Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun (15 page)

Destroyers were the mainstay of the Tokyo Express. They typically carried 100 or 150 men on each transport mission. The Japanese came to a technique of having a guard ship fully combat-ready to lead the column, with loaded ships following in trail. If the threat level was low, the force small, or the mission urgent, all the vessels might be loaded. There were many challenges to the Tokyo Express, the Cactus Air Force only the biggest. Allied subs were active in these waters, surface ships could catch the Express, mines could explode beneath them, and, beginning in October, American PT boats became an increasing annoyance. When a destroyer sank, stopping to rescue survivors was dangerous. A damaged ship could be calamitous—endangering others traveling in her company while offering the Allies a ready target. Four destroyers were damaged and two sunk during August, three sunk and six damaged in October, and four sunk and seven damaged in November. The worst month was December 1942, when eight tin cans were damaged, though only two were sunk. Best would be September, when but a single ship succumbed.

But fate remained fickle—Chief Petty Officer Oshita Mitsukuni of the
Hayashi
recalls that his ship made three or four transport missions to Guadalcanal before she was ever attacked. Some ships were never struck at all. Seaman Watanabe Hashio’s destroyer made multiple runs to Guadalcanal and was never in a battle. Petty Officer 2nd Class Tokugawa Yoshio in the
Kawakaze
remembered twenty-five to thirty Express runs. His ship was bombed in The Slot during September but back off Cactus a month later. Warships with slight damage remained on duty.

Coupled with peril was the sheer oppressiveness of the climate. The heat and humidity of the tropics multiplied exponentially when the ship had to button up for protection. Lieutenant Nakamura Teiji of the
Yudachi
, which first arrived at Rabaul on August 22, found the hot air in the ship terrible, but there were also fatigue and exhaustion plus endless air raids. Nakamura credits the warm personality and open heart of
Yudachi
’s skipper, Commander Kikkawa Kiyoshi, for the destroyer’s high morale. On
Yudachi
even supply officers watched for planes. Sharp eyes kept the enemy at bay.

Meanwhile, at Shortland, the dispute over reinforcement methods continued. Admiral Mikawa affirmed his instructions to deliver troops by destroyer. General Kawaguchi finally acceded, though some subordinates never did. The general himself with 2,000 men traveled to Cactus aboard destroyers on the last two nights of August and the first of September. A big mission the night of September 4–5 deposited another 1,000 men and covered a barge convoy. Their intent to bombard Henderson was vitiated when they discovered a couple of U.S. ships in Ironbottom Sound. Rear Admiral Hashimoto Sentaro’s tin cans sank the destroyer-transports
Little
and
Gregory
instead. The barge unit encountered various delays and had not beached by dawn. The Cactus Air Force found them at sea—now for the third time—and strafed them mercilessly. The convoy disintegrated. About a hundred of the 1,000 passengers died, but the rest were scattered, including almost half marooned on Savo Island. The survivors regrouped over a period of days, starting with shuttles by the next night’s Tokyo Express, which also landed another 375 men on Guadalcanal. The survivors would not be in position for Kawaguchi’s planned offensive—he wanted to attack from Taivu Point, east of the Marine position (they had landed at the west end of the island)—nor would they be in time. At this point, after numerous transport missions, the Japanese had roughly 5,400 troops on Cactus, and about half that many had perished in the effort to get there.

Among those who stumbled onto Guadalcanal’s shore was Colonel Tsuji Masanobu, a notorious operative of the Japanese Army. The forty-year-old Tsuji, a mainstay of Army cabals through the 1930s, enjoyed the benevolence
of imperial family members and had access to the office of the Army’s chief of staff. Tsuji had played his part in Japan’s machinations in Manchuria and China. He led the unit that gathered intelligence for the Malayan invasion and participated in the last stage of the Philippine conquest. Tsuji was ubiquitous in Japan’s war, and the Solomons were no exception. Now he headed the operations section of the General Staff, and traveled to the Outer South Seas on a personal inspection. Tsuji passed through Truk in late July, just ahead of Admiral Mikawa. At Rabaul he found Hyakutake’s 17th Army headquarters located in a nice concrete building, but almost everything else in the fleet way. With typical Army disdain for things Imperial Navy, Tsuji remarked on the music concerts and sake joints that entertained the sailors, not to mention the geisha houses that had sprouted at Rabaul.

When the Americans landed at Guadalcanal, Tsuji immediately suspected the intel on their strength was bogus—such a large invasion flotilla would not have landed the paltry force estimated. After a few weeks’ frustration, Tsuji secured Hyakutake’s permission and set out to see for himself. He went with the barge convoy, mesmerized by luminescent waters at night that made him forget about the war. The convoy faced aerial strafing by Major Mangrum’s Dauntlesses on September 2, then storms. The compass on his barge was knocked out, and the crew steered using a handheld compass. Their barge shipped so much water its occupants jettisoned provisions and half their ammunition. Then came the Cactus Air Force’s last-minute attack. Soldiers staggered ashore—some jumping into neck-deep water—but that was just the beginning. Colonel Oka Akinosuke, who led the regiment with which Tsuji had deployed, spent five days just gathering the survivors. American planes looked for them too—and had such plentiful munitions, it seemed to Tsuji, that they could drop bombs like rocks. The Japanese hid under palm fronds. Colonel Oka finally began marching toward Mount Austen, the assigned destination, hacking through jungle. Food was almost gone. A mission house they encountered was a godsend—shelter—and the men slept like pigs, but once they began cooking rice the smoke betrayed them, and Marine artillery pounded their position. Oka’s group finally found Colonel Ikki and some Navy construction troops. They were practically naked and had nothing to eat. Oka shared his men’s sparse rice. Their ordeal continued.

The other way to get to Guadalcanal was to eliminate the Cactus Air Force. Then the Imperial Navy could steam anywhere, in daylight if it liked. The Eleventh Air Fleet did its best to accomplish that. An interdiction campaign began in late August and continued unabated for four months, with almost daily raids on Henderson. Sometimes the missions failed due to weather over Cactus or at the launch points, occasionally because of operational factors. Usually the raids were conducted by two to three squadrons (twenty to thirty bombers) covered by roughly equal numbers of fighters. The JNAF altered routine by mounting fighter sweeps or else sending a few bombers with substantial fighter escorts.

The Japanese also used their seaplanes offensively, creating the R Area Force, a unified command for floatplanes and patrol bombers under Rear Admiral Joshima Takatsugu. Admiral Joshima anchored seaplane carrier
Chitose
at Shortland for his main base. He rotated aviation ships
Sanuki Maru
,
Sanyo Maru
, and
Kamikawa Maru
through Rekata Bay on Santa Isabel, 140 miles from Henderson, as a forward refueling and control point. It was
Sanuki Maru
and
Sanyo Maru
that failed in covering the Tanaka convoy. Aviation ships not at Rekata shuttled new aircraft up from Truk or performed antisubmarine patrols around Rabaul.
Chitose
herself sailed with Admiral Kondo on the KA Operation, providing air cover until damaged. Captain Sasaki Seigo would return to Japan for repair and
Chitose’s
conversion to a light aircraft carrier, but Sasaki sent his floatplanes to the R Area Force.

On July 1 the
Chitose
had had fifteen active and twenty-one reserve aircraft. Two months later her air group would have ten aircraft with no reserves. The aviation ships usually contributed six to eight aircraft, and the air fleet’s complement of four-engine flying boat patrol planes ranged from none to about a dozen. Most nights the R Area Force put a floatplane over Guadalcanal, dropping flares and occasional bombs just to shake up the Marines, who began calling these aircraft “Louie the Louse” to distinguish them from twin-engine night intruders, known as “Washing Machine Charlie.” Closer to Cactus, the R Force also made small attacks on Henderson Field at odd hours.

Vice Admiral Tsukahara, the Imperial Navy’s senior air admiral, was the man for the job, most experienced at conducting a long-range air campaign.
It was he who had masterminded the long-distance interdiction of Clark Field during the Philippine invasion, and before that Tsukahara had led JNAF formations in the first extended bombing of the China Incident. But Guadalcanal was different and more complex. In the Philippines, a months-long air campaign had been unnecessary. In China the operations had not been over water, so it was easier for crews to survive aircraft damage, and there had been plentiful emergency airstrips. Neither campaign had featured an adversary able to sustain its defense, and this time the enemy maintained its strength. Tsukahara’s Eleventh Air Fleet, though powerful, had to fly from primitive airfields in a challenging climate. He also faced competing needs for his component air flotillas and was unable to mass them to overpower the Cactus Air Force. But the Japanese were serious about this effort—just how serious became evident when the high command sent Tsukahara a new air staff officer, Captain Genda Minoru.

The admiral, originally a gunner, had been associated with naval aviation in Japan since the early 1920s. He had been executive officer of Japan’s first carrier, the
Hosho
, and skipper of
Akagi
, and he had led the JNAF development command. As a captain, Tsukahara had participated in naval arms limitation talks at Geneva, where the powers’ aircraft carrier tonnage had been a major issue, and he had visited the United States too—at a time when the young Yamamoto was assigned there. Tsukahara was the senior aviation officer in the Imperial Navy. If anyone could overcome the difficulties of flying in the Solomons, it would be he.

In addition to the climate, the enemy, and the campaign’s duration, at least four factors hampered the Japanese Naval Air Force in the Solomons. First, lack of an effective bombsight decreased precision. In combination with Tsukahara’s inability to mount true mass attacks (bomb raids in the European war already comprised hundreds of aircraft and would grow larger), inaccurate bombing severely limited the possibility of neutralizing Henderson Field. Second, U.S. defenses forced the Japanese to higher altitudes, further diminishing accuracy. Third, the relatively small JNAF bombs (the heaviest at 550 pounds, compared to 2,000 pounds for the Allies) reduced damage potential. And finally, the small payloads of JNAF aircraft (1,750 pounds on the “Nell” or 2,200 pounds on the Betty; even an early American model, the B-25, carried 4,000 pounds) curtailed the overall weight of force loadings. The JNAF had long oriented itself toward tactical
naval warfare. Both the Nell and the Betty had been developed as land-based long-range torpedo planes.

Japan paid dearly for its failure to produce a true heavy bomber. Only in February 1943 did the Japanese Navy ask industry to work on a multiengine bomber, and JNAF specifications were not forthcoming until that fall. The resulting aircraft had reached only the prototype stage by the end of the war, much too late for the Solomons arena.

Zero fighters had an early advantage in being armed with cannon in addition to machine guns, whereas the F-4F Wildcat had only the latter, meaning the JNAF could hit opponents with explosive projectiles. But the Americans had both armor and self-sealing tanks, and they could dive faster. In the very first dogfight over Cactus, U.S. pilots learned that even when damaged their planes could often reach home. And while the .50-caliber machine gun might not be so powerful as the Zero’s 20mm cannon, Cactus pilots bragged that their Wildcats could stand up to fifteen minutes or more of Zero fire, while the Japanese planes often flamed within seconds of taking hits. Pilots even claimed their .50-calibers had sunk a couple of Jap destroyers. Nevertheless, from the F-6F on, subsequent American fighters had increased armament, providing additional firepower.

The other side of the coin lay in aircraft vulnerability. Japanese aircraft design emphasized speed and maneuverability in preference to armor and armament. This contributed to attrition, since planes, once hit, frequently caught fire or were crippled even if not destroyed. Damaged aircraft had little chance. It was 560 nautical miles from Henderson to Rabaul, more than 400 to Buka, and more than 300 to the Buin-Ballale-Faisi complex. A major reason the Japanese later installed an air base at Munda on New Georgia was to recover aircraft damaged over the lower Solomons. In the meantime there was no alternative except the long return at great hazard—as Sakai Saburo’s experience illustrates so vividly. The attrition was appalling. After the Eastern Solomons, to take one example, the
Shokaku
and
Zuikaku
sent thirty planes to fly from the new Buka base on Bougainville, which the carriers’ expert pilots did for two weeks. Only half the aircraft survived that assignment.