Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun

by John Prados

  The CINCPAC war diary records Halsey’s request for fast battleships as a result of “information that a force of cruisers and destroyers left Truk headed south.” Halsey’s dispatch noted that Merrill’s task force, while still effective, needed rearming. Nimitz sent some additional cruisers and destroyers to the South Pacific but warned he would have to call them very quickly to the Central Pacific. He added, “IN CIRCUMSTANCES BELIEVE REINFORCEMENTS BEING FURNISHED COUPLED WITH HEAVY AIR SUPERIORITY HELD BY COMSOPAC AND CinCSOWESPAC WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS.”

  In return Halsey objected that actions would undoubtedly be fought at night, when air superiority could not be applied, that the Japanese could reinforce from Truk more quickly that he from Efate, and that fighting on many fronts “usually” prevented “consistent attacks on Rabaul.” The date/time group on this cable, sent on November 3 from the South Pacific, makes clear that SOPAC was lining up an air assault against Rabaul before Kurita’s cruisers ever arrived there. Until then the conventional wisdom saw carrier units at a disadvantage striking powerful land bases, but Rabaul had been battered already, and the opportunity to wipe out Kurita was too good to pass up. Halsey ordered Ted Sherman to prepare the carrier attack. The premeditated nature is clear in what the Halsey memoir does say—that he had sufficient time to coordinate with Kenney for a near-simultaneous Rabaul strike by the Fifth Air Force. Halsey’s dispatch to Nimitz finished: “AS IN THE PAST WE WILL HURT JAPS AND ATTACK THEM WITH EVERYTHING WE HAVE BUT HATE TO GIVE THEM AN EVEN BREAK.” Thus the admirals planned a trap for the Imperial Navy.

  Kurita Takeo steamed blithely into this iron storm. That an aerial snooper had not simply made a preliminary sighting that November 4 might have become clear when an air attack followed almost immediately. North of New Ireland the two tankers detailed to fuel the Kurita fleet were set upon. Both were damaged, one badly enough to be towed into Kavieng. The other returned to Truk accompanied by heavy cruiser Chokai and a pair of destroyers. Chokai was lucky. Otherwise she would have been on the hook with the rest of Kurita’s vessels. Half past noon the cruiser Mogami actually fired her main battery at a scout 23,000 yards distant. No one attacked except a snooper near New Ireland late that night. Allied aircraft avoided the Second Fleet for a reason. A warship maneuvering at sea always had better odds against aircraft than one tied up in port. Halsey wanted the Kurita fleet inside Rabaul.

  With his fleet carrier Saratoga and light carrier Princeton taking on fuel from oiler Kankakee not far from Rennell, Admiral Sherman received Halsey’s dispatch late in the afternoon of November 4. Sherman was to make an all-out attack on shipping in Rabaul and to the north of it. The SOPAC commander, in keeping with his private Ultra, explicitly made cruisers, then destroyers the priority targets. Halsey did not reveal his source, but the reference to cruisers and the instruction to focus on Rabaul plus the waters north of it—the sea between that fortress and Truk—are a dead giveaway. To maximize striking power, he directed AIRSOLS to furnish Sherman’s defensive cover, freeing all of Task Force 38’s planes for the attack. Ted Sherman sped through the night, coming up from the south. The weather cooperated. Overcast protected the carriers from JNAF snoopers, and calm seas enabled destroyers to keep station. At Sherman’s maximum practicable speed of twenty-seven knots he reached a dawn position 230 miles southeast of Rabaul in time to put a morning strike over Simpson Harbor.

  Carriers began launching at 9:00 a.m. Air Group 12, of the Saratoga, sent out twenty-two SBD Dauntless dive-bombers, sixteen TBF Avenger torpedo planes, and thirty-three F-6F Hellcat fighters under air group boss Commander Henry H. Caldwell. The Princeton’s Air Group 23 put up seven TBFs and nineteen F-6Fs under Commander Henry Miller, its chief. The rain and cloud at the launch point gave way to clear skies as the aircraft thrummed toward New Britain. Approaching Rabaul, visibility was estimated at fifty miles. It was a brilliant day for a killing. The strike wave swung into St. George’s Channel on its final approach shortly after 11:00 a.m. Commander Caldwell led the overall force and directed it from his Avenger torpedo bomber.

  Admiral Kurita also voyaged through the night. His Second Fleet skirted the eastern coast of New Ireland, crossed north of Bougainville, and entered St. George’s Channel to make Simpson Harbor. Predictably, around dawn there was another aircraft contact. The fleet began entering Blanche Bay, Rabaul’s roadstead, around 8:00 a.m. Kurita had with him the heavy cruisers Atago, Takao, Maya, Suzuya, Mogami, and Chikuma, the light cruiser Noshiro, and destroyers. Within fifteen minutes of entering Simpson Harbor, the first ships, cruisers Chikuma and Noshiro, thirsty for oil, were tying up alongside tanker Kokuyu Maru. At 11:16 a.m., flagship Atago and the Maya took their places. Captain Takahashi Yuji’s Suzuya was gulping fuel from fleet oiler Naruto. Some destroyers fueled from cruisers. Takao apparently pulled away shortly before the moment of crisis. Kurita wanted to be ready to sail that evening.

  There is some confusion about Japanese warning. Morison’s official history indicates that the Rabaul area command issued a brief warning at 11:10. Suzuya’s action record, however, records first sighting of aircraft at 11:15, notes verification of identity and then the alert by 8th Base Force at 11:18. Cruiser Chikuma’s record agrees the sighting was at 11:15; Mogami makes the time 11:16; Maya 11:20; the Noshiro puts the clock at 11:21. Light cruiser Yubari, just back from an escort mission to Kavieng, saw enemy planes at 11:23. Other ships’ action records are missing or lack detail. In any case the key point is that the Americans achieved surprise. Rabaul on November 5, 1943, would be Pearl Harbor in reverse.

  Lack of warning impacted Japanese air defense. The number of fighters on patrol is variously cited as fifty-nine or seventy. JNAF pilots are reported to have held back, expecting escorts to break away to engage them, whereupon they could pounce on the bombers. Instead, American fighters stuck to the strike aircraft right into Simpson Harbor. Japanese air patrols were effectively useless. The escort fighters made their own contribution. One Hellcat peeled off to strafe the small boat carrying Commander Ohmae Toshikazu out to flagship Atago. The staff officer’s routine delivery of a message from Kusaka to Kurita almost cost him his life.

  Morison notes that one cruiser used her main battery in a desperate effort to obliterate the attackers. Kurita’s vessels had the time to do this because Commander Caldwell circled the shoreline past Crater Peninsula to come in over Rabaul town. This gave his dive-bombers an approach vector enabling them to attack fore-to-aft, the most effective target aspect for dive-bombing. Available Japanese records show that all the warships fired their big guns, the heavy cruisers expending more than 356 eight-inch shells, the light cruisers at least ninety-five six-inch munitions. The cruisers also put up a hail of fire from five-inch high-angle guns, more than 1,421 rounds. And they expended nearly 24,000 light cannon and machine gun bullets in close-in defense. No doubt destroyers put up storms of fire also, since they collectively claimed downing ten aircraft. All this was in addition to the flak from Rabaul’s extensive antiaircraft array. Given the curtain of fire, it is amazing that total American losses amounted to just five bombers and an equal number of fighters.

  On the flagship, Captain Nakaoka Nobuyoshi ordered AA action to port and cast off from the tanker. His Atago was just under way when Commander Caldwell split the attack into several units headed for different parts of the harbor. One element aimed at Nakaoka’s cruiser. At 11:28 three SBDs dropped on the Atago. All scored near misses to port, forward of the beam. Splinters opened steam lines and set fire to torpedo oxygen flasks. The ship listed. A splinter shot across the bridge, carrying away half of Captain Nakaoka’s face. Sailors bore him from the bridge on a stretcher. The flag captain managed a weak, “Banzai!” as he passed Admiral Kurita. There were more dive-bombers—with another near miss—and seven Avengers launched torpedoes without effect. By 12:11 p.m. counterflooding had returned the Atago to an even keel. By then Captain Nakaoka was dead. Twenty-one seamen were killed and sixty-four wounded. Kurita was stunned, as was Nakaoka’s cla
ssmate Rear Admiral Komura Keizo, Ozawa’s chief of staff; and Baron Tomioka, another Etajima comrade. His friend had died senselessly in the harbor of the impregnable fortress for which Tomioka was now responsible.

  Cruiser Takao exited to Blanche Bay. Captain Hayashi Shigetaka watched the attack planes turn in over Rabaul town. Every gun on his ship was firing by 11:25. As the Takao gained speed, destroyer Wakatsuki cut in front of her. Hayashi ordered hard right rudder. The bombers came as the 12,000-ton cruiser responded. She shuddered with an impact starboard of the number one gun turret that holed its side, pierced the deck, and damaged the barbette of the next turret back. Twenty-three sailors were killed and another twenty-two wounded. A torpedo attack followed but obtained no result. By 11:50 Hayashi’s ship was out of Simpson Harbor and the enemy had disappeared.

  Next to the Atago, the worst affected would be Captain Kato Yoshiro’s cruiser Maya, caught just casting off from her oiler. Kato had held command for less than a month—not so familiar with his vessel as he could have been. His ship was a sitting duck. Lieutenant Commander James Newell, leader of VB-23 of the Independence, put a bomb right down one of Maya’s smokestacks. The weapon detonated in her engine rooms. The Maya suffered the most severe casualties, with seventy dead and sixty wounded. Fires blazed into the night.

  On the heavy cruiser Chikuma, Captain Shigenaga Kazue ordered AA action just two minutes after the initial sighting. By 11:24 his main battery and secondary were both engaged. Any hope of escape evaporated in the two minutes starting at 11:30 when, in close succession, the Chikuma was hit next to her forward turrets and abaft the beam on her catapult deck. The latter explosion started a fire that spread to the engine spaces. Shortly thereafter came a near miss off the stern. The Chikuma was among the first to reach speed and attain Blanche Bay, at 12:10, where Captain Shigenaga’s violent weaving put off the Americans’ aim. Her damage turned out to be only superficial.

  Captain Aitoku Ichiro of the Mogami was also quick on the trigger, and for a little while it seemed his ship might escape. But SBDs re-formed overhead at 11:32, and a minute later Dauntlesses dropped on Aitoku’s vessel. He ordered full left rudder, and the Mogami was turning when a bomb hit between the forwardmost turrets. Black smoke billowed into the sky. A glide bomber and a torpedo attack were fended off by destruction of the aircraft, which crashed in the harbor nearby. The Mogami reached the wider waters of Blanche Bay fifteen minutes later, but at 11:45 a.m. Aitoku had to stop engines and flood the forward magazines. Crewmen extinguished the fires before 1:00 p.m. An hour later Mogami was pumping out. In all, thirty-one sailors were wounded.

  The other Japanese warships proved luckier. Breaking away from the oiler that had been fueling his Suzuya, Captain Takahashi Yuji ordered full speed and joined the stampede for the harbor exit. His ship put up flak and endured only strafing attacks that wounded eight men. Also strafed was light cruiser Agano, which had stayed at Rabaul after Admiral Omori’s debacle at Empress Augusta Bay. One sailor was killed and seven wounded, her damage bullet holes in the hull. Captain Tahara Yoshiaki’s Noshiro sustained a near miss, which wounded a single sailor and damaged one high-angle flak gun. The Yubari also came through with nothing worse than a couple of men wounded. Destroyer Fujinami was hit by a torpedo that failed to explode, but dented her hull, killing a sailor and injuring nine others. Another tin can, the Wakatsuki, sustained damage from a near miss.

  Admiral Kurita’s ships were milling about, some in Blanche Bay, the others headed there, when another wave of American planes arrived. The Takao reports sighting these at 12:02 p.m., the other vessels variously between 12:17 and 12:19. This was General Kenney’s complementary land-based attack, with twenty-seven B-24 bombers plus sixty-seven P-38 escorts. To Kurita’s relief they made for Rabaul town, not the fleet. The action incensed Admiral Halsey, who notes Kenney had promised an attack in strength that would “lay Rabaul flat.” His formation not only lacked the strength to do that, it arrived only as Navy carrier planes were leaving. In fact, Sherman’s fliers could see only eight Army planes as they made off. The poor timing and weak strength, Halsey felt, were not the promised maximum effort. General Kenney’s defense is that, after the exertions of recent weeks against Rabaul, his forces had damage that outstripped repair capacity. Kenney maintains he told MacArthur, “[M]y maximum effort would be pretty low until I got some replacements and repaired all the shot-up airplanes.” The SOWESPAC commander, Kenney writes, told him to proceed on that basis, and the actual attack force would be a bit larger than Kenney had estimated he could field. But the general was aware from communications with Washington that no replacements were in the offing and he should not have left Halsey expecting major cooperation.

  Kenney notes his attack had excellent results. Japanese materials available at this writing, however, associate no particular damage with the bombs of November 5 other than the destruction of the Kurita fleet. Even the codebreakers had little to show except that Rabaul radio went off the air from 11:29 a.m. until 2:18 p.m.—less than two hours after the end of Kenney’s attack. Two Japanese fighters fell to P-38s, both to the ace Dick Bong. Navy fighters claimed over two dozen more in dogfights as the carrier planes made for Sherman’s task force. Over the two attacks, the Japanese claimed to have destroyed forty-nine American planes. The attack stirred Rabaul like a hornets’ nest. By dint of strenuous efforts the Japanese made a sighting and sent as many planes as they could. Radio Tokyo would assert that a fleet carrier and a light carrier were both sunk in what the Japanese would term “the First Air Battle for Bougainville,” but in fact the JNAF attack completely miscarried, going against a PT boat and a couple of landing ships. The most they accomplished was to damage one. It was an ignoble performance. At the Imperial Palace, where Nagano Osami reported the same claims for American carriers sunk, the news was believed and greeted with joy.

  As for Admiral Kurita’s glorious purpose of mopping up the Americans off Bougainville, that evaporated in the heat of Halsey’s daring raid. Captain Shigenaga left for Truk almost immediately with his Chikuma and the destroyer Wakatsuki. Admiral Kurita sailed for the same place with most of the fleet that night. Heavy cruiser Suzuya stayed with the Mogami, making temporary repairs to her plant. Those vessels departed the next day. Captain Kato also stayed to effect temporary repairs to his Maya. Combined Fleet recalled a reinforcement unit it had sent from Truk direct to Bougainville. The heavy cruiser Chokai, hastening from Truk to rejoin the Second Fleet, reversed her course. The Imperial Navy never again sent heavy ships to Rabaul. The light cruisers Agano, Noshiro, and Yubari, now the backbone of the Southeast Area Fleet, did not have long left to them in the Solomons either. The players were already taking their places for the last act of this story. The Empire had crossed the event horizon, entering a state of negative entropy: Under this condition enormous efforts generated picayune results. How pernicious the situation had become would be demonstrated almost immediately.

  “A FUNERAL DIRGE FOR TOJO’S RABAUL”

  Bull Halsey exulted at the results of the carrier raid. Though the next time they met, the admiral would complain to MacArthur of George Kenney’s performance, in the moment he expressed himself quite clearly to Ted Sherman, signaling, “IT IS REAL MUSIC TO ME AND OPENS THE STOPS FOR A FUNERAL DIRGE FOR TOJO’S RABAUL.” Admiral Nimitz, pleased too, immediately assigned Rear Admiral Alfred E. Montgomery’s Task Group 50.3 to the South Pacific and directed that officer, who had fleet carriers Essex and Bunker Hill, along with light carrier Independence, to make his best speed. Nimitz wanted exploitation, taking action “WITH VIEW EARLIEST POSSIBLE STRIKES REPEAT STRIKES ON DAMAGED AND OTHER SHIPS IN AND AROUND RABAUL.”

  But a campaign of repeated carrier raids on the Japanese fortress proved unnecessary. Ultra revealed the Japanese heavy units withdrawing and Koga hunkering down at Truk. On November 9, CINCPAC modified his order to provide that Montgomery, after a single strike, should proceed to the Central Pacific for Nimitz’s offensive.

  The last ac
t of the Rabaul drama took place in the air, with the evolving Bougainville campaign in the lead. The Japanese would actually fight six “air battles of Bougainville” in the course of their RO Operation. The air battles afforded Kusaka’s and Ozawa’s pilots no greater success than the ineffectual attack on the American carriers following the November 5 raid. But JNAF losses were painful, eighty-three aircraft. Emperor Hirohito’s satisfaction with the claimed (but false) U.S. carrier losses in the Rabaul raid continued when Admiral Nagano updated the palace on November 9. Hirohito joined Captain Jyo for toasts in the aide’s duty office. But those combat results were illusory too. Throughout November, on 869 sorties flown (many of which were, however, fighter patrols over Rabaul), the fruit was a single transport sunk and a few ships damaged. Halsey’s infusion of South Pacific forces onto Bougainville proved more supple and enduring than Japanese efforts to blockade the island.

  For the Marines, Seabees, and others on Bougainville—including the Japanese—there would be plenty of mud, mayhem, and misery. But enemy efforts to drive the Allies into the sea were no more successful than they had been on Guadalcanal. Imperial Navy support activities would be subject to the existing operational environment—now highly dangerous to the Japanese. The light cruisers left at Rabaul furnish a good example. The fleet ran a counterlanding mission to Torokina coupled with a supply run to Buka. Both succeeded. On the next Buka run the Natori was torpedoed and left the Solomons for the last time. Again like Cactus, the Japanese on Bougainville became isolated.

  While action off Bougainville continued, George Kenney sent several more small air strikes against Rabaul, and Bull Halsey geared up for another big attack. That aerial assault took place on November 11. Kenney’s follow-up strike was canceled due to weather, which had also dramatically reduced his activities during the previous forty-eight hours. On the appointed day, Sherman flung his carrier planes at Rabaul from the east, and Montgomery from the south. Overcast hampered Sherman’s planes, which got in just a small attack on a few ships they spotted through a break in the clouds.