Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun (57 page)

Morison notes that one cruiser used her main battery in a desperate effort to obliterate the attackers. Kurita’s vessels had the time to do this because Commander Caldwell circled the shoreline past Crater Peninsula to come in over Rabaul town. This gave his dive-bombers an approach vector enabling them to attack fore-to-aft, the most effective target aspect for dive-bombing. Available Japanese records show that
all
the warships fired their big guns, the heavy cruisers expending more than 356 eight-inch shells, the light cruisers at least ninety-five six-inch munitions. The cruisers also put up a hail of fire from five-inch high-angle guns, more than 1,421 rounds. And they expended nearly 24,000 light cannon and machine gun bullets in close-in defense. No doubt destroyers put up storms of fire also, since they collectively claimed downing ten aircraft. All this was in addition to the flak from Rabaul’s extensive antiaircraft array. Given the curtain of fire, it is amazing that total American losses amounted to just five bombers and an equal number of fighters.

On the flagship, Captain Nakaoka Nobuyoshi ordered AA action to port and cast off from the tanker. His
Atago
was just under way when Commander Caldwell split the attack into several units headed for different parts of the harbor. One element aimed at Nakaoka’s cruiser. At 11:28 three SBDs dropped on the
Atago.
All scored near misses to port, forward of the beam. Splinters opened steam lines and set fire to torpedo oxygen flasks. The ship listed. A splinter shot across the bridge, carrying away half of Captain Nakaoka’s face. Sailors bore him from the bridge on a stretcher. The flag captain managed a weak, “Banzai!” as he passed Admiral Kurita. There were more dive-bombers—with another near miss—and seven Avengers
launched torpedoes without effect. By 12:11 p.m. counterflooding had returned the
Atago
to an even keel. By then Captain Nakaoka was dead. Twenty-one seamen were killed and sixty-four wounded. Kurita was stunned, as was Nakaoka’s classmate Rear Admiral Komura Keizo, Ozawa’s chief of staff; and Baron Tomioka, another Etajima comrade. His friend had died senselessly in the harbor of the impregnable fortress for which Tomioka was now responsible.

Cruiser
Takao
exited to Blanche Bay. Captain Hayashi Shigetaka watched the attack planes turn in over Rabaul town. Every gun on his ship was firing by 11:25. As the
Takao
gained speed, destroyer
Wakatsuki
cut in front of her. Hayashi ordered hard right rudder. The bombers came as the 12,000-ton cruiser responded. She shuddered with an impact starboard of the number one gun turret that holed its side, pierced the deck, and damaged the barbette of the next turret back. Twenty-three sailors were killed and another twenty-two wounded. A torpedo attack followed but obtained no result. By 11:50 Hayashi’s ship was out of Simpson Harbor and the enemy had disappeared.

Next to the
Atago
, the worst affected would be Captain Kato Yoshiro’s cruiser
Maya
, caught just casting off from her oiler. Kato had held command for less than a month—not so familiar with his vessel as he could have been. His ship was a sitting duck. Lieutenant Commander James Newell, leader of VB-23 of the
Independence
, put a bomb right down one of
Maya
’s smokestacks. The weapon detonated in her engine rooms. The
Maya
suffered the most severe casualties, with seventy dead and sixty wounded. Fires blazed into the night.

On the heavy cruiser
Chikuma
, Captain Shigenaga Kazue ordered AA action just two minutes after the initial sighting. By 11:24 his main battery and secondary were both engaged. Any hope of escape evaporated in the two minutes starting at 11:30 when, in close succession, the
Chikuma
was hit next to her forward turrets and abaft the beam on her catapult deck. The latter explosion started a fire that spread to the engine spaces. Shortly thereafter came a near miss off the stern. The
Chikuma
was among the first to reach speed and attain Blanche Bay, at 12:10, where Captain Shigenaga’s violent weaving put off the Americans’ aim. Her damage turned out to be only superficial.

Captain Aitoku Ichiro of the
Mogami
was also quick on the trigger, and
for a little while it seemed his ship might escape. But SBDs re-formed overhead at 11:32, and a minute later Dauntlesses dropped on Aitoku’s vessel. He ordered full left rudder, and the
Mogami
was turning when a bomb hit between the forwardmost turrets. Black smoke billowed into the sky. A glide bomber and a torpedo attack were fended off by destruction of the aircraft, which crashed in the harbor nearby. The
Mogami
reached the wider waters of Blanche Bay fifteen minutes later, but at 11:45 a.m. Aitoku had to stop engines and flood the forward magazines. Crewmen extinguished the fires before 1:00 p.m. An hour later
Mogami
was pumping out. In all, thirty-one sailors were wounded.

The other Japanese warships proved luckier. Breaking away from the oiler that had been fueling his
Suzuya
, Captain Takahashi Yuji ordered full speed and joined the stampede for the harbor exit. His ship put up flak and endured only strafing attacks that wounded eight men. Also strafed was light cruiser
Agano
, which had stayed at Rabaul after Admiral Omori’s debacle at Empress Augusta Bay. One sailor was killed and seven wounded, her damage bullet holes in the hull. Captain Tahara Yoshiaki’s
Noshiro
sustained a near miss, which wounded a single sailor and damaged one high-angle flak gun. The
Yubari
also came through with nothing worse than a couple of men wounded. Destroyer
Fujinami
was hit by a torpedo that failed to explode, but dented her hull, killing a sailor and injuring nine others. Another tin can, the
Wakatsuki
, sustained damage from a near miss.

Admiral Kurita’s ships were milling about, some in Blanche Bay, the others headed there, when another wave of American planes arrived. The
Takao
reports sighting these at 12:02 p.m., the other vessels variously between 12:17 and 12:19. This was General Kenney’s complementary land-based attack, with twenty-seven B-24 bombers plus sixty-seven P-38 escorts. To Kurita’s relief they made for Rabaul town, not the fleet. The action incensed Admiral Halsey, who notes Kenney had promised an attack in strength that would “lay Rabaul flat.” His formation not only lacked the strength to do that, it arrived only as Navy carrier planes were leaving. In fact, Sherman’s fliers could see only eight Army planes as they made off. The poor timing and weak strength, Halsey felt, were not the promised maximum effort. General Kenney’s defense is that, after the exertions of recent weeks against Rabaul, his forces had damage that outstripped repair capacity. Kenney maintains he told MacArthur, “[M]y maximum effort would be pretty low until I got some replacements and repaired all the shot-up airplanes.” The SOWESPAC commander, Kenney writes, told him to proceed on that basis, and the actual attack force would be a bit larger than Kenney had estimated he could field. But the general was aware from communications with Washington that no replacements were in the offing and he should not have left Halsey expecting major cooperation.

Kenney notes his attack had excellent results. Japanese materials available at this writing, however, associate no particular damage with the bombs of November 5 other than the destruction of the Kurita fleet. Even the codebreakers had little to show except that Rabaul radio went off the air from 11:29 a.m. until 2:18 p.m.—less than two hours after the end of Kenney’s attack. Two Japanese fighters fell to P-38s, both to the ace Dick Bong. Navy fighters claimed over two dozen more in dogfights as the carrier planes made for Sherman’s task force. Over the two attacks, the Japanese claimed to have destroyed forty-nine American planes. The attack stirred Rabaul like a hornets’ nest. By dint of strenuous efforts the Japanese made a sighting and sent as many planes as they could. Radio Tokyo would assert that a fleet carrier and a light carrier were both sunk in what the Japanese would term “the First Air Battle for Bougainville,” but in fact the JNAF attack completely miscarried, going against a PT boat and a couple of landing ships. The most they accomplished was to damage one. It was an ignoble performance. At the Imperial Palace, where Nagano Osami reported the same claims for American carriers sunk, the news was believed and greeted with joy.

As for Admiral Kurita’s glorious purpose of mopping up the Americans off Bougainville, that evaporated in the heat of Halsey’s daring raid. Captain Shigenaga left for Truk almost immediately with his
Chikuma
and the destroyer
Wakatsuki.
Admiral Kurita sailed for the same place with most of the fleet that night. Heavy cruiser
Suzuya
stayed with the
Mogami
, making temporary repairs to her plant. Those vessels departed the next day. Captain Kato also stayed to effect temporary repairs to his
Maya
. Combined Fleet recalled a reinforcement unit it had sent from Truk direct to Bougainville. The heavy cruiser
Chokai
, hastening from Truk to rejoin the Second Fleet, reversed her course. The Imperial Navy never again sent heavy ships to Rabaul. The light cruisers
Agano
,
Noshiro
, and
Yubari
, now the backbone of the Southeast Area Fleet, did not have long left to them in the Solomons either.
The players were already taking their places for the last act of this story. The Empire had crossed the event horizon, entering a state of negative entropy: Under this condition enormous efforts generated picayune results. How pernicious the situation had become would be demonstrated almost immediately.

“A FUNERAL DIRGE FOR TOJO’S RABAUL”

Bull Halsey exulted at the results of the carrier raid. Though the next time they met, the admiral would complain to MacArthur of George Kenney’s performance, in the moment he expressed himself quite clearly to Ted Sherman, signaling, “IT IS REAL MUSIC TO ME AND OPENS THE STOPS FOR A FUNERAL DIRGE FOR TOJO’S RABAUL.” Admiral Nimitz, pleased too, immediately assigned Rear Admiral Alfred E. Montgomery’s Task Group 50.3 to the South Pacific and directed that officer, who had fleet carriers
Essex
and
Bunker Hill
, along with light carrier
Independence
, to make his best speed. Nimitz wanted exploitation, taking action “WITH VIEW EARLIEST POSSIBLE STRIKES REPEAT STRIKES ON DAMAGED AND OTHER SHIPS IN AND AROUND RABAUL.”

But a campaign of repeated carrier raids on the Japanese fortress proved unnecessary. Ultra revealed the Japanese heavy units withdrawing and Koga hunkering down at Truk. On November 9, CINCPAC modified his order to provide that Montgomery, after a single strike, should proceed to the Central Pacific for Nimitz’s offensive.

The last act of the Rabaul drama took place in the air, with the evolving Bougainville campaign in the lead. The Japanese would actually fight
six
“air battles of Bougainville” in the course of their RO Operation. The air battles afforded Kusaka’s and Ozawa’s pilots no greater success than the ineffectual attack on the American carriers following the November 5 raid. But JNAF losses were painful, eighty-three aircraft. Emperor Hirohito’s satisfaction with the claimed (but false) U.S. carrier losses in the Rabaul raid continued when Admiral Nagano updated the palace on November 9. Hirohito joined Captain Jyo for toasts in the aide’s duty office. But those combat results were illusory too. Throughout November, on 869 sorties flown (many of which were, however, fighter patrols over Rabaul), the fruit was a single transport sunk and a few ships damaged. Halsey’s infusion of South
Pacific forces onto Bougainville proved more supple and enduring than Japanese efforts to blockade the island.

For the Marines, Seabees, and others on Bougainville—including the Japanese—there would be plenty of mud, mayhem, and misery. But enemy efforts to drive the Allies into the sea were no more successful than they had been on Guadalcanal. Imperial Navy support activities would be subject to the existing operational environment—now highly dangerous to the Japanese. The light cruisers left at Rabaul furnish a good example. The fleet ran a counterlanding mission to Torokina coupled with a supply run to Buka. Both succeeded. On the next Buka run the
Natori
was torpedoed and left the Solomons for the last time. Again like Cactus, the Japanese on Bougainville became isolated.

While action off Bougainville continued, George Kenney sent several more small air strikes against Rabaul, and Bull Halsey geared up for another big attack. That aerial assault took place on November 11. Kenney’s follow-up strike was canceled due to weather, which had also dramatically reduced his activities during the previous forty-eight hours. On the appointed day, Sherman flung his carrier planes at Rabaul from the east, and Montgomery from the south. Overcast hampered Sherman’s planes, which got in just a small attack on a few ships they spotted through a break in the clouds.

Montgomery’s 199 aircraft stormed into Rabaul through rain. Kusaka’s defenses put up sixty-eight Zeroes to contest the airspace. In an echo of Santa Cruz, Jim Vose, who had planted the damaging bomb on the
Shokaku
’s flight deck that terrible day, was now a lieutenant commander leading the
Bunker Hill
dive-bombers. But Vose got no major decision this time. Not only was the weather uncooperative, but the pickings were nothing like they had been. Most important of them was the
Agano.
She sighted the attackers at 8:57 a.m. Captain Matsubara ordered his flak gunners into action ten minutes later. At 9:12 Avengers began their level runs for torpedo attack. One tin fish hit the bow but failed to explode. Another struck the after section and detonated in crew quarters, leaving part of the structure dangling in the sea. Dive-bombers achieved no results. With the detritus acting as a stationary rudder, Matsubara lost steering control. The
Agano
had many casualties. Heavy cruiser
Maya
, still repairing, emerged unscathed. The
Yubari
also rode at anchor. Captain Sakai Takumi’s light cruiser saw the approaching
planes at 8:54. Sakai ordered his main battery into action and got off twenty-six 5.5-inch shells. But by 9:13, U.S. planes were close enough to strafe the
Yubari
and several tin cans with her. The cruiser’s luck held and only a couple of seamen were wounded. The destroyer
Suzunami
was caught while she was loading torpedoes. She sank near the entrance to Simpson Harbor. The
Naganami
reached Blanche Bay but suffered a torpedo hit and had to be towed back.