50 Years Ago . . . Fork to Victory

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By Jack Sweetman

The turning point in the Pacific came at Guadalcanal

Since 7 August 1942, when U.S. Marines landed at Guadalcanal in the southern Solomons, Imperial Japanese General Headquarters had determined to eject the invaders—the first threat to the integrity of its defensive perimeter—and bring the island back under Japanese control. The resulting contest attained a dura­tion, intensity, and cost that neither side could have fore-

U.S. forces called the Tokyo Express—Japanese ships that steamed down the Slot through the Solomons to land troops and supplies and to bombard Henderson Field. U.S. surface forces challenged these nocturnal forays success­fully at the Battle of Cape Esperance in October and the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in mid-November, and less successfully at the Battle of Tassafaronga later that month.

seen. At stake, as both soon came to realize, was more than possession of a sweltering, disease-ridden, singularly inhospitable South Seas island; the real objective was no less than the strategic initiative in the Pacific.

For months, the outcome of the struggle hung in a precarious balance. Later in the war, when the U.S. Navy had won command of the sea, it could isolate islands on which landings were made. This was not the case at Guadalcanal, where command of the sea changed at sun­rise and sunset. During the day, U.S. aircraft exercised it from Henderson Field, the airstrip the Marines quickly es­tablished on the island. After dark, it belonged to what

But before and after these clashes, the Tokyo Express ran on schedule, subject only to interference from U.S. patrol boats and the need to be well on its way back up the Slot by daybreak. Besides night surface actions immedi­ately offshore, two inconclusive fleet actions took place between carrier forces: the Battle of the Eastern Solomons in August and the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in October. On more than one occasion, only a single car­rier was available to support the defense of Guadalcanal, and U.S. leaders considered the possibility that it might become necessary to evacuate the island.

Fortunately, the Japanese Army consistently underes-

timated the number of Marines and soldiers ashore by 50% to 70%. Consequently, the 30,000 troops landed in de­tachments fed three successive attempts to overrun Hen­derson Field—in late August, mid-September, and late October—rather than massing for one great attack. Psy­chologically, the turning point occurred on 18 October, when pugnacious Vice Admiral William F. “Bull” Halsey took over as head of the South Pacific forces, an ap­pointment applauded throughout his new command. Ob­jectively, it came on 12-15 November, in the three inter­locking actions that comprised the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal.

Like the majority of engagements in the Guadalcanal campaign, the naval battle had its origins in a Japanese plan to reinforce the island—in this case, with 10,000 men in high­speed transports escorted by a destroyer force led by Rear Admiral Raizo Tanaka, the Tokyo Express’s indomitable engineer. These troops were to land on Guadalcanal during the night of 12-13 November, while a raiding force com­manded by Vice Admiral Hiroaki Abe pounded Henderson Field and the Marine positions around it. By coincidence, two heavily es­corted U.S. transport groups under orders from Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner reached the island on 11 and 12 November. On the 12th, air patrols reported powerful enemy forces mov­ing toward Guadalcanal, obviously with the in­tention of attacking the airfield and the trans­ports, if present. Turner seized the opportunity to prepare a surprise. As soon as his trans­ports had put to sea, he dispatched the cruis­ers and most of the destroyers in their support group to intercept the intruders off Guadalcanal.

The enemy formation—correctly believed to include two battleships—presented the home team with heavy odds.

Cruiser Night Action, 13 November

The force Turner had deployed numbered 13 vessels: the heavy cruisers Portland (CA-33) and San Francisco (CA-38), light cruisers At­lanta (CL-51), Helena (CL-50), and Juneau (CL52), and eight destroyers. In command in the flagship San Francisco was Rear Admiral Daniel J. Callaghan. Also present, flying his flag in the Atlanta, was Rear Admiral Norman Scott, the victor at the Battle of Cape Esperance. Abe’s raiding group consisted of the battle­ships Hiei and Kirishima, light cruiser Nagara, and 14 de­stroyers. Radar contact was made at 0124. Firing began ^at virtually point-blank range—less than a mile—at 0145, ^and the opposing formations held head-on courses to pass through one another in the fiercest, most confused melee since Tegetthoff led his flying wedge into the Italian fleet pff Lissa in 1866. Callaghan and Scott were killed early ^ln the action, which lasted barely a quarter-hour. At its ^end, the Japanese withdrew without having shelled Hen­derson Field, and Tanaka’s transports were ordered back to the Shortland Islands, midway up the Slot. Sunk or sink­ing were the Atlanta and four U.S. and two Japanese de­stroyers. The Hiei, slowed by at least 30 large-caliber hits, was left behind with three destroyers attending her.

Dawn and U.S. aircraft found the Hiei only a few miles from Guadalcanal. Repeated bomb and torpedo runs added to her misery, and around sunset she became the first Japanese battleship to be sunk in World Way II. The day’s action was not entirely to the Imperial Navy’s disadvantage, however. Torpedoes from the submarine /- 26 claimed the damaged Juneau as the U.S. force retired from the battle area, and shortly past midnight two heavy cruisers of Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa’s Eighth Fleet, called into play that morning, pasted Henderson Field.

Air Action, 14 November                             _____________

Tanaka’s convoy set out for Guadalcanal for a second time at 1300 on 13 November. At first light U.S. recon­naissance flights spotted his transports and destroyers heading toward the island and Mikawa’s cruisers mov­ing away from it. In the ensuing air attacks one o Mikawa’s six cruisers was sunk and three others dam­aged, one severely, while six of Tanaka s 11 transports were destroyed and another hit so badly that it had to turn back. His losses notwithstanding, Tanaka pressed on to­ward Guadalcanal.

Battleship Night Action, 14-15 November

Meanwhile, U.S. and Japanese commanders had been reaching decisions that precipitated the climax of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. Late on 13 November, Halsey or­dered the carrier Enterprise (CV-6) task force to send its heavy gunfire unit into the cauldron. The surface action group thus formed under Rear Admiral Willis A. Lee con­sisted of the new battleships South Dakota (BB-57) and Washington (BB-56) and four destroyers. On the Japan­ese side, Vice Admiral Nobotake Kondo, commanding the Combined Fleet’s Advanced Force, made plans to support the landing of Tanaka’s transports by attacking Hender­son Field. The formation assembled under his personal command comprised the battleship Kirishima, heavy cruis­ers Atago (flag) and Takao, two light cruisers, and nine destroyers. These deployments set the stage for the first and next-to-last time in the Pacific war that battleships fought their own kind.

The action opened with 16-inch salvoes from the U.S. dreadnoughts at 2317. By the time it ended approximately an hour and a quarter later, the South Dakota had been heavily damaged, two U.S. destroyers had been sunk, and a third was slowly sinking; but the Kirishima and a Japan­ese destroyer had taken such punishment that they had to be scuttled, and Kondo’s force was retiring. Although it had not hammered the airfield, it had cleared the way for

Tanaka, who ran his four surviving transports ashore on Guadalcanal at 0400. Of the 10,000 men intended to re­inforce the island, 2,000 had reached it.

In view of the opposition encountered, the delivery of these troops is a testimonial to the fighting spirit of the Imperial Navy. At a cost of two battleships, a heavy cruiser, and three destroyers, however, this was a testi­monial the Japanese could ill afford. Thereafter, the prob­lem of convoying troops to Guadalcanal was overshad­owed by the increasingly intractable one of supplying those already there. On 12 December, the Navy formally re­commended abandoning the struggle for the island, and on the last day of the year Imperial General Headquarters directed a staged evacuation, which took place on 1-8 February 1943. In the words of a Japanese document cap­tured some time earlier, “Success or failure in recaptur­ing Guadalcanal ... is the fork in the road which leads to victory for them or for us.” For Japan, the fork led to defeat. The U.S. Navy was about to begin its long march across the Pacific to Tokyo Bay.

For further reading: Paul S. Dull, A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy (1941-1945) (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1978); David C. Evans, ed„ The Japanese Navy in World War 11: In the Words of Former Japanese Naval Officers, Second Edition (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1986); Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol­ume V: The Struggle for Guadalcanal (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975).

Dr. Sweetman is a naval and military historian.