Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun (44 page)

Preparations consumed the next weeks. For the first time the Japanese built their strength in the Solomons to three full JNAF flotillas. The matter of the carrier air groups was reconsidered and their deployment approved in March. To the base air force the Japanese would add
Kido Butai
’s groups, though the flattops themselves remained at Truk. Admiral Kusaka, controlling the land-based force, would be the major player, but Vice Admiral Ozawa Jisaburo, now leading the carrier force, came to Rabaul to oversee his own units. To be sure all the leaders worked together, Admiral Yamamoto went to Rabaul too, taking along Ugaki and the Combined Fleet staff. The C-in-C certainly had his own doubts. Before departing, Yamamoto played shogi into the night with an officer he was leaving with the rear echelon. He confessed misgivings about moving the high command so near the front. Yamamoto would have preferred a return to Empire waters. But his presence would be good for morale. At home the citizenry were complaining about commanders who did not lead their men into battle. In any case it had become necessary to make this venture go just right.

Never before had fleet headquarters been located ashore. Any doubts that Yamamoto intended to lead in person, not simply visit the front, were dispelled when the admiral and Ugaki turned up replete with their stewards and the fancy dishware, tablecloths, and silverware used to serve meals aboard flagship
Musashi.
On the morning of April 3, the staff group took a launch to Truk’s seaplane base and packed into a pair of Emily flying boats. The big four-engine patrol bombers took wing, circled the
Musashi
, and laid in their course for Rabaul. Yamamoto landed in Simpson Harbor at midafternoon. Admirals Kusaka, Ozawa, and Mikawa, the latter soon to leave, received him. Yamamoto’s staff would work out of Southeast Area Fleet headquarters. He and Ugaki stayed at the colonial governor’s villa on Residence Hill. The war’s toll could be seen on the faces of the men and in
their health. The C-in-C’s friend Kusaka Jinichi had dysentery and could hardly keep his food down. Yamamoto picked a cucumber and tried to get Kusaka to eat it. Yamamoto himself was off-kilter, looking tired. Okumiya Masatake, the air staff officer, noticed his physical decline. Medical experts studying Yamamoto believe he may have gotten beriberi, with swollen ankles and shaking hands plus potential mental impairment. The admiral was getting vitamin C shots from his doctor and was said to be changing shoes four or five times daily. But the I Operation would be the big show. Yamamoto pushed at the hinge of fate.

VI.

WAR OF ATTRITION

Already the tentacles of Allied power had begun to wrap around Japan’s Central Solomons outposts, replicating the headaches of Guadalcanal. Well might Admiral Yamamoto want to change the rhythm. Chief of staff Ugaki records that the Combined Fleet had concluded that if the big offensive did not work, “[T]here will be no hope of future success in this area.” Admiral Ugaki wondered whether the point had been driven home sufficiently to the sailors and airmen who were about to fight. The entire I Operation was fraught with consequence.

At the end of March a Munda-bound Tokyo Express had recoiled in the face of fierce aerial attacks. Twenty-four hours later, April Fools’ Day, the Express tried again, with six destroyers to Kolombangara. This action took place simultaneously with a big AIRSOLS raid on Munda. Japanese fighters intercepted the attackers and pursued them toward the Russells, over which nearly sixty JNAF fighters furiously battled a hundred Americans. Kusaka’s fighter groups claimed to have destroyed about half of the enemy aircraft but incurred nine losses. American records note only six planes lost. Meanwhile the destroyers completed their voyage undisturbed. But the Americans had been tougher than ever and the JNAF achieved little.

The Allies quickly struck back. On April 3, hours after Yamamoto flew into Rabaul, the 43rd Bombardment Group bashed Kavieng, where Captain Yamamori Kamenosuke’s heavy cruiser
Aoba
lay anchored outside the port. Especially upsetting about this attack was that the B-17 aircraft skip bombed—the Americans had found a way to make their heavy bombers effective at sea. Japanese officers also cringed because the
Aoba
had just returned from repairing damage taken at Cape Esperance. She had yet to get back into action. A 500-pound bomb made a direct hit, cooking off two of
the cruiser’s torpedoes. Though Yamamori’s crew extinguished the resulting fire within an hour, he had to beach
Aoba
to prevent steady flooding from sinking her. It took two weeks to pump her out and apply a temporary patch. The Imperial Navy could not afford incidents like this.

The events at Kavieng put a dark cloud over the I Operation. Already misgivings had sprung up in the ranks. The dogfight over the Russells had been another mission for the Eleventh Air Fleet fighters, which had battled over the islands twice in the previous month. Kusaka’s fighter strength, though powerful, was increasingly limited. The 204th Air Group had a full complement of forty-five Zeroes, the 253rd some thirty-six, while the fighter component of the 582nd Group possessed twenty-seven planes. Admiral Yamamoto’s plan depended on massive reinforcements. The air groups of Carrier Division 2—the
Hiyo
and
Junyo—
just up from Empire waters, formed one major source of augmentation. The carrier planes flew from Ballale when attacking and withdrew to Rabaul when not in action. Air staff officer Okumiya Masatake accompanied Rear Admiral Kakuta. Full of foreboding, Okumiya saw young men, many just out of flight school with barely a month of carrier training before this aerial offensive. The pilots—supposed to be Japan’s best—were proof positive of the decline. He feared for both crews and aircraft. “More than once this lack of experience cost us our valuable warplanes, as the unqualified pilots skidded, crashed, and burned on takeoff,” Okumiya wrote.

Ozawa of the Third Fleet,
Kido Butai
’s boss, arrived at Rabaul on April 2, his Carrier Division 1 planes alighting there from the
Zuikaku
and
Zuiho
. The latter’s fighters were actually returning to the Solomons less than a month after a previous stint there. The carrier air groups added more than 180 aircraft to the JNAF deployment. Of Kusaka’s land-based air fleet, the 21st Flotilla set up shop at Kavieng with half its seventy-two Betty bombers, the rest at Vunakanau. The 26th Air Flotilla concentrated at the complex of fields around Buin on Bougainville. With the 25th Flotilla, Kusaka’s fleet brought 190 warplanes to the table. The concentration was huge for the Japanese, the biggest since the
Kido Butai
at Pearl Harbor—but a measure of the changing war was that at Pearl Harbor the carriers by themselves had fielded a force of practically this size.

Admiral Yamamoto was not to be deflected. But sometimes determination is not enough. With Yamamoto and his staff at Rabaul, a weather front
closed in over the northern Solomons. Yamamoto and Ugaki were pelted with rain their first night and into the morning, but more than that, delay became necessary to dry out runways and obtain better flying conditions. By midmorning the C-in-C had pushed back the onset of his offensive by twenty-four hours, to April 6. As the awful weather continued into the fifth, Ugaki considered changing the initial target from Guadalcanal to Port Moresby, but finally agreed to another twenty-four-hour postponement. Yamamoto and Ugaki inspected Lakunai Airfield, the
Zuikaku
planes there, and Captain Sugimoto Ushie’s 204th Air Group Zeroes. Ozawa deployed the
Zuikaku
and
Zuiho
aircraft to Bougainville later that day. Yamamoto directed Kakuta to move his carrier aircraft to Buin also, and the latter followed suit the next morning. On April 6, Admiral Mikawa handed the Eighth Fleet command over to his successor, Baron Samejima.

Yamamoto’s assembly of forces did not go unnoticed. An Allied reconnaissance flight over the Buin complex returned photos of 114 aircraft at Kahili, where there had been forty the day before. At Ballale were ninety-five JNAF planes where the field had been bare. Quackenbush’s Photographic Interpretation Section, now installed on Guadalcanal, quickly generated a report. Meanwhile, on April 2, Pearl Harbor intelligence predicted possible imminent attacks in the central Solomons. By April 4 the CINCPAC fleet intelligence summary had refined this to anticipate “increased air activity expected soon.” Two days after that the intelligence had hardened: “Large air action by land-based planes, possibly supplemented by carrier planes [is] expected within one week.”

Yamamoto launched the thunderbolt of Japan’s “sea eagles.” The air assault began with a night raid on Guadalcanal. Some of the soldiers there were watching the heroics of the recent film
Wake Island
when the night stalkers struck. Movie antics were forgotten as GIs dashed for cover. The raid lasted nearly an hour. The JNAF inflicted barely any damage, but they disrupted sleep and relaxation very well. The intruders dropped flares at intervals, using the tactics of “Washing Machine Charlie” so familiar to the Marines of Cactus.

Kusaka’s dawn scout over Guadalcanal on April 7 reported Pug Ainsworth’s cruiser-destroyer group on its way to another bombardment of Munda. Fourteen merchantmen were also counted. Yamamoto hurled an armada of seventy-one bombers and 117 Zero fighters. The lead wave were
fighters of the 253rd Air Group, closely followed by those of the 204th. Lieutenant Miyano Zenshiro personally led his 204th Group fighters. Behind them Ozawa’s carrier Zeroes escorted Val dive-bombers. Next in were Vals of the 582nd Air Group, with its own fighters plus some from the
Zuiho.
Cloud cover frustrated this attack unit. Rear Admiral Kakuta’s bombers struck in two last waves. Kakuta’s aircraft flew from Rabaul and refueled at Buka or Buin before heading on, affording them maximum air time over Guadalcanal. Yamamoto went to Lakunai to encourage the “sea eagles.”

Making up for Santa Cruz,
Zuiho
fighters participated in nearly every attack unit.

Coastwatchers duly reported the aerial stream. But the Allies seem to have had multiple warnings derived from Ultra. Lieutenant Ray Calhoun of the destroyer
Sterett
remembers a message foreseeing an air raid with at least a hundred planes for April 7. Aboard another tin can, the
Maury
, escorting a nearby convoy, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Russell S. Crenshaw comments on the work of both the aerial spies and the codebreakers, and assumes Captain H. E. Thornhill, the convoy commander, was being appraised of their results. Ashore, notice of the air raid had percolated so far down the food chain that GI journalist Mack Morriss was aware of it. Through the morning, men hurried preparations. As the raid approached, at 12:20 p.m. Cactus control issued Condition Red.

Destroyers and other ships milled around in Ironbottom Sound. The
Aaron Ward
, escorting supply vessels to the Russells, left them off Savo Island to pick up the arriving
LST-449
and shepherd her out of Ironbottom Sound. The LST, a new-type large landing ship, carried a couple of hundred Army soldiers and naval officers for Guadalcanal assignments. One of them, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) John F. Kennedy, bound for the PT-boat base at Tulagi, was a long way from his native Boston. Destined to be a future president of the United States, Kennedy began his combat career with an eye-opening display of the violence of war. Several dive-bombers dropped out of the clouds to cripple the
Aaron Ward
right in front of him. Flak gunners were powerless to stop them. The tin can sank that night.

As usual Carney Field—the former Henderson—had had enough notice to loft an ample number of interceptors. Of course, the Japanese were in huge numbers also. “There’s millions of ’em!” exclaimed Lieutenant James E. Swett, on his first mission leading a division of four Wildcats of Marine
Fighter Squadron 221. Lieutenant Swett waded into a flight of Val dive-bombers about to hit Tulagi and quickly shot down three. He followed another formation right into their attack, flaming four more even as U.S. flak damaged his F-4F. Swett’s engine seized and he had to ditch off Tulagi, nose broken by the water impact and face lacerated from glass shards when bullets shattered the windshield. Swett, an instant ace, earned the Medal of Honor. He went on to sixteen and a half kills and nine more probables in the war, starting with this dogfight.

The Condition Red notice did not last long. An unprecedented Condition
Very
Red followed. The sky filled with AA shell bursts, flashes of swirling planes catching the sun, smoke, flames, or explosions as aircraft were damaged or disintegrated. Some seventy-six fighters met the Japanese, and fifty-six of them engaged. Army Captain Thomas G. Lanphier, with his flight of three twin-tailed P-38s, claimed seven planes smoked. Air intelligence credited twenty-seven Zeroes and twelve Vals destroyed. In his memoirs Bull Halsey would gush that as many as 107 JNAF birds were clipped. Halsey was usually more careful about his claims, and this one bore no correspondence either to Air Intelligence findings or the numbers contained in the Navy’s own communiqué, public knowledge at the time. The Japanese recorded nine Zeroes and twelve Vals destroyed. The Americans lost seven warplanes.

Again damage was minimal, especially for such a huge effort. The Japanese concentrated on Tulagi, about twenty miles across the sound. Reporter Morriss saw AA shells detonating over the island, the tall water spouts of bombs exploding in the sea, a few columns of smoke, and the flash of something pulverized. Near him the only damage was a tree limb dislodged by muzzle blasts of the AA guns. In Tulagi harbor the New Zealand corvette
Moa
, refueling, did not get the warning and could not cast off quickly enough. She was holed and sank in minutes, perhaps a measure of retribution for
Moa
’s role in the capture of the Japanese codes from the
I-1.
The tanker
Kanawha
also went to the bottom. A number of other ships were attacked, threatened, and sometimes suffered lightly, but there were no huge disasters either to vessels off Guadalcanal or to Ainsworth’s cruiser group. The early news disappointed Combined Fleet headquarters, but Admiral Kusaka had sent a scout to the battle area just to observe proceedings, and
it confirmed the Tulagi result, though misidentifying the ships. Overall claims were much more optimistic (and inaccurate): a cruiser and a destroyer sunk, ten merchantmen (two large) put down, two more damaged. That seemed more satisfactory. When Admiral Nagano reported it to the emperor, Hirohito seemed pleased.