Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun (55 page)

The Japanese response could just possibly have worked. A one-two punch might drive Halsey’s fleet away. Bougainville could then be sealed tight by Kusaka’s pumped-up air force. Roy Geiger’s Marines would become beleaguered the same way the Americans had been on Cactus in that now dimly remembered past. General Hyakutake could assemble his ground troops and obtain revenge. The Japanese were in an excellent position to do this. But since August 1942, their power had deteriorated markedly. The consequences became apparent in the air strikes against Empress Augusta Bay. The first came early in the morning. The JNAF mustered only seven dive-bombers with forty-four Zero fighters. Then came a pure fighter sweep by eighteen Zeroes. Early in the afternoon there was a mission flown by seven Vals accompanied by forty-two fighters. Though JNAF fliers claimed sinking cruisers and transports and setting many landing craft afire, the Allies seem to have suffered no damage whatsoever. Against that nugatory result, the Japanese lost seventeen fighters and six bombers, with ten more planes damaged, two of them seriously.

That night Kusaka sent seven torpedo-armed Bettys accompanied by scouts and flare planes against Sherman’s carriers off Buka. Admiral Sherman recounts that his crews had reached the point of complaining they never saw any action, grousing that land-based air got the juicy assignments. The Buka strikes supplied a corrective, while the pyrotechnics of a Japanese torpedo attack at night woke them right up. Several attack aircraft were splashed.

The daring of Halsey’s landing at Empress Augusta Bay is demonstrated with blinding clarity by the fact that the invasion site was but a few hours’ voyage from Fortress Rabaul, all of it under the Japanese air umbrella. This would be no Tokyo Express. A Japanese Navy force could leave Rabaul at speed, engage in a surface battle, and return in the space of a single night and dawn, before the bulk of Allied airpower could respond. The other major action of L-Day illustrates the point. That was Admiral Omori’s sortie to Empress Augusta Bay.

In a fitting bookend to Guadalcanal—and Mikawa’s triumph at Savo—Omori intended to go after the invasion transports that his predecessor had missed. Indeed, at the mission briefing in the gun room of heavy cruiser
Myoko
, Omori referred to the earlier battle and indicated they might surpass Mikawa’s achievement. One participant was Captain Hara Tameichi, who would bring along all three vessels of his division. Hara found it far-fetched that Omori Sentaro, who had not been in battle since Santa Cruz, could perform under the new conditions. A torpedoman par excellence, Omori had passed out with a distinguished record and returned to the torpedo school as an instructor no less than three times, in all spending more than a decade familiarizing Imperial Navy officers with the intricacies of these weapons. Omori had commanded destroyers, destroyer squadrons, and big ships too, including battleship
Ise
and now the heavy cruiser unit. It was Omori who had led the
Kido Butai
’s screen at Pearl Harbor, and he had played a role in the Japanese seizure of the Aleutians. But perhaps Hara was right. What Japan needed that South Pacific evening was a Blackbeard, a pirate destroyerman along the lines of the British Napoleonic hero Sir Edward Pellew. Omori Sentaro, well-informed and conscientious, better fit the mold of Alfred Thayer Mahan.

Admiral Omori gamely accepted the mission. In addition to the heavy cruisers
Myoko
and
Haguro
he would have two destroyer squadrons, each with a light cruiser and three tin cans. Hara’s unit sailed under Baron Ijuin of Squadron 3, who was in the
Sendai.
Ijuin made a point of telling his captain that he would depend especially on Hara, for the baron did not trust his aged flagship, which Ijuin had left behind on many previous missions. Squadron 10, under Rear Admiral Osugi Morikazu in the
Agano
, added another unfamiliar unit, though his light cruiser was among the most modern in the fleet. Admiral Omori himself noted the lack of experience working together as a disadvantage when the senior officers met, but pointed out that this had also been true for Mikawa off Guadalcanal.

It was not only Imperial Navy officers who had Guadalcanal on their minds. Bull Halsey code-named the Bougainville invasion Operation “Shoestring II.”

The Omori fleet sailed from Rabaul about 4:00 p.m. on L-Day. Before he could exit St. George’s Channel, Admiral Omori learned of a delay in loading troops aboard the five destroyers that were to transport them. He was
forced to mark time in submarine-infested waters, already distressing him. It was past dark when the units finally joined together. As they exited the channel there was a contact Omori understood to be a real submarine. The southerly course he adopted to skirt it further delayed the mission. The admiral’s ambition to catch the Allied amphibious ships had already been frustrated—Halsey made sure those precious craft cleared before nightfall.

Awaiting the Japanese instead was Rear Admiral Merrill with his light cruisers
Montpelier
,
Cleveland
,
Columbia
, and
Denver
, along with eight destroyers in Empress Augusta Bay. The tin cans were under Captain Arleigh A. Burke, commanding Destroyer Squadron 23, the “Little Beavers.” Burke himself led the van of the American formation. Tip Merrill’s worst problem was that Burke’s destroyers had gone to refuel, but they rejoined before midnight. Halsey had carefully saturated the channel from Rabaul and the northern part of The Slot with night snoopers. The sea was calm. It was dark and drizzly, with the moon setting early and overcast obscuring the stars except where they shone through holes in the cloud. Captain Hara estimated visibility at about 5,500 yards but thought the night murky. A fateful encounter impended.

Omori’s cruisers were barely out of the channel when they began to overhear radio contact reports. In view of the delays in loading the troop force and avoiding the submarine, and the slower (twenty-six-knot) speed of the transport destroyers, Admiral Omori recommended that the counterlanding be canceled. Kusaka agreed—but ordered Omori ahead to attack the Allied invasion fleet anyway. The dispatch came through at 11:30 p.m., with Omori less than two hours from the invasion area. The fleet commander leaped ahead at thirty-two knots.

The Americans had radar-equipped aircraft (of the 5th Bomb Group) watching from above the clouds. Tip Merrill made a point of commending the accuracy of the aerial scouts in his after-action report. Early on one plane dived to bomb the
Sendai
; later a bomber tried its luck against
Haguro.
She was hit amidships, opening up some side plates. Omori altered course to follow one mistaken sighting report, then pressed forward at a reduced speed of eighteen knots. Scouts claimed several battleships plus many cruisers and destroyers were in Empress Augusta Bay. At 1:40 a.m., a
Haguro
floatplane reported ships only twenty miles away.

The Omori fleet went to thirty knots after another erroneous report
that U.S. transports were unloading off the invasion beaches. The admiral discovered that the
Haguro
’s damage now restricted him to that speed. With the conflicting reports Admiral Omori ordered a course reversal to await clarification. Rain pelted the warships. After about ten minutes Omori again headed for Empress Augusta Bay. The double course change threw the formation into confusion. Shortly after they came about the second time, Captain Hara spotted a red flare in the distance and ordered a warning message.

At about the same moment, 2:27 a.m., American radars spotted the Omori fleet, beginning with Baron Ijuin’s column. Tip Merrill intended to withhold fire with his cruisers while the tin cans executed a torpedo attack. Burke, whose estimate of when the Japanese would be seen was almost precisely correct, took his “Little Beavers” ahead immediately, and without further order launched half salvos of torpedoes. Commander Bernard L. Austin, with the trailing tin can unit, Destroyer Division 46, waited his own attack until Merrill came around to a southerly course. Omori’s task force had more difficulty detecting the Allies. Some of his ships were equipped with modified air search radars, but the admiral had little confidence in them. But Merrill watched the enemy carefully. The Japanese prompted his course change after
Shigure
detected warships at 2:45, and Omori began to react. All three Japanese columns turned to starboard, which Merrill interpreted as their assuming a line of battle. Admiral Omori never commented on his intentions. Hara saw the maneuver simply as turning away from torpedo water. Merrill’s cruisers opened fire four minutes later.

The Japanese fleet never regained its poise. Cruiser
Sendai
narrowly avoided colliding with the
Shigure
and became the prime target for Merrill’s cruisers. Following behind the
Shigure
, Lieutenant Commander Sugihara Yoshiro’s
Samidare
sideswiped the last destroyer in the column,
Shiratsuyu.
The latter’s hull crumpled under the shock. Her guns were disabled. Both ships, their speed now restricted to only fourteen to sixteen knots, simply left the battle area. Seaman Fahey on the
Montpelier
had a ringside seat, as only the five-and six-inch turrets were involved. He watched an inferno. “You sense a funny feeling as both task forces race toward each other,” Fahey told his diary. “It is very dark and heat lightning can be seen during the battle along with a drizzle. Our ship did not waste any time.”

Captain Shoji Kiichiro’s
Sendai
was surrounded by shell splashes and hit
at least five times. Her rudder jammed. She coasted to a halt while the battle moved southward. Baron Ijuin signaled Captain Hara in the
Shigure
to come alongside and take off the crew, but the destroyer leader could not see any way to close with the blazing
Sendai
, and he hesitated to put his own destroyer in the American crosshairs. Hara conformed with Omori’s movement instead. Commander Austin came upon
Sendai
a half hour later and finished her off with torpedoes. Baron Ijuin and thirty-seven sailors were rescued by an I-boat. The rest went to Davy Jones’s locker.

Admiral Omori made the best of a bad lot. Captain Natsumura Katsuhiro’s
Myoko
, the flagship, saw Task Force 39 at 2:49 a.m. Natsumura ordered torpedo action to starboard, then to port as the ship circled and steadied on a southwesterly heading. At 3:07 the destroyer
Hatsukaze
collided with the heavy cruiser, scraping her beam to port, tearing off two torpedo tubes. The destroyer was cut in half. Captain Natsumura ordered star shells to illuminate the scene, but apparently they were duds. He opened fire with armor-piercing shells at 3:17.
Myoko
launched four torpedoes and the
Haguro
six more. Captain Matsubara Hiroshi’s
Agano
fired eight torpedoes from 2:51. American shells fell thick around her starting seven minutes later, and Matsubara’s evasive action confused the formation, which could not re-form until a half hour later. Squadron commander Osugi ordered torpedo action, but the
Haguro
now lay between
Agano
, her consorts, and the Americans, so Rear Admiral Osugi canceled it. Cruiser
Haguro
fired on Merrill’s ships. Jim Fahey saw shells falling all around. The
Montpelier
was struck by two torpedoes, duds at the end of their runs, which bounced off instead of opening her hull. The
Denver
caught a shell that fell right down a stack but apparently was a dud too. She was hit four more times. Destroyer
Foote
, crippled by a torpedo, lay dead in the water. The tin can
Spence
absorbed a shell hit without serious damage, and she too was sideswiped, by another American destroyer.

To maintain a steady course for gun laying, Admiral Merrill coolly ordered a series of simultaneous turns by his cruisers, despite his fifty-year-old navigation charts and a near collision with a U.S. destroyer. Fahey recorded, “They say the maneuvers Admiral Merrill pulled off in this sea battle would put German Admiral Scheer of World War I fame to shame. Scheer pulled his tactics in daylight off Jutland but Merrill had darkness to cope with and twice the speed.” In a display of their enormous capacity
for volume gunfire, the American cruisers fired more than 4,500 six-inch shells, the
Montpelier
alone accounting for a third of that total. Considering that Merrill had just carried out surface bombardments of Buka and Shortland, and that his crews had gotten only two hours’ sleep, this gunnery is remarkable. The cruisers also fired 700 five-inch shells, while destroyers expended 2,600 rounds.

At 3:37 a.m. Admiral Omori ordered his fleet to withdraw. He told U.S. interrogators after the war that he based his decision on several factors. He remained uncertain of the composition of Merrill’s force, and feared it might have as many as seven cruisers and a dozen destroyers. Omori himself had already lost the equivalent of one of his two destroyer squadrons—
Sendai
and
Hatsukaze
sunk and two tin cans disabled by collision. Formation speed was down due to the
Haguro
’s bomb damage,
Myoko
had sustained structural damage in her collision, the supply of star shells had been exhausted—and Omori wanted to be beyond the range of Allied airpower, or at least under a Japanese air umbrella, before dawn. Merrill pursued until about 5:00 a.m. Omori’s battered ships entered Simpson Harbor that afternoon. The crippled destroyers
Shiratsuyu
and
Samidare
arrived the next day.

Captain Uozumi Jisaku’s
Haguro
absorbed half a dozen shells—Omori notes that four of them were duds—and the
Myoko
had been hit twice. Morison mentions hits on the
Agano
only as a possibility, and indeed that cruiser’s action record notes none. The
Hatsukaze
, crippled by her collision with
Myoko
, sank with all hands. In terms of breaking up the invasion, Admiral Omori accomplished nothing. The Imperial Navy’s vaunted superiority at night combat had eroded. In fact, Admiral Omori would cite a lack of training in night operations as the main reason for the hapless collisions among his vessels that night. The Japanese warships smashed into each other like kids playing at crash cars in a theme park. The Americans had perfected the marriage of technology and manual efficiency that made their radar-controlled gunnery so formidable.