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By Commodore Bruce Loxton, Royal Australian Navy (Retired)
The Australian Hudson reconnaissance aircraft found the Japanese force that was headed for Guadalcanal (here, the heavy cruisers Furutaka and Kinugasa) and transmitted sighting reports—but in a supreme irony of war, only the Japanese heard them. The Allies off Guadalcanal had to wait for the reports to be relayed from Fall River to Port Moresby to Townsville to Brisbane to Canberra to Pearl Harbor—in the case of the U.S. commander—to the task force.
Early in the morning of 9 August 1942, five Japanese heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and a destroyer, under the command of Vice Admiral Gu- nichi Mikawa, surprised an Allied cruiser force off Savo Island and sank four ships; the Japanese did not lose a vessel.
Royal Australian Air Force reconnaissance aircraft had sighted the Japanese off Bougainville the previous morning, but the Japanese approach down the chain of the Solomons went unopposed. After the initial sightings, the Japanese force was not seen again until lookouts on the Australian cruiser Canberra and the USS Patterson (DD- 392) spotted them at a range of three miles.
Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Fleet, later described 9 August 1942 as the blackest day of the war for him. In December 1942, having received no full written account of the loss of the four ships, he asked Admiral Arthur S. Hepburn, U.S. Navy (Retired),
former Commander-in-Chief of the United States Fleet, and, in 1942, Chairman of the General Board of the Navy, to conduct an informal inquiry into the circumstances attending the loss of the ships, and to report his findings to Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet.
By mid-May 1943, in what Nimitz described as a skillfully conducted, exhaustive study, Hepburn concluded that surprise was the fundamental cause of the defeat and the foremost reason for surprise was [the] inadequate condition of readiness of all ships to meet sudden night attack-
In forwarding Hepburn’s report to King, Nimitz commented that among the primary causes of the defeat were: uncoordinated searches, the failure of either carrier- of land-based aircraft to conduct effective searches, the failure of Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) aircraft to track the enemy after the sighting off Bougainville on 8 August, and communications weaknesses.
In September 1943, some 13 months after the battle. King informed the Secretary of the Navy, the Admiralty, and the Australian Naval Board, that he had accepted surprise as the immediate cause of Allied losses. He believed that the disaster could have been prevented if the fla? officers and ships had been on the alert.
There the matter rested for eight years until, in 195 E the U.S. Naval War College completed an analysis of the Battle of Savo Island, and Rear Admiral Samu^ Eliot Morison, U.S. Naval Reserve, published the first edition of The Struggle for Guadalcanal as Volume V i*1 his History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Since then, historians and biographers have generally accepted that the defeat would not have occurred had the Allied force been bright-eyed and bushy-tailed fd 0143 on 9 August. (All times are local—Greenwich Men11 Time + 11 hours.) The poor showing of those respoitsi'
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,e for aerial reconnaissance, which should have prevented ^surprise, is rarely mentioned.
” hen it is mentioned, the consensus is that bad weather Prevented shore-based, long-range U.S. Army Air Corps g ^°nnaissance aircraft from sighting the Japanese on t . ugust; that shore-based RAAF aircraft failed to main- gln Contact with the Japanese when they sighted them off ougainville; and that no RAAF aircraft made an imme- 1 pe enemy report via radio.
co ]XCePt *or lhe Naval War College analysis, the part that • U “ ^ave been played by carrier-based reconnaissance Craft *las been ignored, and coverage of the communions shortcomings has been confused and sketchy.
Reconn
te Allied cruiser force, part of Operation Watch- Screr'7~the first Allied advance in the South Pacific—was U S6rg arnPhibi°us ships that had begun landing the thp *rSt ^ar'ne Division on Guadalcanal and Tulagi on e moming of 7 August.
OandCe ^m'ra' R°bert L. Ghormley, U.S. Navy, com- manr|ed ^out*1 Pacific Area, and was the overall com- Gaj ,er ^or Watchtower, but remained at Noumea, New Frani-00*3’ ^°r Endings, ar*d designated Vice Admiral Sarcit *7*etc*ier' U.S. Navy, on board the USS Gen (UV-3), to command the Expeditionary Force. pacifra Douglas MacArthur commanded the Southwest lc Area, and the boundary between the two com-
AIRCRAFT; INTERNATIONAL NEWS PHOTO; SHIPS; SHIPS OF THE WORLD: CHARTS: WILUAM J. OUPSON
mands lay along the 158th Meridian of East Longitude for the operation. The position of the boundary in relation to the position of major Japanese forces that threatened the operation played a major role in the Battle of Savo Island.
As a result of the boundary location, responsibility for the aerial reconnaissance of the Bismarck Archipelago, the Solomon Sea, the Solomon Islands, and the waters north of the Solomons also was split along the 158th Meridian. MacArthur’s Allied Air Forces’ North Eastern Command, with headquarters in Townsville, Australia, searched generally west of the boundary; Ghormley’s South Pacific Air Command (SOPAC), which was commanded by Rear Admiral John S. McCain, based on the USS Curtiss (AV-4) in the New Hebrides, searched primarily east of the boundary.
The 158th Meridian lies only 95 miles west of Guadalcanal in the southern Solomons; because the Solomon chain trends northwest toward the Bismarck Archipelago, Rabaul—the probable source of the major threat to the expeditionary force—lay outside Ghormley’s South Pacific Area, as did the greater part of the approaches to Guadalcanal from Rabaul.
To cover the northern Solomons and the waters to the northwest of them, MacArthur’s North Eastern Command on 5 August deployed five Lockheed Hudsons of 32 Squadron RAAF to Fall River, a fighter strip on Milne Bay at the eastern tip of New Guinea, where they remained under the operational command of Townsville. The North Eastern Command’s communication plan called for all
signals to Ghormley’s South Pacific forces to be routed via Allied Air Forces Headquarters in Brisbane. Only if urgency demanded could the RAAF air bases at Townsville and Port Moresby communicate directly with SOP AC air bases and task forces.' No provision was made for communication between the Hudsons and the ships off Guadalcanal.
Allied Air Force Headquarters’ instructions to Townsville included an order that special precautions were necessary to preserve secrecy. A personal signal from the commander emphasized that only those operations and communications officers who required the information for the proper execution of their duties be informed. As a result, neither Fall River personnel nor the aircrews deployed there were told of the reason for the Hudson deployment.
How were aircrew, operations, and communications personnel to determine the urgency of a report when they were unaware of its relevance to operations then in progress? In the event, sightings made by RAAF aircraft in the context of the previous experience of those concerned, were of a routine nature; in the reality of the Guadalcanal operations, however, they were obviously of immediate importance.
Arrangements for coordination of the carriers’ considerable reconnaissance capability with that of McCain’s land-based air and seaplane command were limited to a verbal agreement that carrier aircraft would be made available if long-range aircraft could not provide adequate coverage.2 This arrangement was meaningless because the carriers were informed of the coverage achieved by McCain’s aircraft only when they had all landed after nightfall.3
On 8 August, in any case, Fletcher effectively limited the contribution that carrier aircraft could have made to aerial reconnaissance by moving his carriers from their planned operating area southwest of Guadalcanal to an area about 60 miles southeast of the island. Thus, in reducing the threat to his three carriers from one possible Japanese carrier—which he thought might be operating west of Guadalcanal—he increased the vulnerability of the force he was supporting.4
Even then, the Naval War College’s analysis found that a carrier aircraft search flown during the afternoon came within 30 miles of the Japanese force as it was steaming through Bougainville Strait. The Allies paid a heavy price for Fletcher’s shadow- boxing.5
To ensure that a Japanese force could not approach undetected from the direction of Truk or the Marshall Islands, McCain deployed the seaplane tender USS McFarland (AVD-14) to Ndeni in the Santa Cruz Islands, and the seaplane tender USS Mackinac (AVP-13) to Maramsike Estuary on the southeast coast of Malaita in the Solomons. These ships, and the Cur- ; tiss, operated up to 20 PBY Catali- nas on searches to the north and east of Guadalcanal.
McCain also controlled B-17 air- ! craft of the Army Air Corps’ 11 th Bombardment Group, based on Es- piritu Santo and at Noumea, NeW Caledonia, which were responsible for watching the northwestern approaches as far as New Georgia and western Choiseul. The B-17s carried radar, but their searches were effective only during the day be' cause of equipment limitations. They were prevented from searching beyond New Georgia because of the South Pa* cific Area boundary line, which lay about six hours steam' ing time from Savo Island. As a result of the radar and search area limitations, they proved ineffective against a force that decided to use darkness to mask its approach- These handicaps were exacerbated by the timing of their searches; the aircraft had been instructed to be abreast Tu- lagi by sunrise on their outward legs so that they reached
the
senior air staff officer at Allied Command Headquar-
1992
the limits of their search by 0915, leaving any possible Japanese force the remainder of the day to steam southeast undetected.6
As a means of preventing a surface force making a highspeed penetration through the Solomons by night, the searches planned by McCain were virtually worthless. The curtailment of B-17 searches by bad weather, despite all that has been made of it, was totally irrelevant to what followed.
Communications
Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, U.S. Navy, who commanded the Amphibious Force for Operation Watch- tower, recognized the danger. Aware that he was asking "•cCain to poach in MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific Area, he nevertheless requested him to increase the area searched by the Catalinas to include the northern Solomons and the aPproaches to them from Rabaul. McCain had aircraft available, but there is no contemporaneous record that any such additional search was flown. Indeed there is no record that McCain got the request. It is unlikely, therefore, that t e additional search was flown.7
Rut since Turner had no reason to doubt that this search ad t^en flown, the absence of any enemy report during he afternoon and evening of 8 August probably strengthened his belief that the force sighted off Bougainville had n°t continued to close on Guadalcanal.
In assessing the part played by the Allied Air Forces orth Eastern Command, it is important to understand that he staff perceived the assault on Tulagi and Guadalcanal as a side show. On D-day, 7 August, for example,
ers Townsville, was not at his post monitoring the situ- at>on, but rather visiting outlying airfields.8 The command ad been for some considerable time fully extended fight- ,ng the war in New Guinea with inadequate resources, and Was facing the probability of an assault on Milne Bay and an mtensification of the threat to Port Moresby from Japanese forces located across the Owen Stanley Mountains on c north coast of New Guinea.9 he airfield at Fall River had become operational only rays before—on 26 July. A metaled 5,000-foot strip sur- l^unded by a sea of mud and coconut trees, it was located HlV area l^at rece‘ve(J an average rainfall of more than and mC^es a year- R lacked navigation aids, a base staff, oj, any maintenance backup for the Hudsons. The lack in atT1en'ties forced some of the Hudson aircrew to sleep n their aircraft.10
Intclljgence matters at Fall River were handled by the p ^'a!'st a'r intelligence officers of the two resident m fitter squadrons, to whom maritime reporting st have been something new. Reports of enemy ship- To lniducling warship sightings, were radioed to beVVnsv>Ile in a format known as Form White, which had p1?. lntroduced as recently as 4 August, sid R*eutenant Lloyd Milne, an officer of very con- Riv^kle exPerience> commanded the Hudsons at Fall Werer- kut Sergeant William Stutt and his crew of three e more typical of the crews; they had just completed
Pr^eedinKS / AuRu.st their operational training, which included less than an hour’s instruction in ship recognition. They flew their first mission on 4 August."
In retrospect, a great deal was asked of inexperienced aircrews flying daily seven- to eight-hour sorties in a difficult environment with inadequate support. As events proved, however, little of the blame for what followed can be attributed to them.
The crews of the three Hudsons that took off from Fall River at about 0715 on 8 August had been told they might sight Allied ships east of Bougainville, but they knew nothing of the Tulagi-Guadalcanal operation, which had then been in progress for 24 hours.
Hudson 218, flown by Stutt, at 1025 sighted what turned out to be Mikawa’s cruiser force 37 miles northeast of Kieta on Bougainville’s east coast. Expecting the ships to be friendly, Stutt continued to close until he recognized them as Japanese. On sighting a single-winged float plane in the vicinity of one of the larger ships, and fearing interception, he retired to the northwest toward clouds over Bougainville.
All crew members had a good look at the ships, but there were no ship recognition aids on board. After some discussion, they decided to report seeing three cruisers, three destroyers, and two seaplane tenders or gunboats. The identification is surprising, as four of the ships—the four Aoba-class cruisers—were virtually identical, and a fifth, the Chokai, though larger, was similar in outline. The navigator thought that there were a number of cruisers and destroyers, and two ships that looked rather different. Because they had seen a seaplane they felt these ships might even be some sort of “back-up vessels” carrying seaplanes. The crew’s intention when they sent the report was to indicate that they had sighted two ships that they could not identify; a more experienced crew would have indicated doubt by describing the two as “unknown.”
The crew deemed it an emergency, and broke radio silence to transmit an enemy sighting report. The Chokai, Mikawa’s flagship, intercepted the message, but there was no acknowledgement of receipt by Fall River.12 The radio station at the field had been closed down from about 1032 to about 1100 because of an air-raid alert.13 Unaware of the reason his transmission had not been acknowledged, Stutt decided to return to Fall River without delay. Pausing only to make an unsuccessful bombing attack on two submarines west of Guadalcanal, he landed at 1242 and was immediately taken by jeep to the operations hut and debriefed. (All this is contrary to the unwarranted criticism heaped on Stutt by Samuel Eliot Morison, Vice Admiral George C. Dyer, and Brigadier General Samuel B. Griffith II.)"
Fall River s first Form White of the day reporting the ship and submarine sightings was prepared and transmitted to Townsville via Port Moresby. The debriefing officer, probably because he had no ship-recognition aids either, and because of inexperience in maritime matters, accepted the ambiguity of “two seaplane tenders or gunboats,” which was of course nonsense, if only because of the difference in size between the two types.
At 1101, Hudson 185, piloted by Flying Officer M.
83
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COURTESY OF THE WILLMAN FAMILY
In his entry for 8 August, Flying Officer Willman recorded the information the debriefing officer refused to accept: “Sighted 6 CCs
2 DD engaged—A/A 3 holes____ ”
Conditions at the Fall River air strip in early August 1942 were fairly primitive. Marston matting provided some footing for the Hudsons and their crews but it was a constant battle against the environment.
Willman, sighted the Japanese and, once again believing them to be friendly, closed until the Chokai opened fire; the aircraft sustained hits in three locations, but Will- man decided to continue his patrol and did not return to Fall River until 1501. He attempted to send an enemy sighting report but was told to maintain radio silence, apparently by Fall River.15
After landing, he was immediately debriefed and reported the sighting of six cruisers and two destroyers. The debriefing officer refused to believe that he could have seen such a force, and despite what Willman was later to describe as a “flaming row,” reported in the subsequent Form White that Hudson 185 had seen two heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and one small unknown type. Willman subsequently recorded in his log book his sighting of the six cruisers and two destroyers, and also the damage to his aircraft.16
To add insult to injury, Willman was reprimanded for breaking radio silence. Fall River was apparently not only unaware of the Guadalcanal operations, but also of Allied Air Force instructions to break radio silence to report enemy sightings.
Had Willman’s information reached the task forces off Guadalcanal during the evening, their commanders could hardly have failed to realize that Mikawa’s force was headed for the amphibious area and would have acted
accordingly. There would have been no debacle at Savo-
Milne flew the third aircraft, Hudson 157, but did not sight Mikawa s cruiser force, although he was fired on by other Japanese ships in the area. Fall River’s third Form White for the day describes how he sighted and was fired on by single Japanese warships on three different occ3" sions. He made an unsuccessful bombing attack on the destroyer Oite, south of the Shortland Islands against heavy antiaircraft fire. He also reconnoitered Green Island, the Shortlands, Faisi, and Choiseul Bay.17
Though Stutt had landed at 1242 and had almost ini' mediately been debriefed, word of his sighting did not reach naval officers in Brisbane until 1817. It was quickly passed to South Pacific ships and authorities through Cam berra Naval Radio Station at 1835, almost exactly eight hours after the initial sighting. The sun had set at 18l5> so that it was far too late to relocate and verify the com' position of the Japanese force. Intelligence from Will'
handlii
‘Allied Air Forces Operations Plan for the assault on Tulagi and Guadalcanal. Allied Air Forces Signal Instruction, Annex B to Operations Instruction No. 18. Adm. Arthur J. Hepburn, USN, “Report of Informal Inquiry into Circumstances Attending Loss of U.S.S. Vincennes ... on Aug. 9, 1942 in the vicinity of Savo Island," dated 13 May 1943, Annex F.
'Commander Aircraft South Pacific Operation Plan 1-42, p. 7.
'Commo. Richard W. Bates, USN, and Cdr. Walter D. Innis! USN, “The Battle of Savo Island, August 9, 1942, Strategical and Tactical Analysis,” (Newport. RI: U.S. Naval War College, 1950), p. 62.
’Ibid., p. 97.
“Commander Aircraft South Pacific Operation Plan 1-42, p. 8.
7U.S. Naval War College analysis, p. 99.
•Conversations with Air Commodore Garing and Air Commodore Kingwel] who were, at die time, senior air staff officer and commanding officer 32 Squadron, respectively.
■“Information provided by Mr. R. Piper of the RAAF Force Historical Division, Canberra, and from conversations with Commander Gould (76 Squadron), Dr. Deane-Butcher (75 Squadron), and aircrew of Hudsons 218 and 157; also from the diary of Aircraftsman Koy (75 Squadron).
"This and subsequent information on the sortie of Hudson 218 was obtained from conversations and correspondence with the pilot and captain (Sergeant Stutt), navigator (Sergeant Courtis), and radio operator (Sergeant Geddes), as well as from the daily record and signal log of ACH Townsville now held in the Australian War Museum at Canberra.
Correspondence with Capt. Shin Itonaga, Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (Ret.). That Mikawa’s force had intercepted Stutt's message did not come to light until recently because no record of the intercept was found among the Japanese naval records examined by the Allies after the war. No copies of the Chokai's part in the battle had apparently survived the cruiser’s loss off Samar during the Battle of Leyte Gulf late in 1944. In 1963, however, an officer who had been the assistant engineer on board the Chokai at the time of the battle presented his personal papers to the Japanese National Institute of Defense Studies. Among them was a galley proof of the Chokai's missing battle report. He had kept the report, at considerable risk to himself in view of its high security classification, because of his justifiable pride in having taken part in the battle Date's article in the September 1989 Naval Historical Review led me to Captain Itonaga who verified the interception for me.
"From the signal log of ACH Townsville.
"Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II: Vol. V, The Struggle for Guadalcanal (Boston: Little, Brown and Company 1974), p. 25; Vice Admiral George C. Dyer, USN, (Ret.), The Amphibians Came to Conquer: The Story of Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, Vol. I, (Washington D C- Government Printing Office, 1969), pp. 364-365; and Brigadier Samuel B.’ Griffith II. USMC, (Ret.), The Battle for Guadalcanal (Philadelphia: J.B. Linnin- cott Company, 1963), p. 58.
"For this and other information on the sortie of Hudson 185, the author is indebted to the family of the late Squadron Leader Willman. Squadron Leader Willman was an air enthusiast before joining the RAAF in 1941 and had a very good knowledge of warships. He studied law after the war and eventually rose to be Crown Prosecutor of New South Wales.
This information was extracted from Willman’s log book for the month of August 1942, a photocopy of which is in the author's posession "Daily record of ACH Townsville; and correspondence with Captain Itonaga "Hepburn Report, Annex T.
Ibid. Bonnot s work was not published in its entirety, but extracts were in the February 1989 edition of NRA, an American magazine; the RAAF Association's 'Contact magazine; and in the September 1989 issue of the Naval Historical Society of Australia's Naval Historical Review. Bonnot’s information was derived from the original research of the late Mrs. Nancy Milne, wife of Flight Lieutenant Milne, which was undertaken to remove the stigma of Morison's criticism.
Commodore Loxton survived the sinking of HMAS Canberra at Savo Island and went on to serve 40 years in the Royal Australian Navy. His service included command at sea and duty as Director of Naval Intelligence. He also served three years as Naval Attache in Washington, D.C. He retired in 1978 and is writing a book on the Battle of Savo Island.
Editor’s Note: The Naval Institute Press this month is publishing Disaster in the Pacific: New Light on the Battle of Savo Island by Denis and Peggy Warner and Sadao Seno. A detailed account of the battle, it is based on years of original research (see page 104).
man $ debriefing was even longer in transit as it did not reach South Pacific command until about 2130, six and 0ne-half hours after the aircraft had landed.18
During his investigation. Admiral Hepburn reported inding several passages indicating that the sighting of the apanese force that morning off Kieta was known on board rnore than one ship during the afternoon. In spite of directly questioning survivors, he was unable to obtain any Positive information on the matter. Nevertheless, there has een speculation that early warning of the Japanese approach had been received, most recently in an article at was published in 1989 in Australia that was based, in urn, on a paper prepared a year earlier by Captain Emile onnot, U.S. Navy (Retired).
A reexamination of the evidence contained in the Hepburn Report and its annexes—including the communications plans of the task-force commanders involved and of the Australian coastwatching organization—and a review of Bonnot’s work has shown that there was virtually no likelihood that any ship in the Allied force received word of the sighting off Kieta before it was broadcast by the Canberra and Pearl Harbor naval radio stations after sunset on 8 August.19 In particular, Bonnot’s work appeared to be selective and inaccurate in reporting proceedings at the Board of Inquiry into the loss of the Canberra, which was held in Sydney in August 1942.
The Naval War College analysis put the inordinate communication delays down to a laissez-faire attitude on the part of RAAF personnel, who had become complacent as a result of their inability to take offensive action because they lacked resources. This is probably a fair comment, as there is evidence in the signal log of Allied Command Headquarters at Townsville that message handling delays in RAAF communications did not occur only at Fall River. Ironically, a message from Allied Air Force Headquarters in Brisbane, complaining of excessive message on 8 'n® delays> dself took nine hours to reach Townsville ^August. There can be no doubt that the reaction of kn " Pers°nnel would have been very different had they own of the operations then under way at Guadalcanal, dur' e^nved the opportunity to update their intelligence mak^ t*1C afternoon, the task force commanders had to tjj .e tae*r estimates of the situation on unverified infor- head°n ^at Was e^Shit hours old. Southwest Pacific naval Jan ^Uarters’ and Turner, among others, deduced that the to la"686 W6re k°und for an island anchorage from which it wrUnC^ torPedo attacks. As is now well known, they got the ' nf The PriHcipal cause of their miscalculation was health0 US*0n seaplane tenders in Stutt’s report and a g ^ resPect for Japanese torpedo bombing.
Was , 1 ® failure to provide for the possibility that Mikawa not p63 'n^ 3 ra’d'n8 party is another story. It should Conna'ntlnUe l° °bscure the effects of the failure of re- •ssance and communications to provide adequate
warning of Japanese intentions. What happened is in reality a sad story of inexperience, incompetence, and even, perhaps, stupidity—not only, as one has been led to believe, on the part of the senior officers off Guadalcanal, but also—and probably predominantly—at command and staff levels elsewhere.