Savo Island

The U.S. Navy’s upset victory at Midway had brought the strategic balance in the Pacific to an uneasy equilibrium, breaking the momentum that the Imperial Japanese Navy had maintained throughout the war’s opening phase. For the first time since Pearl Harbor, U.S. leaders could aspire to do more than parry the enemy’s thrusts or sting him with hit-and-run raids. Despite this terrible blow, however, the Imperial Navy remained a formidable force, and its commanders were as determined to retain the initiative as their American counterparts were to wrest it from them. The ensuing contest entailed seven months of the most intense combat in the history of the U.S. naval service.

The scene was the Southwest Pacific, where both antagonists shifted their attention in the wake of Midway. Admiral Ernest J. King, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, had placed the security of the sea lines of communication with Australia among the Navy’s top priorities as early as the Anglo-American Arcadia Conference of late 1941 and early 1942. On 31 March, King directed Admiral Chester Nimitz to begin planning for large-scale amphibious invasions of the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and the Bismarck Archipelago, and on 2 July he won the approval of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to use Major General Alexander A. Vandegrift’s 1st Marine Division to seize Tulagi, occupied by the Japanese on 2 May, and “adjacent positions” in the Solomons. King chose Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner to command the amphibious force, and scheduled the operation, code-named Watchtower, for 1 August; in view of the limited time and slender resources available, participants called it “Shoestring.”

Admiral lsoroku Yamamoto’s Central Pacific offensive having ended in disaster, the Imperial Navy reverted to the Southwest Pacific strategy that its general staff had favored all along. Although it had to drop the grand design of occupying the Fijis, Samoa, and New Caledonia, the navy collaborated with the army in planning to complete the conquest of New Guinea and to strengthen the defensive perimeter by establishing an air barrier over the Solomons. The Japanese intended to accomplish the latter by building airfields on Buka in the north and Guadalcanal in the south. On 4 July, an Allied reconnaissance flight over Guadalcanal detected an airfield under construction near Lunga Point. This threatening discovery placed the capture of Guadalcanal at the head of Watch- tower’s agenda and, improbably enough, made the 2,500 steaming square miles of what Samuel Eliot Morison called “this. . . fecaloid island” the fulcrum of the Pacific war.

Meeting the operation’s original target date proved impossible, but on 7-8 August 18,000 men of the 1st Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and the neighboring islets of Gavutu and Tanambogo. A three-carrier task force under Vice Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher provided air cover. The Japanese were taken completely by surprise. While the Marines overran the islands’ outnumbered garrisons in a succession of sharp little actions, the transports quickly began offloading the division’s supplies amid the interruptions of air attacks launched from the Japanese base at Rabaul, New Britain. Speed was of the essence, as Fletcher had announced that he would not keep his carriers within range of land-based enemy air power for more than 48 hours. In the event, the loss of 21 fighters in air battles over Guadalcanal and a concern about his carriers’ fuel situation led him to begin his withdrawal before sunset on 8 August.

Air strikes were not the only means with which the Japanese responded to the landing. At 1430 on 7 August, Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa, commander of the recently activated Eighth Fleet (Outer South Seas Force), sortied from Rabaul with the heavy cruiser Chokai (flag), light cruisers Tenryu and Yubari, and destroyer Yunagi. Three hours later, these ships rendezvoused with four heavy cruisers—the Aoba, Furutake, Kako, and Kinugasa—which Mikawa had ordered to sea from the base at Kavieng, New Ireland, at 0800 that morning. The combined force then proceeded down the inter-island channel—to become infamous as the Slot—toward Guadalcanal. The admiral intended to close the invasion site under cover of darkness early on 9 August and destroy the enemy amphibious force in night action, a form of combat at which the Imperial Navy acknowledged no peer.

Mikawa’s movement through the Slot did not go unobserved. A U.S. Army patrol plane and the submarine S-38 (SS-143) sighted his force on 7 August, as did three Australian aircraft on the 8th. Unfortunately, the report upon which Admiral Turner had reason to place most credence contained misinformation that the enemy column included two seaplane-carriers. Such vessels having no place in surface battles, Turner concluded that the Japanese were on the way to establish a seaplane base in the central Solomons—not to attack him.

Nevertheless, the amphibious force took precautions against unwelcome surprises. Its cruiser-destroyer screen, a combined U.S.-Australian force, was commanded by Royal Navy Rear Admiral V. A. C. Crutchley, VC. Geography dictated his dispositions. Turner’s transports dropped anchor in two groups, one off the northern coast of Guadalcanal and the other off the southern coast of Florida Island (Tulagi’s big neighbor), almost opposite one another in the passage soon dubbed lronbottom Sound between the two large islands. The western entrance to the sound was divided in two by Savo Island. Two radar- equipped U.S. destroyers were picketed outside—the Blue (DD-387) in the south and the Ralph Talbot (DD-390) in the north. Inside the sound was a Southern Force consisting of the Australian cruisers Australia (Crutchley’s flagship) and Canberra, the U.S. cruiser Chicago (CA-29), and the U.S. destroyers Bagley (DD-386) and Patterson (DD-392); and a Northern Force composed of the U.S. cruisers Astoria (CA-34), Quincy (CA-39) and Vincennes (CA-44), and the destroyers Helm (DD-308) and Wilson (DD-408). Guarding the opposite approach to the anchorage was an Eastern Force comprising two light cruisers (U.S. and Australian) and two U.S. destroyers.

The circumstances under which these arrangements were carried out opened the door to disaster. At 2032 Turner summoned Crutchley to a conference on board a transport off Lunga Point, depriving the covering forces of the Australia and effectively leaving them leaderless, since the U.S. officer to whom Crutchley delegated command failed to exercise it. As no unpleasantness was anticipated, the ships were in readiness Condition II, allowing half their crews, exhausted after the past two days’ exertions, to catch some sleep. Much worse, many commands had become what Admiral Nimitz later described as insufficiently battle-minded. Excessively incredulous might be a better way to put it. When enemy shells began to fall, the captains of at least three cruisers assumed that they must be receiving friendly fire. One skipper directed his gunnery officer, who had started shooting back, to cease fire; another ordered his ship’s recognition lights turned on. To them and others it seemed unbelievable that those could be Japanese ships out there.

The result has been called the worst defeat in U.S. naval history. At 0054 on 9 August Mikawa’s column slipped into the sound past the Blue. Sighted by the Japanese, she made neither visual nor radar contact with them. Finally, at 0145, the Patterson gave the alarm: “Warning—warning: strange ships entering harbor.” Even as her message was being transmitted, the first of two torpedoes and two dozen shells slammed into the Canberra. In six minutes the enemy cruisers were making a U-tum northwestward around Savo Island, leaving the Canberra in sinking condition and the Chicago, also torpedoed, without a clue as to where the battle was going. No one alerted the Northern Force, and by 0215 the Astoria, Quincy, and Vincennes had sustained damage to which all succumbed before dawn. Aside from an 8-inch hit on the Chokai, the attackers emerged practically untouched.

Mikawa then threw away the fruits of victory by electing to withdraw. Ironically, in view of Fletcher’s retirement, he acted out of fear of the U.S. carriers. Dealing with the transports would take most of what remained of the night and, presumably, expose his ships to hours of air attacks as they steamed back up the Slot after sunrise. Still, the Japanese did not get off scot-free. On 10 August torpedoes from the S-44 (SS-155) sank the Kako as she neared Kavieng.

The mutilation of his covering force left Turner no choice but to clear the area before nightfall on 9 August. Even though unloading continued until midafternoon, his transports weighed anchor with cargo in their holds. The amphibious exodus did nothing to boost the morale of the Marines, but enough supplies had been landed to keep them going until seaborne communications could be resumed later that month. Strategically, therefore, the Battle of Savo Island proved barren of consequence. Tactically, it provided a grim curtain-raiser to the struggle for Guadalcanal.