planned attack. The Japanese had already put troops into the southern Solomons at Guadalcanal and Tulagi, and had both a seaplane base and an airfield under construction in those islands, though they were not yet strongly held. Now the attack would be aimed at either Espiritu Santo or Noumea, and if either one fell it would put Jap bombers in range of both Fiji and Samoa. Australia would be virtually cut off, and King would have none of it.
The fiery admiral vigorously argued that sitting back on defense and trying to parry the Japanese thrusts would simply not do. “We have to hit the bastards somewhere,” he said hotly. “Stick a boot right where it hurts.” And he fingered Guadalcanal as the perfect place to start. To make sure it happened he pushed on Nimitz to replace the equivocating and fretful Admiral Ghormley and appointed a new commander in theater, Admiral Bull Halsey.
Halsey was a strong proponent of the fleet air arm’s ability to project decisive power through fast, mobile aircraft carriers. The time honored maxim of getting there first with the most men had been applied to army maneuvers since Confederate Cavalry commander Nathan Bedford Forrest first explained his tactics during the Civil War. Halsey applied this same principle to carrier warfare when he said: “get to the other fellow with everything you have as fast as you can and to dump it on him.” In any encounter at sea he was prone to immediately let his planes do the talking with a shoot first attitude.
The few feathers the Navy had at this point in the war were already in Halsey’s cap. He was involved in the Doolittle Raid, and pointed attacks on the Marshalls and Wake Island. The burden of driving these operations soon found him in ill health, and he had been hospitalized for several months before asked to take command of the American counterattack again, arriving in Noumea August 15, 1942, a full sixty days before his arrival date there in the history Fedorov knew.
When outgoing Admiral Ghormley conveyed his misgivings over the planned operation against Guadalcanal, saying it was likely to create another Bataan all over again, Halsey waved it away dismissively. He was a fighting Admiral, and the operation was just what he wanted. He had three carriers in hand now, and he would use them to support a lightning swift attack, right into the heart of the enemy’s forward position in the Solomons.
When cryptanalysts winnowed down the planned attack date for the new Japanese operation as August 25, King argued that the U.S. should be ready, with troops at sea, and hit the Japanese where they might least expect it, at Guadalcanal.
“They’ll expect us to be sitting on our duffs waiting for them at New Caledonia or Vanuatu,” King argued. “Let’s kick them right in the nuts with the 1st Marines!” Halsey agreed wholeheartedly.
It had been a long, uphill fight. Many said that putting Marines in transports with the Japanese carriers at large was sheer madness. It would force the US carriers to shepherd them to their planned invasion beaches, anchor them there for days and yield complete freedom of movement to the enemy as they swept south.
Halsey argued that if the attack were launched at least two days in advance of the Japanese invasion date, it could unhinge the entire enemy operation just as it was getting underway. “It will attract Jap carriers like flies, I know it,” he said, “but we’ll have a fist full of flat tops as well, and we can hit them as they come at us. It’s either that or we just sit at Noumea and wait for them. And what good is that? Let’s hit Guadalcanal and take that god dammed airfield there and put Wildcats and Dauntless dive bombers on the ground. That will give us one more carrier that they can lob shells at all they want and never sink.”
In the end Marshall was convinced to side with King and win approval of the President and authorization for the pre-emptive counterattack, which they called ‘Operation Watchtower.’ The 1st Marine Division went to sea on August 20th, escorted by everything the U.S. had, including the carriers
In-theater reserves were also substantial for the Americans. They had moved three old battleships to Suva Bay, Fiji: the
Yamamoto had planned to come at his first target, Espiritu Santo, in a wide pincer attack, like the twin horns of a bull. He was going to take the big fleet carriers
The other horn of the bull would originate from the forward base of Rabaul where fleet carriers
The American counterthrust at Guadalcanal would be King’s well placed kick just as the enemy closed these two powerful arms on their intended target, and it worked as planned.
Both Japanese task forces were well out to sea when the Marines set sail, yet too far away to threaten them. By the time the convoy was eventually spotted by a seaplane out of Tulagi, the two prongs of Yamamoto’s navy were widely dispersed, hundreds of miles from one another. He had to make a decision—should the operation go forward as planned, or should one or both pincers be re-directed to blunt the American thrust at Guadalcanal? The outcome of the entire battle would rest on that choice, but the United States 1st Marine Division had much to do with forcing the reluctant Admiral’s hand in the matter. They stormed ashore at both Tulagi and Guadalcanal with such elan, that within a day they had overrun Japanese positions at Lunga on August 25th, where they captured the airfield and were working feverishly to make it ready to receive planes from nearby U.S, airfields and carriers. The “Cactus Air force” as it would come to be called, was about to be born.
The news shook the staff at Combined Fleet headquarters at Truk, and the consensus was that the operation against Espiritu Santo would do nothing more than to create an isolated outpost, over 950 kilometers behind an active battle front at Guadalcanal, and one within range of two other strong American bases at Noumea and Suva Bay, Fiji. If the Americans were allowed to secure and establish a strong base at Guadalcanal, the whole operation would come unhinged. It was therefore decided that the bold attack would have to be crushed, and Japanese control of the Solomons made undisputed. Only then could the next move against Espiritu Santo be contemplated with any hope of success.
Yamamoto considered how to proceed, first thinking to send Admiral Yamaguchi’s smaller Western force to engage and repel the operation, or proceed directly to Guadalcanal on his own. Many officers argued that both horns of the bull should be used in one crushing blow, and Yamamoto was about to make that very decision when he suddenly received some rather startling news from Admiral Hara’s Operations force against Darwin.
Like all dispatches, it began with glowing returns of the successful air raid and surface bombardment of Darwin, and Yamashita’s easy invasion, claiming to control the port and airfield within 24 hours. Then details of a rather unexpected “incident” were related that described the presence of an enemy capital ship that presumably had sortied from Darwin with some very unusual weaponry. The description was terse, with few details, but related intense anti-aircraft capabilities and noted that Hara’s attempts to engage and sink this solitary ship had met with less than satisfactory results. Yamamoto was wise enough to read between those lines, and he immediately sent a signal to Hara asking him to state the present condition of his air strike arm, wondering whether it would be needed in the Coral Sea now, given the American counter thrust.
