his surviving planes could not land there.
He had no choice but to order them to fly southwest in the hope of somehow finding the Western Task Force under Admiral Yamashiro where they could land on Hiryu and Soryu. This they did, eventually finding that task force south of San Cristobal and east of Rennell Island, but the haggard formations of Nagumo’s precious strike planes arrived at a most inopportune time.
Yamashiro had been unable to get any radio communications through to either Nagumo or Combined Fleet Operations in the Kondo Bombardment group. The radio waves eventually cleared up, but unlike Nagumo, the urgency to strike at once was not as great for him. The Americans did not know where his ships were. For all they knew, Nagumo’s force represented the only real threat to their operations. He therefore held his strike wave on deck—until the airwaves suddenly cleared a little after 06:00 hrs that morning and he heard the urgent calls coming from Nagumo’s planes as they desperately tried to locate his carriers.
Realizing that he now had to receive some fifty planes in a recovery operation, he hastily began launching everything he had to make room on the already crowded decks of his two fleet carriers. Nagumo’s planes arrived short of fuel, and many had to be given immediate priority to land. If he had kept his third carrier in hand, the light escort carrier Ryuho, he could have started bringing Nagumo’s planes in there, but the Dragon Phoenix was well to the north by now, coordinating with the Hara Group for a strike on a mysterious ship that appeared to be threatening the second wave transport fleet where troops of the 3rd division were still riding at sea.
Yamashiro had only Hiryu and Soryu available, but he managed to juggle his operations and get most of his planes in the air, ordering some below decks, still fully armed, so as to make room on the decks for the recovery. It was a matter of controlled chaos for a good long while, and by the time his strike wave was finally headed northeast to look for the Americans, the enemy had already learned of his location as well.
The American carriers moved boldly west, like a boxer side stepping in the ring and slipping into a corner. Their superior damage control had enabled them to clear their decks, recover most of their planes and turn them around into another strike wave while Yamashiro was struggling with his own recovery/launch operation further south. Yamashiro’s planes flew to the last reported positions of the US fleet and began search operations, but the lucky American strike wave led by Lieutenant Commander Wade McClusky off the Enterprise found and followed one last straggler from the Nagumo group, and it ended up leading them right to Yamashiro’s carriers.
The resulting air strike was catastrophic. The Americans dove on the enemy while Lieutenant Commander John Waldron’s Torpedo 8 off the Hornet came in on the deck. Yamashiro looked out to see yet more planes coming at him for recovery before he realized what was happening, and then controlled chaos became utter chaos. The American planes found their primary targets and rained hell upon them. Bombs penetrated the flight deck of both Hiryu and Soryu, some deep enough to smash the armed remainder of his strike planes that had been taken below. The resulting explosions were ripping his carriers to pieces, and then the torpedoes came.
By 07:00 hours both Hiryu and Soryu were gone, and he had transferred his flag to the cruiser Chokai, shaken and much distressed. He was now commander of little more than a screening force with two cruisers and four destroyers. His planes would eventually find and strike the Americans, hitting the Hornet hard enough to put her at the bottom of the sea and also damaging both Enterprise and Saratoga, but when they concluded their strike there was now nowhere they could go. No friendly flight deck could receive them in the Western Group.
In an astounding feat of flying and carrier management, some twenty planes were told to look for Nagumo’s last remaining light carrier Ryujo, the Prancing Dragon as it retired to the north. There Nagumo managed to juggle operations and launch planes from Ryujo, and then receive the valuable strike planes from Yamashiro’s savaged carriers. He would refuel them and then send them up again while he recovered the fighters as their fuel ran out, and on it went as the last of Nagumo’s force hastily retired towards Rabaul. The planes from Hiryu and Soryu that could not take part in this flying circus were forced to ditch near Guadalcanal and, though they were total losses, their precious pilots would make it ashore there to fight again another day.
Yamamoto’s face was ashen as he listen to the reports. The entire operation had come flying apart. The odd radio interference had prevented close coordination of the two pincers and the Americans had done exactly what the Japanese feared they would, defeating each horn in detail. He had lost Akagi, Hiryu, Soryu, and Kaga was making a pathetic twelve knots as she limped back to Rabaul. Her damage was severe enough that she would be many months in repair, and effectively lost to the fleet for the remainder of the year.
Then he heard the result of Admiral Hara’s strike, and his mood darkened further. Lt. Commander Sakamoto was alive, though many more planes and pilots from Zuikaku, Shokaku, and Ryuho had been killed. His force was now spent, and could be of no further service to the action around Guadalcanal.
Yamamoto shook his head sullenly. “Four decks sit there, almost empty considering Zuiho has also lost all her planes, and here we learn of Yamashiro’s planes having to ditch off Guadalcanal. This is a disaster. We had nine carriers to the enemy’s three! We could have smashed the Americans if we had only coordinated our strikes more carefully.”
“This odd radio interference, sir,” Operations Chief Kuroshima explained, an almost pleading look on his face now. “It could be another example of advanced jamming capabilities developed by the enemy. This ship we have been chasing, this Mizuchi, has also been a most unsettling affair.”
“Most unsettling? That ship has passed through our entire operation like a bullet! Well, Kuroshima, what about it? Did Hara’s planes sink it this time?”
“We have very strange reports, sir. Sakamoto says the ship seemed to simply disappear as the strike planes were making their final attack.”
“Disappear?”
“The reports are very confused, sir. None of the pilots reported hits this time, but the ship was masked by smoke, or so some of the reports read this way. Then it could not be found minutes later. I was of the opinion that it had been hit and sunk, sir, possibly by one of our submarines, but—”
“But we had no submarine in that area, yes?”
“Correct, sir. Then we received this last report from a seaplane off the cruiser Tone. Captain Iwabuchi has his flag there now, and he reports that this Mizuchi has been spotted again, about forty miles east of the position where Sakamoto’s planes made their attack. The odd thing is this, sir. They made that sighting at 12:20 hours, just ten minutes ago. We’ve only just received the report.” He held out the decrypted paper like another excuse.
Yamamoto frowned. “The distraction of this ship has proved fatal. It has unhinged our entire operation, from Darwin to the Coral Sea. Thank God Yamashita’s troops made good their pledge and at least took Darwin. That is our only consolation in this whole sad affair. We lost three fleet carriers today, and Kaga is a complete wreck as well. Hara’s group has no teeth either. Do you realize that we now have virtually no naval air power we can use here, and that is likely to be the case for months! I wanted a decisive engagement, but who could expect this? Operation FS must be immediately canceled. Kondo cannot hope to take those transports to Guadalcanal now. It will be all we can do to safely get the men of the Nagoya Division to friendly ports. The American carriers have been hit, but they do not sink!”
“We do report one carrier has been abandoned and scuttled, sir. The Hornet.”
“Yet they still have two carriers operational, not to mention control of the airfield at Lunga. Now we will have to operate at night, running fast cruiser forces south through the Solomons to land troops in the dark, like shadows skulking ashore before the dawn chases us north again. This is disgraceful.”
There was a long silence in the room before Kuroshima spoke again. “And this enemy ship, sir? This Mizuchi? Captain Iwabuchi has asked permission to take the cruiser escorts from Hara’s
