CAPSTONE PAPER:

THE U. S. NAVY AND THE TOKYO EXPRESS AT GUADALCANAL, AUGUST - DECEMBER, 1942:

A BATTLE THAT REQUIRED ‘EVERY CONCEIVABLE WEAPON’

James A. Smith

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the

Master of Arts in Military History

History Capstone Preparation and Submission ClassroomProfessor David Ulbrich

Norwich University

August 17, 2014

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INTRODUCTION

At the end of August, 1942, the Empire of Japan and the

United States of America found themselves locked in a battle for

the possession of a muddy airstrip on an island in the South

Pacific that most members of their militaries had never heard of

a month earlier, and few of them could have located on a map.

Guadalcanal was the Pacific War’s version of a border march, a

wild jungle far from the mainstreams of civilization and the

areas of principal military concern. It lay at the intersection

of the furthest ranges of the two combatants’ land-based

airpower, and was accessible only through dauntingly long lines

of communication and supply. And at the maritime thresholds to

this remote battlefield, it posed critical dilemmas to both the

Imperial Japanese Navy (“IJN”) and to the United States Navy

(“USN”). How each side would resolve its dilemma would control,

in large measure, how long or short the Guadalcanal campaign

would be, how cheap or costly it would be, and whether the

Japanese or the Americans would prevail. Their respective

resolutions are the focus of this paper.

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The dilemma the Japanese faced was how to move troops across

an ocean without the benefit of troopships. By the end of

August, 1942, a large force of U. S. Marines was well dug in on

the north coast of Guadalcanal, near the outlet of the Lunga

River, and in possession of the one piece of strategic real

estate on the island: its airstrip, now known as Henderson Field.

Within two days of their landing on August 7, 1942, the Marines

scattered the construction troops building this airfield into the

jungle. Two weeks later, the Marines annihilated an elite

Japanese reinforced battalion, the Ichiki First Echelon, when it

attacked their lines at Alligator Creek. Clearly, a more

substantial force was required to retake the airfield. Since the

days three centuries before when warships and merchantmen parted

company as branches of naval architecture, the transportation of

troops has been the task of troop transports, not warships.

Transports, even when escorted by warships and aircraft, are

vulnerable. When risked in the approaches to Guadalcanal, which

were dominated by the ‘Cactus Air Force’ - the group of American

carrier strike aircraft operating from the ‘unsinkable aircraft

carrier’ of Henderson Field - they were all too likely to be

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lost. That was the clear lesson the Japanese drew from the

events of the last week of August, 1942. Without the ability to

move substantial reinforcements to Guadalcanal, and keep them

supplied, the Japanese had no chance to prevail in the campaign,

and might just as well give it up. It is not surprising that in

the last week of August, 1942, the Japanese Army was considering

doing just that.

Events took a different course, however, because the

Japanese Navy responded quickly and effectively to the challenge

by creating the ‘Tokyo Express,’ the near-nightly runs of

Imperial Japanese Navy destroyers bringing supplies and

reinforcements from Rabaul and the Shortland Islands down New

Georgia Sound – which came to be known as ‘the Slot’ - to the

Japanese garrison on Guadalcanal.1 They thereby created a1 A note on nomenclature is in order. The Japanese themselvescalled the destroyer runs to Guadalcanal ‘Rat Transport,’ todistinguish them from efforts to transport men and material toGuadalcanal by barge – ‘Ant Transport.” The Marines, who quicklyunderstood what the Japanese were doing, began to call the runs‘Rat Patrols’ or ‘the Cactus Express,’ since ‘Cactus’ was theall-too-appropriate Allied code name for Guadalcanal. Whenjournalists began using the term ‘Cactus Express,’ censors, inorder to preserve the secret of the identity of ‘Cactus,’ changedthe term to ‘Tokyo Express.” See John Prados, Islands of Destiny (NewYork: NAL Caliber, 2012), 79. Since the latter term has becomeso closely associated with the actual operation, it will be used

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logistical pipeline which enabled them to make two major efforts

to retake the airfield, each of which came within measurable

distance of success. They also delayed for six months the

American occupation of Guadalcanal, which the Americans had

planned to complete in five days, buying themselves time with

which to reinforce position further north in the Solomons.

The Tokyo Express presented the Americans with a dilemma of

their own: how to deny the Japanese the use of the waters off

Guadalcanal at night, without the benefit of a navy that could

fight effectively at night, or air units capably of flying at

night. The carrier task forces, the heart of the U. S. Navy

(“USN”) since Pearl Harbor, were effectively checkmated at

Guadalcanal by Japanese carrier forces of equal or greater

strength. In any event, their air groups could not operate at

night. Two days into the campaign, on the night of August 8-9

1942, the surface navy received a disastrous introduction to

modern war at the Battle of Savo Island. Savo, the most lopsided

defeat in USN history, resulted in the sinking or disablement of

much of the cruiser-destroyer force with which the USN had

here, with the caveat that no Japanese involved in the operationwould have so described it.

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expected to control the waters between around Guadalcanal; the

strategic stretch of water between Guadalcanal and Tulagi where

the battle was fought became forever known as “Ironbottom Sound,”

for the ships sunk there. Savo convincingly demonstrated that

the IJN was vastly superior to the USN in night surface battle

training, tactics and technology. Moreover, when the sun went

down, so did the Cactus Air Force.

Without adequate night surface combat capability or a night

air attack capability, the Americans were seemingly without means

to prevent the Japanese from taking total nighttime control of

the maritime approaches to Guadalcanal. Yet to allow the

Japanese to exercise such control could well have disastrous, if

not fatal, consequences for the success of the American invasion,

a fact recognized from the onset. The American challenge was

therefore to mount a ‘sea denial’ operation against the Tokyo

Express in the nighttime waters around Guadalcanal. A sea denial

operation is the employment of forces to prevent an adversary

from controlling a maritime area without being able to control

that area oneself.2 It usually employs means other than2 British Maritime Doctrine, UK Ministry of Defense Joint Doctrine Publication 0-10 (August, 2011), Par. 224 at p. 2-11.

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conventional warships, such as submarines, motor torpedo boats

and mines, whose primary function is to defend a given stretch of

water or to harass enemy forces in that stretch, rather than to

command that stretch in the traditional sense.

Unfortunately, the USN failed to respond to the appearance

of the Tokyo Express in the campaign with an early, effective sea

denial effort. This failure had complex causes, which varied

depending on the nature of the potential resource. Submarines,

which might have played a part in such a sea-denial effort, were

under the control of other commands with different objectives.

Even when ultimately committed to the campaign in numbers, they

were poorly deployed and defectively armed. The potential of

motor torpedo boats was realized almost immediately, but their

arrival in theater was substantially delayed. Finally, the

relevant commanders failed to make use of mines, the one weapon

available in abundance which might well have made a difference.

Behind the dysfunctional command structures, delayed deployments

and inadequate efforts lay more basic failures. Leadership at

the theater level was clearly inadequate. Most importantly, an

essential war-winning ingredient - the determination to harass

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the enemy by every conceivable means – was conspicuously absent.3

Instead, the Americans relied solely on air power from Henderson

Field – the “Cactus Air Force” - to deal with the Express, which

it could not do alone.

The Americans would pay a high price for their failure to

wage an effective sea denial campaign against the Express when it

first appeared. The Japanese garrison, reduced after the initial

invasion to a corporal’s guard, was reinforced to the point where

it was able to mount attacks which twice nearly succeeded in

retaking Henderson Field. Moreover, the Japanese, perceived the

vulnerability of the American position to attack at night from

the sea. They made good use of that vulnerability to frequently

harass, and on at least one occasion to almost obliterate, the

Cactus Air Force, upon which the American effort depended. A

well-conceived sea denial effort early on could have either

deterred the Japanese from exploiting this vulnerability to begin

3 The phrasing is from Nimitz’s Running Summary for November 30,1942. Papers of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Naval Historyand Heritage Command, Archives Branch, Series 1, Subseries A,Boxes 1-8, (hereafter, the “Nimitz Graybook”), Vol. II, 1179.http://digark.us/imageserver/NWC/DS/001/PDFA/NWC_DS_001_01_v1_WEB.pdf

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with, or increased the cost and risk of so doing. Whether it

would have succeeded cannot be known for certain, because that

campaign remained unfought. We do know, however, that at the end

of August, 1942, before the Express provided the Japanese with a

logistics pipeline to Guadalcanal, they were considering

withdrawing from the island. We also know that when a sea denial

campaign was waged against the Express, in December, it

effectively cut the Japanese logistics pipeline, and that

Japanese withdrawal from the island soon followed. There is no

reason to believe that the same result could not have been

attained earlier.

Because the Americans were not able to stop the Express

until almost the end of the campaign, the struggle became a

battle of pure attrition. Fortunately, the Americans had the

better logistical pipeline. They were able to replenish their

forces and replace their losses with conventional shipping

protected by aircraft, generating a far more voluminous flow of

logistics than the Express, with its limited capabilities, could

give the Japanese. This was certainly not the manner in which

they Americans intended to win the campaign when it began.

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Guadalcanal was a long, dramatic, costly, painful campaign.

Much of the campaign’s length, drama, cost and pain were, from

the American point of view, unnecessary. This was the price of

the American failure to act early and decisively to cut the thin

Japanese logistical pipeline into the island. Because American

leadership and imagination were in short supply, the Guadalcanal

campaign became long and expensive, and was very nearly lost.

SETTING THE STAGE

A. The Guadalcanal Battle-Space

Ninety miles long and twenty-five miles wide at its center,

Guadalcanal lies near the southeastern end of the Solomon Islands

chain in the southwestern Pacific Ocean.4 The southern half of

the island is steeply mountainous, with peaks exceeding 7,500

4 Samuel E. Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II-,Vol. V, “The Struggle for Guadalcanal” (Annapolis, MD: Naval InstitutePress, 1949), 4-11. See, also, Richard W. Bates and Walter Innis,The Battle of Savo Island, August 8-9, 1942: Strategical and Tactical Analysis(Newport, RI: Department of Analysis, Naval War College, 1950),3-4. http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/PTO/Hell/NWC-Savo.pdfThe Bates Report, prepared under the auspices of the then-president of the Naval War College, Admiral Raymond K. Spruance,is a wealth of information regarding the Guadalcanal invasion.

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feet. The precipitous southern coast of the island, protected by

a coral reef, affords few places for landings. The island’s

interior has sharp ridge lines created by fast-flowing streams.

To the north, the island’s topography flattens into a coastal

plain divided by a series of rivers flowing north from the

interior mountains. The only area suitable for an airfield was

located here, near the mouth of the Lunga River.

To the immediate north of Guadalcanal lie the Florida

Islands, including Florida, Tulagi, Gavutu and Tanambogo. Tulagi

has a good natural harbor, and, as might be expected, was

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therefore the most settled of the islands in the immediate area.

The sound separating Tulagi and the Florida Islands from

Guadalcanal, formerly known as Savo Sound, came to be known

during the campaign as ‘Ironbottom Sound.’ This roughly

rectangular patch of ocean, forty miles long and twenty-five

miles wide, was a rather restricted area in which to fight three

major surface engagements and many minor actions. Separating the

western end of Ironbottom Sound from New Georgia Sound, is Savo

Island, a conical volcanic island about four miles in diameter.

The passages north and south of Savo Island are both

approximately seven miles wide. Access to Ironbottom Sound from

the east also ran through two channels, Lengo Channel, close to

shore, and Skylark Channel, further out. As the name implies,

Ironbottom Sound became the principal naval conflict space during

the campaign.

Ironbottom Sound is at the southeastern end of New Georgia

Sound, a passage formed by the double chain of the Solomon

Islands as they run in a generally northwesterly direction from

Guadalcanal towards Rabaul. During the campaign, this passage,

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too, came to have another name: the ‘Slot.’ The Slot came to be

the major highway for the Tokyo Express.

Guadalcanal’s position in relation to other key positions in

the South Pacific was at least as important as its local

geography. It lay 565 miles southeast of Rabaul, well within

range of long-legged Japanese medium bombers from Rabaul, though

just barely within range of their fighter escorts, and 540 miles

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northwest of Espiritu Santo, within range of U. S. heavy bombers

based there, though not of any other type of American aircraft.

Guadalcanal was, in other words, at the intersection of the

extreme edges of each side’s ability to project airpower.

Simpson Harbor at Rabaul, made a superb local anchorage for the

Japanese. American vessels used Espiritu Santo, and Noumea in

New Caledonia. Further north lay Truk, the major Japanese

Pacific anchorage and base; part of Japan’s rationale for seizing

Rabaul had been to shield Truk.5 To the south, the Allies had

Australia, and to the east, Pearl Harbor. But there were

significant distances between all these places and Guadalcanal.

For both sides, Guadalcanal was a border march.

Guadalcanal’s topography and weather affected the sea-denial

struggle as dramatically as did its geography. The island’s

weather is hot throughout the year. From April to October,

southeasterly trade winds dominate, with temperatures ranging

from 70° F to 90º F. By November, the wind pattern becomes

northeasterly, with temperatures frequently in excess of 100° F,

and torrential rains. Over 100 inches of rain fall yearly near5 Andrieu D’Albas, Death of a Navy: Japanese Naval Action in World War II (NewYork: Devin-Adair Co., 1957), 155.

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the coast, and over 200 inches in the mountains. This weather

pattern was dominated by tropical thunderstorms, which frequently

hampered naval and air operations and degraded radio

communications.

The dominant feature of the island was its tropical jungle.

As Eric Bergerud notes in Touched by Fire, the jungle was “the most

wretched battlefield of World War II.”6 It was a nemesis against

which both sides struggled, and which wise commanders took into

careful account. It concealed a surprisingly rugged landscape.

Moreover, it was home to a host of serious diseases – malaria,

dengue fever, scrub typhus, dysentery and jungle rot being

common, but not exclusive, examples. Troops in such a hostile

environment required frequent replacements and evacuations, which

lent more urgency to the sea denial battle.

B. Origins of the Guadalcanal Campaign

After the Japanese defeat at Midway, the strategic

initiative in the Pacific War resembled “a gun lying in the

street: it was there for either side to pick up and use.”7

6 Eric Bergerud, Touched by Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific (New York:Viking, 1996), 89.7 H. P. Willmott, The War with Japan: The Period of Balance, May, 1942-October1943 (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2002, 90.

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Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander in Chief of the USN

(“COMINCH”), was, like the other U. S. Joint Chiefs of Staff,

committed to a “Europe First” strategy. King was, however, not

content with a purely defensive posture in the Pacific. In his

eyes, a campaign in the Solomons was a means of seizing the

initiative by staging a limited offensive in a secondary theater

of operations. The strategic purpose of the operation was

essentially defensive, to protect the sea lanes between the U. S.

and Australia. King had in mind a quick ‘smash and grab’

operation which would be the start of a step-by-step advance up

the Solomon Islands towards the major Japanese base at Rabaul.8

The pre-operation estimate, prepared in July, 1942, gave an

expected duration of five days.9 Tulagi was the original target;

8 King had been contemplating such and advance, through the NewHebrides, Solomons and Bismarck Archipelago, as early as Februaryof 1942. The US commitment to a "Europe first" strategy,together with Japanese naval superiority in the Pacific, putKing’s plans on hold until after Midway. See Richard Frank,Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle (New York: RandomHouse, 1990), 12. Frank’s excellent work is the standardreference used for general information in this paper. 9 Papers of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Naval History andHeritage Command, Archives Branch, Series 1, Subseries A, Boxes1-8, (hereafter, the “Nimitz Graybook”), Vol. I, 739.http://digark.us/imageserver/NWC/DS/001/PDFA/NWC_DS_001_01_v1_WEB.pdf

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Guadalcanal was added when it became known that the Japanese were

building an airstrip there.

This was to be an amphibious operation, and it is axiomatic

among military strategists that an amphibious assault requires

local air superiority and sea control to be successful.10 At

Guadalcanal, these goals were doubtful from the start. The

objective lay well within range of Japanese medium bombers based

at Rabaul, which Japan had seized in January, 1942. Even before

the operation began, this consideration moved Admiral Robert L.

Ghormley, Commander of U. S. Naval Forces, South Pacific

(“COMSOPAC”), the naval theater commander responsible for the

operation, to urge its postponement.11 Moreover, when the

operation was planned, the U. S. Pacific Fleet was distinctly10 See, e.g., Theodore Gatchel, At the Water’s Edge (Annapolis, MD: NavalInstitute Press, 1996), 7: “Virtually all practitioners ofamphibious warfare agree that at least local air superiority andsea control are required in the objective area to ensure thesuccess of a landing”; Merrill B Twining, Gen., USMC, No BendedKnee: The Battle for Guadalcanal (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996), 56:“The great overriding and controlling factor that makes such anoperation possible is firm control of the sea in and around theobjective area on a permanent rather than a transitory basis.”11 Ghormley and MacArthur to JCS, 1012, 8 July 1942, quoted inRobert L. Ghormley, The Tide Turns (unpublished MS), 51, in Robert LGhormley Papers, (#1153), East Carolina Manuscript Collection, J.Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, NorthCarolina, USA (hereafter, “Ghormley Papers”), 1153.16.g.

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inferior to the Imperial Japanese Navy (“IJN”) in every major

class of naval combatant save one – aircraft carriers.12 The

Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway changed the strategic

calculus in the Pacific by eliminating Japan’s margin of

superiority in carriers. A rough equality was thereafter the

norm until mid-1943. The lessons of the war’s first seven months

suggested aircraft carriers were the new queens of the fleet, the

most potent means of asserting sea control. Admiral King was

convinced that a preponderance of aircraft carriers at the point

of attack, supplemented by an adequate surface covering force,

would be sufficient for a five-day operation, and overruled

Ghormley.

The invasion went forward on August 7, 1942. Surprise,

which the Allies had not expected to achieve,13 proved critical

to their success in the first hours of the invasion of

Guadalcanal. The invasion force was blessed with a cloak of

12 Richard B. Frank, Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle(New York: Random House, 1990), 58; 13 On July 8, Ghormley and MacArthur had opined: “Surprise is nowimprobable due to the depth of the existing hostilereconnaissance.” Ghormley and MacArthur to JCS, 1012, 8 July1942, quoted in Robert L. Ghormley, The Tide Turns (unpublished MS),48, Ghormley Papers, 1153.16.g.

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impenetrable bad weather in its final approach.14 By the end of

the first day, 11,000 Marines of the First Marine Division, under

the command of Major General Archibald Vandegrift, landed on

Guadalcanal, four miles east of Lunga.15 The Japanese force on

the island, two battalions of construction troops totaling about

3,000 men, fled from the airfield which they had been

constructing without having destroyed their stores or equipment –

a fact that was to prove of invaluable assistance to the

Marines.16 By the end of the second day, the Marines had secured

the airfield and the principal Japanese encampment at Kakum on

the west side of Lunga point. Other Marine forces landing on

Tulagi and at Gavuto-Tanambogo found the going much tougher; the

900-man Special Naval Landing Force (“SNLF”) unit garrisoning

these islands fought to the last man. Nevertheless, by the

evening of August 8, resistance at these locations had been

eliminated.

C. The Americans Lose Sea Control: The Battle of Savo Island,

August 8-9, 1942.

14 Frank, Guadalcanal, 60.15 Morison, Struggle for Guadalcanal, 15.16 Frank, Guadalcanal, 31.

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At sunset on August 8, the Allied invasion appeared to be

proceeding according to plan. By the time the sun rose on August

9, the IJN had completely reversed the fortunes of war. In the

pre-dawn hours of August 9, 1942, a Japanese force of five heavy

cruisers, two light cruisers and a destroyer commanded by Vice-

Admiral Gunichi Mikawa attacked and destroyed two separate Allied

cruiser-destroyer forces near Savo Island, sinking three American

and one Australian heavy cruiser damaging another American heavy

cruiser and two destroyers, and killing one thousand Allied

sailors, in the space of forty minutes, without sustaining any

loss to itself. This stunning Japanese victory, known to

Americans as the Battle of Savo Island and to the Japanese as the

First Battle of the Solomon Sea,17 wiped out the cruiser-

destroyer force the Allies counted on to secure the waters around

Guadalcanal, and effectively brought to a halt the process of

unloading supplies for the Marines. Three days into the

operation, the Allies lost its sea-control sine qua non.

17 Japanese nomenclature is from Paul S. Dull, A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1978), 187.

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An ocean of ink has been spilled describing what happened at

Savo Island, analyzing the reasons for this ghastly fiasco, and

attempting to assign (or escape) culpability for it.18 In broad

outline, however, the answer is clear. The IJN had prepared,

equipped, and trained itself to fight a night surface battle18 The flood began during the War, with the official USN inquiryperformed by Admiral Arthur J. Hepburn at the request of FleetAdmiral King (the “Hepburn Report”), and endorsements by AdmiralNimitz and Fleet Admiral King. Soon after the War, the Naval WarCollege prepared an analysis of the battle, the Bates Report,which, in light of its authorship, sponsorship and thoroughness,is virtually a second quasi-official inquiry. Morison had accessto the Bates Report (then classified) in preparing his account ofSavo Island in The Struggle for Guadalcanal, 17-64, unquestionably thestarting point for much subsequent debate about Savo Island, andalso unquestionably one of Morison’s more opinionated andfactually inaccurate efforts. Since then, the battle has beenthe subject of a number of single-subject books. RichardNewcomb’s The Battle of Savo Island (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1961)is among the earliest. Mistakes made by Morison and Newcomb areperpetuated in Denis and Peggy Warner’s Disaster in the Pacific: New Lighton the Battle of Savo Island (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1992).They are corrected in Bruce Loxton, and Chris Coulthard-Clark,The Shame of Savo: Anatomy of a Naval Disaster (Annapolis: Naval InstitutePress, 1994). Loxton’s unique perspective and special expertise– he was Communications officer on HMAS Canberra at the time ofthe battle, and was injured in it – enabled him to untangleseveral mysteries about the battle, but his criticism of Fletcheris extreme. There are worthwhile professional studies: ThomasMcCool, Col., USA, “Battle of Savo Island – Lessons Learned andFuture Implications,” U. S. Army War College, 4/9/02 and David E.Quantrock, Lt. Col., USA, “Disaster at Savo Island, 1942”. U. S.Army War College, 4/9/02.http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/rep/Savo/Quantock/index.htmlEvery published work of any substance dealing with Guadalcanal

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under conditions such as those found in the Solomons, and the USN

had not. The result was foreordained, two decades in the

making.

Modern Japanese naval doctrine began at the same point of

origin as American naval doctrine: the works of Alfred Thayer

Mahan. As Mahan himself noted, more of his works were translated

into Japanese than into any other language.19 Indeed, Japanese

historical experience seemed to validate Mahan. The Battle the

Tsushima, which ended the naval phase of the Russo-Japanese War

of 1904-05 in Japan’s favor, was accurately described by British

naval strategist Sir Julian Corbett as “the most decisive and

complete naval victory in history.”20 Tsushima was planned and

has devoted substantial attention to the battle: Frank,Guadalcanal, 83-123; James F. Hornfischer, Neptune's Inferno: The U. S.Navy at Guadalcanal (New York: Random House, 2011), 62-92, EricHammel, Guadalcanal: Starvation Island (New York: Crown Publishing,1987), 102-121. The battle continues to attract attention: seethe counterfactual by Sandy Shanks, The Bode Testament (Lincoln, NE:Writers Club Press, 2001).19 Evans and Peattie, Kaigun, 24.20 Julian S. Corbett and Edmund J. W. Slade, Maritime Operations in theRusso-Japanese War, 1904-05 (London: Admiralty War Staff, 1914), Vol.2, 333, quoted in David C. Evans and Mark R. Peattie, Kaigun:Strategy, Tactics and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941.(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997), 124.

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fought by men who knew their Mahan.21 Early years of the

Twentieth Century, Japanese naval strategy was strongly

influenced by a number of leaders and writers, including Saneyuki

Akiyama and Satō Tetsutarō, who were inspired by Mahan.22 By

1921, the IJN’s officer corps had become, in Samuel Eliot

Morison’s words, “oriental acolytes of Mahan.”23

Mahan preached the gospel of seeking ‘decisive battle’ in

order to establish ‘command of the seas.’ In the interwar

period, however, the Japanese were forced to address a problem

Mahan never faced: how to prevail in the ‘decisive battle’

despite the fact that the provisions of the Washington Naval

21 Saneyuki Akiyama, chief of staff to Admiral Togo, had metMahan, as a young officer, while on a program of study in theUnited States, and received a reading list of military classicsfrom him. Sadeo Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor (Annapolis: NavalInstitute Press, 2012), 29.22 Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor, 31-36.23 Samuel Eliot Morison, History of U. S. Naval Operations in World War II,vol. 4, Coral Sea, Midway and Submarine Operations, p. 76. This factwas well known in the USN. In a 1921 letter to Admiral WilliamS. Sims, President of the Naval War College, William H Gardiner,President of the Navy League, wrote “I warrant every Japaneseflag officer knows [Mahan’s books] … Mahan is a perfect guidebookto the imperial policy of Japan and to me the wonder is that weare blind to the fact that her overseas expansion is an exquisiteadaptation to her entourage of the overseas expansion of England– without England’s mistakes.” Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor,42.

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Treaty of 1922 locked Japan into a position of numerical

inferiority in capital ships. The Washington Treaty established

capital ship ratios of 5:5:3 between the U.S., England and Japan.

This sixty-per-cent position was ten per cent lower than the

ratio which Japanese naval strategists previously identified as

necessary to insure a Japanese victory in a war with America.24

In 1923, only a year after the Washington Treaty had been

signed, the Navy General Staff promulgated a new strategic plan

to address this issue. The plan assumed that at the start of any

war between Japan and the U. S., the Japanese would quickly seize

the Philippines and destroy the small U. S. Asiatic fleet.25 It

then laid out a three-stage plan for dealing with the U. S.

fleet, assumed to be approaching from Hawaii: scouting,

24 Evans and Peattie, Kaigun, 142-43. To understand why theJapanese were confident they could win a ‘decisive battle’ froman initial position only 70% as strong as America’s, one mustremember the Mahanian rule that oceanic distance, in itself,costs a certain amount of naval strength. Ships which have to goa long way to engage in battle lose efficiency through fouling,crew fatigue, mechanical casualty and other causes. The ‘rule ofthumb’ accepted during the interwar era by both Japanese andAmerican naval officers is that a battle fleet lost ten per centof its efficiency for every thousand miles it had to travel. ThePacific is a big place, and the Americans had to do most of thetraveling.25 Evans and Peattie, Kaigun, 202

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attrition, and a decisive fleet encounter.26 Submarines and sea

planes would keep watch on U. S. naval movements. Once the U. S.

fleet’s course was established, Japanese naval forces would begin

to concentrate, the lighter forces to the eastward for attrition

operations, the main body to the west. This was the first time

in which the ‘interceptive-attritive strategy’ (yokegi zengen

sakusen) had been given such a prominent role.27 A key part of

this attrition strategy was night torpedo attacks by destroyers,

escorted by cruisers. Once these nighttime operations were

concluded, the main fleets would close for the decisive battle,

which the Japanese significantly named the "decisive fleet battle

the morning after" (yokuchō kantai kessen).28

This strategy put a premium on the use of the destroyer as a

torpedo carrier, and Japanese naval architecture soon evinced

this fact. The twenty four units of the Fubuki class, ordered in

1923 and built between 1926 and 1931, exemplify the trend.

Officially listed at 1,680 tons, they were fast, having a maximum

speed of 34 knots. Their armament of six five-inch guns in three

26 Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor, 103. 27 Ibid. 28 Evans and Peattie, Kaigun, 205.

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twin mounts, one forward and two aft, gave them the firepower of

many light cruisers. On the last fourteen members of the class,

the five-inch mount was improved to allow elevation to 70˚,

allowing for both anti-surface and anti-aircraft work.29 But it

was their torpedo complement which defined these ships: three

sets of three 24-inch torpedo tubes, with a reload for each tube

– a total of eighteen torpedoes, far higher than any foreign

contemporary. In four subsequent classes, the Japanese

experimented with different propulsion machinery main gun

armament layouts. Ultimately, with the eighteen Kageros, the IJN

achieved an optimal design. Size was increased, to 2,033 tons,

gun armament was as heavy as on the Fubukis, speed was increased,

to 35.5 knots, and the torpedo battery was modified by using two

quadruple tubes instead of three triples, and rearranging the

reloads to achieve greater stability. As David Evans and Mark

Peattie note in Kaigun, their definitive history of the Imperial

Japanese Navy before World War II, “the Japanese destroyer, with

29 Ibid, 221-22.26

its nine to twelve torpedo tubes, was an all-out attack

vessel.”30

The destroyers could not launch their attacks on the

oncoming American battleships without assistance from cruisers to

help them break through the protective cordon of light forces the

Americans were expected to throw around the battleships. For

this purpose, the Japanese, using experience and techniques

developed during the 1920s when most other powers were taking

naval holidays, developed a formidable set of “A” type heavy

cruisers. There were twelve such ships, in three classes of

four: two Kakos, two improved Kakos, four Nachis and, most

formidably, four Atagos.31 The Kakos and improved Kakos eventually

30 A. J. Watts, Japanese Warships of World War II (New York: Doubleday Books, 1966), 126.31 Rounding out the Japanese heavy cruiser inventory were twoscouting heavy cruisers, Tone and Chikuma, which carried theirentire main armament of eight 8-inch guns forward, and hadextensive seaplane flight decks aft, and the four Mogamis, builtas light cruisers, but converted to heavy cruisers when theytraded their five triple 6-inch gun turrets for dual 8-inch gunturrets. By far the best description of these ships, and allother Japanese cruisers to serve in the Pacific, is theoutstanding work of Eric LaCroix and Linton Wells II, JapaneseCruisers of the Pacific War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Proceedings,1997), which contains plans, specifications, service histories,and photographs, many never before published, of these remarkablevessels.

27

carried six 8-inch guns; the others, ten 8-inch guns. These

ships were superior in nearly every respect to those of other

nations – faster, better armed and better armored.32

Consistent with their attack mission, Japanese cruisers

carried heavy torpedo batteries at a time when foreign navies

were removing their cruisers’ torpedoes for fear of the risk of

secondary explosion they presented.33 The real main armament of

Kako and Furutaka, for example, was not their six 8-inch guns, but

twelve 24-inch torpedoes (with an additional twelve torpedoes in

32 Fletcher Pratt, Sea Power in Today’s War (New York, Harrison-Hilton Books, Inc., 1939), 30. 33 It is a good question whether the Japanese gained more thanthey lost by so doing. Most of the Allied ship losses at theBattle of the Java Sea (February 27, 1942) were attributable tocruiser-fired Long Lance torpedoes. Two of the American cruiserslost at Savo Island were hit by cruiser-fired torpedoes, and athird American cruiser was damaged in the same manner. On theother hand, there was no denying the risk that massive amounts ofexplosive and propellant high in the Japanese ships representedto a navy whose damage control procedures were substantiallybelow USN standards. ‘Own torpedo’ fires and explosionscontributed heavily to the loss of Furutaka at Cape Esperance (seefn. 32), Mikuma at Midway and Suzuya at Leyte Gulf. See LaCroix &Wells, Japanese Cruisers, 488 and 498. The same thing almosthappened to the Chikuma at Santa Cruz. LeCroix & Wells, JapaneseCruisers, 529-530. For a comparison of Japanese and U. S. damagecontrol practices, see Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully,Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (Washington, D.C.:Potomac Books, 2005), 277-78.

28

reserve) fired from fixed tubes on the middle deck in the hull.34

As the foregoing indicates, the Japanese considered the torpedo,

not the gun, to be the most important weapon for non-capital-ship

combatants – the opposite of American practice.35

An effective torpedo was critical to this strategy, and the

Japanese then developed the world’s best, an oxygen-driven

monster called the “Long Lance.” The Japanese were not the

first or the only naval power to consider the use of oxygen as a

torpedo propellant. Indeed, the Japanese inspiration to

investigate this possibility may have been stimulated by a 192734 Evans and Peattie, Kaigun, 225-26. This heavy torpedoarmament, mandated by Naval General Staff, was opposed byFurutaka’s designer, Yuzuru Hiraga, head of the Basic DesignSection of the Navy Technical Department, on stability groundsand because he feared the consequences if the torpedo tubes, fourof which were located near the engine room and two of which werelocated immediately behind the rear-most forward turret, close toa magazine, were to catch fire and explode in battle. Tests onthe hulk of the battleship Tosa seemed to bear Hiraga out. Notfor the last time, Naval General Staff overruled Hiraga. Twodecades later, Hiraga’s concerns would be realized; on theevening of October 11-12, 1942, at the Battle of Cape Esperance,several shells hit Furutaka in the area of No. 2 port torpedo tubeset and caused heavy fires, lighting the ship up as a target andultimately causing her loss. LaCroix and Wells, Japanese Cruisers,308-09.35 Thomas J. McKearney, The Solomons Naval Campaign: A Paradigm for SurfaceWarships in Maritime Strategy (Unpublished thesis, Naval PostgraduateSchool, Monterey, CA, 1985), at 77.http://hdl.handle.net/10945/21550

29

report from the Japanese naval attaché in England that the

British battleship Rodney was equipped with oxygen-driven

torpedoes.36 In theory, oxygen was an ideal torpedo propellant,

but the practical difficulties to utilizing it were immense. On

the basis of developmental work in the late 1920s and early

1930s, America, Britain and France all gave up on this

possibility.37

The Japanese persisted, and mastered the technical

difficulties. Their oxygen-driven torpedo, the Type 93 “Long

Lance,” was introduced into service in 1935. The Long Lance was

61 cm. (24 inches) in diameter, a substantial increase over the

55 cm. (21 inch) torpedoes utilized by almost all other foreign

navies, including the USN. It was also longer – at almost 30

feet, compared to the 24-foot length of the standard U. S.

destroyer torpedo, the Mark XV – and heavier – 3 tons, as opposed

to the Mark XV’s 2 tons. What the additional size, and oxygen

propulsion, bought, was a weapon whose performance was two to

four times as good, in every important parameter, as the Mark

36 Yutaka Yakota, The Kaiten Weapon (New York: Ballantine Books, 1962), 30. 37 Jolie, Brief History of U. S. Navy Torpedo Development, 39-40.

30

XV’s. The Long Lance had a range of 22,000 meters at a speed of

48 knots; the Mark XV’s best range at that speed was 9,000

meters. It carried a much bigger warhead; 1,080 lbs., as opposed

to the Mark XV’s 825 lbs. As an added benefit, oxygen propulsion

substantially reduced the telltale torpedo wake. Moreover, pre-

war live-fire exercises validated that the Long Lance’s simple

firing pistol would detonate the warhead when called upon to do

so, and verified that the torpedo ran at set depth. As the pre-

war USN, starved for money to conduct live-fire tests, was to

discover to its dismay in World War II, neither of these things

held true for the Mark XV and its Mark VI exploder.38 In effect,

the Long Lance enabled the IJN to rewrite the rules of war at

sea. It gave a destroyer the potential punch of a battleship, at

battleship gun range. It was a technological triumph.39

38 For performance data on the Long Lance and the Mark XV, seeCombined Fleet Website, “Torpedoes,”http://www.combinedfleet.com/torps.htm (accessed 7/31/14). For ahistory of the Mark XV and its troubles, see Russell S. Crenshaw,Tassafaronga (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995), 114-121. The troubles of the Mark XV’s submarine sister, the MarkXIV, are much better known, but not substantially different,since both used the same basic design and the same exploder.They are detailed in Anthony Newpower, Iron Men and Tin Fish(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006).39 The Long Lance was not without problems. It occasionallyself-detonated on launch (Admiral Ukagi expressed his concern

31

Not the least of its advantages was that its capabilities

remained unknown in the West. The Japanese took certain

precautions to conceal the true nature of the torpedo’s

propulsion system, such as calling the oxygen chamber the

‘secondary air chamber.’ Yet the massive torpedo equipment on

many Japanese ships could not be, and was not, concealed. No one

in the USN or any Allied navy seems to have taken a close look at

the available photographs of this equipment to see what the

diameter of the torpedoes in question actually was, and no one

seems to have been struck by the thought that the amount of space

and weight the Japanese were prepared to devote to this weapon

might be an index to its extraordinary capabilities. Rather, in

a case of “mirror-image thinking,”40 the USN believed that since

its own torpedoes were 21 inches in diameter, and were steam-

driven, so must the Japanese be. The USN was not alone in this

belief: as late as 1945, respected naval references such as Jane’s

about this, Fading Victory, 183); it created high weight in a navywhose ships were often plagued by stability problems, and itcreated the potential fire and explosion risks outlined in fn.31. Notwithstanding these issues, it was the best torpedo ofWorld War II. 40 The phrase is McKearney’s. The Solomons Naval Campaign, 94. http://hdl.handle.net/10945/21550

32

Fighting Ships were still listing the torpedo tubes of Japanese

cruisers and destroyers as being 21 inches.41

In 1940, the Office of Naval Intelligence received

information that the size of Japanese torpedoes was actually

closer to 25 inches, that they were oxygen-driven, and that they

were capable of phenomenal range and speed – all of which was

true. This information found its way to the USN’s Bureau of

Ordnance, which discounted it as impossible.42 The Bureau

apparently never considered the possibility that the Japanese

could have succeeded in producing an oxygen torpedo where it had

failed. Clearly, more was involved than a mere failure of

technical analysis. Racism and ethnocentrism blinded the

Americans to the possibility that the Japanese, whose reputation

was that of a nation of copyists, could have come up with

something so original.43 41 Jane’s Fighting Ships, 1944-45.42 Thomas G. Mahnken, Uncovering Ways of War: U. S. Intelligence and Foreign Military Innovation, 1918-1941 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 2002), 70-71. 43 The same sort of enthnocentrism blinded Westerners to thetechnical achievement of Japanese ordnance engineers in buildingthe main armament of the Yamato class. These super-battleshipscarried nine 18.1” (46 cm.) guns, larger than any otherbattleship main armament ever shipped. They were emplaced inthree triple turrets whose ammunition-handling arrangements were

33

Because of the havoc it wrought at Guadalcanal, among other

places, the Long Lance has gone down in history as the symbol of

the IJN’s technical prowess in night surface warfare. It was

not, however, the only, or even the most significant, technical

adoption which the Japanese made to fight effectively at night.

Considering the enormous benefit that accrued to the side

achieving initial detection in a night surface action, the low-

light optics with which the Japanese equipped their ships

probably deserve that honor. These optics were good enough to

consistently out-see American radar in the difficult electronic

operating environment of the Solomons. Not far behind were

excellent pyrotechnics – a factor at Savo Island, where brilliant

flares dropped by Japanese float planes illuminated the Allied

Southern Force at precisely the right moment.44 Flashless

of highly original and very efficient design. Peter Hodges, inThe Big Gun: Battleship Main Armament, 1860 – 1945 (Naval Institute Press1981), calls the mounting “a remarkable piece of weaponsengineering.” The Big Gun, 116. Yet Jane’s for 1944-45 lists thearmament of this class as nine 16” (40 cm.) guns (probablybecause that was the biggest weapon shipped by the USN in itsmodern battleships), and the USN itself was unaware of the actualsize of these weapons until after the war ended.44 By way of contrast, not one of the eight star shells fired bythe Chicago, one of the Ships in Southern Force, to illuminate theJapanese, worked properly. John J. Domagalski, Lost at Guadalcanal:The Final Battles of the Astoria and Chicago as Described by Survivors and in Official

34

gunpowder was also important, in particular contrast to the U. S.

Navy’s gunpowder, which flashed brilliantly at night, giving

Japanese torpedo men a good aiming point.

The Japanese conducted regular night surface battle

exercises, which one Japanese officer described as ‘more heroic

than under battle conditions,’ in order to perfect their

nighttime combat skills.45 These exercises, though arduous and

sometimes fatal, were laboratories in which the Japanese hammered

out a standard doctrine for conducting night surface actions.

This doctrine provided that upon detecting an enemy force, the

Japanese would close, pivot, fire torpedoes, and then turn away,

reserving gunfire until after the torpedoes had completed their

runs.46 Having such a fleet-wide battle doctrine was to prove

invaluable. During the Solomons campaign, battle losses and

equipment casualties on both sides made it difficult to preserve

the integrity of ship divisions or squadrons which had trained

Reports (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2010), 92.45 Jeff T. Reardon, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy into an Effective Night-Fighting Force During the Solomon Islands Campaign, 1942 – 1943 (unpublished doctoraldissertation, The Ohio State University, August, 2008), 10-11. https://etd.ohiolink.edu/rws_etd/document/get/ohiou1214239278/inline 46 Mahnken, Uncovering Ways of War, 59.

35

together, and battles often had to be fought with whatever ships

were available at the time, regardless of whether they had ever

worked with one another before. The Japanese force victorious at

the Battle of Savo Island was just such a thrown-together

collection; the flagship (Chokai) was not in the same squadron as

the other four heavy cruisers, and the two light cruisers and the

destroyer came from other formations. All, however, understood

basic Japanese night-fighting doctrine, and conformed to it. The

USN was to have no similar doctrine until 1943.47 At

Guadalcanal, American admirals had great difficulty making the

ships in their battle groups work smoothly together.

The anticipated ‘decisive battle’ between opposing

battleship fleets which the Japanese contemplated as the

culmination of Japan’s ‘attritive’ strategy never took place.

Indeed, the manner in which the Japanese opened the war – a

powerful carrier strike on a battleship fleet surprised at anchor

47 See Trent Hone, “’Give Them Hell!’ - The U. S. Navy’s NightCombat Doctrine and the Campaign for Guadalcanal.” War in History13, Issue 2 (Apr. 2006) 171-199; Trent Hone, “U. S. Navy SurfaceBattle Doctrine and Victory in the Pacific.” Naval War CollegeReview 62, Issue 1 (Winter 2009), 67-105; Thomas G. Mahnken,“Asymmetric Warfare at Sea: the Naval Battles of Guadalcanal,1942-1943.” Naval War College Review 64 No. 1 (Winter 2011) 95-121.

36

in a supposedly secure base – virtually insured that it never

would. But the strategy bequeathed to the Japanese a valuable

legacy: a cruiser-destroyer force that was well equipped and well

trained for precisely the type of aggressive night battles that

the Guadalcanal campaign featured. It also produced an

invaluable body of experience directly applicable to the

operation of a night-time logistics supply route such as the

Tokyo Express.

Inter-war USN leaders, like their Japanese counterparts,

expected to fight a ‘decisive battle’ in the central Pacific.

Shaping their perspective, however, was the fact that the

Washington Naval Treaty theoretically gave them a guaranteed

superiority in the number of capital ships. Whereas the Japanese

struggled against the tyranny of numbers, the Americans struggled

against the tyranny of distance. In the event of a war between

the U. S. and Japan, the American fleet would have to go a long

way before encountering the IJN, and Japanese attempts to use

that distance to whittle away the strength of the U. S. battle

line were readily foreseeable. Hence, the American cruiser-

destroyer force, unlike its Japanese counterpart, was structured

37

defensively, as an escort force.48 American cruisers and

destroyers tended to have good sea-keeping qualities, robust

endurance and heavy secondary batteries; the latter trend was

accentuated after Navrik and other early World War II experience

demonstrated how potent an enemy the aircraft could be.

American tactical doctrine stressed the desirability of

keeping danger at arm’s length by long range gunnery. The

Americans came to view a “close-in” engagement as one where the

range was 17,000 yards or less, and a “moderate” range for

engagement stood 20,000 yards.49 At this range, the American

torpedo would not be an effective weapon, and the Americans

assumed that no one else’s torpedoes would be, either.50 In the

Solomons, however, narrow waters and restrictions on visibility

meant that actual battle ranges rarely exceeded one-quarter of

these distances. That effectively negated the American approach.48 McKearney, The Solomons Naval Campaign, 82.49 Ibid, 76.50 That was a mistake. The Long Lance could, in fact, hit thatfar, and the Japanese had developed a technique, “long distanceconcealed firing” (enkori ommitsu hassha) to make use of largesalvoes of Long Lances in just this situation. Mahnken,Discovering Patterns of War, 59. This tactic proved effective in theBattle of the Java Sea, where the Allies mistook the source ofthe torpedoes which sank most of the Allied ships lost in thataction to submarines.

38

If the American cruiser’s function was to escort the

battleship, the American destroyer’s function was to escort the

cruiser. Thus, in the night surface actions around Guadalcanal,

where true capital units were rarely committed, and cruisers

served as mini-battleships, the American destroyer was usually

found in the battle line escorting cruisers. This, however,

squandered the destroyer’s true potential as an offensive weapon

making use of its torpedoes. Not until after the Guadalcanal

campaign would the USN address this fundamental flaw in its night

surface doctrine. Its rising fortunes thereafter in the night

surface arena were closely linked to the use of independent

destroyer formations under highly capable and aggressive leaders

such as Arleigh Burke. Such formations were not a part of the

fleet when the Guadalcanal campaign started.

The USN had its own technological triumphs, the principal

one being radar. In the night surface warfare context, radar

promised to remove the veil of night, through the use of a new

kind of electronic visibility. Unfortunately, for the most part,

during the Guadalcanal campaign, the promise of radar remained

just that: a promise, rather than a reality. The USN’s common

39

search radar, commonly referred to as “SC,” proved unable to

distinguish ships from islands in the clutter of the Solomons.51

A newer type of surface search radar, “SG,” was a vast

improvement. That fact, however, was largely lost on senior

admirals. A verse circulated in the fleet after the Battle of

Cape Esperance, which Admiral Norman C. Scott commanded from the

SG-less heavy cruiser San Francisco, captures the issue:

Yes, we’re heading for hell in column,Scott is as proud as can be.Only one thing he is lacking,A brand new, working, SG!52

Scott survived Cape Esperance, but he would not be so

fortunate next time. He would be killed a month later at the

first part of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (November 12-13,

1942), along with the commander of the American force engaged in

that battle, Daniel V. Callaghan, who, like Scott, hoisted his

flag on the SG-less San Francisco.

Apart from the unawareness of key senior commanders, there

were many issues that needed to be solved in order for radar to51 For a detailed discussion of the impact of radar on variousbattles in the Guadalcanal campaign, see Louis Brown, A Radar Historyof World War II (Philadelphia: Institute of Physics Publishing,1999), 246-262.52 Brown, Radar History of World War II, 256.

40

be fully integrated into the USN’s sensor and fire control suite.

The Guadalcanal campaign provided occasional glimmers of how the

intelligent use of radar could transform night surface battle;

Willis Lee’s handling of Washington at the Naval Battle of

Guadalcanal, Part II (November 14-15, 1942) was a conspicuous

example. These would, however, be exceptions, not the rule,

during the course of the campaign.

A final point necessary to understand the plight in which

the USN found itself in the early going at Guadalcanal relates to

the level of realistic night surface battle training, and indeed,

of realistic training of any sort. At no point did the money-

pinching ways of the 1920s and 1930s hurt the fleet more than in

the lack of realistic training, especially night training. Once

war broke out, there was no time to remedy these deficiencies.

Instead, the cruiser-destroyer force upon which the brunt of

night surface warfare would fall was fully occupied in protecting

the few precious carriers on whose survival the fate of the

Republic rested. Training for any form of action, including

night surface battle, practically ceased.53 53 Statement of Rear Admiral Richmond K. Turner, set forth in Ghormley, The Tide Turns, 87.

41

A comparison of the night-fighting capabilities of these two

navies can leave no doubt as to which was the more likely to

prevail in a night surface battle. The Americans were about to

face a formidably steep learning curve, and at Savo Island, they

started at the bottom. It so happened, in the build-up to the

battle, that there were many other factors which inured to the

benefit of the Japanese.54 All these errors and omissions were54 A partial list would include the inadequacy of the aerialreconnaissance scheme prepared for the invasion, and, inparticular, its failure to cover the Slot during the key hours ofdaylight; the misidentifications of ship types by the crew of thefirst reconnaissance aircraft to make contact with Mikawa’sforce; the distortion into unrecognizability, by an unknowndebriefing officer at Milne Bay, of the accurate report of thepilot of the second reconnaissance aircraft that made contactwith Mikawa’s force; the sloth with which vital contactinformation was moved through various Allied communicationschannels; the generally chaotic condition of those channels; thedivided disposition of the Allied defense; the lack of jointoperational experience among the ships of the covering force; theabsence of a coherent battle plan; the over-reliance on radar(whose characteristics, and consequently, whose limitations, werelargely unknown to the officers relying on it); the fatigue ofmen who had been at battle stations for two full days; theassignment of an inadequate number of picket destroyers; thefailure of the defensive scheme to coordinate the movements ofthe picket destroyers so as not to allow a large gap to developbetween them; the negligence of the watch on the picketdestroyers, particularly the southern picket destroyer Blue; thelackadaisical or disbelieving response on other ships to suchclear signs of enemy presence as the operations of enemy cruiserfloat planes; the fact that none of the Allied warships wasstripped of flammables and combat ready; and finally, the

42

unnecessary gifts to Mikawa The Japanese did not need them in

order to prevail, though they made good use of them when

presented.55

The Battle of Savo Island had two major consequences, one

immediate and strategic, and the other, long-term and

psychological. The immediate strategic consequence was the loss

of that very control of the local waters around an amphibious

assault required by sound military doctrine. Mikawa, having

dispatched the Allied surface covering forces, elected not to

attack the transports, but he hardly needed to, in order to force

their withdrawal. The transports could not stay in the waters off

Guadalcanal without naval protection. Their swift departure, a

decision already taken before the disastrous defeat,56 was

unforeseeable absence, hours before the battle, of a heavycruiser and the only Allied flag officer having direct commandover the covering force, who had called away for a conferencewhose point would very soon be rendered moot. 55 In addition to the sources listed at fn. 16, the reader shouldconsult Mike Hart, “An Assessment of the Circumstances, Conductand Consequences of the Battle of Savo Island, 8/9 August 1942,”Journal of Australian Naval History 2, No. 1 (March 2005), 52-82, for agood analysis of the battle.56 The transports’ departure was decided upon by Rear AdmiralTurner after the meeting with Vandegrift and Crutchley, butbefore the battle started. Turner took this step because of thedecision by Vice Admiral Fletcher to withdraw the carrier groupswhich had been providing air support for the landing. This

43

insured by it. With them went the Marines’ heavy equipment, much

of their supplies, and even some as-yet-unloaded infantry units,

Some subsequent analyses have suggested that Mikawa’s

decision not to attack the transports was the only good news for

the Allies to emerge from the Battle of Savo Island. The real

good news was that by the time of the Battle of Savo Island,

“[t]he American landing at Guadalcanal, in spite of this

brilliant riposte, remained an accomplished fact.”57 The battle

decision, which the Hepburn Report cited as a contributing factorin the ensuing debacle at Savo Island, has remained controversialever since. Early historians condemned Fletcher in very strongterms: Morison called the withdrawal “worst of all blunders thatnight.” Samuel Eliot Morison, The Two Ocean War (Boston: Little,Brown, & Co. 1963), 172. John B. Lundstrom offers a spiriteddefense of Fletcher: Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea,Midway and Guadalcanal (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2006),368-83. Professional studies have tended to support Fletcher.M. E. Butcher, Lt. Commander, U.S.N., “Admiral Frank JackFletcher, Pioneer Warrior or Gross Sinner?” Naval War College Review,40/1: 69-79 (Winter, 1987); Scott T. Farr, Lt. Cmdr., USN, “TheHistorical Record, Strategic Decision Making, and Carrier Supportto Operation Watchtower”, (Paper presented to the Faculty of theU. S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth,Kansas, 6/6/03)http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p4013coll2/id/54/rec/5; W. D. Hughes, III, Major, USMC, “Vice AdmiralFrank Jack Fletcher: Scapegoat or Operational Artist?” (Papersubmitted to the Faculty of the Naval War College, 2/22/93).This battle, however, has clearly not ended. See the criticismof Fletcher in Prados, Islands of Destiny, 62-65.57 D’Albas, Death of a Navy, 169.

44

took place after the First Marine Division had gotten ashore,

established itself, and grabbed the prize for which the campaign

had been launched – the almost-finished airfield.

It has also been suggested that the withdrawal of the

transports left the Marines in “dire straits.”58 In war, all

things are relative; compared to the straits of the few Japanese

remaining on Guadalcanal after August 8, the Marines were fairly

well off.59 What they could not do, as a result of the departure

of the transports, was to finish the job of seizing Guadalcanal.

They had to think defensively, in terms of finishing the airfield

and holding it against possible attack.60 The five-day operation

had become a stay with no end in sight. The gun of the strategic

initiative, to use Willmott’s analogy, had fallen to the street

again.

58 See, e.g., Eric Hammel, Guadalcanal: Starvation Island (New York: Crown Publishers, 1987), 125.59 Indeed, as Frank notes, the Marines were to regard their firstfew weeks ashore as a “pleasant interval” compared to what was coming. Frank, Guadalcanal, 126.60 That is, in fact, exactly what they did. “In thecircumstances literally changed overnight, Vandegrift perceivedthe security of the airfield as his mission, pending a favorableturn in the naval and air situation.” Frank, Guadalcanal, 125.

45

The second, long-term consequence of Savo Island was to

leave the USN’s top local naval commanders with a profound

distaste for night surface actions. John B. Lundstrom, a

distinguished historian of the early Pacific War, has asserted

that “Savo inflicted its greatest blow on the navy’s pride.”61

This goes too far in the direction of minimizing the actual loss.

There is, however, a germ of truth in the notion that the

greatest blow was psychological, to the navy’s self-confidence.

Before Savo Island, the USN’s attitude as summarized by Vice-

Admiral Turner, was overconfident:

The Navy was still obsessed with a strongfeeling of technical and mental superiorityover the enemy. In spite of ample evidenceas to enemy capabilities, most of ourofficers and men despised the enemy and feltthemselves sure victors in all encountersunder any circumstances. ... The net result of all this was a fatallethargy of mind which induced a confidencewithout readiness, and a routine acceptanceof outworn peacetime standards of conduct. Ibelieve that this psychological factor as acause of our defeat, was even more importantthan the element of surprise.62

61 Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 399. 62 Frank, Guadalcanal, 123.

46

After Savo Island, this overconfidence was replaced

overnight with respect, even fear. Nimitz’ ‘Running Summary” for

August 17, 1942 commenting on COMSOPAC to CINCPAC 1400 (13 August

1942), noted that “[t]he excellent performance of the Jap ships

in night attack is of special interest.”63 In a message of

August 20, Ghormley elaborated: “It must be admitted too that the

enemy displayed a very high standard of night fighting

[proficiency] and were probably more efficient and more practiced

at it than our forces which were assembled together for the first

time to carry out this operation.”64 Both Ghormley and the

Expeditionary Force Commander, Vice-Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher,

were already cautious by nature. Savo Island undoubtedly

reinforced their aversion to risk.65

The USN’s highest leadership – Nimitz and King - sensed

this, and were, by turns, concerned and infuriated. On August

19, Nimitz issued a message to the Pacific Fleet:

63 Running Summary for August 17, 1942 commenting on COMSOPAC toCINCPAC 13 1400, (13 August 1942), Nimitz Graybook, Vol.I, 824. 64 COMSOPAC to CINCPAC 20 0230 (20 August 1942), Nimitz Graybook,Vol. I, 657.65 See, e.g., Letter, 9/7/42, Ghormley to Nimitz, Ghormley Papers,1155.15.b

47

Suitable targets present themselves onlyrarely to our guns, bombs and torpedoes. Onthose rare occasions, our tactics must besuch that our objectives will be gunned,bombed or torpedoed to destruction. Surely,we will have losses - but we will alsodestroy ships and be that much nearer to thesuccessful conclusion of the war. We cannotexpect to inflict heavy losses on the enemywithout ourselves accepting the risk ofpunishment. To win this war we must come togrips with the enemy. Courage, determinationand action will see us through.66

Since the Pacific Fleet’s lower ranks did not make the

decisions on when the fleet was to fight; the target of this

message was clearly the theater leadership. On the other hand,

neither Nimitz nor King directly commanded the movement of USN

forces around Guadalcanal. The caution which the Savo Island

disaster bred in the local commanders would be a major

restraining factor in shaping the USN’s response to the Tokyo

Express.

There was, of course, another psychological effect from the

Battle of Savo Island. It validated Japanese confidence in the

superiority of their night-fighting technique. This, also, had

implications for the future. If the Japanese could win the66 CINCPAC to PACFLT, 190305, 19 August 1942, quoted in Frank,Guadalcanal, 204.

48

battle for sea control at night, they might also be able to use

the night for other things, such as establishing a logistics

pipeline to the island.

D. The Allies Partially Regain Sea Control: Henderson Field

Becomes Operational.

When the Marines captured the airfield during the first two

days of the landing, on August 7-8, 1942, they also captured

intact the Japanese base facilities, construction and

communications equipment, weapons, ammunition, and a substantial

quantity of food.67 That was an unexpected gift. The Marines

now received another unexpected gift: time. When the Guadalcanal

operation was launched, the Japanese position “throughout the

southwest Pacific was one of weakness everywhere,”68 and their

attention was fixed on an offensive in Papua New Guinea to take

Port Moresby through an overland offensive from Buna. They were

in no position to exploit the victory at Savo Island. Not until

the evening of August 18 would a Japanese ground force of any

size be landed on Guadalcanal, and that would be nothing more

than a reinforced battalion, the ill-fated Ichiki First Echelon.67 Ibid, 108.68 Willmott, Period of Balance, 103.

49

For over a week, the Marines had the island, or at least, their

perimeter on the island, to themselves. They used the time well.

They consolidated the defenses around their toehold. When the

Ichiki First Echelon foolishly attacked at Alligator Creek on

August 21, these defenses proved sufficient to destroy it. More

importantly, the Marines completed the airstrip, renamed

Henderson Field.

When Henderson Field became operational on August 21, the

Americans could once again contend for control of the waters

around Guadalcanal, at least, during daylight and moonlit hours.

The Cactus Air Force – the assortment of aircraft from various

services and various commands that called Henderson Field home –

would be, in John Prados’ phrase, “the American game changer.”69

While this airfield would eventually host heavy bomber units in

the manner of a conventional air base, its complement of

aircraft, for most of the campaign, were naval strike aircraft,

many of them on loan from sunken or damaged aircraft carriers.

Indeed, strategically, Henderson had the attributes of a carrier.

Immobile, but unsinkable. After August 21, for as long as

69 Prados, Islands of Destiny, 71. 50

Henderson Field was operating, Japanese forces seeking to

approach Guadalcanal for any purpose would have to brave attack

by the most potent weapons of sea control then available,

carrier-based dive bombers and torpedo bombers.

How difficult an enterprise this would be became apparent on

August 25, 1942, when the Cactus Air Force ambushed a Japanese

reinforcement convoy on its way to Guadalcanal. The convoy

consisted of three merchant transports and four destroyer –

transports carrying 1,500 troops of the Ichiki Second Echelon and

the 5th Yokusuka Special Naval Landing Force. As reinforcement

convoys go, this was not much reinforcement. For close escort,

the convoy had five newer and three older destroyers and light

cruiser Jintsu. For distant cover, it had the better part of the

Combined Fleet - two fleet carriers, a light carrier, two

battleships, nine heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and

seventeen destroyers. There is something almost comic about this

movement, “an entire fleet for one battalion,” as the French

author D’Albas puts it.70 Surely, such a large hammer should be

able to drive such a small nail through whatever resistance it

70 D’Albas, Death of a Navy, 171.51

encountered? It was not to be. The Saratoga and Enterprise battle

groups, lurking southeast of Guadalcanal, came out to fight.71

On August 24, the Japanese fleet carriers expanded their air

groups against the American carriers without doing more than

damaging Enterprise. Meanwhile the air groups of the American

carriers sank the Japanese light carrier Ryujo, which was to have

suppressed the Cactus Air Force, but did nothing of the kind.

Such was what the USN came to call the Battle of the Eastern

Solomons, and the IJN, the Second Solomons Sea Battle.

Bad weather prevented Japanese bombers based at Rabaul from

raiding Henderson Field. The convoy was, nevertheless, ordered

to proceed to Guadalcanal. At 0808 on August 25, it was still

150 miles north of its destination when eight SBDs from the

Cactus Air Force found it. The Japanese at first mistook them

for friends; there was no anti-aircraft fire until too late. One

SBD put a 500-lb. bomb into Jintsu’s forecastle between her

forward gun mounts. Another scored a hit on Kinryu Maru, the71 They should have been joined by the Wasp battle group, whichwould have given the USN a significant superiority in aircraftstrength for the first time in a carrier battle before 1944. Ina masterpiece of bad timing, Fletcher detatched the Wasp groupfor refueling just before the battle. Frank, Guadalcanal, 165;Morison, Struggle for Guadalcanal, 83-84.

52

convoy’s biggest transport, igniting ammunition stowed aboard.

It began to burn and sink.

At this point, the Japanese convoy commander, Rear Admiral

Razio Tanaka, decided to withdraw the undamaged ships in the

convoy to Rabaul in order to avoid further losses. He also

ordered the older destroyers to rescue the survivors from Kinryu

Maru. One of these, Mutzuki, was hove to alongside Kinyu Maru when,

to add insult to injury, B-17s from Espiritu Santo appeared

overhead at 1027. Highly touted as an anti-ship weapon before

the war, the B-17 had failed so completely in that role during

the war’s first few months that the Japanese now viewed it with

contempt. Mutzuki’s skipper declined to move. Five of the bombs

dropped by the B-17s hit Mutzuki and she went down quickly, taking

forty of her crew with her. Fished from the sea, her skipper was

heard to observe, with the wisdom of experience, that “even the

B-17s could make a hit once in a while.”72

72 This account of the August 25 convoy battle is drawn fromthree main sources: Frank, Guadalcanal, 188-90, Tanaka, Struggle forGuadalcanal, 58, and Eric Hammel, Carrier Clash: The Invasion of Guadalcanaland The Battle for the Eastern Solomons, August 1942 (St. Paul, MN: ZenithPress, 1999, 2004), 324-27.

53

For Tanaka, who had harbored “grave doubts about this slow

convoy’s chances of reaching its goal,” his “worst fears for the

outcome of this operation had come to be realized?”73 More

broadly, the convoy battle demonstrated that so long as Henderson

Field was operational, “Japanese warships could not survive in

the waters that washed Guadalcanal in the hours of daylight.”74

Neither could much slower troopships and merchantmen.

In light of the difficulties encountered in moving troops to

the island, the Japanese Seventeenth Army headquarters in Rabaul

seriously considered abandoning all further effort to retake the

island.75 Combined Fleet headquarters, however, decided on a

different approach. Admiral Matome Ukagi, Chief of Staff to

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander of the Combined Fleet, noted

in his diary entry for August 25, 1942:

It is apparent that landing on Guadalcanalby transports is hopeless unless the enemyplanes are wiped out. So the plan was revised

73 Tanaka, Struggle for Guadalcanal, 58.74 Willmott, Point of Balance, 112. See, also, Paul S. Dull, A Battle Historyof the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1941-1945 (Annapolis, MD: Naval InstitutePress, 1978), 209.75 Tatsushi Saito, “Battle of Guadalcanal as Viewed from theConcentration of Forces,” Proceedings of the 2013 InternationalForum on War History, 82.http://www.nids.go.jp/english/event/forum/pdf/2013/07.pdf

54

to transport reinforcements by minesweepersand destroyers, which would shuttle from ourplace to that island at high speed every day.Accordingly, we instructed the Eleventh AirFleet and the Eighth Fleet to consult theArmy in preparing for. It appears that theEighth Fleet shared this view.76

THE JAPANESE CHALLENGE

A. The Japanese Commander: Rear-Admiral Razio Tanaka

Rear-Admiral Raizo Tanaka, the commander of the convoy

forced to retreat on August 25, now had the responsibility of

carrying out Combined Fleet’s plan to ferry reinforcements to

Guadalcanal. A 1913 Eta Jima graduate, aged 50 in 1942, Tanaka

started the war as the commander of the 2nd Destroyer Squadron, a

force of eight destroyers and Tanaka’s flagship, light cruiser

Jintsu. Tanaka and his squadron had participated in the invasion

of the Philippines in December, 1941 and had been among the

Japanese forces present at the Battle of the Java Sea in

February, 1942. At the Battle of Midway, in June, 1942, Tanaka’s

2nd Destroyer Division provided the escort for the troops slated

for the assault on Midway Island, many of whom Tanaka was

76 Donald Goldstein, Donald M., and Katherine V. Dillon, Fading Victory: The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991), 193.

55

destined to ferry again in the Solomons. On August 11, 1942,

following the invasion of Guadalcanal, Tanaka was ordered to take

Jintsu and destroyer Kagero to the Japanese fleet anchorage at Truk.

By the time he arrived, he had been named Commander of the

Guadalcanal Reinforcement Group.77

The first reinforcement operation to arrive at Guadalcanal

under Tanaka’s auspices, a six-destroyer force ferrying the

Ichiki First Echelon to Taivu Point, arrived there without

incident on the evening of August 18. Within the next four days,

however three of Tanaka’s destroyers were attacked by American

aircraft. The most serious attack was on August 19, when

destroyer Hagikaze was hit by bombs from a B-17. These incidents

took place even before Henderson Field became operational. That

ratcheted the air threat to an entirely new level. During the

convoy air-sea battle of August 25, Tanaka was standing on

Jintsu’s bridge when the 500-lb.bomb that hit her landed on the

forecastle; its blast knocked him unconscious. The fate of this

convoy convinced Tanaka that it was “sheer recklessness” to

77 Raizo Tanaka, “The Struggle for Guadalcanal,” in Raymond O’Conner, ed., The Japanese Navy in World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1971), 55,

56

“attempt a landing operation against strong resistance without

preliminary neutralization of enemy air power.”78

This, however, was exactly the task which Combined Fleet now

assigned to him. It did not give him an abundance of resources.

His initial allotment of forces included five destroyers, four

older destroyer-transports, and his flagship, Jintsu, now sent

back to Japan for repairs.79 The problem he faced was evident

from a glance at the map. The principal American attack aircraft

quartered at Henderson Field, the SBD dive bomber, had a combat

radius of about 200 miles. The run from Rabaul to Guadalcanal

was approximately 560 miles. It had taken Mikawa’s cruisers a

full day to make that run, even at high speed. A run of that

length almost certainly involved exposure within the 200-mile arc

during daylight. Mikawa had been willing to accept that risk,

but he did so before Henderson Field was operational. Now,

things were different. Among other things, Henderson Field

provided the Americans with better reconnaissance capability.

78 Ibid, 59.79 Tanaka, Struggle for Guadalcanal, 55.

57

They would certainly detect a force advancing up the Slot in

daylight.80

Tanaka’s solution was to make the run from the Shortland

Islands, at the southern tip of Bougainville, rather than from

Rabaul itself, using destroyers. The IJN had previously

established an anchorage there, at Faisi. Troops could be

transported to the Shortlands from Rabaul by regular transports.

Once there, they could be transferred to destroyers for the run

in to Guadalcanal. The Shortlands were between 250 and 300 miles

from Guadalcanal. A destroyer that left there by noon and

steamed at high speed could be off Guadalcanal at midnight and

well on the way back by dawn.81 This reduced the daylight

‘window of vulnerability’ to an hour or two there, and an hour or

two back – an acceptable risk.

80 Tanaka explains: “From Shortland to Guadalcanal there arethree possible routes of surface transit running along the northor south, or through the center of these islands. Our shipsmoving to and from Guadalcanal had to follow one or another ofthese routes, hoping always to evade the enemy. But the enemysearch net, without exception, always thwarted this hope, and hisships and attack planes were always alerted, fully prepared forinterception." Tanaka, Struggle for Guadalcanal, 68. Tanaka somewhatoverstates American vigilance, but his point is clear.81 John Prados, Islands of Destiny (New York: NAL Caliber, 2012), 79.

58

The use of destroyers as transport vehicles was by no means

novel, as their use to transport; the Ichiki First Echelon

attests. The novelty lay in making use of the destroyers in this

capacity on a day-in and day-out basis, as the workhorses of the

transportation network. Transportation was the last thing for

which the destroyer, a lean, fast, fighting machine, was

designed. Each destroyer could only carry about 150 men or 30-40

tons of supplies,82 and there was no room for heavier equipment

such as field artillery. Moreover, transporting men and supplies

by destroyer was a conspicuously uneconomic proposition; given

the high consumption of fuel oil by destroyers running at speed,

it took approximately 1.5 tons of fuel oil to move a man or a

barrel of supplies to Guadalcanal by destroyer.83 In this case,

however, survival trumped efficiency. Destroyers had the

requisite speed; merchantmen did not.

While the destroyers of the Express had the requisite speed,

they lacked another important prerequisite: strong antiaircraft

batteries. This was, in part, a result of design trade-offs; as82 Frank, Guadalcanal, 199. 83 Anthony Tully, “Oil and Japanese Strategy in the Solomons: A Postulate,” www.combinedfleet.coom/guadoil1.htm

59

an “all-out attack vessel” intended primarily to use its

torpedoes against surface targets, the Japanese destroyer had

little room for extensive secondary AA mounts. It was also, in

part, a product of more general ordnance deficiencies. The IJN

failed, both before and during World War II, to develop an

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effective medium-caliber AA weapon in the 37-57 mm. range.84

That fact goes far to explain Japan’s defeat in World War II.

What the IJN had instead was an air-cooled 25 mm. gun based

on a Hotchkiss design, available in single, twin and triple

mountings. The magazine, a clumsy 15 round box, slowed the

gun’s high theoretical (cyclic) firing rate of 260 rounds per84 By contrast, the USN made this a priority. The first effortwas a quadruple 1.1 inch four-barreled water-cooled weapon whichwas a complex maintenance nightmare and lacked punch. This gunwas replaced by the Bofers 40 mm. AA gun. The Bofers gun beganlife as a Krupp design shortly after 1918, and was then taken upby the Swedish firm of A. B. Bofers. The Bureau of Ordnancebrought one to the U. S. in August, 1940, but what sold the USNwas a demonstration at about the same time by the Dutch, who hadequipped several of their ships with the weapon. Heavilymodified to suit U. S. manufacturing and operationalrequirements, the Bofers proved to be a potent weapon. Mounted intwins or quadruple mounts, water cooled and fully powered, theBofers was easily loaded from a top-feeding clip, allowingsustained engagements at high rates of fire. Each barrel couldfire 120 rounds per minute, and any single two-pound shell wascapable of knocking down an aircraft at 3,800 m., a distance longenough to be useful. Its already considerable lethality wasincreased with radar fire control. Most U. S. 40 mm. guns werebuilt by Chrysler; the U. S. Navy made a practice of advisingChrysler of the serial numbers of guns credited with shootingdown enemy aircraft. The Bofers 40 was the greatest plane-killerof World War II, and handy for other tasks such as shooting upbarges and laying down covering fire over beaches. See PeterHodges and Norman Friedman, Destroyer Weapons of World War II(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1979)128-31; David Zatz,“Chrysler Corporation, Gunmaker: Bofers Guns of World War II,”http://www.allpar.com/history/military/bofors.html (accessed8/15/14).

61

minute to something more like 100 to 110 rounds per minute in

actual practice. Ballistics were unimpressive; the gun’s maximum

AA fighting range was 3.500 m., and effective range was more like

1,500 m. Training and elevation speeds were too low and the

open-ring sight was inadequate for high speed engagements.85

Despite these deficiencies, the gun was the best light AA weapon

in the Japanese arsenal, and destroyers sent to Truk or Japan for

modernization often traded a 5-inch turret for two triple 25 mm.

mounts and received additional single mounts, along with

increased numbers of 13 mm. guns. Modernization also usually

involved supplementing the standard depth charge racks and rails

with depth charge throwers to keep submarines at bay, at the

sacrifice of minelaying and minesweeping equipment.86

The destroyers of the Express learned through experience

that stealth was a better defense against American aviators than

augmented AA batteries. The blacked-out Japanese ships soon

learned not to give away their position by gunfire, and the

85 The particulars and deficiencies of the 25 mm. are detailed inLaCroix & Wells, Japanese Cruisers, 243-46. 86 Dull, Battle History of the IJN, 211.

62

primitive form of radar with which American PBYs tried to find

them could not distinguish ships from an adjacent shore.87

To say that Rear Admiral Tanaka created the Tokyo Express by

implementing Combined Fleet’s August 25 order to move troops to

Guadalcanal by destroyer, is to give the process by which the

Japanese created the Tokyo Express an orderliness and

organization it did not have. Tanaka’s account speaks of

midnight conferences and all-night efforts to move troops and

make ships ready. The reader has little difficulty perceiving

between the lines of Tanaka’s understated Japanese that words

like ‘exhausting,’ ‘intense’ and ‘confused’ more accurately

describe the actual atmosphere in which the Express was

incubated. Tanaka was under the jurisdiction of a local naval

command, Eighth Fleet and a regional command, Eleventh Air Fleet.

Though both commands were headquartered in Rabaul, neither felt

an obligation to coordinate its actions with the other. Even

before the undamaged ships of the August 25 convoy had returned

to the Shortlands, Eleventh Air Fleet directed Tanaka to have the

300 troops of the Yokusuka 5th SNLF who had not been on the Kinyu

87 Morison, Struggle for Guadalcanal, 113:63

Maru sent to Guadalcanal. Although Tanaka thought that “this was

a hasty decision not based on careful planning,” he ordered the

troops loaded onto three destroyers, together with four rapid-

fire guns and provisions for 1,300 men, and sent them on their

way early on the morning of August 27 with the idea of reaching

Taivu point at 2100 that evening.88 The destroyers had only

been gone a few hours, however, when Eighth Fleet ordered Tanaka

to conduct the landing on August 28. When Tanaka responded that

the destroyers had already left, Eighth Fleet ordered him to

recall them. Tanaka was dumbfounded; not for the first time, he

had received “contradictory and conflicting orders from the area

commander and my immediate superior, and was at a loss as to what

to do. If such circumstances continue, I thought, how can we

possibly win a battle?”89

Conflicting orders were not Tanka’s only problem.

Subordinates who lacked either prudence or courage were another.

It turned out that the reason behind Eighth Fleet’s recall of

Tanaka’s planned run for August 27 was that four additional

destroyers from IJN Destroyer Division 20 were heading south from88 Tanaka, Struggle for Guadalcanal, 58.89 Ibid.

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Rabaul, carrying an advance guard of a new force, the Kawaguchi

Detachment. Eighth Fleet apparently thought that these ships

should be consolidated with Tanaka’s existing force for a single

run to Taivu Point. These new ships, however, were low on fuel.

That should have led the division commander, Captain Yuzo Arita,

to abort the run. Instead, he elected to proceed independently,

not stopping at the Shortland Islands and not making the run in

at full speed. This decision cost Arita his own life and many

others besides. At 1700 on August 28, the Cactus Air Force

caught the four destroyers 70 miles north of Guadalcanal. There

was enough daylight for two attacks. Destroyer Asagari, with

Captain Arita aboard, took two bomb hits, and her torpedoes

exploded. She went down with heavy casualties. Destroyer

Shirakumo took a bomb in the forward boiler room; two of her crew

and 62 of her passengers died. Destroyer Yugiri sustained a near

miss that knocked out pairs of boilers and main battery mounts,

killed 31 crewmen and wounded 40 others. The surviving ships of

IJN DesDiv 20 limped back to the Shortlands with Shirakumo at the

end of a tow rope.90 Meanwhile, the commander of IJN DesDiv 24,90 The August 28 air-sea battle is chronicled in several sources:Frank, Guadalcanal, 199–200; Tanaka, Struggle for Guadalcanal, 59;

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which Tanaka had once again sent out with the intent of landing

at Taivu Point, turned around on his own initiative, saying that

“the battle situation had taken an unfavorable turn.” Tanaka was

waiting when he arrived back to reprimand him.91 The Americans

could be counted on to weed out the foolish among Tanka’s

destroyer commanders, but he had to deal with the cowards

himself. Meanwhile, at Combined Fleet headquarters, Admiral

Ugaki’s verdict on the day was harsh, but just: “the first day of

this landing method met with perfect failure.”92

B. Resolving the Japanese Dilemma: The August 29, 1942 Run

Tanaka persisted. On August 29, Tanaka sent out the four

destroyers of IJN DesDiv 24 to Guadalcanal again. The passengers

were 450 troops of the 124th Infantry Brigade and 300 of Ichiki’s

Second Echelon. Tanaka carefully timed the departure of this

force for 1000 hours so that it would arrive and leave during the

Thomas G. Miller, The Cactus Air Force (New York: Harper & Rowe,1969), 59–60. Dull cites it for the proposition that “a convoyshould not leave the Shortlands staging area too early . . .”Dull, Battle History of the IJN, 201.91 Tanaka, Struggle for Guadalcanal, 59. 92 Goldstein, et al, Fading Victory, 197.

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hours of darkness.93 Tanaka also arranged for an additional 300

troops of Ichiki’s Second Echelon to head towards Guadalcanal in

two ‘patrol boats.’94

While this force was on its way, Tanaka encountered still

another difficulty: the Imperial Japanese Army. Major General

Kiyotaki Kawaguchi commanded the “Kawaguchi Detachment,” a force

composed of the Japanese Army’s 35th Infantry Brigade and the

124th Infantry Regiment. The Japanese Seventeenth Army, which

had responsibility for the Solomons, had selected the Kawaguchi

Detachment to retake Henderson Field, an action which it labeled

‘Operation KA.’ On August 28, Kawaguchi and his main force

arrived in the Shortland Islands aboard the transport Sado Maru.

Next day Tanaka invited Kawaguchi and his officers to his new

flagship, heavy cruiser Kinugasa, to discuss transportation

arrangements.

93 Tanaka, Struggle for Guadalcanal, 60.94 These ‘patrol boats’ were, in fact, older destroyers which hadbeen converted to the transport role, much like American former‘four-piper’ APDs which served as destroyer transports, and, liketheir American counterparts, they had sacrificed a pair ofboilers and gained some ship-to shore lift capability – one ortwo 46 foot long Daihatsu landing craft. See Watts, Japanese Warshipsof World War II, 273-74.

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It did not take long for Tanaka to realize that Kawaguchi

was a serious problem. Kawaguchi had enjoyed success in landing

operations in the Netherlands East Indies using large motorized

barges. He now intended to do the same thing at Guadalcanal,

taking Sado Maru to Gizo Island, just out of range of aircraft

from Henderson Field, and slipping his troops into the island by

motorized barges. As an Army officer, Kawaguchi did not consider

himself bound by Combined Fleet’s orders to Tanaka to send

reinforcements in using destroyers.95 The Japanese Army was a

latecomer to Guadalcanal; Army leaders learned that the Navy was

constructing an airstrip there the day the Americans invaded the

island.96 Now that it had been summoned to fix the mess created

by the Navy, it would do so its own way, and it would use its own

form of transportation to get there.

Whatever Kawaguchi’s views regarding Combined Fleet’s orders

to use destroyers, Tanaka regarded them as binding. Moreover he

was also already experienced enough with conditions at

Guadalcanal to know that the barges, much slower and less95 Tanaka, Struggle for Guadalcanal, 60; Frank, Guadalcanal, 198-99.96 Saburo Hayashi, in collaboration with Alvin D. Cook, Kogun: TheJapanese Army in the Pacific War. Marine Corps Association, 1959 (firstprinted in 1951 as Taiheiyo Senso Rikusen Gaishi), 58.

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maneuverable than destroyers, would be shooting-gallery material

for the Cactus Air Force. The result was a standoff; both

Kawaguchi and Tanaka agreed to refer the matter to their

respective higher echelons, pending the results of the evening’s

destroyer run.

That evening’s destroyer run proved highly successful. The

destroyers and patrol craft made it to Taivu Point, unloaded

their soldier passengers and four anti-tank guns, and made it

back to the Shortlands without a single casualty, despite the

fact that fourteen aircraft from Henderson were looking for

them.97 It was a critical, if unheralded, turning point in the

campaign. As a Japanese commentator later observed, “through the

success of this landing, a tangible method for reinforcing

Guadalcanal was established, and, therefore, ‘Rat’ landings

became the standard method of landing troops on Guadalcanal.”98

The August 29 run had a strange denouement. Japanese aircraft

had spotted American shipping off Lunga point, and Eighth Fleet

headquarters instructed the run’s commander, Captain Murakami, to97 For a list of ‘Tokyo Express’ runs, see Appendix A.98 U. S. Armed Forces Far East, History Division, JapaneseMonograph Series 98, Southeast Naval Operations Part I, May 1942 – February1943 (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Army, 1949), 19.

69

sweep Ironbottom Sound of enemy vessels. Although Henderson’s

aircraft did not spot Murakami’s ships in the inky blackness of

the night, the Japanese were aware of the aircraft. Murakami

thought discretion the better part of valor and withdrew after

disembarking his passengers and cargo. For this perceived

dereliction of duty, Tanaka relieved Murakami of command upon his

return to the Shortlands.99 It was one of Tanaka’s rare lapses

in judgment. A handful of small American ships – APD William Ward

Burrows, transport S.S. Kopara, and five small escorts – was not

worth a repetition of the August 28 disaster.

To Tanaka, the August 29 run decisively proved the viability

of ‘Rat Transport.’ On August 30, he ordered three destroyers

loaded with troops. Kawaguchi, however, demurred. He had

received no direct reply to his request authorizing the use of

barge transportation, and until he got it, forces under his

command were not going anywhere. That morning, therefore, Tanaka

could only send one of his destroyers, loaded with troops other

than those under Kawaguchi’s command) to Guadalcanal. That

evening, that destroyer joined the two ‘patrol boats’ Tanaka had

99 Frank, Guadalcanal, 200-01; Tanaka, Struggle for Guadalcanal, 60. 70

sent earlier, and all three deposited their cargoes of soldiers

and withdrew without further incident. Yet, in a Japanese

version of ‘Catch 22,’ Eighth Fleet Headquarters blamed Tanaka

for the fact that the other two destroyers had not also sailed!100

Later on August 30, Tanaka’s superiors at Eighth Fleet

Headquarters and Kawaguchi’s superiors at Seventeenth Army

Headquarters reached a compromise under which most of Kawaguchi’s

brigade would get to Guadalcanal using ‘Rat Transport’ –

destroyers - but 1,000 men would attempt to get there using ‘Ant

Transport’ - large landing barges. Tanaka anticipated this

result, loading 1,200 troops of Kawaguchi’s brigade, including

Kawaguchi himself, on to eight destroyers for a dash to the

island on August 31. No doubt Tanaka was happy to see him go.

All were transported to Taivu Point without incident. On the way

back, the destroyers bombarded the Marine positions on

Guadalcanal, then retired without loss.

The Tokyo Express was in business. Nothing could stop it

now – not even the decision by Tanaka’s superiors, on August 30,

to relieve him of command. Their motives for so doing are not

100 Tanaka, Struggle for Guadalcanal, 60. 71

clear; it could have been the August 25 convoy debacle, the

initial confusion and withdrawn runs, Murakami’s failure to sweep

Ironbottom Sound on August 29, or just a sop to the Army, whom

Tanaka had no doubt offended by refusing Kawaguchi’s wishes.101

Tanaka himself was exhausted by the ordeal. On August 31, he

relinquished command to a friend and Eta Jima classmate, Admiral

Shintaro Hasimoto, and headed for Truk aboard Yudachi.102 But he

would be back. He was persistent.

Even without him, the Express ran, for first two weeks of

month of September, like a well-oiled machine. There were runs

to Taivu Point on September 1, 2, 4 and 5, and a run to Kamimbo

Bay, on the west side of the island, on September 11. These runs

transported most of Kawaguchi’s brigade to Taivu Point, where

Kawaguchi wanted them, with their supplies and light equipment.

By September 5, Kawaguchi’s strength stood at 6,200 men.103 The

price for this effort was slight. On September 1, Shikinami was101 In his diary, Admiral Ugaki attributes Tanaka’s removal fromcommand to a sense in Eighth Fleet Headquarters that he hadbecome ‘overcautious’ since having his flagship bombed. FadingVictory, 201. On September 2, Tanaka paid a visit to Ugaki onYamato at Truk “to apologize for his failures of 29 and 30August.” Ibid, 202. 102 Tanaka, Struggle for Guadalcanal, 61. 103 Frank, Struggle for Guadalcanal, 218.

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slightly damaged by an SBD bomb, and three soldiers and five

crewmen were killed, and two crewmen wounded. On September 2,

minelayer Tsugaru was attacked on the way back from an Express

run; fourteen were killed and twenty wounded. It would be a

month after Asagari went down on August 28 before dive-bomber

pilots next scored a direct hit on an Express destroyer.104 Bad

weather helped by keeping the Cactus Air Force down and hiding

the destroyers.105 Meanwhile, the Express caused at least as much

damage as it sustained. Regular Express bombardments, starting

with the one on August 31, became a part of Marine life on

Guadalcanal. Moreover, on September 5, an Express run caught and

sunk APDs Little and Gregory, killing thirty-three U. S. sailors and

wounding sixty. It could have been much worse; they had just

finished transporting the Marine First Raider Battalion to Savo

Island and back.106

Not so fortunate were the 1,000 men whom Kawaguchi detailed

to attempt ‘Ant Transport’ to Guadalcanal. This effort went awry

from the start. Kawaguchi had ordered its commander, Colonel

104 Frank, Guadalcanal, 210.105 Hornfischer, Neptune’s Inferno, 120.106 Ibid, 211-212.

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Oka, to use the southern island of Gizo as a staging point.

Instead, Oka took his men to the northern island of Santa Isabel,

and from there to San Jorge. Kawaguchi wanted Oka’s men to join

him at Taivu Point, east of the Marine lines. Oka, instead, made

for Kamimbo Bay, to the west. The major effort took place on

September 4-5. A late start due to low tide, high seas, and

leaks in the barges slowed things down. When morning came, so

did the Cactus Air Force. Aircraft machine guns took a horrific

toll of the soldiers packed in the barges. More survived than at

first suspected, but there were several hundred casualties and

the force was scattered along the west coast of Guadalcanal, of

not much help to Kawaguchi. The ‘Ants’ had been crushed.107

As subsequent events made clear, the force which the Express

transported to Guacalcanal was considerably weaker than necessary

to accomplish its mission. The Express was a taxi, not a truck;

there was little room for provisions or munitions and almost none

for equipment, particularly field artillery. This meant that

Kawaguchi had a short time frame in which to achieve success, and

107 Ibid, 212-213; see, also, Miller, Cactus Air Force, 76.74

small margin for failure in the event of setbacks.108 In relying

on the Express as the means of transport, the Japanese understood

and accepted those limitations. Why were they have been content,

at this time, to do so?

The answer appears to be a mix of bad intelligence and

wishful thinking. The Japanese high command believed that a

major Allied counter-offensive in the Pacific would not be

forthcoming until 1943,109 when the U. S. Navy would begin to take

delivery of large numbers of new ships. The quick withdrawal of

the transports after the Battle of Savo Island lent credence to a

report from the Soviet naval attaché in Tokyo that the invasion

was a reconnaissance-in-force designed to destroy the airfield,

and would be imminently withdrawn. On August 14, Admiral Ugaki‘s

diary records the receipt of information from the chief of the

Operations Bureau to the effect that “the enemy in the Solomons

had decided to withdraw.”110 This sort of optimism was prevalent108 Kawaguchi’s already-thin margins were further depleted by the successful Marine raid on his base camp at Point Taivu on September 8, which destroyed much of the supplies and equipment which the Express had so laboriously shipped to the island. See Frank, Guadalcanal, 220-23, Jersey, Hell’s Island, 222-23.109 Edward J. Drea, Japan’s Imperial Army: Its Rise and Fall, 1853-1945 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2009), 238.110 Goldstein and Dillon, Faded Victory, 184.

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even after the annihilation of the Ichiki First Echelon.

Kawaguchi’s superiors informed him, on his way to Guadalcanal

that there were 2,000 Marines on the island.111 Later estimates

put the number at 7,500.112 All these numbers were serious

underestimates.

In fact, Vandegrift enjoyed a 2:1 manpower advantage over

Kawaguchi, and the Marines had again used their time well,

strengthening their defenses and redistributing their forces more

effectively. They brought over reinforcements from Tulagi,

including the crack Raider and Parachute Battalions.113 Manpower,

however, was not Vandegrift’s biggest advantage. He had a

silent, but powerful ally in the Guadalcanal jungle, which the

Japanese were forced to traverse in order to attack. The jungle

disorganized formations, impeded maneuver, disrupted coordination

between units, restricted an attacking commander’s ability to

control the battle, and caused its share of casualties before the

first shot was fired. Beneath the jungle, Guadalcanal’s rugged

111 Frank, Guadalcanal, 218.112 Dull, Battle History of the IJN, 212.113 Frank O. Haugh, et al, History of Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. 1 – Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1958), p. 303.

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topography favored the defense. Moreover, when the Japanese

finally came to grips with the Marines, they would be facing

formidable firepower. The Marine infantry were well supplied

with water-cooled .30 cal. Browning machine guns capable of

replicating on Guadalcanal scenes from the Western Front, should

the Japanese present themselves in a massed infantry attack. The

First Marine Division’s artillery component, the Eleventh

Marines, had numerous 75 mm. pack howitzers and 105 mm. field

guns, and plenty of ammunition for them. Kawaguchi would be

throwing tired and disorganized troops against a strong position

and into cannons’ mouths.

The inadequacies of Kawaguchi’s force, however, were not the

fault of the Reinforcement Group. The Express delivered just

what it was asked to deliver, when it was asked to deliver it,

where it was asked to deliver it, without serious American

interference.

THE AMERICAN REACTION

A. The American Commander – Robert L. Ghormley

Vice Admiral Robert L. Ghormley, aged 58, had been selected

as COMSOPAC in April, 1942. A 1906 graduate of the U. S. Naval

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Academy, he had done his World War I service on the battleship

Nevada. He later served as executive officer of battleship

Oklahoma and in a number of shore billets. In June, 1935, he

returned to the Nevada for a year as her commander. He then

became Operations Officer on the Staff of the Commander in Chief,

US Fleet, and served there for a year before being detached to

the Naval War College for a course of study which he completed in

1938. He became Director of the War Plans Division, Office of

the Chief of Naval Operations, and remained in the Navy

Department as Assistant Chief of Naval Operations from July 1939

until August 1940.114 He was then appointed Special Naval

Observer in the U. S. Embassy in London. He was in London during

the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, and participated in the

earliest round of staff talks between the U. S. and the U. K.

which ultimately became the “ABC” agreements, governing general

global Allied strategy in the coming war. Ghormley’s reputation

was that of an intellectual man, widely experienced and highly

114 For information on Ghormley’s early career, see Naval Historyand Heritage Command, “Biographies in Naval History – ViceAdmiral Robert Lee Ghormley, U. S. Navy,”http://www.history.navy.mil/bios/ghormley_robertl.htm

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intelligent,115 with a pleasant personality and a natural talent

for diplomacy.116

Nimitz’s first choice for COMSOPAC would have been Admiral

William S. Pye, commander of the Battleship Force. Fleet Admiral

King, who chose flag rank officers, knew Pye only as a battleship

admiral in a world which had become dominated by aircraft

carriers. He also associated Pye with the fleet’s failure to

relieve the Marines at Wake Island. In truth, Ghormley’s sea

career had hardly been less battleship-oriented than Pye’s.

Moreover, Ghormley’s last major appointment was a diplomatic

posting, not an operational command. It would turn out that what

COMSOPAC needed was not an intellectual diplomat such as

Ghormley, but an excellent operational commander with the

instincts of a street fighter. This was not, however, apparent

when King appointed Ghormley.117

B. Ghormley and WATCHTOWER115 E. B. Potter, Nimitz (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press,1976, 47.116 Nancy R. Dillard, Lt. Cmdr., USN, “Operational Leadership: ACase Study of Two Extremes During Operation Watchtower,” PaperSubmitted to the Naval War College, Newport, R.I., 2/7/1997, 5.www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA325157 117 For details concerning Ghormley’s selection as COMSOPAC, see Potter, Nimitz, 45-46.

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When King informed Ghormley of his appointment in April,

1942, he told Ghormley that he was looking towards starting an

offensive from the South Pacific “possibly this fall (1942).”118

King further told Ghormley that he did not have the tools to give

Ghormley to do the task as it should be.119 It should hardly have

come as a surprise to Ghormley later that he would have to make

do with limited resources, and to improvise where necessary.

Ghormley formally took command of SOPAC, headquartered in

Auckland, New Zealand, on June 19. He had barely gotten

comfortable in his chair when, on June 25, the Joint Chiefs

authorized the initiation of an offensive in the Tulagi-

Guadalcanal area with an initial date of August 1, and directed

Ghormley to plan accordingly. For posterity, Ghormley recorded

his understanding that the Japanese had to be attacked before

they consolidated their hold on the South Pacific. 120

Privately, Ghormley was disconcerted.121 He thought he was going

118 R. L. Ghormley, The Tide Turns, unpublished MSS, Ghormley Papers,Joyner Library, 1153.16g, at 1. 119 Ibid.120 Ibid, 40.121 One observer described Ghormley’s reaction as “flabbergasted.”Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 521.

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to have four months to prepare an offensive. Now he was being

given four weeks:

“I had practically no ships under mycommand, and did not know what ships could bemade available to me . . . We were woefullyshort in shore-based aircraft and landingfields; in fact, had no landing fields fromwhich planes could fly and support ouroperation … The Japanese had airfields onBougainville, New Britain, and were startingthe construction of a field on Guadalcanal.To summarize, my estimate was that to carryout the first phase of this operationsuccessfully we must do everything we couldwith what we had and hope for some“breaks.”122

Directed by the Chiefs to consult with his opposite number,

MacArthur (COMSOWESPAC), about the proposed operation, Ghormley

arrived at MacArthur’s headquarters in Melbourne, Australia early

in July, full of doubts and anxieties. He was an innocent in

inter-service no-man’s land, walking into a minefield. On June

8, as the dust from the Battle of Midway was still settling,

MacArthur had proposed to the Chiefs a direct assault on Rabaul

itself, using the three Army divisions he had plus a division of

amphibiously trained troops and two carriers.123 The plan was too122 Ghormley, The Tide Turns, 40-41.123 Louis Morton, United States Army in World War II: The War in the Pacific -Strategy and Command: The First Two Years, (Washington, D.C., GPO, 1962),

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bold for a secondary theater of war because it promised a big

Pacific battle at a time when the Chiefs had committed to the

invasion of North Africa. Moreover, it gave MacArthur control

over aircraft carriers, something he would never have for as long

as King was COMINCH. King engineered the rejection of

MacArthur’s plan, and then cleverly used it as a foil against

which to propose his own three-step proposal for an advance

through the Solomons to Rabaul. King claimed that the Navy was

ready to launch the first step without any help from the Army,

even though Tulagi, the initial target, fell within the Southwest

Pacific area and was therefore under MacArthur’s jurisdiction.

In the last week of June, King and George C. Marshall, his Army

opposite number, had worked out a compromise; King and the Navy

would get to launch the Tulagi area attack (referred to in

Marshall’s memorandum summarizing their understanding as “Task

I”) and COMSOWESTPAC would lose one degree of longitude, enough

to transfer the area around Tulagi and Guadalcanal to COMSOPAC –

294-95; Frank, Guadalcanal, 32. 82

effectively, from Army to Navy - but the remaining steps up the

Solomons ladder would be under MacArthur’s command.124

As Ghormley unfolded his concerns to MacArthur in Melbourne,

MacArthur realized that Ghormley could be useful to help derail a

South Pacific offensive that was not MacArthur’s own. On July 8,

MacArthur and Ghormley sent a message to the Chiefs urging a

postponement of the operation, on many different grounds –

insufficient forces, inadequate base structure, local enemy

superiority in land-based aviation, and unlikelihood of

surprise.125 That message may have seemed reasonable to Ghormley,

but it looked absurd to King and to the other Chiefs. A month

before, MacArthur had wanted two carriers and a Marine division

so that he could immediately assault Rabaul itself. Now, he was

claiming that one of its smaller outposts could not be attacked

successfully, even later, without a commitment of considerably

more air power and shipping. The Chiefs told MacArthur and124 The understanding arose from an exchange of memoranda betweenKing and Marshall between June 29, 1942 and July 2, 1942, withinstructions issued by the Joint Chiefs on July 2. Thenegotiation of this understanding is well described in a numberof sources: Willmott, Point of Balance, 91-96; Frank, Guadalcanal, 32-36; Morton, Strategy and Command, 294-304.125 Ghormley and MacArthur to JCS, 1012, 8 July 1942, quoted inGhormley, The Tide Turns 51.

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Ghormley they “had no desire to countermand operations already

underway [sic] for the execution of Task One.”126 The offensive,

now code-named WATCHTOWER, would proceed in four weeks, like it

or not.

Stuck with responsibility for a major operation he had not

been consulted about in a time frame he considered unrealistic,

Ghormley found himself navigating a sea of troubles. He not only

had to plan the operation, but to manage the logistics and to

create the infrastructure – all “from scratch,” to use Ghormley’s

own term.127 The difficulties were endless. Construction of a

bomber base at Espiritu Santo, the closest Allied-held island to

Guadalcanal, began only on July 3, and was slowed down by an

outbreak of malaria among the Seabees constructing it.128

Communications equipment at Ghormley’s headquarters was

inadequate, and the personnel operating it were untrained.129 The

126 Willmott, Point of Balance, 97. As Willmott notes, “The leastthat can be said about this whole episode is that it isremarkable that MacArthur and Ghormley were not dismissed.” Italmost certainly cost Ghormley whatever confidence King had inhim, and King was soon to have other grounds upon which toquestion his judgment.127 Ghormley, The Tide Turns, 2. 128 Frank, Guadalcanal, 36. 129 Ghormley, The Tide Turns, 55-56.

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transports from the U. S. carrying the supplies for the assault

force had been “commercial-loaded,” not “combat-loaded,” and bad

weather in Wellington, New Zealand, where they were sent to be

re-loaded, slowed down the process.130 That fact alone forced a

postponement of the invasion date from August 1 to August 7.

There were countless other difficulties. Moreover, Ghormley now

had to transfer the Auckland headquarters he had just established

to a closer location and find facilities suitable for that.

Faced with what must have seemed an insurmountable list of

problems, Ghormley responded by over-delegating. On July 17,

Ghormley issued his plan for the operation, SOPAC Op-Plan 1-42,

which was based largely on work done by Nimitz’s staff at Pearl

Harbor. Not surprisingly, Op-Plan 1-42 placed Frank Jack

Fletcher (who had been promoted from Rear Admiral to Vice Admiral

enroute to the South Pacific) in charge of Task Forces 18 and 16

(the Wasp and Enterprise battle groups) in addition to his own Task

Force 11 (the Saratoga battle group). It also named Rear Admiral

Richmond Kelly Turner to command Task Force 62, the amphibious

group, and Rear-Admiral John S. McCain to command Task Force 63,

130 Ibid, 58. It was winter in the Southern Hemisphere. 85

the land-based air component. What was surprising about Op-Plan

1-42, at least, to Fletcher, was it also made him Expeditionary

Force Commander and gave him command of Task Force 61, an

umbrella which housed virtually all naval forces involved in

WATCHTOWER – the three carrier battle groups, Turner’s amphibious

force, and Task Force 44, and the cruiser-destroyer group

commanded by British Rear Admiral Victor Crutchley. Fletcher

was, in effect, to run the entire naval part of the operation.131

Ghormley later claimed, in his unpublished memoirs, that by

appointing Fletcher to be the officer in tactical command of all

naval forces committed to WATCHTOWER, he was just doing what

Nimitz required him to do. Nimitz’s letter of instruction to

Ghormley for WATCHTOWER, dated July 8, 1942, specified that

Ghormley was to exercise “strategic command in person in the

operating area . . .”132 Strategic command is not tactical

command. Yet, Ghormley himself acknowledged, in that manuscript

and elsewhere, that naval forces assigned to him were under “my

131 Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 319. 132 Ghormley, The Tide Turns, 58 (emphasis in the Ghormley original,though not in the Nimitz letter).

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tactical command.”133 Ghormley’s delegation of authority to

Fletcher was a preference, not an obligation. It made sense for

Fletcher, who was by now the most experienced carrier admiral in

the Navy despite his ‘black shoe’ origins, to have command of the

carrier battle groups. Yet Ghormley’s delegation of the entire

naval command to Fletcher was ill conceived. If Fletcher were to

stay at sea to command the carrier battle groups, the requirement

of radio silence would prevent him from exercising command over

the whole force.134

Further evidence of what Fletcher’s biographer, John B.

Lundstrom, has aptly described as Ghormley’s “hands-off attitude

towards WATCHTOWER” came on July 27, when the naval and

amphibious forces committed to the operation rendezvoused at

Koro, in the Fiji Islands, for the one and only rehearsal of the

landing.135 Op-Plan 1-42 required “staff representatives” of the

major commands to consult with one another prior to the campaign,

and for Fletcher, McCain and Rear Admiral Leigh Noyes, it was a133 Ibid, 24 (emphasis in the original). See, also, “Narrative by Admiral R. L. Ghormley, U.S.N., South Pacific Command - April Through October, 1942” (1/22/43) (“Ghormley Narrative”), 6. Ghormley Papers, 1153.15.o.134 Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 322.135 Ibid, 320.

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reunion of the Annapolis class of 1906. Yet Ghormley, their

classmate, was not present. Instead, in “a telling error of

judgment,” Ghormley sent his aide, Admiral Callaghan, in his

stead.136 Callaghan, however, had no power to decide matters in

Ghormley’s absence.137 Ghormley claimed in his unpublished

memoirs that he was “desirous of attending this conference, but

found that it was impossible for me to give the time necessary

for travel with possible attendant delays.”138 It is hard to

imagine what other duties could have prevented Ghormley from

attending the one occasion on which all his force commanders

would be gathered prior to battle, and his memoirs divulge no

clue.139

136 Dillard, Operational Leadership, 8.137 The Marines present at the Koro conference took Ghormley’s“flagrant evasion of his plain duty to be present at and conductthe [Koro] conference in person” as an indication that Ghormley“disapproved of the entire undertaking or at best gave it faintsupport.” Twining, No Bended Knee, 57.138 Ghormley, The Tide Turns, 64. 139 What Ghormley’s memoirs, and an earlier narrative upon whichthey expand, do divulge, is that on July 28, Ghormley met inAuckland with the Chief of Staff of the New Zealand Army aboutthe possibility of using New Zealand troops for garrison duty.The Tide Turns, 72; Ghormley Narrative, 13. If that was the reasonfor his absence from Koro, it was a conspicuous case of puttingthe cart before the horse. Planning to secure Guadalcanal shouldhave had a higher priority than arrangements to occupy it.

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Ghormley’s absence from the Koro conference was keenly felt.

Among the many subjects on the agenda was the issue of the length

of time for which the carriers would provide air support to the

invasion force. On this subject, an argument took place between

Turner and Fletcher. Fletcher wanted to minimize the amount of

time the carriers were tethered to a particular patch of ocean,

and therefore easily locatable by enemy aircraft and submarines.

He announced that the carriers were to stay no more than two

days. Turner, supported by Vandegrift, argued for more time to

unload at least some of the transports.

Exactly who said what at the Koro conference has become

clouded by time and the subsequent self-interest of the

participants. Turner later claimed that he argued for five days

of air cover, and that Fletcher adamantly refused to provide more

than two. Vandegrift’s account tends to support Turner’s, but

Kincaid’s and Noyes’ recollections, as well as Fletcher’s own, do

not.140 Frank, the “definitive” historian of Guadalcanal, asserts

that Fletcher at first insisted on two days, and then agreed to140 Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, at 333-37, collects thevarying accounts. See, also, Twining, No Bended Knee, 55-57, for hisrecollections of Vandegrift’s reactions. Twining was on theSaratoga, but excused from the room before the conference began.

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give a third.141 The sources cited by Frank, however, do not

support this interpretation. The only notes made of the

conference were produced by Admiral Callaghan, who was later

killed in battle.142 This was exactly the sort of dispute that

Ghormley, as COMSOPAC, should have been present to resolve. His

absence from this key conference was a conspicuous early failure

of leadership on his part. The uncertainty over the exact amount

of carrier support which the landing should receive was to have

ugly consequences on the evening of the Battle of Savo Island,

when the flag officer commanding the Allied cruiser-destroyer

141 Frank, Guadalcanal, 54. 142 The full version of Callaghan’s notes is in Ghormley, The TideTurns, at 65-68. On the carrier support question, Callaghan’snotes are clear: “Task Force must withdraw to South fromobjective area (i.e. general advanced position) within two daysafter D day!” The same passage, however, appears in Dyer’sadulatory biography of Turner, The Amphibians Came to Conquer: The Storyof Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner (Washington,D.C.,GPO, 1972) at 300.http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ACTC/actc-8.html. Making itlikely that Callaghan’s version of how this matter was resolvedis accurate is Callaghan’s immediately following notation thatthe plan was “to send transports out evening of D day. Thissound too sanguine to me, but they believe it can be done.”That would leave only the cargo ships, which “may not be unloadedfor 3 or 4 days.” Surely, Turner would not have expectedFletcher to risk his carriers for a few cargo ships. HadGhormley himself been there, he likely would have deferred toFletcher, as even Dyer concedes. Dyer, The Amphibians Came toConquer, 302.

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force that was annihilated in that engagement, and the heavy

cruiser which served as his flagship, were both absent from the

battle because he had been ordered to attend a late-night

conference which Turner called to decide what to do with the

transports upon Fletcher’s withdrawal of the carriers at the end

of the second day.143

On August 1, Ghormley moved his headquarters from Auckland

to the U. S. S. Argonne, a converted freighter docked at Noumea, New

Caledonia. For Ghormley, it must have seemed like a step into

hell. The Argonne was cramped and uncomfortable; communications

facilities were fair at best, and it was hot all the time. His

sense of duty drove him to work endless hours on the Argonne,

refusing exercise or recreation. During this time, he also

suffered seriously from abscessed teeth.144 Better facilities

were available ashore, but the political situation, in Ghormley’s143 Whether the presence of Rear Admiral Crutchley, and hisflagship, Australia, would have made a difference at Savo Island,is an interesting question. Mike Hart offers a positive answer;see Hart, “Battle of Savo Island,” Journal of Australian Naval History 2,No. 1 (March 2005), 70. In this author’s views, the more likelyoutcome was that Australia would have been sunk or seriouslydamaged along with the other cruisers of Southern Force, but hemost likely would have given warning to the Allied NorthernForce, which did not receive any in the actual event. 144 Frank, Guadalcanal, 334; Dillard, “Operational Leadership,” 5.

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view, prohibited him from using them. Because New Caledonia was

a French possession, the same Vichy/Free France agony which

transfixed other French possessions was playing out in full

force. Ghormley was disinclined to ruffle Free French by asking

them for more ample quarters. It was characteristic of Ghormley

to suffer through problems rather than solve them.

C. Pre-Express Japanese Incursions into Ironbottom Sound

Whatever Ghormley’s problems before the invasion, they

quickly paled by comparison to those he faced almost immediately

thereafter. The disaster at Savo Island, the marooning of the

1st Marine Division, and the Japanese counterattack resulting in

the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, occurred in quick succession.

Important as these issues were, however, they were not the only

ones calling for Ghormley’s attention. Even prior to the

commencement of regular Express runs on August 29, there was

abundant Japanese activity in Ironbottom Sound.

Early in the campaign, “Japanese submarines owned

[Ironbottom Sound] for weeks,”145 shelling the Marines every other

night,146 sending useful reconnaissance reports, and occasionally145 Prados, Islands of Destiny, 67.146 Frank, Guadalcanal, 129; Twining, No Bended Knee, 98.

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chasing away transports attempting to land supplies.147 Japanese

destroyers followed, and frequently left calling cards in the

form of bombardments of the Marine positions. The first recorded

instance of this took place on the evening of August 16-17, when

three destroyers which had dropped off 113 men of the 5th

Yokusuka SNLF and then bombarded both Tulagi and Guadalcanal.

Three of the destroyers which landed the Ichiki First Echelon to

Taivu Point on the evening of August 18-19 also bombarded Tulagi

on the morning of August 19.148 Moreover, destroyers bombarded

the Marine positions for ten minutes on the evening of August 24-

25.149 None of these bombardments did much material damage, but

they were certainly nuisances to the Marines. More

significantly, they pointed to the possibility of something worse

coming Ironbottom Sound remained open to Japanese incursion.

At CINCPAC, such incursions gave rise to mounting

frustration. The Nimitz Running Summary for August 19 noted

that Japanese destroyers had “been intermittently shelling our

147 Ibid, 68-69. 148 Ibid, 147.149 C. G. 1st Mardiv to COMSOPAC, info CTF 61, 62, 63, CINCPAC t’d to COMINCH (25 August 1942) (Pink), Nimitz Graybook, 812; Frank, Guadalcanal, 189..

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shore positions and small boat patrols for the past two days.”

The same Running Summary observed, “In fact since the initial

landing not much of anything has been done by our task forces.”150

Ghormley and Fletcher, however, refused to commit the carrier

task forces to clearing Ironbottom Sound of the Japanese

destroyers. Their gaze was fixed much further north. In a

message of August 16, Ghormley explained: “A determined enemy

carrier attack against our carriers while planes of latter are

protecting ships in CACTUS area might spell disaster. Under

present conditions our carrier groups are the principal defense

of this area and of our lines of communication from U. S. to

Australia and New Zealand.”151 The same rationale, of course,

ruled out any effort by the carrier planes to chase the Japanese

out of Ironbottom Sound.

The surface navy, too, was, for all effects and purposes,

not available in August. Ghormley had precious few surface ships

left that were not part of a carrier battle group. Savo Island

had virtually wiped out Task Force 44, the cruiser covering150 Running Summary, August 19, 1942, Nimitz Graybook, Vol. I, 829-30.151 COMSOPAC to COMINCH, CINCPAC info COMSOWESPAC, 16 1156 (16 August 1942) (Part II) (Pink), Nimitz Graybook, 652.

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group. Vandegrift sough surface navy assistance to deal with the

Japanese destroyers which had brought the Ichiki Detachment, but

Fletcher demurred. “Referring Comgen Cactus 202013 consider it

inadvisable to send cruisers and destroyers into Cactus

nightly.”152 Fletcher’s reluctance to commit surface navy forces

to such a mission is understandable; it would take ships away

from the carrier screens at a time when he considered them

inadequate as it was. Fletcher had a point; the inadequacy of

the destroyer screens escorting the carrier battle groups did not

have enough escorting destroyers was borne out by several

incidents, including the torpedoing of the Saratoga on August 31,

the loss of the Wasp on September 15, and the near torpedoing of

the Hornet on September 7.153

Any inclination which Ghormley might have had to send

surface ships to challenge the Tokyo Express probably vanished as

the result of an incident which took place in Ironbottom Sound on

the evening of August 21-22, 1942. That night, destroyers Blue

and Henley were in Ironbottom Sound escorting a two-ship convoy152 FLETCHER to COMSOPAC, 11 1120 (21 August 1942) (Green), NimitzGraybook, Vol. I., 807. 153 For a discussion of this issue, see Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 475-79.

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when Admiral Turner ordered them to leave the convoy and steam

ahead to keep Japanese reinforcements away from Guadalcanal.

Also in Ironbottom Sound that night were Japanese destroyers

Kawakaze and Yunagi. A Japanese submarine had spotted the American

convoy, and Eighth Fleet commander, Admiral Mikawa, ordered the

Japanese destroyers to intercept. Bad weather kept the Yunagi

away, but not the Kawakaze. It speaks volumes about the quality of

Japanese training and Japanese low-light optics alike that on a

moonless, overcast night, Kawakaze had already spotted Blue before

0330 on August 22, when Blue’s radar and sonar simultaneously

detected a high-speed vessel – Kawakaze - at 5,000 yards’ range.154

Blue maintained course and speed – a major mistake in a night

surface battle – while she closed to 3,200 yards. Meanwhile,

Kawakaze fired six Long Lances, one of which hit Blue’s stern at

0339, tearing it off. Blue was immobilized, and later had to be

scuttled.

A hit on the Blue by an American destroyer using American

torpedoes at 5,000 yards would have been virtually unimaginable.

It was reported to Ghormley that the Blue had been struck by a

154 Morison, Struggle for Guadalcanal, 81.96

torpedo from a motor torpedo boat (“MBTs”), and he clearly

believed it.155 In one respect, Ghormley was right: MBTs in

Ironbottom Sound could present formidable dangers to enemy

destroyers operating there. The Americans, operating MBTs there

four months later, were to prove that point. In August, 1942,

the Japanese had no MBTs in the area. That should have been

apparent to Ghormley upon thoughtful consideration; MBT’s are

short-range craft which usually require the services of a tender

or a close shore base, and the Japanese had neither in the

vicinity. Ghormley, however, could not critically analyze the

reports of Japanese MBT activity, due to the stress he was under

at the time, and the many distractions which he faced. In any

event, the USN did not commit surface forces to stop the Japanese

incursions. After the loss of the Blue, it rarely had surface

forces in Ironbottom Sound at night in September and October,

1942.

Ghormley did solicit McCain’s comment on proposals to send

daily anti-sub patrols and offensive bomber sweeps over

155 Ghormley Narrative, 16. 97

Guadalcanal and Tulagi against enemy shipping.156 It was one of

these sweeps that resulted in the damage to Hagikaze on August 19.

That incident notwithstanding, daylight sweeps by B-17s were not

the answer to the Tokyo Express. The performance of B-17s

against ships fully warranted the contempt that the Japanese held

for them. As Louis Brown observes, “of the demonstrated failures

of air power to deliver on pre-war promises, the failure of land

based heavy bombers to destroy naval power is the most

grotesque.”157

What most concerned Ghormley in August was the sea denial

campaign the Japanese were waging. The USN well understood that

“supply of the occupation forces is of utmost urgency.”158 It was

not long before the Japanese seemed to be threatening to cut the

supply lines. On August 15, Ghormley stated, in a message to

McCain: “Hostile submarines and aircraft operating CACTUS area

freely. Enemy surface vessels may be expected for purpose of

blockading.”159 In a message to King later that day, Ghormley156 COMSOPAC to CTF 63, info CINCPAC, CTF 61, 62 15 0746 (Pink), 15 August 1942, Nimitz Graybook, Vol. I., 650.157 Brown, Radar History of World War II, 353.158 Running Summary, 10 August 1942, Nimitz Graybook, Vol. 1, 822.159 COMSOPAC to CTF 63, info CINCPAC, CTF 61, 62 (Pink), 15 August1942, Nimitz Graybook, Vol. I, 650; COMAIRSOPAC to COMGEN CACTUS,

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warned: “”Until air coverage can be given in the restricted

waters between GUADALCANAL and TULAGI against enemy shore based

aircraft and anti-sub protection can be given at entrances the

protection of any ship entering that area is a major

operation.”160 On August 26, Ghormley stated: “Enemy submarines

in RINGBOLT-CACTUS area are a threat to ships unloading

supplies.” Ghormley requested twelve 110-foot PC (subchaser)

boats “at earliest moment” because the “need is most urgent.”161

For a brief time in mid-August, the Americans employed

distinctly “Express-like” tactics themselves, using high-speed

APDs to ship the essential personnel, equipment and supplies to

make Henderson Field operational.162 Food and technicians were

also sent to Guadalcanal in this manner. But the Americans

viewed this as “an emergency measure only.”163 When Henderson

info VARIOUS, 13 0623 (Pink) (16 August 1942), Nimitz Graybook,Vol. I., 648. 160 COMSOPAC to COMINCH, CINCPAC, info COMSOWESPAC, 16 1156(Pink), 16 August 1942) Nimitz Graybook, Vol. I., 652.161 COMSOPAC to CINCPAC info CTF 62, 63, 26 1336 (Green), 26August 1942, Nimitz Graybook, Vol. I., 812.162 COMSOPAC to CTF 63, COMTRANSDIV 12, info CINCPAC, ETC., 120216 (Pink) 12 August 1942, Nimitz Graybook, Vol. I, 646.163 CTF 62 to COMAIRSOPAC, 19 0323 (Pink) (19 August 1942), NimitzGraybook, Vol. I, 655. One of the more exotic requests was for aradar expert with the requisite skill to operate a “good Jap set”captured there – not a widely known fact. COMSOPAC to

99

Field opened, it greatly eased the Marines’ supply problems.

Ships could now run into Ironbottom Sound under aircraft

protection by day and the guns of the garrison at Tulagi Harbor

at night, and Japanese submarines began to have second thoughts

about the wisdom of surfacing to shell the Marines. Still, one

might have expected Ghormley’s brief exposure to a sea-denial

effort aimed at the Americans to have served as a useful reminder

of how potent such an effort could be if turned the other way.

D. The Challenge of the Express

On September 1, Ghormley received clear information that the

Tokyo Express was in business. A message from Major General

Vandegrift that day clearly laid out the issue:

To CTF 62 Info Comsopac from CACTUS. My202013 and Comsopac 201132. Appears enemy isbuilding up striking force by continuoussmall landing during darkness. Due todifficult terrain areas are beyond range ofland operations except at expense ofweakening defense of airfield. We do nothave a balanced force and it is imperativethat following measures be taken: Affirm.Base planes here capable of searching beyondsteaming range during darkness. Baker.

COMAIRSOPAC, 13 1248 (Pink), 13 August 1942, Nimitz Graybook,Vol. I, 648. In fact, two sets were captured there. Japaneseradar is described in Brown, Radar History of World War II, 248-49, andone of the captured sets is pictured and described at p. 143.

100

Provide surface craft DD’s or motor torpedoboats for night patrolling. Cast. Providestriking force for active defense bytransferring 7th Marines to CACTUS. If notprevented by surface craft enemy can continuenight landings beyond our range of action andbuild up large force.164

Ghormley was not expecting this. On August 29, he had sent

Nimitz a message reviewing the satisfactory results of the air-

sea battle of August 25 and looking forward to more of the same:

For the present, hostile infiltrationtactics and initial shock of a hostile maineffort may have to be borne by ground troopsand land based aviation. Land-based aviationattack against Japanese infiltration moves should extract aconstant toll of transports and escorting combatant shipswhich the Japanese cannot long sustain. ShouldJapanese carrier-supported main forces moveto attack, our land-based aviation should beable to equalize the opposing carrierstrength. In short it is hoped that theresult of use of our defensive positions andland-based aviation may create a favorablesituation wherein I can decisively employ thecarrier task forces, whether on my extendedfront or to the westward. It is hoped thatmy freedom of action will not becircumscribed by restrictive tasks ormissions.165

164 C.G.CACTUS to CTF 62, Info Comsopac, 01 2013, Nimitz Graybook,Vol. II, 864. Vandegrift’s message was noted by Nimitz in theRunning Summary for September 1, Nimitz Graybook, Vol. II., 1008.165 COMSOPAC to CINCPAC 29 0310 (29 August 1942) (Green), Nimitz Graybook, Vol. I, 864 (emphasis supplied). Quoted in Hornfischer, Neptune’s Inferno, 119.

101

In a message to MacArthur at the same time, Ghormley listed

transports as first and destroyers as last in his priority of

surface targets.166 Ghormley thought he was facing an

accommodative enemy who would continue to send conventional

transports to their doom. Raizo Tanaka, a destroyer man by

trade, was not an accommodative enemy.

This news came at a bad time for Ghormley. The day before,

Japanese submarine I-26 put a torpedo into Saratoga. There were no

fatalities, and only twelve casualties, but, as luck would have

it, Vice-Admiral Fletcher was one of the casualties. In one

stroke, Ghormley lost the services of a precious carrier and his

Expeditionary Force Commander. On September 6, Saratoga departed

for Pearl Harbor with Fletcher aboard; she would eventually

return but he would not. He was replaced by Leigh Noyes as

Commander, Task Force 61.167

Saratoga’s damage, coming a week after Enterprise was damaged

at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, left Ghormley with two

carrier battle groups, Hornet’s TF-17 group having meanwhile

166 Hornfischer, Neptune’s Inferno, 120.167 Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 477.

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arrived to join Wasp’s TF-18. By now, he was far more concerned

to preserve his remaining carrier battle groups in the midst of

sub-infested waters than he was to use those groups to deal with

the Tokyo Express. On September 3, Ghormley restricted the

carrier battle groups to operate south of 12° S. latitude and

east of the Ndeni-Espiritu Santo line unless “promising targets”

appeared.168 A major battle was in the offing over Ghormley’s

upcoming efforts to reinforce Guadalcanal by sending in the 7th

Marines, and the carriers were going to be needed for that.

Effectively, this took the carriers out of the battle against the

Express.

Ghormley had more surface ships at his disposal in September

than he did in August. The damage to Enterprise and Saratoga had the

ironic effect of freeing up some surface combatants. Just as

Henderson Field was the occasional beneficiary of an American

carrier’s loss or damage, the American surface battle force was

replenished, after Savo Island, chiefly through the transfer of

escorts from carriers that had been damaged or sunk. On

September 7, Ghormley formed a new surface battle force, Task

168 Ibid, 478.103

Force 64, consisting of one heavy and two light cruisers and four

destroyers under the command of Rear Admiral Carlton Wright.169

The fact that Ghormley had more ships in September than in

August did not do anything to increase his inclination to commit

them to battle. His reluctance to do so caused frustration at

both the top and the bottom of the USN. Nimitz’s Daily Running

Summary for September 1 noted:

Three Jap DDs landed troops and suppliesabout twenty miles east of our position onthe north side of GUADALCANAL. It has notyet been learned how such operations can takeplace without satisfactory counter actions onour part.170

King was of the same mind. Noting the reports of the

destroyer bombardments of August 24-25 and August 31-September 1,

COMINCH complained, “At this distance it is difficult to

understand how enemy operations such as are reported in ComGen

1st MarDiv 210200 and the destroyer bombardment in his 250955 can

approach and proceed relatively unmolested.”171 Nimitz’s and

King’s irritation with Ghormley’s unwillingness to commit his169 Hornfisher, Neptune’s Inferno, 126.170 Daily Running Summary, 1 September 1942, Nimitz Graybook, Vol.II, 1008.171 COMINCH to COMSOPAC, info COMSOPAC, 01 1315 (1 September 1942)(Pink), Nimitz Graybook), 862.

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surface ships to battle was echoed in the fleet. “It seemed we

were on the fringe of battle for months,” Richard Hale of the

destroyer Laffey said. “I felt uneasy knowing the real war was

only five hundred miles north of us in the Solomons, and we could

have run up there in a day’s steaming.”172 Mahan warned that it

was hard to keep up the morale and fighting efficiency of the

officers and men of a fleet-in-being.173 Ghormley, using his

surface forces only as a fleet-in-being, was finding out Mahan

was right about that.

In a rambling letter to Nimitz on September 7, Ghormley

sought to justify his reticence to employ surface forces to stop

the Tokyo Express:

Some people are probably saying why don’t Isend surface forces in strength toGuadalcanal at night. The simple reason is,it is too dangerous to suffer possible lossunder the present conditions where they havesubmarines, motor torpedo boats, surfaceforces and shore-based aircraft to aid themin restricted waters.174

172 James F. Hornfischer, Neptune’s Inferno: The U. S. Navy at Guadalcanal(New York: Bantam Books 2011), Hornfischer, Neptune’s Inferno, 122.173 A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon the French Revolution andEmpire, 1793-1812 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Library Collection,2010), 102174 Letter, Ghormley to Nimitz, September 7, 1942, p. 1, Ghormley Papers, 1153.15.b.

105

By this time, however, the issue between Nimitz and King was

no longer Ghormley’s strategy; it was Ghormley himself. Between

September 7, when Ghormley wrote his letter, and September 9,

Nimitz and King met in San Francisco. The conference notes

reflect dissatisfaction with Ghormley:

“2. Comments on employment of forces byComSoPac:

(a) Calculated risks

(b) Operations not closely knit.

(c) Refueling accomplished atinopportune times.

(d) Delay in setting up TF 64.

(e) Surprise attack should not havebeen possible.

(f) Distribution of Flag Officers.

(g) Disadvantages of mixed forces.”175

On September 8, King commented that the establishment of Task

Force 64 was “about one month late.” The conference then took a

very personal turn:

175 COMINCH-CINCPAC Conference Notes, 9 September 1942, Nimitz Graybook, Vol. II, 1014.

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12. Consideration given to the possibilityof Vice Admiral Ghormley being unable tostand up physically. Possible reliefs forhim were mentioned. CinCPac stated that hepreferred Turner. (Subsequently, CinCPacstated that he would check up on Vice AdmiralGhormley’s physical examination and notifyCominCh of the results.) 176

Six weeks before Ghormley was formally relieved of command,

he had lost the trust and confidence of his superiors. Moreover,

this discussion almost certainly occurred before Ghormley’s

September 7 letter reached Nimitz. Had it done so, the conferees

would have had been more alarmed than they already were.

Ghormley began the letter, which is written in stream-of-

consciousness style, by stating that he was writing to satisfy

the need “to spill this (sic) to somebody, a little bit of what is

on my mind . . . but I hope you will burn this letter after it is

read.”177 That was enough, by itself to make it a most unusual

communication between two U. S. flag officers. Ghormley then

described an unhealthy personal regime: “I have not been off the

ship since I arrived August 1, but manage to keep going all

176 COMINCH-CINCPAC Conference Notes, 8 September 1942, Nimitz Graybook, Vol. II, 1020.177 Letter, Ghormley to Nimitz, September 7, 1942, p. 1, Ghormley Papers, 1153.15.b.

107

right. Once in a while I can get a fairly good night’s sleep

without interruption.” Turning to broader subjects. Ghormley

expressed his resentment that with the British having established

the priority of the European war, “the Government is not backing

us up down here with what we need, why, I don’t know.”178 Coming

from an officer who had been present when the original ABC-1

accord was negotiated, this was a strange statement indeed.

Ghormley next surveyed the all-important carrier situation.

He credited the Japanese with having “many more carriers that we

have, and if they use them properly they could leave havoc with

us.” This compelled Ghormley to “hold back” his own carriers,

“to strike at favorable targets only at favorable opportunities

where they have a chance to do better than 50-50.” Having

effectively sidelined his carrier forces from the battle except

under rare circumstances, Ghormley then explained that he was

equally unprepared to risk the loss of his surface ships, as

quoted above. Motor torpedo boats would help; so would

subchasers and the ability to employ loaded B-17s from Henderson

Field, currently not an option due to field conditions.179

178 Ibid.179 Ibid.

108

Ghormley recognized the recent operations of the Tokyo

Express, but spent relatively little time discussing them: “The

Japs are infiltrating to the east and west of Cactus.

Restrictive operations may help and sure will if they are

successful, but our patrol planes and pilots are getting worn

down.” Clearly, Ghormley had little appreciation for just how

successful the Express had been at “infiltrating” an entire

infantry brigade by this time. Rather, Ghormley’s focus remained

firmly fixed upon his own problems resulting from Japanese sea

denial activities: “Sending supplies into Cactus is a big risk

every day as they may all get sunk but we are doing it anyway.

They must have the supplies.”180

Ghormley’s letter went on to discuss a number of other

subjects. One was the lack of support from the Army. The Army’s

P-400 fighters had proven plainly inadequate, but it had been

unwilling to send the much better P-38 fighters to Guadalcanal.

“There is something back of this failure of the Army to come

across, which is bothering me. When we are hanging on merely by

a shoe string, it is not very helpful for the Army to arrange

180 Ibid, 1-2.109

with MacArthur for reinforcement when I need it promptly because

I know MacArthur hasn’t the reinforcement to give [me].”181

A second area of concern was logistics. “How we have gotten

along without logistics up to the present moment I do not

know . . .” Ghormley noted he had sent Nimitz a message

regarding Service Force requirements, as to which he hoped he

could get prompt action: “it is all going to fall in a heap if we

do not.”182

Ghormley expressed praise for many of those with whom he

worked. Army General Harmon “has cooperated 100%., is a great

help to all of us. He is a good, clear thinker, and has an

excellent Chief of Staff, Brigadier General Twining, a nephew of

Admiral Twining and brother of Colonel Twining in the Marine

Corps.” On the logistics side, Commander Cowdrey had been “a

tower of strength.” McCain and Turner were “working with a

will,” and the task force commanders “are doing Herculean jobs.”

It was fortunate for Ghormley that he was getting good help,

because he came across in this letter as neither a tower of

strength nor a clear thinker.181 Ibid, 2.182 Ibid, 3.

110

Ghormley closed his letter on an ominous note: “I feel that

our position is hanging on a shoe string, but we are not going to

let that shoe string break if we can help it.”183 Ghormley may

have thought the words read resolutely, but they actually

communicated doubt, uncertainty, and the hedge of a lawyer’s

opinion rather than a clarion call to battle.

To give Ghormley his due, the surface fleet was not ready in

September to fight a night surface action against the Japanese.

When Rear Admiral Norman Scott took over Task Force 64 in mid-

September, 1942, he began night surface gunnery practice on

September 22. It was the first time some of his heavy cruisers

had fired their guns in five months.184 During the last two

weeks of September, Scott sought to give his cruiser-destroyer

force a course in “Night Fighting Course 101,” but it would take

time before this force could take on the vastly more experienced

Japanese on anything like even terms.185

Meanwhile, the Express was running regularly. Nimitz’

Running Summary for September 14 observed:

183 Ibid, 4.184 Hornfischer, Neptune’s Inferno, 138.185 Ibid, 137.

111

A group of 7 enemy DDs was heading towardGUADALCANAL in the afternoon and it seemsprobable that they will land reinforcementsthere tonight. It must be recorded that oursurface forces in the South Pacific have donenothing the past 30 days presenter interruptthese night landings and shellings of theMarines.186

F. The Sea Denial Alternatives

In light of Ghormley’s reluctance to risk the surface fleet

in a night surface action with the Express – a decision which, in

light of what happened at Tassafaronga in November, looks

cautious but hardly foolish – it becomes a fair question what

Ghormley could have done to contest or deny the use of the sea

around Guadalcanal to the Express. Three such methods suggest

themselves: submarines, motor torpedo boats, and mines. The

first was not in SOPAC’s control, the second was not yet in-

theater, and the third, which was both under SOPAC’s control and

in-theater, was never seriously considered.

1. Submarines

At an early point in Operation WATCHTOWER, submarines

demonstrated their potential sea-denial capabilities. As part

186 Running Summary, 14 September 1942, Nimitz Graybook, Vol. II, 1036.

112

of the WATCHTOWER invasion plan, the Allies threw a cordon of

submarines ahead of the invasion force. Submarines S-38 and S-

44, based at Brisbane, Australia, were sent, approximately two

weeks before the invasion, to positions from which they could

monitor and intercept shipping between the major Japanese base at

Rabaul and points further south. At the time of the invasion, S-

44 had moved from her original position of Bougainville to a

point near the entrances of Steffan and Byron Straits, while S-38

was off New Ireland in the vicinity of Cape St. George.187 These

“S-Boats” were coastal submarines, old, slow (maximum surface

speed: 14.5 knots), small, miserable to operate in tropical

waters due to lack of air conditioning, and in need of constant

repair.188

Despite these deficiencies, the S-boats proved highly

effective. S-38 put an abrupt end to the first Japanese attempt

to reinforce the Guadalcanal garrison, which Vice-Admiral Mikawa

ordered immediately upon learning of the invasion of Guadalcanal

on the morning of August 7. This effort involved a force of 519

187 Bates Report, 35-36. 188 Theodore E. Roscoe, United States Submarine Operations in World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1949), 14 and 150.

113

sailors, armed with rifles and machine-guns which the Japanese

loaded on the merchantman Meiyo Maru and the supply ship Soya,

headed for Guadalcanal. At midnight on August 8, near Cape St.

George, the small Japanese convoy chanced upon S-38. S-38 had

already earned its keep that evening by reporting contact with

the cruiser-destroyer force which Mikawa also directed to head

for Guadalcanal; that force would next day prevail in the Battle

of Savo Island. Now, S-38 outdid herself by torpedoing Meiyo Maru,

which sank, taking 373 men with her.189

On the morning of August 10, S-44 was outside Mowe Passage,

near Kavieng Harbor, to which the four heavy cruisers of IJN

CruDiv 6 were returning, fresh from their victory at Savo Island.

S-44 put three torpedoes into heavy cruiser Kako, which sunk in

five minutes – the sole American retribution for Savo Island.190

On the basis of these early results, one might have

predicted that the Guadalcanal campaign would be a submariner’s

paradise, and that predictions proved to be correct.

Unfortunately for the Americans, the submariners for whom it189 Frank, Guadalcanal, 87; Clay Blair, Silent Victory: The U. S. Submarine War against Japan (New York: Bantam Books, 1975), 299)190 Frank, Guadalcanal, 116 Blair, Silent Victory, 298; LaCroix & Wells,Japanese Cruisers, 307.

114

turned out to be a paradise were Japanese.191 After the first

three days, the American submarine effort in the Solomons faded

away. It was of no immediate help in dealing with the Tokyo

Express, and of not much help long term.

There were several reasons for this. First in chronological

sequence and order of importance was the organization of the

Pacific Fleet Submarine Force. By the time of WATCHTOWER,

American submarines were divided between bases at Pearl Harbor

and Fremantle, Australia. Pearl Harbor hosted the main force,

with the boats topping off at Midway Island before going on to

patrols in Far Eastern waters. Fremantle was home to the

survivors of the Asiatic Fleet submarine force, with occasional

191 Never did the IJN’s submariners have a bigger impact on acampaign than at Guadalcanal. The penetration of IronbottomSound early in the campaign by Japanese submarines has beenmentioned already, see p. 52, as has been the torpedoing ofSaratoga, see p. 58. By then, the waters between Guadalcanal andEspiritu Santo were teeming with Japanese submarines. OnSeptember 15, 1942, I-19 launched the most destructive singlesalvo of torpedoes in the war, sinking aircraft carrier Wasp,mortally wounding destroyer O’Brien, and damaging battleship NorthCarolina. On October 20, I-176 put a torpedo in the engine room ofheavy cruiser Chester, knocking her out of the war until theGilberts operations. On November 14, I-26 hit anti-aircraftcruiser Juneau with a torpedo that effectively disintegrated theship, killing almost her entire complement. These were just thenaval losses. There were merchant ship losses, as well.

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new additions. The division between these two bases, seemingly

reasonable when made, turned out to be unfortunate. It left the

ex-Asiatic Fleet boats at the end of a long spare-parts and

resupply pipeline, and put them out of position to attack the key

choke points of Japanese shipping. Divided basing fostered

rivalry between commands, led to divergences in tactics,

equipment and procedures, and prevented the full cross-

fertilization of ideas that might have taken place had the

submarine force been centralized at Pearl Harbor. Finally, the

Fremantle force was always under pressure from MacArthur to

undertake a heavy burden of special missions to the

Philippines.192 What all this meant for WATCHTOWER, in practical

terms, was that COMSOPAC had no submarine force of its own. If

submarines were to be made available for patrols in the South

Pacific, they would be coming from Pearl Harbor or Fremantle,

which had their own agendas regarding the deployment of these

scarce resources.

By August, 1942, the submarine forces at both Pearl Harbor

and Fremantle were fully committed to unrestricted submarine

192 Blair, Silent Victory, 202-03. 116

warfare against the Japanese merchant marine. “The sole shred of

offensive response that survived the first awful day [of Pearl

Harbor] was the directive to execute unrestricted air and

submarine warfare against Japan.”193 By the time WATCHTOWER began,

this effort had produced few significant results; the net

Japanese shipping loss for the entire first thirteen months of

the war was an insignificant 89,000 tons.194 That fact, however,

did not lessen the dedication of the submarine force commanders

and their superiors in the Pacific Fleet to that struggle, or

their determination not to be diverted from that mission by

anything as picayune as the opportunity to assist in the

isolation of a major fighting front.

On September 10, Turner made the point that submarines in

the SOPAC area could be helpful against the Express:

193 Edward S. Miller, War Plan Orange: The U S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897-1945 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997), 333.194 Blair, Silent Victory, 360. There were many reasons for thisfailure. In addition to the failure to concentrate boats in thePearl Harbor base where they could be most effective, there wasan overall lack of numbers. Many peacetime boat commanders werefound unfit for the rigors of war. The Mark XIV torpedo and theMark VI exploder caused many attacks to fail. Most important ofall was the lack of an overall strategy for cutting Japaneseshipping lanes. The U. S. Navy may have declared unrestrictedsubmarine warfare, but did not yet understand how to fight it.

117

The situation forecast in your 100725 andnightly bombardment CACTUS-RINGBOLT indicatesurgent need for several PacFlt submarinesthat area. If these are sent recommendSoWesPac submarines operate on line NEWGEORGIA ISLAND – MANNING STRAIT.195

The Running Summary notes Nimitz’s response: “In this

connection the only submarine now immediately available was

offered to General MacArthur for patrol off SHORTLAND Island.

The offer was not accepted as ComSWPac is employing his own

submarines to the westward of the SOLOMONS.” In effect, Nimitz

buried the request by suggesting that the offer of the assistance

sought had been made to MacArthur and declined. This was

somewhat disingenuous. As the Japanese had shown, a submarine

could do a considerable amount of disruption even in Ironbottom

Sound, which was within Nimitz’ jurisdiction, not MacArthur’s,

and the Express was now presenting itself as a target. Yet no

American periscope ever seems to have broken water in Ironbottom

Sound during the entire Guadalcanal campaign.

MacArthur’s desire to commit his submarines to the “westward

of the Solomons,” as referenced by Nimitz, reflected the

195 COMAMPHFOROSOPAC to COMSOPAC, T’d by Comsopac to CINCPAC, 10 0725 (Green) (10 September 1942), Nimitz Graybook, Vol. II, 917.

118

predilection of the then-commander of the Fremantle submarine

force, Charles Lockwood, who was later to become Pacific Fleet

sub commander. Lockwood, one submarine skipper observed, “wanted

‘bags.’ Tonnage sunk. The more, the better. He didn’t care

what kind or where it was found. He assumed, I suppose, that his

boats would find better bags of Indochina and Manila.”196 Because

MacArthur’s submarine commander considered it more important to

rack up tonnage statistics than to interdict strategic

communications lines to one of the few active fighting fronts in

the Pacific, the Tokyo Express ran without interference from U.

S. submarines based in Fremantle.

At Pearl Harbor, Nimitz soon experienced a change of heart,

influenced by the reports of major fleet unit movements towards

Guadalcanal by the Japanese in connection with the attack of

Kawaguchi’s brigade in mid-September. On September 14, Nimitz

advised MacArthur that he planned to send one tender and six

fleet subs to COMSOPAC, and asked MacArthur to adjust the

boundaries of MacArthur’s theater of operations to allow Pacific

196 Quoted in Blair, Silent Victory, 357. 119

Fleet submarines to operate in the upper Solomons.197 MacArthur

responded to this by saying that if the Pacific Fleet intended to

send submarines to operate in or from his area, he wanted

operational control of them. Accordingly, Nimitz held the plan

in abeyance.198 Had he been aware of this exchange, Rear Admiral

Tanaka would probably have derived some satisfaction from the

fact that Japan was not the only nation whose military operations

suffered from inter-service friction.

Whether an earlier deployment of submarines would have made

a difference in the battle against the Express is open to

question. Later, when many more submarines were committed to

the effort, they failed to achieve significant results. A major

reason for that later failure was that at this stage of the war,

the submarine command tended to deploy its boats against Japanese

military bases such as Truk, Palau and Rabaul. These were the

places where Japanese anti-submarine efforts were also most

concentrated.199 In retrospect, a better strategy would have been

197 CINCPAC to COMSOWESPAC, info COMINCH, COMSOPAC, COMSUBPAC, 14 2247 (Green), 14 September 1942, Nimitz Graybook, Vol. II, 920.198 Running Summary, 15 September 1942, Nimitz Graybook, Vol. II, 1037.199 Frank, Guadalcanal, 329.

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to target tankers at the much less heavily defended oil ports.200

Oil was the lifeblood of the Japanese war machine, and even in

the fourth quarter of 1942, long before the U. S. submarine

effort hit anything like full stride, needs were beginning to

outrun stocks.201

Moreover, American submarines were still equipped with the

defective Mark XIV torpedo and its wretched Mark VI exploder. In

June of 1942, the submarine force in the field, with little or no

help from the Bureau of Ordnance, proved that the Mark XIV ran a

full eleven feet deeper than set depth, which went far to explain

many failures in early attacks using it.202 Recognition at

command levels of the defects in the Mark VI exploder – the

magnetic exploder’s tendency to premature explosions, and the

contact exploder’s failure to detonate when the torpedo made a

direct, as opposed to a glancing, hit – remained in the future.

The war would be twenty-one months old, and the Guadalcanal

campaign long over, before they were resolved.203

200 Blair, Silent Victory, 357.201 Combined Fleet Website, “Oil and Japanese Strategy,” 5. www.combinedfleet.coom/guadoil1.htm202 Blair, Silent Victory, 273-81.203 Ibid, 439; Newpower, Iron Men and Tin Fish, 181.

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In short, at Guadalcanal, the submarine had great potential

as an instrument of sea denial against the Express, directly or

indirectly. That potential, however, was frustrated by faulty

command arrangements, faulty deployment, and faulty ordnance.

2. Motor Torpedo Boats

When motor torpedo boats were committed against the Express

in December, 1942, they proved to be a key element in the

Americans’ success against the Express at that time. The

deployment of these craft was, however, late in coming.

In the summer of 1942, the USN possessed a squadron of

fourteen MBTs (‘PT’ boats, in USN nomenclature) organized as

Squadron 2, operating in the Panama Canal Zone. It was alerted

in July for a move to the combat area. Out of these boats, a new

eight-boat squadron, Squadron 3, was commissioned on July, 27,

1942 with the intent of sending it to the Solomons. Yet, the

first four boats of that squadron did not depart from the Canal

Zone for the Pacific until August 29, when they were placed

aboard two Navy oilers. They did not arrive at Noumea until

September 19. They were then towed to Espiritu Santo, and did

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not arrive in Tulagi harbor until October 12.204 This leisurely

deployment schedule meant that they were entirely too late for

the initiation of the Express and the series of runs by which

Tanaka and his successors were able to move Kawaguchi’s brigade

to Guadalcanal.

On August 21, Ghormley advised MacArthur of the need for

motor torpedo boats, and requested the Southwest Pacific for any

that could be spared. This request was specifically linked to

the loss of the Blue; Ghormley was seeking these craft as

defenders, not as attackers.205 Yet the potential of MBTs for

attacks on the Express destroyers was obvious from the onset. No

sources known to this author has identified the reason for the

slow deployment of the PT boats. The most likely cause was lack

of shipping, which caused difficulties throughout the entire

Guadalcanal operation.206

204 Robert J. Bulkley, At Close Quarters: PT Boats in the United States Navy (Washington, D.C.: .Government Printing Office, 1962), 82.205 Daily Running Summary, 21 August 1942, Nimitz Graybook, Vol. II, 831.206 For an example of how lack of shipping slowed down the Guadalcanal campaign, see Larry G. DeVries, Capt., USN(R), “Navy Seabees at Guadalcanal,” http://www.seabeecook.com/history/canal/cactus.htm (accessed 8/12/14).

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3. Mines

Mines, unlike submarines or MBTs, were already in-theater,

under COMSOPAC’s jurisdiction, cheap, available, and ideally

suited to the situation. Moreover, they would have hit the

Japanese at a weak point: the IJN’s minesweeping capabilities

were poor. Despite this, the thought of using mines against the

Express never seems to have crossed Ghormley’s mind. In this

regard, however, he was no worse than the other local commanders,

or Nimitz, or King. The first time any American commander

appears to have given consideration to this possibility was after

the Battle of Tassafaronga on November 30, 1942. The question

therefore is one of institutional myopia. The only reason

evident for this remarkable oversight was the USN’s deeply

engrained bias against mine warfare.

Guadalcanal’s geography does not just suggest the viability

of mining as an effective defensive strategy: it screams it. The

two channels on either side of Savo Island providing access to

Ironbottom Sound from the west were each only a few miles wide,

virtually made to be mined. The other channels providing access

to Ironbottom Sound from the north and east, are not much wider.

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All of these channels were far smaller than other areas mined in

World War II and prior conflicts, and were capable of being

covered by a reasonable minelaying effort.207

That the mines were in-theater is established by the

defensive fields which were being planted at this very time

around Espiritu Santo and Noumea. These fields soon proved their

deadly efficacy. The day after the Espiritu Santo field was laid

on August 3, 1942, destroyer Tucker sailed into it and was lost.

Nor was that to be its only unintended victim. On October 25,

1942, the 21,936-ton Army transport President Coolidge fell prey to

207 An example of a really big minefield is the North Sea MineBarrage, laid by British and U. S. minelayers during the latterpart of World War I to prevent German U-Boats from gaining accessto the Atlantic. It was a belt of over 70,000 mines, 230 mileslong, 15 to 35 miles wide, with the mines set at depths rangingfrom 80 to 240 feet. The mines were mostly U. S. Mark VI typeswith long antennae for use against submarines. See Arnold S.Lott, Lt. Cmdr., USN, Most Dangerous Sea (Annapolis, MD: NavalInstitute Press, 1959), 15. Opinions regarding the effectivenessof this operation vary, but it is credited with sinking at leastthree U-boats and possibly three more during its short existence.The psychological pressure it exerted may have been the mostimportant thing about it; some German submarine crews mutiniedrather than brave it. See Tamara Moser Melia, “Damn the Torpedoes – AShort History of U. S. Naval Mine Countermeasures, 1777-1991, (Washington,D.C., Naval Historical Center, 1991), 33. This illustrates oneof the most useful things about offensive mine warfare; mines donot have to destroy anything for their mere presence to have aneffect.

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the same field. She was loaded with heavy weapons and 5,050

troops of the 172nd Division, who were intended to reinforce the

garrison at Guadalcanal. Surprisingly, only two men went down

with the President Coolidge, but her precious cargo was lost. 208 It

was a more serious blow to the American logistical effort than

Japanese were ever able to land. The mines at Noumea, too,

claimed unintended victims. In February, the Panamanian ship

Snark hit a mine laid there only nine days earlier. Worse, in

August, 1942, the tanker Bishopdale, on her way to load oil in

Australia for the Guadalcanal invasion force, hit a mine while on

her way out of Noumea harbor.209 At the very least, these

sinkings provided incontrovertible evidence that American mines,

unlike American torpedoes, worked reliably.

The mines at Espiritu Santo were laid by U. S. Navy

destroyer-minelayers. These ships (“DMs”) were “four piper”

World War I flush-deck destroyers converted to service as

minelayers by having their torpedo tubes removed and tracks laid

which could hold up to 85 mines.210 In the days after laying the208 Lott, Most Dangerous Sea, 77-78. 209 Ibid, 80.210 Destroyer History Foundation, “DM Conversions,” http://destroyerhistory.org/flushdeck/dm/

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Espiritu Santo minefield, these ships were very active in the

waters off Guadalcanal, serving as escorts for attempts to run

supplies into the Marines and auxiliaries for the fleet. On

August 29, Gamble spotted Japanese submarine I-123 in Ironbottom

Sound, and, after a three-hour A/S, action, scored a kill with

her still-installed depth charges.211 On September 30, while

towing a target in a night surface battle exercise, Breese was

involved in a collision with heavy cruiser San Francisco.212 The

ships were being used for anything and everything except

minelaying.

Two incidents later in the war hint at what a minelaying

campaign by these ships might have accomplished. On February 1,

1943, three of these ships, Tracy, Montgomery and Preble, conducted

the first offensive minelaying operation of World War II. Their

target was a large Tokyo Express run – the first of the runs

intended to evacuate the surviving Japanese garrison under the

plan known as ‘Operation KE,’ although the Americans did not

realize that at the time. The minelayers dropped 255 mines in

211 Theodore E. Roscoe, United States Destroyer Operations in World War II(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1953), 177. 212 Hornfischer, Neptune’s Inferno, 139-40.

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fifteen minutes off Doma Point. Because the Express destroyers

were only 12,000 yards away by the time the DMs finished their

plant, the DMs abandoned their intended line of retreat past Cape

Esperance, reversing course and heading back up Lengo Channel.

Almost immediately, their mines claimed a victim. Destroyer

Makigumo moved inshore to avoid PT torpedoes, and hit one of the

newly planted mines instead, becoming the first casualty of

American offensive mining in World War II. She was the only

destroyer lost by the Express in the entire KE operation. A

perfectly planned, flawlessly executed American mine plant

knocked the only hole in a perfectly planned, flawlessly executed

Japanese evacuation.213

Three months later, an even more daring operation netted

more substantial results. By early May, 1943, the war had moved

northward in the Solomons, with the Japanese using much the same

tactics which the Tokyo Express had pioneered to reinforce (and

occasionally evacuate) their garrisons. The USN had figured out

that Blackett Strait, which lies between the islands of

213 Lott, Most Dangerous Sea, 93-95; Roger and Dennis LeTourneau, Operation KE: The Cactus Air Force and the Withdrawal from Guadalcanal (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2012) 208-210.

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Kolombangara to the north, and Arundel Island to the south, and

connects Vella Gulf to the west with Kula Gulf to the east, was

frequently employed by Japanese destroyers to make these runs.

On the evening of May 6-7 1943, Breese, Preble and Gamble, escorted

by destroyer Radford, took eighteen minutes to plant 250 mines in

Blackett Strait’s narrow waters. A day later, they claimed an

entire Japanese destroyer division – Kuroshio, Oyshiro and Kagero,

their decks loaded with evacuees from Vila. All were veterans of

the Express; Oyshiro’s torpedoes, at Tassafaronga, probably sank

Northhampton. Between the three ships there were a total of 192

Japanese fatalities. The operation cost the Americans nothing

but the price of the mines.214

In addition to the actual successes netted by these later

minelaying operations, two other factors suggest that an earlier

minelaying campaign against the Express would have had a major

impact. The first is the fact that the IJN’s minesweeping forces

were “neither extensive, efficient, nor adequate for the

214 Lott, Most Dangerous Sea, 96-97; Combined Fleet Webpage, “The Destruction of DesDiv 15,” http://www.combinedfleet.com/desdiv15.htm

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purpose.”215 In The Japanese Merchant Marine in World War II, Mark Parillo

explains:

In Japan, the Navy Torpedo School wasoriginally responsible for all mine research.For years the Japanese considered minewarfare, like anti-submarine warfare, to be“defensive” and not worthy of attention. TheNavy finally opened the mine school in 1941,but as the latecomer among naval educationalinstitutions it never had enough personnel orfunding for serious study and research . . .The threat posed by mines received scantattention until the massive US miningcampaign of 1945. At that late hour, the Navyset up a research department of fiveprofessors at Tokyo Imperial University, butdemanded little of them and received littlein return.

Japan’s minesweeping equipment andoperations were consequently abysmal duringWorld War II. Often the minesweeping servicehad an odd assemblage of small craft,especially those too decrepit for other uses.For example, it cost the Navy one week andthree minesweepers to clear the waters offAmbon of 70 mines left there by theretreating Dutch in early 1942. Early in thewar, a determined effort to clear a channelthrough a minefield took four days, andalthough the minesweepers eventually managedto halve this figure, by 1945 delays had

215 USSBS, The Offensive Mine Laying Campaign against Japan, 26, quoted in Mark P. Petrillo, The Japanese Merchant Marine in World War II (Annapolis,MD: Naval Institute Press, 1993), 198.

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become an accepted corollary of seatransport.216

The odds that even a commander as persistent and resourceful

as Tanaka could come up with a quick and effective answer to a

mining campaign were not good. The Japanese would have to

conduct minesweeping under the noses of the Cactus Air Force –

hardly the kind of activity that lends itself to efficient

performance under air attack. Of course, the Japanese could

always move the debarkation points to un-mined areas. That,

however, was a losing proposition. On Guadalcanal, for the

Japanese, there was a close relationship between distance and

death; the more distance was imposed between debarkation point

and battlefield, the more the jungle and the Cactus Air Force

took their toll. Moreover, the Americans could play a cat-and-

mouse game between the Express and the American minelayers to

advantage. Ships and planes could be waiting in ambush for the

Express to debark in places it moved to in order to avoid the

mines.

The time pressures under which the Express operated also

favored the use of a minelaying operation against the Express.216 Petrillo, Japanese Merchant Marine, 198-99.

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The Express had to make its runs at high speed in order to avoid

excessive exposure to the Cactus Air Force. High speed is

difficult and dangerous to maintain in mined waters, however, for

several reasons. It increases the acoustic and pressure

signatures of a ship, for mines whose firing mechanisms are

sensitive to those influences, and it makes moored mines harder

to spot, avoid and sweep. Slowing down the Express could have

disastrous consequences, a fact driven home by IJN DesDiv 20’s

August 28 debacle.

Every relevant consideration points to the truth of the

conclusion expressed by Ellis Johnson and David A. Katcher that

“[f]ailure to make more extensive use of surface-laid mines

during the early Guadalcanal campaign resulted in the loss of a

favorable opportunity to hinder enemy naval actions seriously.”217

The question that must therefore be asked is, why was that

opportunity not seized earlier, when the Express first began to

run in September?

Part of the problem undoubtedly arose from the USN’s pre-war

conception of how it was going to fight the Japanese, as217 Ellis Johnson and David A. Katcher, Mines Against Japan(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1973) 106.

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manifested in the various ‘Orange’ and ‘Rainbow’ war plans. The

Navy expected to beat the Japanese with gunfire, in the wide-open

waters of the central Pacific. In this sense, the USN viewed the

mine, a weapon best used in restricted waters, much as it viewed

the torpedo, a weapon best used in close-in engagements. In the

future war imagined by the USN, both weapons were to be avoided

rather than employed.218 In retrospect, this seems folly. It

dangerously presumed the USN would always have its choice of

where to fight and on what terms. In this case, however,

frugality reinforced folly. Tight for money throughout the 1920s

and 1930s, the USN could not afford to plan and build for a

multiplicity of war-fighting scenarios.

Another part of the problem was also the historically

troubled relationship between the USN and mine warfare generally.

The first public comment ever made by a USN flag officer about

mines was, famously, to damn them, and traces of that attitude

can still be found. Thus, in 2013, Sam Tangredi quoted a USN

staff officer as saying, supposedly facetiously, that “mine

218 See, Hodges & Friedman, Destroyer Weapons 105 (“Indeed the [pre-war] U. S. Navy expected its destroyers to have relatively fewopportunities to use torpedoes in combat.”)

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warfare is the strategy of pusillanimous navies or nations with

no navy.”219 That prejudice is another folly. The Royal Navy, a

force committed, like the USN, to sea control and not known for

being pusillanimous, made extensive use of mines, offensively and

defensively.220 Yet the presence of this attitude in the USN

before World War II, and during the early days of the conflict,

is clear. The dismissive view taken by Mahan towards ‘defensive’

measures such as coast defense, under which category Mahanian

thinkers tended to put mines, was both an example and a cause of

this attitude.221

One concrete manifestation of the USN’s hostility towards

mine warfare was the paucity of resources devoted to minelaying

and minesweeping during the interwar period.222 A second was the219 Sam J. Tangredi, Anti-Access Warfare: Countering A2/AD Strategies (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2013), 176.220 During World War II, the British planted a total of 263,000mines in their various theaters of operation, a figure six timesthe American figure of 44,000, which includes the massive U. S.minelaying operation in the Japanese home islands at the end ofthe war. Lott, Most Dangerous Sea, 80.221 Milan Vego, “Naval Classical Thinkers and Operational Art,” (Newport, RI: Naval War College, 2009), at 2. 222 Almost every source dealing with U. S. Navy mine warfare has commented on this. E.g., Gregory J. Cornish, Captain, USN, “U. S.Naval Mine Warfare Strategy: Analysis of the Way Ahead,” (USAWC Strategy Research Project, Carlisle Barracks, PA 2003), 4; Lott, Most Dangerous Sea, 17.

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lack of a unified mine warfare organization in the USN. That did

not exist until the creation of the Mine Warfare Division in the

Office of the Chief of Naval Operations in January, 1943. Until

then, responsibility for mine warfare was in many different

hands, including the Bureau of Ordnance, the Bureau of

Construction and Repair (which had jurisdiction over moored

mines) and the various Naval Districts – an embarrassing contrast

to the unified British practice.223 The absence of a unified mine

warfare command led, in turn, to the absence of mine warfare

officers in the important councils of war. Until the end of

1942, there were no mining officers on the operating staffs of

the Pacific areas except for the Commander of Submarines, Pacific

Fleet.224 As a result, “mining tended to be sporadic and mostly

of a tactical nature.”225 This was a situation almost designed

to miss the strategic opportunity that existed off Guadalcanal to

cripple the Japanese logistics effort through offensive mining.

Lurking behind these deficiencies was another. Its

parameters are hinted at Merrill B. Twining’s critique of Admiral223 See Johnson & Katcher, “Mine Policy During World War II” in Mines Against Japan, 41-62.224 Ibid, 90.225 Ibid.

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Turner’s response to the notion that he had some degree of

responsibility for the disaster at Savo Island. As Twining

correctly observes, Turner, while claiming he would take

responsibility for anything that was justly his fault, actually

laid the blame on “just about everyone in the world except

himself and Mother Teresa.” Turner’s list of culprits included

Admiral McCain, whose search planes failed to defect the

approaching Japanese force:

In this unjust criticism of McCain, Turnerlays himself open to the charge that, like somany inexperienced commanders, he failed to employ allweapons available to him; specifically, the morethan fifteen scouting planes of the cruiserforce. Had they been sent out to scour thearea south of Rekata Bay at sunset, theycould not have failed to locate the oncomingenemy force before nightfall . . .[I]nstead, these planes, many with tanksfilled with gasoline, remained on theircatapults or on deck and became giganticinfernos when ignited by the first enemyprojectiles . . . In short, Turner had amplemeans of his own to detect Mikawa’sapproaching cruisers, but failed to usethem.226

226 Twining, No Bended Knee, 71 (emphasis supplied). One need not agree with Twining about McCain in order to appreciate that truerwords were never written about Turner.

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Ghormley, like Turner, was an inexperienced commander,

versed in the ways of the peace-time Navy, but not the exigencies

of war. Like Turner, he failed to grasp that in war, it is

critical to employ every available weapon against the enemy. If

Ghormley could not employ his carrier task forces against the

Express because they were reserved for other purposes, or his

surface fleet because it was not yet battle-ready, then he needed

to keep going through the arsenal until he found a weapon to hit

the Japanese with. In September, 1942, that weapon was the lowly

mine. It just might have worked, and it was better than nothing.

By the end of November, Nimitz, with the benefit of four months’

brutal experience at Guadalcanal, understood this.227 Ghormley

never did. In war, you must hurt your enemy however you can. If

you do not, he will hurt you. Ghormley’s failure to use what

ways he had to hurt the Express was to have very serious

consequences for the Guadalcanal campaign.

F. Travails of the Cactus Air Force

227 Running Summary 30 November 1942, Nimitz Graybook, Vol. II, 1179 (Commenting on a proposal to institute aerial offensive mining in the Pacific, Nimitz noted: “It is believed that we should harass the enemy with every conceivable means.”) (Emphasis supplied).

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As noted earlier, the Cactus Air Force was relatively

ineffective in stopping the Tokyo Express. This should hardly

have been a surprise. The Express was tailored to avoid the

Cactus Air Force, and it did so adroitly. Even if operational

conditions at Henderson had been perfect, the Express destroyers,

fast, maneuverable ships with heavy defensive armament, would

have made hard targets. Operational conditions at Henderson

were, however, anything but perfect, as John Prados points out:

The tropics often turned Henderson into amudflat or a dustbowl, sometimessimultaneously. The planes’ hard rubber tailwheels, designed for carrier landings, ruttedthe field. Planes of MAG-23, brand-new whenthey arrived, needed little more than gas andoil - a good thing, since most sailors ofCUB-1 (the aircraft service unit) could notdo much more than pump gas. And that was byhand, just like rearming the aircraft, whichtook hours. Of course, there were enemy bombsand naval bombardments to contend with, alongwith the Zeros. Within a few weeks theplanes were flying wrecks. On the day of theBattle of the Eastern Solomons, the thirty-one aircraft of MAG-23 had been reduced totwenty. Possibly the low point came onOctober 12, when Cactus had just five flyablefighters.

* * * *

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It was a constant struggle to keep theplanes flying - when they had gasoline andordnance. At one point in October fuel wasin such short supply that liaison planes wereairlifting gas to Cactus. An index of thesignificance of this is that a C-47 typeplane could carry a dozen barrels of aviationgas, each sufficient to fuel one Wildcat forone hour. Oxygen bottles for the Wildcatsran out within days of arrival and, alongwith critical spare parts, became a staple onthe transport planes from Efate. One timethe Japanese plastered the “Pagoda,”Henderson’s control tower, another its mainammunition dump. Shelling destroyed the fooddump in October, scattering cans of Spameverywhere. They would be found at oddmoments for a long time afterward.

Japanese airmen may have been able to relaxwith geishas at Rabaul, but there was no suchluxury for the Cactus Air Force. The men wereon half rations until mid-September, and thatwas made possible by captured provisions.Even later they existed on dehydratedpotatoes and spam or cold hash. When carrierWasp embarked a flight of Marine planes fordelivery, the pilots were enchanted by itsquality food and accommodations, only to besubjected to the reality of Guadalcanal. Thetentage, bedding and blankets were allcaptured from the Japanese. On Cactus therewas no way even to wash laundry except totake it to a stream and do-it-yourself.228

228 Prados, Islands of Destiny, 85-6, 88-9. Eighty-five – eighty-six, eighty-eight – eighty-nine

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Above and beyond these difficult circumstances, perhaps the

most important reason for the failure of the Cactus Air Force to

interdict the Express is the simple fact that U. S. aviation

units did not, at this stage of the war, have a night attack

capability. The first aircraft specifically equipped with such a

capability - PBY “Black Cat” Catalinas - did not begin to operate

out of Henderson Field until mid-December, 1942.229 Earlier

improvised attempts by individual pilots to attack Japanese ships

at night resulted in such high losses, due mostly to operational

failures rather than enemy action, that the commander of the

Cactus Air Force, General Roy Geiger, prohibited them.230

Even at this stage of the war, before airborne radar was

available, air attacks on enemy warships and shipping at night

were feasible with the right training, tactics and pyrotechnics.

The Japanese were to provide a painful demonstration of this in

the Battle of the Rennell Islands, on the night of January 30,

1943.231 The heterogeneous air groups comprising the Cactus Air229 Richard C. Knott, Black Cat Raiders of World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1981), 100.230 Frank, Guadalcanal, 320.231 In this engagement, Japanese ‘Betty’ torpedo bombers,attacking at night, severely damaged the heavy cruiser Chicago,leaving her to be sunk next morning by a second strike. For a

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Force did not have any of the ingredients which the Japanese

melded into a successful night shipping attack force. That was

doubly unfortunate. It deprived them of the opportunity to shut

down the Express, and it made them vulnerable to attack from the

sea at night. The Japanese would soon take advantage of both

these vulnerabilities.

THE CONSEQUENCES

A. The Battle of Bloody Ridge

The immediate consequence of the first set of successful

Express runs, in the first two weeks of September, 1942, was that

the Kawaguchi Detachment was enabled to get to Guadalcanal and

launch the effort to retake Henderson Field that culminated in

the Battle of Bloody Ridge (September 12-13, 1942). The Japanese

attack narrowly failed, and the Kawaguchi Detachment sustained

heavy casualties. A thorough treatment of the Battle of Bloody

Ridge is outside the scope of this paper.232 There can be no

denying the courage and determination exhibited by Colonel

description of the Japanese attack, see Hornfischer, Neptune’sInferno, 405-06; Domagulski, Lost at Guadalcanal, 178-85.232 For good treatments of the battle, see Frank, Guadalcanal, 218-46; Jersey, Hell’s Island, 224-235.

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Merritt Edson and the forces under his command, the Parachutist

Battalion and the Raider Battalion. That having been said, the

stout stand of the Paras and Raiders was not the only, or even

the principal, instrument of the American victory. The airfield

defended itself well; air attacks had kept one of Kawaguchi’s

battalions out of the battle completely and slaughtered or

dispersed half of another.233 Most important of all was the

Marines’ artillery. Kawaguchi’s attacking infantrymen were not

so much mown down as blown apart. The 5th Battalion, 11th

Marines’ 105 mm. howitzers fired 1,992 rounds on the night of

September 13-14, and these inflicted between two-thirds and

three-quarters of all Kawaguchi’s casualties.234 Among those not

surprised at the failure of the attack was Kawaguchi himself.

Immediately prior to the attack, he confided to Gen Nishino, a

war correspondent, “No matter what the War College says, it is

extremely difficult to take an enemy position by night assault.

If we succeed here it will be a wonder in the military history of

233 Frank, Guadalcanal, 244. 234 Ibid, 245. It should be noted that the 105 mm. guns was notthe 11th Marines’ principal artillery weapon; the 75 mm. packhowitzer was.

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the world.”235 To Nishino, “[t]he artillery fire seemed to be a

never-ending earthquake. Trees toppled over and red-hot shrapnel

whistled through the air.”236

For the Japanese, the defeat at Bloody Ridge was just the

start of a bad week. Kawaguchi ordered a retreat across the

Manitaku on September 15, and the march became a passage through

Armageddon. Now, the risks in the early Express strategy of

shipping many troops and few supplies came due with interest.

Kawaguchi’s Detachment had sustained close to a thousand dead in

the assault on Bloody Ridge. It now lost about the same number

of men to starvation, untreated wounds and exhaustion, as it

moved through some of the worst jungle on Guadalcanal. It

emerged from the jungle without most of its basic infantry

235 Bergerud, Touched by Fire, 329. The IJN did not give theproposed attack much chance of success, either. Briefed bySeventeenth Army Headquarters on September 10 during a visit toRabaul. Admiral Ugaki found that the planned night assault “paidlittle attention to how to employ field guns brought to theisland only with great difficulty.” After asking some questions,Ugaki told the army commander that “in view of the importance ofthis operation and the enemy’s attitude, we should never beoptimistic about the coming operation.” When word that theattack failed arrived on September 14, Ugaki observed: “I canonly say that this was what I expected.” Goldstein & Dillon,Fading Victory, 209, 213.236 Bergerud, Touched by Fire, 329.

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weapons and minus whatever artillery it had landed. Kawaguchi’s

Detachment was defeated at Bloody Ridge; it was ruined by the

retreat.

Meanwhile, an elaborate game of shadow-boxing between the

Combined Fleet and the American carrier task forces resulted in

the successful landing, on September 18, of the 7th Marine

Regiment to reinforce Vandergrift’s force. Turner had learned

much in the six weeks since the Marines first went ashore at

Guadalcanal about the importance of unloading in a hurry. This

time, 4,157 Marines, 137 vehicles, 4,323 barrels of fuel, a large

store of rations and 60 per cent of the tentage of the 7th

Marines were ashore in a day, and Turner’s transports were on

their way out by 1800.237 On the same day, VT-8 flew in six TBF

torpedo bombers to Henderson Field. The Marine position was far

stronger at the end of the week Kawaguchi attacked it than on the

day he launched his attack. The only consolation for the

Japanese in all this was I-19’s September 15 torpedoing of Wasp,

North Carolina and O’Brien, and the Japanese were in no position to

exploit that success.

237 Frank, Guadalcanal, 252.144

B. The Japanese Response

As H. P. Willmott observes, the repulse of the Kawaguchi

Detachment was a second “moment of truth” for the Japanese in the

Guadalcanal campaign. 238 It presented them with a new dilemma,

similar in structure to, but different in content from, the

initial “moment of truth” following the repulse of the

reinforcement convoy on August 25. In both cases, the problem

arose from the constraints imposed on Japanese logistics by local

American air superiority.

The dilemma at the end of August had been how to transport

troops without troop transports. The Express had been the answer

to that. What the Battle of Bloody Ridge demonstrated, however,

was that in order for a Japanese ground attack on Henderson Field

to succeed, the attackers would have to have enough artillery of

their own to soften up the defenses and keep the Marine artillery

from annihilating the assaulting infantry.239 This was not an

issue which the Express could resolve; a destroyer is an

238 Willmott, Point of Balance, 120.239 Marine firepower was one of the two reasons which ImperialGeneral Headquarters gave to the Emperor for the failure of theattack (loss of coordination being the other). Frank,Guadalcanal, 253.

145

unsuitable vehicle with which to attempt to transport 15 cm.

heavy artillery pieces. To move artillery meant to move cargo

ships, and to move cargo ships into range of Henderson Field was

to lose them, for so long as the field was operational.

The problem was at least as thorny as the one which

Seventeenth Army had faced at the end of August. Then it had

seriously considered withdrawing from the island. In the wake of

Kawaguchi’s debacle, however, the thought of withdrawal never

seems to have crossed the minds of anyone at either Seventeenth

Army or Combined Fleet Headquarters. Instead, without

hesitation, the Japanese doubled down on the bet. Only three

days after Kawaguchi’s repulse, orders went out to forward to

Guadalcanal the 2nd (Sendai) Infantry Division and a part of the

38th Division, totaling 17,500 men and 196 guns.240

To get this far larger and heavier force to Guadalcanal,

Combined Fleet adopted a two-pronged strategy. First, the

Express runs increased in size and frequency. During the first

fourteen days of October onward, the Express ran every day,

rather than every second or third day, as in September. The

240 Ibid, 251. 146

average number of destroyers in each Express run was increased.

Moreover, bigger ships were run with the Express, particularly

seaplane tenders with heavy-lift capability. Second, the

Japanese merchant marine was combed for relatively fast

freighters, six of which were formed into a ‘high speed convoy’

to be sent to the island in mid-October. As part and parcel of

this strategy, the Japanese undertook to use their nighttime

control of the waters of Ironbottom Sound to neutralize Henderson

Field through battleship bombardments.241

The Japanese planned these much more substantial efforts to

retake the airfield with a confidence borne of the ease with

which the Express had been able to operate within Ironbottom

Sound during the hours of darkness throughout the month of

September. Having seen the Express work as a taxi for

Kawaguchi’s brigade-sized detachment; it was only natural that

the Japanese would seek to run a truck through the same open

entrance, when they perceived the need for a cargo that only a

truck could carry. And having seen the Express conduct tip-and-

run bombardments of the Marine positions “unmolested,” to use

241 Ibid, 267-69. 147

King’s word, it was only logical for them to think that a much

larger bombardment force would be equally unmolested. Of course,

battleships were capital ships, not lightly committed to a

secondary theater even by as air-minded a commander as

Yamamoto.242 For theCombined Fleet to commit battleships, the

perception of risk must have been minimal – a sad commentary on

American sea denial efforts to date.

C. An Almost Lost Campaign

The Japanese plans were, in the main, implemented. The

Express did run every night between October 1 and October 14, and

it was supplemented with light cruisers and seaplane tenders. It

thus became a ‘super-Express,” capable of moving heavy artillery

and tanks as well as infantry (See Appendix A). On the evening

of October 13, when Japanese battleships Haruna and Kongo

unleashed a devastating fusillade of 14-inch shells on Henderson

Field, effectively suppressing it for the one and only time in

the campaign, an episode known to all on the American side who

lived through its terrors as “The Bombardment” or “The Night.”

In approaching Henderson Field, the battleships had made a high-

242 Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor, 183.148

speed circuit of Savo Island.243 No mines barred their passage.

Four PT boats did sortie from Tulagi Harbor; this was, in fact,

their first action since reaching the theater of operations. The

battleships’ escorting cruisers and destroyers chased them away

with little difficulty. Their only effect had been to cut short

the bombardment by five minutes.244

By this time, the U. S. surface fleet was back in the war,

although its operations did not impede those of the Tokyo

Express. Of course, that was not the American intent. On

October 11, Rear Admiral Scott took Task Force 64 west of Cape

Esperance with the object of intercepting a ‘super-Express’ run

scheduled for that evening. Going into battle, Scott handicapped

himself in two ways. First, he deployed his force (heavy

cruisers San Francisco and Salt Lake City, light cruisers Boise and Helena,

and five destroyers) in a single column, line-ahead, with three

of the destroyers in front of the cruisers and two behind. This

formation repeated the mistaken pre-war concept of tying

destroyers to cruisers rather than having them act independently.

Scott probably knew better, but the formation was a concession to243 Prados, Islands of Destiny, 118.244 Frank, Guadalcanal, 315-19.

149

Task Force 64’s lack of experience working together. Even so,

Scott was to have plenty of trouble controlling his force.

Second, Scott elected to make San Francisco his flagship. This was

a mistake on two counts. First, light cruisers such as Helena and

Boise were capable of laying down prodigious amounts of 6-inch

fire in a short time, making them more useful for night surface

battle at close range than the heavy cruisers, with their

comparatively slow-firing 8-inch main batteries. Second, only

Scott’s light cruisers were equipped with SG radar. That meant

that they were the only ships whose commanders enjoyed a clear

idea of the developing tactical situation, which they would have

great difficulty communicating to Scott over cluttered-up voice-

radio circuits. As against this, Scott’s decision to meet the

Japanese west of Ironbottom Sound was sound, though unfortunately

not followed by subsequent American commanders. The wider waters

of the Slot gave him more room to maneuver against torpedoes.

More importantly, it had been months since any Allied warship had

plied those waters, and it was an excellent means by which to

secure surprise.

150

Surprise, when it came, was complete; but it was not the

Express that was surprised. It was, instead, a bombardment group

commanded by Rear Admiral Aritomo Goto consisting of the three

surviving heavy cruisers of IJN CruDiv 6 and two destroyers,

headed for Henderson Field. The forces were hidden from each

other by a rain squall. Shortly before contact, Scott reversed

course from northeast to southwest, a maneuver which threw his

ships squarely across the path of Goto’s oncoming column, but

which also caused Scott’s three lead destroyers to become

separated from the formation. Scott, concerned that the wayward

destroyers were coming up on his starboard side, very nearly

missed the opportunity of a lifetime for an admiral to cap his

opponent’s “T.” Fortune, in the form of a misunderstood voice-

radio transmission, came to his rescue. Helena’s captain took

Scott’s “Roger,” an acknowledgement of receipt of a request to

open fire, as an affirmative response to the request. When

Helena opened fire, so, spontaneously, did the other American

cruisers. Goto, astonished, ordered a starboard turn; the ships

of his command who complied with that order were to be sunk or

severely damaged. American shells then found the bridge of his

151

flagship, heavy cruiser Aoba, and mortally wounded him; his last

word was “Bakayaro’ – “fools,” or “stupid bastards,” an

indication that he thought he had been fired on by the Japanese

transport group.

In the first few minutes of battle, Aoba was severely

damaged, heavy cruiser Furutaka was mortally wounded, and

destroyer Fubuki was sunk. Scott’s wayward destroyers suffered,

too; Duncan, on a quixotic one-ship charge towards the Japanese,

was hit by both friendly and enemy fire and gutted forward,

eventually to sink, and Farenholt was hit, most likely by friendly

fire. Meanwhile, the third Japanese heavy cruiser, Kinugasa, and

destroyer Hatsuyuki, elected to turn to port rather than

starboard, and made a clean getaway. To add insult to injury,

Kinugasa’s gunners, clearly the best in action this night, were

able to get accurate firing solutions on both Boise and Salt Lake

City, using only her after gun turret. The two hits Kinugasa

scored on Boise caused heavy casualties and nearly sunk the ship,

as one of the shells hit the forward magazine, burning out the

handling rooms and three gun turrets. The two hits she scored on

Salt Lake City caused moderate damage.

152

The Americans won this battle; they sunk more ships and

frustrated the Japanese bombardment mission. It was, however, a

disorganized, confused, undisciplined affair from which it was

easy to draw the wrong lessons, particularly as to the use of the

single column. Other than subtracting a heavy cruiser and a

destroyer from the IJN, it had no long term consequences; the

‘Super-Express which it sought to intercept arrived, unloaded and

withdrew without interruption (See Appendix A). Moreover, it

was, for Task Force 64, a cameo appearance only, as two of its

cruisers were going to be spending months in the repair yards.

Within two days of “The Bombardment,” the “High Speed

Convoy” was unloading off Tassafaronga. By October 15, the

Japanese had effectively moved the Sendai Division and most of

its equipment to Guadalcanal, producing the most severe crisis of

the campaign for the Americans. One almost immediate casualty of

the crisis was Ghormley. Nimitz was disquieted by what he saw at

Ghormley’s headquarters on the Argonne at Noumea during an

inspection on September 28. The final straw was a message from

Ghormley on October 16 in which Ghormley proclaimed “my forces

totally inadequate [to] meet [the] situation.” That day,

153

Nimitz, aghast at what he perceived correctly was Ghormley’s

defeatist turn of mind, sought and secured King’s approval to

relieve Ghormley as COMSOPAC. Halsey, in Noumea to assume

command of the Enterprise battle group now that her repairs were

finished, was “utterly surprised” when, on October 18, he was

handed the dispatch appointing him the new COMSOPAC: “This is the

hottest potato they ever handed me.”245

It was a hot potato. By the end of October, the Japanese

had as many men on the island as the Americans did, a situation

which would remain true through November.246 Ultimately, however,

the Japanese effort failed. Heroic efforts at Henderson put a

handful of aircraft back in the air (including General Geiger’s

own Catalina, used in an improbable, but successful, torpedo

attack), and these, plus B-17s from Espiritu Santo, accounted for

three of the six transports in the “High Speed Convoy.” Like the

Kawaguchi Detachment, which had landed supplied and equipment

with great effort, only to lose it a few days later to Marine

raiders at Point Taivu, the Sendai Division, lost much of the

supplies and equipment which the ‘Super-Expresses” had carried245 Hornfischer, Neptune’s Inferno, 203-4, 209.246 McKearney, The Solomons Naval Campaign, 48.

154

within a few days, to American air attack and naval bombardment

of the landing sites. Moreover, the Sendai Division found the

Guadalcanal jungle no easier to go through than had Kawaguchi’s

Detachment. Between October 24 and October 26, the Marines,

reinforced by then with the Army’s 164th Infantry Regiment,

stopped the Japanese attack on Henderson Field not far short of

the runway. It was the Imperial Army’s last attack on Henderson

Field.

Narrowly rebuffed in October, the Japanese tried the same

formula in November. The lesson of “The Bombardment” was that

unless stopped, the Japanese battleships could indeed neutralize

Henderson Field. The USN therefore had to do battle to defend

it, ready or not. The two resulting engagements, collectively

referred to as the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (November 13-15,

1942), cost the IJN a battleship apiece, though they cost the USN

much more The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal demonstrated to the

IJN that battleship bombardment, the one reliable means available

to the Japanese for neutralizing Henderson Field came with an

unacceptable price tag. If Henderson Field could not be

neutralized, a convoy big enough to land a decisive ground force

155

could not make it to Guadalcanal, the airfield could not be

retaken, and the campaign no longer had a strategic purpose for

the Japanese. The convoy air-sea battle of November 14, a large-

scale replay of the transport air-sea battle of August 25, proved

these points beyond dispute.

D. The Last Days of the Guadalcanal Express

The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal was strategically decisive

in that it convinced the IJN that the campaign could not be won,

and the IJN gradually brought the Japanese high command around to

this point of view. That, however, took time; Imperial General

Headquarters formally made that decision only on December 26,

1942.247 Meanwhile, things did not change much on the ground or

in the seas and skies around the island. The worn-out, malaria-

ridden First Marine Division was gradually replaced with U. S.

Army troops. The perimeter was gradually extended west past

Point Cruz. Saratoga and North Carolina finished their repairs.

They were joined by new battleship Indiana, a replacement for

South Dakota, which had been shot up in the Naval Battle of

Guadalcanal. The Cactus Air Force was reinforced and its

247 Frank, Guadalcanal, 538.156

operational conditions gradually improved. These changes did not

alter the fundamental facts that there was a strong Japanese

garrison on the island. For as long as Imperial General

Headquarters was deciding on its next steps, the Japanese still

needed the Express.

Behind the familiar appearances, there had been two big

changes. One was at the top of the American theater command.

Halsey was the antithesis of Ghormley and Fletcher. Ghormley and

Fletcher sought to conserve naval assets; Halsey was not afraid

to expend them to achieve larger strategic goals. The

leadership Ghormley and Fletcher provided was uninspiring and

irresolute. That was never a problem with Halsey. His message,

inscribed in letters three feet high on a huge sign over Tulagi

Lagoon, was simple, forceful, and direct: “Kill Japs, kill Japs

and keep on killing Japs!” Halsey made mistakes.248 They were

248 A conspicuous example would be his decision to engage theJapanese as far north as he did at Santa Cruz. He should havelet them come further south, burn a little more oil (they werelow by the time the battle took place in any event) and getfurther within the range of American land-based aviation. Thesewere all appropriate steps for an inferior force such as the onehe had. Halsey was later heard to say he would not make themistake of meeting the Japanese in battle north of Santa Isabelagain. Fortunately, he did not have to.

157

always mistakes of aggression. His will to do battle was

infectious. It is impossible to say how much difference it made

to individual soldiers, sailors and airmen to know that their

commander was determined to engage the enemy closely on every

possible occasion, and expected them to follow his example. That

it did make a difference is impossible to deny.249

The second change was that the Americans were at last able

to field a multi-dimensional sea denial force. The seaborne

component of this force were MTBs, present at last in sufficient

strength to send out eight-boat intercept groups. Its airborne

component was a group of half a dozen SOCs – Navy scout

observation planes left behind by various cruisers damaged in the

night actions around Guadalcanal. The SOCs had no attack

capability, but performed a critical reconnaissance role.

Beginning in January, the SOCs were supplemented by PBY-5 “Black

Cats,” which did have an attack capability.250

These new forces were facing an Express which had been

steadily worn down by the constant demands of supply runs and

combat. Apart from the battleships, destroyers had been the249 Dillard, Operational Leadership, 15.250 Bulkley, At Close Quarters, 95.

158

chief Japanese casualties of the ferocious night engagements of

October and November. In addition to Fubuki, sunk at Cape

Esperance, the Japanese lost two Reinforcement Group destroyers

to air attack the next day as they searched for survivors of

Furutaka and Fubuki.251 It was the heaviest toll since August 28.

The first night engagement of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal

cost the Japanese two more Express veterans; the second night

engagement, another Express veteran. Other destroyers were badly

damaged in these engagements, which were hard service even when

the ships escaped damage. One thing about the Express, however,

was familiar; Rear Admiral Tanaka was back in charge of the

Reinforcement Group.

Tanaka soon got the chance to vindicate his American

nickname, “Tenacious.” On November 30, he led a group of eight

destroyers on an Express run to Tassafaronga. By now, Express

tactics had changed to accommodate the increasingly dangerous

environment. Instead of debarking from the destroyers using

daihatsu or ship’s boats, supplies were packed into sanitized oil

drums left sufficiently empty to float and linked in long chains;

251 Frank, Guadalcanal, 308-09. 159

the idea was that the drums would be dropped from the ships as

they reversed course and float to shore in the ships’ backwash,

minimizing the time spent unloading.252 Six of Tanaka’s

destroyers were carrying drums, 200 to 240 per ship; two,

Naganaki, Tanaka’s flagship, and Takanami, would be the screen.

This night, the Americans had a surprise in store for

Tanaka, a cruiser-destroyer surface action group, Task Force 67,

under the command of Rear Admiral Carlton Wright. Wright had four

heavy and one light cruisers and six destroyers under his

command, and he knew Tanaka was coming. It seemed like a

mismatch, and in a way, it was. The Americans thought they had

learned what they needed to know about night surface engagements,

but they still made many of the same mistakes. In particular,

Wright refused a request from his lead destroyer division to fire

torpedoes when that division had a favorable angle to do so, a

fact evident to it, but not to Wright, who had his flag on heavy

cruiser Minneapolis. Tanaka, as soon as he was aware of the

Americans, terminated the supply operation and ordered the

destroyers to attack with torpedoes. Never were the Long Lances

252 Frank, Guadalcanal, 502. 160

more effective. Wright’s cruisers, which had intercepted Tanaka

at the narrowest part of the passage between Guadalcanal and Savo

Island, had little room to maneuver. New Orleans lost her bow

forward of No. 2 turret when a Long Lance hit an unarmored

auxiliary magazine carrying bombs for scout planes. Minneapolis

lost her bow forward of No. 1 turret to a Long Lance, and took

another amidships. Pensacola took a Long Lance in an oil fuel

tank adjacent to her mainmast, which became a torch. Heroic

damage control work saved all three ships. Nothing, however,

could save Northampton, which took two Long Lances in

approximately the same spot as Pensacola, and in which a bad oil

fire compromised efforts to control the ship’s list. American

cruiser and destroyer gunfire sank Takanami, but none of Tanaka’s

other ships took a scratch. The one and only direct engagement

between an American surface force and an Express reinforcement

group ended in an American humiliation second only to Savo

Island.253 253 The best description of the battle is undoubtedly RussellCrenshaw’s Tassafaronga (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press,1995), 33-53. Interestingly, Wright’s post-action report is thefirst official USN document of which this author is aware whichdiscussed the use of mines along the Guadalcanal coast to stopthe Express. Crenshaw, Tassafaronga, 63.

161

With Japanese troops on Guadalcanal starving, Tanaka could

not rest on his laurels. A ten-ship Express run on December 3

seemed like a reversion to old times. The only American

opposition was from the Cactus Air Force, which staged a twilight

raid that inflicted light damage on destroyer Makinami at the

expense of two aircraft. Off Tassafaronga, Tanaka dumped 1,500

drums of supplies intended for the Seventeenth Army. The new

drum technique, however, now revealed a problem; the drums were

slow to reach the beach, and were therefore vulnerable while in

the water. American aircraft sank all but 310 of them. It had

been a successful run, but a failed resupply.254 Tanaka’s own

verdict was harsh, but fair: “The loss of four-fifths of this

precious material was intolerable when it had been transported at

such great risk and cost, and when it was so badly needed by the

starving troops on the island.”255

Tanaka resolved to do better on December 7. That night he

sent a twelve-ship Express, including large anti-aircraft

destroyer Teruzuki. The drum technique had been refined to limit

254 Frank, Guadalcanal, 520.255 Tanaka, Struggle for Guadalcanal, 71.

162

the drums to 100 per line, with the destroyers being requested to

come as close inshore as possible before dropping the lines.

This Express run, made on the first anniversary of Pearl

Harbor, turned into a sea-denial nightmare for the Japanese.

Alerted by coast watchers, the Americans prepared a warm

reception. It began with a raid by thirteen Cactus Air Force

SBDs at 1840. A near-miss on Nowaki flooded an engine room and a

boiler room, killing seventeen men and leaving her without power.

She returned to the Shortlands at the end of a tow rope from

Naganami, escorted by Ariake and Arashi. The remaining Japanese

destroyers pressed on, only to be ambushed by SOC-guided PT boats

between Savo and Esperance. The PT’s fired many torpedoes, none

of which hit. PT 59 came close enough to destroyer Kuroshio to

trade machine-gun fire, causing ten Japanese casualties. The

unnerved Japanese abandoned the mission. It was a near-perfect

exercise in sea denial.256

It had profound repercussions. Strained to the breaking

point by months of unrelenting operations against an increasingly

dangerous enemy, the Express captains and crews had reached their256 Frank, Guadalcanal, 520-21; Buckley, At Close Quarters, 95-96, Prados, Islands of Destiny, 207.

163

limit. Next day, General Imamura Hitoshi, the new Eighth Area

Army Commander, arrived in Rabaul. Eighth Fleet, Eleventh Air

Fleet and Combined Fleet officers gave him a reception he would

not soon forget. They took the occasion to deliver a

“bombshell,” informing him that they were stopping all

Reinforcement Group runs, effective immediately, on the ostensible

basis that the continuing losses of destroyers would make it

impossible for the Combined Fleet to fight the great ‘decisive

battle.’ It was a polite Japanese-tea-ceremony mutiny, a sit-

down strike by the Navy in everything but name.257

Stunned, Imamura begged the Navy to relent. His

protestations induced Admirals Mikawa and Kusaka to agree to one

more run, on December 11. The number of screening destroyers was

increased from three, which had proven inadequate on December 7,

to five. Tanaka himself commanded from Teruzuki, one of the IJN’s

newest and most potent destroyers. He would need all the help he

could get. Allied code breakers had provided the Americans

advance warning.258

257 Frank, Guadalcanal, 521; Prados, Islands of Destiny, 207.258 Prados, Islands of Destiny, 207.

164

The eleven destroyers of this run escaped serious damage

from a twilight raid by fourteen SBDs of the Cactus Air Force at

1855. The six transport destroyers cast off their 1,200 drums of

supplies off Cape Esperance and began their withdrawal around

0115. They were immediately jumped by five PT boats, three of

which let fly with torpedoes at Teruzuki. One hit aft with a

blast that ripped off a propeller shaft and the rudder, and

ignited an oil fire. Soon the aft magazine exploded. For the

second time on a reinforcement run, Tanaka was knocked

unconscious. He awoke to find his flagship at Tassafaronga,

destroyer Naganami, hove to alongside, recovering survivors from

the rapidly sinking Teruzuki. Tanaka immediately transferred his

flag. He took a very ‘Japanese’ approach to the loss of Teruzuki:

The loss of my flagship, our newest andbest destroyer, to such inferior enemystrength was a serious responsibility. I haveoften thought that it would have been easierfor me to have been killed in that firstexplosion. Forced to remain in bed becauseof my injuries, I reported by radio the factthat the flag had been shifted to Naganami.I withheld any mention of my being hurt forfear of the demoralizing effect it might haveon the force.259

259 Tanaka, Struggle for Guadalcanal, 71.165

Distressed as Tanaka was over the loss of his flagship, the

Japanese ashore were equally distressed at the result of the drum

drop-off. Only 220 of the 1,200 drums got to their intended

recipients.260

The closing of the Japanese logistics pipeline left the

Seventeenth Army on Guadalcanal in straits that are barely hinted

at by the word ‘dire.’ Frank summarizes:

The impact of the inability of the ImperialNavy to deliver provisions in December to the17th Army was calamitous. Rations in the 38thDivision fell to 1/6 for the men in the frontline and 1/10 for the others, but even underthis regimen, the unit consumed all the foodlanded in December by the 17th. Of theapproximately 6,000 men in the division,roughly 30% retain the strength to fetchrations for their comrades, but a mere 250men possessed reasonably full combatcapability. In the second Division rationslikewise diminished far below subsistencelevels. Of about 1000 men in the 4th and 16thInfantry Regiments, over two thirds weresick, injured or detailed to support those onthe line, leaving only 100 or 200 at thefront. Unceasing shelling and air attackstook the lives of 4 to 10 men per day perregiment on a good day, and 20 to 30 on a badday. On December 7, the 8th Area Armynotified Tokyo that about 50 men died eachday on Guadalcanal. This rate acceleratedsuch that by mid-December, the Sendai

260 Frank, Guadalcanal, 524.166

Division alone withered by about 40 deathsevery 24 hours.

On December 18, Major Mishiyama of the228th Infantry recorded in his diary: “…orders received to feed men to the end of themonth on food we have now. This is beyondoutrageous.” Other diaries portray what oneofficer termed the “very bottom of the humancondition.” The entire army was composed ofpale wisps of men, all serious skin drapedfilthy, sopping clothes. Vast numbers werewracked with fevers, for which there was nomedicine. Army headquarters reported they atetree shoots, coconuts and grass growing inthe rivers. In his diary, Second Lieut.Yasuo Ko’o, the color bearer of the 124thInfantry, recorded an unfailing formula withwhich he calibrated the life expectancy ofhis fellows at the turn of the year:

Those who can stand – 30 daysThose who can sit up – three weeksThose who cannot sit up – one weekThose who urinate lying down – three

daysThose who have stopped speaking – two

daysThose who have stopped blinking –

tomorrow

“It is said,” noted another officer, “ifyou lose your appetite it is the end.”261

The Navy’s cancellation of the Express was final.262 Though

the Tokyo Express would perform a near-miraculous extraction of261 Ibid, 526-27.262 Prados, Islands of Destiny, 208.

167

the survivors of the Guadalcanal garrison, it would never do

another reinforcement run to the island. The campaign would

drag on for another six weeks, but it was effectively over.

CONCLUSION

The story of the U. S. Navy’s reaction – ‘response’ is too

strong a word for what was going on in the early days of the

Guadalcanal campaign – to the challenge represented by the Tokyo

Express, contains many potential lessons. One of the most

obvious relates to the advantage which a military force capable

of fighting a war on a 24-hour day has over one which is only

prepared to fight during the hours of daylight. Guadalcanal put

the U. S. military in the embarrassing position of having a navy

that could not fight at night attempting to defend an airbase

whose air complement could not fly at night. Had the U. S. been

an original participant in World War II, this lack of

preparedness would have been more understandable. By December,

1941, however, World War II was over two years old, and the U. S.

military had plenty of time in which to see how important night

operations were in modern war. The ‘Blitz’ and the British

carrier strike on Taranto in November, 1940 were just two

168

outstanding examples. The Americans’ inability to fight at night

was to cost them dear in the course of the campaign.

A second lesson is that the war which one will end up

fighting may end up bearing no resemblance to the one that had

been anticipated in years of pre-war preparation. A Navy that

anticipated gunning its adversary to death in the wide blue

stretches of the central Pacific found itself fighting in

restricted waters where other weapons – the torpedo, the mine –

were at least as potent as its preferred weapon of choice. The

Navy had to be prepared to fight the war as it found it, not as

it wanted it. The alternative was to let the Tokyo Express run

at will – and that was essentially what the Navy did for the

first part of the campaign. The results were expensive, and

nearly catastrophic.

A third lesson to be drawn from the U. S. Navy’s reluctantly

fought sea-denial campaign relates to the notion of cross-domain

synergy. This is a concept frequently discussed in a form of

warfare that resembles a ‘sea denial’ battle in certain respects,

namely, an “anti-access/area denial” battle. Indeed, the author

of the only published book on “A2/AD” warfare, Sam Tangredi,

169

acknowledges that the “A2/AD” concept has distant roots in

earlier notions of ‘sea denial.’263 Tangredi notes the

importance, in the A2/AD context, of the ability to strike the

enemy simultaneously or sequentially from dominant positions in

all combat mediums or domains in such a way that operations in

each domain provide support for the others.264 A comparison of

the two sea-denial battles fought around Guadalcanal points to

the significance of this factor in the sea-denial context, as

well. The Cactus Air Force lost its one-dimensional battle

against the Express in September. In December, however, American

forces in different dimensions worked together, and their

operations aided one another, in ways foreseen and unforeseen, to

achieve a different result. In fact, the Express was always

vulnerable to interdiction, and it did not take a major effort to

shut it down as an effective logistical pipeline. The forces

involved were a small percentage of those committed to the

campaign as a whole. It would have spared the USN and the United

263 Sam J. Tangredi, Anti-Access Warfare: Countering A2/AD Strategies(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2013), 36.264 Tangredi, Anti-Access Warfare, 34.

170

States much blood and treasure had this been done three months

earlier.

Perhaps the most important lesson to be derived from this

story is the one which gradually impressed itself upon Nimitz:

the importance of harassing the enemy with every conceivable weapon.

Early on in the campaign, Ghormley found himself left with few

weapons. His carriers were checkmated by the enemy’s. His

surface fleet was second best in an arena where to be second was

to be sunk. Potentially useful submarines were under the

jurisdiction of others. MTBs were not yet in-theater. The only

weapons left to him were mines. He never even considered them.

Yet the relevant factors suggest they may have been enough by

themselves, and much better than nothing at all.

Later on, Halsey won by getting everything he had into the

fight. At Tassafaronga, his surface navy demonstrated, sadly,

that it was still only second best. No matter; under Halsey, the

Americans kept fighting every Express run. A weird mixture of

plywood torpedo boats and old cruiser float planes did the trick.

Every conceivable weapon was exactly what it took to stop the

Express. When Halsey finally gave it a try, it worked.

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© James A. Smith 2014

172

A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Guadalcanal generated such a tremendous outpouring of

scholarly and popular historical books, memoirs, biographies and

articles that its historiography could, by now, be a book in

itself.265 No brief essay could possibly do it justice. Within

this massive historiography, however, one may identify works of

special interest to the campaign’s sea-denial aspects.

The sea-denial battles of the Guadalcanal campaign were

largely – at times, exclusively - battles between the Tokyo

Express and the Cactus Air Force. Given this fact, it is

surprising that there is only one scholarly work which devotes

itself to any of these battles: Roger and Dennis LeTourneau’s

Operation KE: The Cactus Air Force and the Withdrawal from Guadalcanal (2012).

Operation KE, the extraction of the starving Japanese garrison

from Guadalcanal early in February, 1943, was one of the greatest

accomplishments of the Tokyo Express. The LeTourneaus’ book is

likely to become the definitive work on this operation. It is a

masterpiece of mature Guadalcanal scholarship: meticulously

265 And it has been. Eugene L. Rasor, The Solomon Islands Campaign, Guadalcanal to Rabaul: Historiography and Annotated Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997).

173

researched from American and Japanese primary sources,

technically proficient, careful in its consideration of the

campaign from both points of view, strenuously objective, and

highly readable. Yet the A2/AD struggle which is the subject of

this work was the very last chapter of a much longer series of

battles, and while the LeTourneaus’ work throws light by

inference on these earlier struggles, it does not purport to

address them. The complete, definitive English-language history

of the Tokyo Express remains unwritten. When it is written, it

will owe a debt to two works whose extensive use of Japanese

sources has opened the door to greater understanding of the

problems facing the Express and the unique culture of the

Japanese military: Paul Dull’s A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy

(1978) and Mark Parrillo’s The Japanese Merchant Marine in World War II

(1993).

The Cactus Air Force, on the other hand, has received a full

measure of attention. Thomas Miller’s The Cactus Air Force (1969) is

the standard account, but others abound. Some are unit

histories. Robert Lawrence Ferguson’s Guadalcanal, The Island of Fire:

Reflections of the 347th Fighter Group (1987) is one such; Richard C.

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Knott’s Black Cat Raiders of World War II (1981), another. Other works

incorporate the story of the Cactus Air Force within the larger

story of the air war in the South Pacific, or the Pacific as a

whole. A noteworthy example is Eric Burgerud’s Fire in the Sky: The

Air War for the South Pacific (2000), which does for the air war in the

South Pacific what Bergerud’s Touched by Fire: The Land War in the South

Pacific did for the ground campaign. One can only hope Mr. Bergurud

has another book in him, Fire at Sea, to turn a remarkable pair into

a more remarkable trilogy. At Guadalcanal, the lack of U. S.

night combat aerial capabilities was, to borrow Sherlock Holmes’

phrase, “the dog that did not bark;” the subject is covered by

Joel Gray Taylor in “Development of Night Air Operations, 1941-

1952” (1953).

The titles of books about the U. S. surface navy at

Guadalcanal often feature words like “struggle,” “inferno” and

“fierce,” which reflects how brutal an introduction to modern war

this campaign was for the USN. The major works are ably

bookended by Samuel Eliot Morison’s The Struggle for Guadalcanal

(1949), Vol. V of his epic History of United States Naval Operations in World

War II, and James F. Hornfischer’s Neptune’s Inferno: The U. S. Navy at

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Guadalcanal (2011). In between these major works are a host of

worthwhile surface-warfare studies such as C. W. Kilpatrick’s The

Naval Night Battles in the Solomons (1987),Vincent P. O’Hara’s The U. S.

Navy against the Axis: Surface Combat, 1941-45 (2007) and Adrian Stewart’s

Guadalcanal: World War II’s Fiercest Naval Campaign (1985). Early works such

as Morison’s often suffered from an inability to tell both sides

of the story, and an inclination towards hagiography. More

recent works, particularly academic studies, have taken a far

more stringent tone, faulting the Navy’s unrealistic preparation

and training during the interwar years and the poor leadership of

force commanders in combat. Two published articles, Trent Hone’s

“’Give Them Hell!’ - The U. S. Navy’s Night Combat Doctrine and

the Campaign for Guadalcanal.” (2006) and Thomas G. Mahnken’s

“Asymmetric Warfare at Sea: the Naval Battles of Guadalcanal,

1942-1943 (2011) exemplify this trend.266

266 Unpublished professional and academic critiques are even morescathing. See T. J. McKearney, “The Solomons Naval Campaign: AParadigm for Surface Warships in Maritime Strategy.” Unpublishedthesis, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, 1985.http://hdl.handle.net/10945/21550; Reardon, Jeff T., “TheEvolution of the U.S. Navy into an Effective Night-Fighting ForceDuring the Solomon Islands Campaign, 1942 – 1943.” Unpublisheddoctoral dissertation, The Ohio State University, August, 2008.https://etd.ohiolink.edu/rws_etd/document/get/ohiou1214239278/inline.

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Of the many individual battle studies, the one most directly

bearing on a battle between the Tokyo Express and the U. S. Navy

(indeed, the only such battle) is Russell Crenshaw’s Tassafaronga

(1995). Crenshaw’s work is not only an excellent synopsis of the

battle itself, but a full and complete explanation of the

doctrinal, gunnery and torpedo problems which beset the USN in

night surface battles during the Guadalcanal campaign and beyond.

Motor torpedo (“PT”) boats played an important role in the

second Guadalcanal anti-access battle. Robert J. Bulkley’s At

Close Quarters: PT Boats in the United States Navy (1962), though old, is

very comprehensive and still as close to a definitive account of

the exploits of these craft as we have. In a small-unit war such

as the PTs waged, individual unit accounts assume a greater-than-

usual importance: The Mosquito Fleet (1963) by Bern Keating is

representative.

Submarines aided the Allied anti-access effort, and arguably

should have done so to a much greater extent than they did.

Theodore E. Roscoe’s United States Submarine Operations in World War II

(1949) is an informative, if hagiographic, early account which

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includes some good information on the operation of the “S-Boats”

from Brisbane. Clay Blair’s Silent Victory: The U. S. Submarine War against

Japan (1975) is a far more objective and definitive account.

The USN forgot for a time about the existence or the

possibilities of mine warfare in the Guadalcanal campaign (as in

others before and since), but no account of the sea-denial

aspects of that campaign should repeat that mistake. Mines Against

Japan by Ellis Johnson and David A. Katcher (1973), which relies

heavily on USSBS data, is the most comprehensive account and a

valuable reference, though the USSBS data as to the efficacy of

“outer area” minelaying by U. S. submarines must be viewed as

suspect.267 Two other works add useful operational details and

technical information: Weapons that Wait: Mine Warfare in the U. S. Navy

(1991) by Gregory K. Hartmann with Scott C. Truver, and Most

Dangerous Sea: A History of Mine Warfare and an Account of U. S. Navy Mine Warfare

Operations in World War II and Korea by Arnold S. Lott. If a genuine

classic of naval history may ever be said to have arisen out of

mine warfare, Lott’s book is probably it.267 This data is deconstructed in John Alden, “Results of U. S. Submarine Minelaying Activities During World War II as Reported in the Strategic Bombing Survey,” Warship International 30, Issue 1 (Jan. 1993), 46-57.

178

Providing context and framework within which to place these

individual aspects of the campaign are the more general histories

of the Guadalcanal campaign, and its place in the larger struggle

for the Solomons. Morison’s Struggle for Guadalcanal, though focused

on naval operations, is broad enough to be included as an early

example of the type. So are Samuel B. Griffith II’s The Battle for

Guadalcanal (1962), and Merritt L. Twining’s No Bended Knee: The Battle

for Guadalcanal (1996), both of which were written by Marine

officers who distinguished themselves there. Also helpful is

Edwin P. Hoyt’s Guadalcanal (1999). Not to be omitted from any

such compendium is Eric Hammel’s trilogy of works on Guadalcanal:

Starvation Island (1987), Carrier Clash (1999) and Decision at Sea (1988).

The long-term trends in Guadalcanal macro-history have been

(1) a shift in focus from just the Allied side of the battle to

an effort to objectively view the battle from both sides, a trend

that has accelerated greatly with the increasing availability of

original-language and translated Japanese sources; (2) an

increasing awareness of the inter-relationship of the three

dimensions of the Guadalcanal campaign – air, sea, and land – to

each other, and (3) an increasing understanding of the role

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played by intelligence and cryptology in shaping command

decisions, an understanding facilitated by the fairly recent

declassification of relevant primary sources. Two outstanding

examples of these trends are Richard B. Frank’s Guadalcanal: The Definitive

Account of the Landmark Battle (1990) and John Prados’ Islands of Destiny: The

Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun (2012). Frank’s book,

which acknowledges its debt to Sensi Sosho, the 104 volume official

Japanese history of World War II, is as comprehensive and

definitive a single-volume work on the Guadalcanal campaign as is

ever likely to be written, and is practically the only source in

English from which a reasonably complete enumeration of the runs

of the Tokyo Express can be extracted. Prados’ book, the work of

a specialist in Pacific War naval intelligence and cryptography,

brings the intelligence aspects of the campaign into sharp

relief. This paper owes a heavy debt to both works.

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