Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun (10 page)

Fredericksburg, Texas, is not quite a two-horse town, but it is a place where Main Street still means something. There are just a couple of major intersections and a population of less than seven thousand people, many of them, like Chester W. Nimitz himself, of German immigrant stock. It was much smaller—just a few streets—when Nimitz was born in a white frame house there in February 1885. Nearly 200 miles from water, above all this town could be considered unlikely to produce an admiral of the ocean seas. But that would be to ignore the determination of the man, his hard-boiled common sense, and the influence of his grandfather—a former German merchant seaman. In fact, the practical Nimitz sought a college education and saw the service academies as the way to obtain his degree. Nimitz chose the Army and applied to West Point, only to discover no appointment was available. So he entered and won a competition sponsored by his congressman for an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy. Nimitz graduated from Annapolis seventh in the class of 1905, initially serving aboard the battleship
Ohio
. He was commissioned two years later.

Nimitz was perceptive, resourceful, and smart as a whip. As a young ensign in the Philippines he skippered the gunboat
Panay
, and got a destroyer command when his contemporaries were mostly still division officers. Nimitz remained unaffected by the court-martial required when he ran his destroyer aground at Batangas. That kind of incident could finish a less talented officer. But his admiral downgraded the proceeding to a board of inquiry, which issued a reprimand, and then rejected any public upbraiding, confining the reprimand simply to its statement in the board report. With submarines in their infancy in the U.S. fleet, Nimitz became a submariner—under protest, it is true (he had wanted a battleship billet),
but a key career development. Barely four years out of Annapolis, Nimitz led a submarine flotilla as a lieutenant. His evident ability and ease at making friends served Nimitz well.

He was also intrepid and resourceful, as shown when Nimitz rescued a sailor fallen overboard. On a different occasion he saved another seaman from drowning. An engineering specialist, Nimitz championed diesel power to replace gasoline engines in the submarine fleet. Later he survived a potentially fatal accident with a diesel engine, losing part of a finger but saved by his Academy class ring, which jammed the works and prevented the machine from sucking in his arm. Nimitz participated in the first underway refueling ever conducted by the Navy, was an aide to top admirals commanding the entire U.S. fleet, and established the Navy’s first reserve officer training corps unit. He captained a cruiser with the Asiatic Fleet; submarine, cruiser, and battleship divisions; and made rear admiral in 1938. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz was in charge of the Navy’s personnel department when, ten days after the Pearl Harbor attack, he was suddenly ordered to the stricken base to breathe life into the still-stunned Pacific Fleet. In a highly unusual tribute to his qualities, Chester Nimitz was promoted from rear directly to full admiral as he took up the Pacific Fleet command.

The wrecks of the warships devastated by the Japanese still smoldered as Nimitz arrived at Pearl. He raised eyebrows, holding his change-of-command ceremony on the deck of a submarine—the first time a fleet command had ever transferred on an undersea boat—and more by refusing to relieve officers on the Pacific Fleet staff. Already the dispute over who was “responsible” for Pearl Harbor had ignited a witch-hunt for scapegoats. Admiral Nimitz proved equally loyal to subordinates and superiors—a crucial element in restoring the fleet’s confidence. He did fire a few men, most important some of those responsible for the fiasco during an attempt to reinforce Wake Island, but only after careful consideration.

Admiral Nimitz coupled this consideration with smarts and a tactically aggressive stance. His carrier attacks materially annoyed the Japanese. Nimitz had no problem with the improvised scheme to fly land-based B-25 bombers off an aircraft carrier for the Doolittle raid. He appreciated the information from Captain Layton, his fleet intelligence officer, and Commander Rochefort of Station Hypo. The admiral’s response laid the basis for the Coral Sea and Midway actions. While higher-ups were still disputing
theaters and commanders, it was Nimitz, in the spring of 1942, who first suggested taking a Marine Raider battalion and using it against the Japanese at Tulagi. Then, four days after the Battle of the Coral Sea, Admiral Nimitz issued guidance to Vice Admiral Ghormley at SOPAC. The orders instructed Ghormley to prepare a major amphibious offensive against Japanese-held positions. Guadalcanal had yet to become the target.

Thus Chester Nimitz set the stage. In the South Pacific, Vice Admiral Ghormley spent a month familiarizing himself with the area and visiting the key players, from General MacArthur to Australian government officials and French colonials in Nouméa, where SOPAC headquarters would be located. Ghormley assumed command of SOPAC on June 19. He planned to drive the Japanese off Tulagi and occupy a suitable airfield site on adjacent Guadalcanal. In mid-July Ghormley was joined by Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, who left his post as a Washington planner to take over the South Pacific Amphibious Force. Together they would mount the actual landing on Guadalcanal. By then there were just two weeks left before the invasion’s target date.

Alexander Archer Vandegrift was a fighting Marine. The Guadalcanal landing force would be his own 1st Marine Division plus some extra units, but less a regiment in Samoa. When called into Ghormley’s office and told to arrange for an assault landing on August 1, Vandegrift did not even know where Guadalcanal was, much less have the detailed knowledge to plan an invasion. But Major General Vandegrift set out to obtain it. The push to nail down the facts on Guadalcanal helped enshrine the last two pillars of intelligence, overhead photography and combat intelligence—the kind of data provided by willing private citizens or prisoner interrogation.

Division intelligence officer Lieutenant Colonel Frank B. Goettge did much of this work from Australia. It was Goettge who sent officers to visit Ferdinand and find out what the coastwatchers knew. Commander Feldt forwarded current reporting to Goettge. Yearbooks and standard reference sources were culled for data. The Australian government quietly spread the word among its citizenry, yielding a stream of postcard pictures, letters to and from people who had lived on Guadalcanal, and recollections of civil administrators. Goettge looked for the most informative contacts and
had officers interview missionaries, nuns, traders, island clipper sailors, government officials, and planters. Eight former employees of Lever Brothers or Burns-Philp South Sea Traders were given reserve commissions in the Australian Navy and assigned to the 1st Marine Division, where they assembled a sketch map of the Lunga Point area. The cartography was poor—mislocated hills, misplaced and misnamed rivers—but it was all the Marines would have. Their most recent nautical chart dated from 1910. Goettge pressed for a scout mission. A sub could carry him with a team of experts to the ’Canal. Ghormley thought that too dangerous and nixed the idea.

Two Marine officers flew on a SOWESPAC air mission over Guadalcanal. But their B-17, attacked by Japanese Zeroes, left quickly. SOWESPAC’s overhead photography was converted into a photo mosaic of Lunga Point. Then MacArthur’s air intelligence people sent the mosaic to the wrong address. General Vandegrift’s planners never got the take. Admiral Ghormley has generally received short shrift from historians, and this account will not differ. But on the matter of overhead photography he deserves high marks. In England, Ghormley had seen the miracles the British were accomplishing with aerial spies. He took steps to replicate these skills in the United States. The Navy set up a photographic interpretation school in Washington headed by Lieutenant Commander Robert S. Quackenbush, familiarly known as “Q-bush.” Once he arrived at SOPAC, Ghormley demanded a field unit with Q-bush in charge. The fiasco with the SOWESPAC aerial mosaic confirmed the admiral’s sense that South Pacific Command needed its own photographic interpretation capability.

Beginning with the Guadalcanal landing, SOPAC would be well served by its photo interpreters. Admiral Ghormley’s estimate of Japanese strength in the Guadalcanal-Tulagi area would be nearly exact. Vandegrift’s headquarters wildly overestimated enemy strength, putting it at 8,400, about two and a half times the actual, while Admiral Turner also produced a huge overestimate (7,100). JNAF aircraft strength was similarly overestimated. But Captain Frederick C. Sherman of the carrier
Wasp
, which helped support the invasion, later commented that he had received everything he needed from an August 2 photo mission and from radio intelligence.

Accurate or not, General Vandegrift’s staff took what data they had and
incorporated it into the plan. Much as the intelligence was improvised, so was everything else. The last elements of the division were not even scheduled into New Zealand until July 11, and every ship would need to be “combat loaded,” which necessitated docking all their cargo and then reloading it in the order in which it would be used in battle. Not only was this an enormous job; it consumed more space in vessels’ cargo holds. The Marines left behind as much baggage as they could, but it was not enough. Vandegrift made the hard decisions to forfeit some of his artillery and vehicles, then to cut back the scale of supply to sixty days of fuel and food and just ten to fifteen days’ worth of ammunition. Even with that, reloading continued on Aotea Quay until virtually the moment the invasion armada left Wellington.

Summoned to Ghormley’s headquarters on July 18, General Vandegrift sat down for the first time with amphibious commander Admiral Turner. The Marine general had known Turner as a naval planner in Washington and the two got on well, though Kelly Turner’s abrasive manner rubbed some the wrong way. In any case Vandegrift felt relief, since Turner, just arrived, had no time to craft a plan and perforce had to rely upon the Marine one. The senior officers agreed the schedule just could not be met and applied for a delay until August 7. Higher command accepted that. Ghormley informed the others that he was giving tactical command to Frank Fletcher, absent during all these preparations.

The morning of July 22—a perfect South Pacific day of bright sun and spotless sky—the fleet sortied from Wellington. They were headed for Fiji, where an invasion rehearsal had been laid on. Arriving on July 26, the force rendezvoused with Fletcher’s carriers, plus flotillas carrying other invasion units. Admiral Fletcher summoned the senior officers to flagship
Saratoga
for a face-to-face meeting. The destroyer
Hull
had just arrived, carrying Ghormley’s chief of staff, Rear Admiral Daniel J. Callaghan; SOPAC land-based air chief Rear Admiral John S. McCain; and other officers. Turner and Vandegrift joined them for the ride to the
Saratoga.
Protocol dictated that the senior officer, in this case “Slew” McCain, board first. Just as the admiral climbed the Jacob’s ladder, some fellow opened a garbage chute and dumped a stream of milk, drenching McCain. He was furious. Worse was to come.

Admiral Fletcher received the visitors in the
Saratoga
’s wardroom. Last to
arrive was Rear Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, who led the
Enterprise
battle group in Fletcher’s Task Force 61. With the brass seated, Fletcher opened the meeting. After preliminary remarks he advised his counterparts that Task Force 61 would cover the invasion for seventy-two hours and then withdraw. The others were aghast. Kelly Turner warned that he needed at least four days after the invasion (five in all)—not the three Fletcher offered—to unload his cargomen. General Vandegrift seconded Turner, observing that the era of small landing forces quickly put ashore was over. Even with five days, the 1st Marine Division would have difficulties. Admiral Callaghan of SOPAC also warned against premature withdrawal of air support, adding that land-based aircraft lacked the range to help. Participants differ on whether the conversation amounted to a bitter dispute or simply spirited debate, but the central points are that Frank Jack Fletcher knew that his carriers were critical to the invasion, that the project was critical to the U.S. high command, and that he had been put on notice that his own idea of leaving after three days was deemed dangerous by the key executive commanders.

There is no gainsaying the importance of this episode. Fletcher’s defenders and Kelly Turner’s biographer try to shift blame onto Admiral Ghormley’s shoulders, and some measure of that is justified. But the evidence conflicts. As theater commander, Ghormley ought to have been present at the only exchange that would take place among his key subordinates, rather than simply sending a representative, however senior. But his general instructions were to run SOPAC and leave fighting to the combat commanders. On the other hand, specific messages from both admirals King and Nimitz instructed Ghormley to “exercise strategic command in person.” One can debate the meaning of “strategic” in the phrase “strategic command” and dispute whether this meant operational control, but it remains clear that Ghormley was to do that personally. His passivity augured against overruling Fletcher’s peremptory dictum. Yet, whatever Robert Ghormley’s sins, they were of omission; Frank Fletcher’s were a different matter. The task force commander brazenly told colleagues he would pull the rug out from under them, and held to that in the face of fair warning.

The most powerful argument in Fletcher’s favor goes to the question of who held the advantage in the Pacific. Task Force 61 included every flattop the Americans had. Lose those flight decks and Japan might take Midway
after all, not to say Pearl Harbor. Fletcher’s caution might preserve those precious warships. At Midway, Nimitz had set a policy of calculated risk, which he interpreted to mean carriers should be put in harm’s way only for results that justified the risk. Nimitz had not rescinded that, and he was aware of Fletcher’s intention to withdraw early. Excusing Fletcher on this basis, however, requires a judgment that CINCPAC’s general operational policy overrode his own specific orders—and those of Washington—to afford this invasion all the support it needed. Moreover, as will be seen, Admiral Fletcher ultimately did not meet his own promises.