Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun (11 page)

Meanwhile the invasion drill at Fiji turned into a fiasco. On the first day some landings were canceled despite calm seas due to worries over damage to the small craft. Coral offshore threatened the boats. Defective boat engines were discovered. Marines reached two planned beaches before the recall. The best aspect would be having the men practice climbing down onto the boats. It also became apparent that ships bearing key units for the Tulagi landing would arrive too late to exercise. About a third of the Marines succeeded in boarding their landing craft. The gunfire support ships and the aircraft from Fletcher’s carriers also rehearsed coordination. Refueling the fleet went slowly, and critically needed tankers failed to arrive. Some destroyers were not full when the Guadalcanal voyage began. During the cruise the amphibious group actually fueled destroyers from invasion transports. Fortunately enemy defenses were nothing like what Marines had predicted.

Under Marine procedures the division intelligence section was in charge of the care and feeding of the news media. Lieutenant Merillat encountered many of these war correspondents while the 1st Marines were in New Zealand, from Tillman Durdin of the
New York Times
to Francis McCarthy of the United Press and Douglas Gardner of the
Sydney Morning Herald
. The press was fed a stylized version of events. On the day of the invasion the
New York Times
reported on
Japanese
offensive action in the Solomons, although the paper made the important point that the enemy was bypassing many islands in their quest for victory, leaving these entirely unoccupied. On August 9 in New York—with Marines now ashore for three days—the
Times
headline read, “Japanese Occupy 3 Island Groups.” It took time for the news to reach
home. Americans first learned of Operation Watchtower and the Guadalcanal invasion from a CINCPAC communiqué on August 8, which informed readers that “Forces of the United States Pacific Fleet and Pacific Ocean Areas, assisted by units of the Southwest Pacific Area, launched offensive operations in the Tulagi area of the Solomons Islands on August 7th.” The notice added that “operations are progressing favorably.” That news had already been overtaken by events.

^*
To avoid confusion in this text, and because certain forms are more familiar to readers, the narrative will adopt several conventions. In actuality, until late 1942 the JNAF followed a practice of calling its main operating units “air corps” under command of air flotillas, which used that title for administrative purposes but were styled “base air forces” in operational planning and communications. The JNAF used a mixture of numbered and named air corps, but switched to all numbers and restyled the units as “air groups” in November. This text will adopt the air group nomenclature, but the flotilla names, throughout. This avoids confusion between JNAF “base air forces” versus the Imperial Navy’s practice of designating “base forces”—units of sailors manning installations. In addition, the Japanese and Allies had different ways of referring to particular aircraft, with JNAF actually possessing two systems, one based on the year of the reign of the emperor when a design was adopted (e.g., “Type 1” bomber), and the other describing aircraft by type and generation of design (“G4M2” for the same aircraft). Allied forces referred to each JNAF type by a name (“Betty” bomber). The narrative will use the Allied nomenclature except for the Zero fighter (A6M2, Zeke), and where variation is useful. An appendix will identify aircraft types by each of their identifiers. Finally, wherever material permits, each side’s sources will be regarded as authoritative in recording its losses, and assertions for losses by the opposition will be termed “claims.”

II.

UNDER THE SOUTHERN CROSS

When Marines invaded Guadalcanal, the Japanese responded instantly. Certainly the enemy needed to do something, but what they did astonished everyone. It began at Rabaul early that morning. Staff officer Ohmae knocked on Admiral Mikawa’s door with Tulagi’s first radio message. Mikawa answered quickly. The admiral immediately ordered forces assembled. He then dressed and walked the single block to fleet headquarters. In the time it took to do that, the news had been confirmed: Americans were landing at both Tulagi and Guadalcanal. Emergency!

What happened next had much to do with Captain Kami Shigenori, Mikawa’s senior staff officer. In the Imperial Navy, Kami had a justified reputation as a hothead. It was rumored he had once done a handstand from a sixteen-inch gun on the battleship
Mutsu
with her main battery inclined to maximum elevation. Forty years old, Kami expressed himself very emotionally and was a fitness devotee who used off-hours for sumo wrestling and the sword-fighting style known as kendo. After graduating top of his class from the War College, and service at the ministry, Kami had been posted to Germany as assistant naval attaché. Impressed with Hitler’s dynamism, he dallied with fascism, emerging as an important member of the Navy’s pro-German faction. Kami returned to the Navy Ministry, then the War College as tactics instructor, and he promoted the Tripartite Pact aligning Japan with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. His extreme views and forceful style made Kami a dangerous man. Even some friends felt he should not have been seconded to sea commands. At NGS, where he had worked for Baron Tomioka, colleagues recalled Kami as holding the strongest opinions, with Tomioka having a tendency to bend to him. Promoted captain shortly before Pearl Harbor, Kami had been the biggest proponent of an attack on
the Panama Canal. When news of Guadalcanal reached Rabaul, Captain Kami immediately demanded the Eighth Fleet make an all-out assault.

Admiral Mikawa responded without knowing whether the Allies had come to stay. Fortuitously, plans for New Guinea now played in favor of action at Guadalcanal. The 25th Air Flotilla had been slated to bomb Buna. Its mission was redirected. Mikawa then planned a night surface attack on the Allied fleet with everything he could scrape together. He summoned flagship
Chokai
from Kavieng. Rear Admiral Goto Aritomo’s Cruiser Division 6, its four heavy ships also there, would have escorted a Buna convoy. Goto participated along with Admiral Matsuyama’s light cruisers and the single available destroyer. About 400 naval troops were herded aboard a transport and sent to the ’Canal as an emergency reinforcement. Admiral Mikawa with his staff boarded the heavy cruiser
Chokai
at 4:30 p.m. Captain Kami reunited with an Etajima classmate who was the ship’s executive officer. Kami had never been in a naval battle. This would be a wild one.

Mikawa put his intentions into a dispatch to Combined Fleet and the Navy General Staff. At the NGS, Admiral Nagano Osami thought Mikawa rash and wanted to countermand his plan. But staffers convinced Nagano to subside. At Combined Fleet there was concern too, but, anxious to fight the enemy promptly, lest the Allies establish themselves and attack Rabaul, neither Yamamoto nor Ugaki voiced any objection.

Meanwhile, the pillars of Allied intelligence were hard at work. The Combat Intelligence Unit at Pearl Harbor had reported steadily on the Japanese cruisers in the Solomons, seen by air searches at least twice in the days before Watchtower. Radio traffic analysis placed
Chokai
, Mikawa’s flagship, the heavy ships of Cruiser Division 6, and the light ones of Cruiser Division 18 all in the Solomons. This formula was repeated several times. A wartime history of Ultra in the Pacific is worth quoting here: “[I]t is evident that [Allied] operational authorities were aware of the presence in the Solomons of the enemy cruisers.” Further, the codebreakers intercepted messages formatted as operational orders, directed to Yamada’s 25th Air Flotilla and Rear Admiral Kono Chimaki’s Submarine Squadron 3, plus to SNLF commanders demanding troop reinforcements. Traffic analysis confirmed Admiral Mikawa aboard a flagship, not positively identified, but he had already been associated with the
Chokai.
A message
from
Rabaul
to
Mikawa’s chief of staff gave the tip-off that the fleet boss was at sea, and the reply gave
direction finders the geographic coordinates. A partially decrypted Ultra message contained Yamada’s tabulation of available aircraft, while others ordered aerial reinforcement of Rabaul. Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner had refused to bring along one of the fleet’s mobile radio detachments and now paid dearly for that. But Frank Fletcher certainly had one—Ransom Fullinwider’s unit.

On the night of August 7, as Mikawa’s warships rendezvoused outside Rabaul to run down The Slot—as the waters between the Solomon Islands became known—they were sighted and reported by American submarine
S-38.
The radio intelligence on Mikawa should not be overplayed; since some dispatches took longer to decrypt, all were partial breaks subject to interpretation, and they failed to reveal concrete intentions. But the submarine contact alone was enough to warn Allied admirals, and the radio items related the Japanese fleet commander to it. Admiral Turner called for extra air searches of The Slot, but these do not seem to have been carried out. Mikawa’s cruiser group was, however, sighted and followed by an Australian search plane on the morning of the eighth. Its valiant efforts to deliver the information were frustrated, and the report reached Turner too late. There are also questions about the searches carried out by Admiral Fletcher’s task force.
^*
Beyond that, Ultra finally did intercept a Mikawa message containing details of his plan, but the new version of JN-25 the Imperial Navy was using still resisted penetration. This key dispatch would be recovered—more than two weeks after the disaster about to occur.

The Guadalcanal invaders also helped. Australian vice admiral Victor Crutchley was in tactical command. The necessity of blocking two possible approaches perplexed him—Savo Island split The Slot above Guadalcanal. The Japanese could reach the anchorage either way. Crutchley’s solution was to post groups of cruisers and destroyers on either side of Savo, with a couple more within the anchorage. Crutchley himself had been in the southern group on the
Australia
, but left to attend a meeting Admiral Turner had called. Each of the forward units had three cruisers and a pair of tin
cans.
Australia
’s departure left two cruisers with the southern group. The disposition looked good on paper but invited piecemeal destruction.

Imperial Navy night battle tactics were very good. Indeed, the Battle of Savo Island confirmed their reputation. Admiral Mikawa’s vessels saw the Allies first, approached the southern cruiser group in line-ahead formation, and launched torpedoes before firing. The U.S. destroyer that had the picket duty remained oblivious. Within minutes the American heavy cruiser
Chicago
and the Australian light
Canberra
were both crippled. The latter sank. No warning reached the other Allied cruiser group before Mikawa was upon them. Heavy cruisers
Astoria
,
Vincennes
, and
Quincy
were all blown apart within fifteen minutes. Admiral Mikawa obtained a decisive victory.

The Japanese could have pressed on into the anchorage to smash the Allied transports. Commander Ohmae was with Mikawa when he chose not to. The admiral based himself on several factors. First, his ships had expended much ammunition (roughly a fourth to a third of main battery shells and half the available torpedoes), making a shipping attack more problematic. Battle maneuvers had put the Japanese on a heading away from Guadalcanal. The time required to regroup and enter the anchorage would put a fight just before dawn. Mikawa knew that daylight would leave him open to air attack no matter what, and it seemed desirable to be moving away from the danger area at speed when that happened. Imperial Navy radio intelligence had intercepted transmissions characteristic of U.S. aircraft carriers, so Mikawa knew a task force lay within about a hundred miles of him. Finally, the Japanese Army had told the Navy that wiping out the Americans would be a simple thing. At this moment when an aggressive attitude could have served his Navy the most, Kami Shigenori’s posture remains unknown. Admiral Mikawa ordered the withdrawal at 2:23 a.m. on August 9. That marked the beginning of a long and bloody campaign in which victory in the Pacific hung in the balance.

IRONBOTTOM SOUND

The other prong of Admiral Mikawa’s immediate counterattack had been an air strike the day of the invasion. Yamada assembled twenty-seven Betty bombers escorted by eighteen Zero fighters and sent them toward Guadalcanal. Coastwatcher Paul Mason saw them over Bougainville and warned
of the raid. Australian cruiser
Canberra
piped its crew to lunch early so they would be ready. When the Japanese arrived, Fletcher’s carrier fighters quickly engaged them. An
Enterprise
flight met the enemy over Santa Isabel Island. They splashed a Betty but lost several F-4F Wildcats to the escort. More
Enterprise
interceptors battled over Florida Island. They downed another Betty and claimed four more probables. Armed to strike New Guinea, the JNAF bombers could do no better than a level bombing attack. They made no hits.

The JNAF escort fighters, led by Lieutenant Commander Nakajima Tadashi, flew in small “squadrons” of six Zeroes each, because of Rabaul’s shortage of planes. But the Tainan Air Group was among the Imperial Navy’s best, containing several leading aces. One unit preceded the bombers to disrupt interceptors. The others flew close escort. Petty Officer Sakai Saburo encountered the Wildcat fighter here for the first time and was amazed at the plane’s durability. Closing to point-blank range, Sakai managed to shoot one down. Its American pilot, “Pug” Southerland of the
Saratoga
, incredibly, endured cannon fire right into his cockpit, bailed out, and survived. Sakai’s comrade Nishizawa Hiroyoshi claimed six U.S. planes. According to Sakai, none of the other Zero pilots scored that day. Historian John B. Lundstrom, however, records an array of JNAF claims totaling more than forty aircraft, and finds that nine Wildcats plus a Dauntless dive-bomber were actually blasted. The redoubtable coastwatchers rescued several pilots. Four JNAF bombers were lost, two so badly damaged they were written off, and excepting two others the rest were hit to some degree. Among the fighters, two Zeroes failed to return, and Sakai’s plane was an effective loss. Half a dozen were damaged enough or so low on fuel they landed at the base the JNAF had now opened at Buka on Bougainville.