was a case where Imperial Navy predilections for subdividing forces was truly counterproductive.