had to scrape up 410 men from the Fifth Sasebo Special Naval Landing Force and from the 81st Garrison Unit. He put them under Lieutenant Endo with instructions to board transport
Mikawa realized that this was not very many men, but he expected them to do some good; for he, too, believed that there were only about 2000 Americans to the south.
Japanese bombers flying to Guadalcanal from the airfield at Kavieng on New Ireland usually passed over Buka Passage in the northern Solomons—where they could be seen by the coastwatcher, Jack Read.
Bombers flying from Rabaul passed over Buin on Bougainville—and there they could be spotted by the coastwatcher, Paul Mason.
At half-past ten that morning of August 7 the bespectacled and benign Mason sat serenely within his palm- thatched hut on Malabite Hill and heard the thunder of motors overhead. He rushed outside and counted the Bettys preceding the Zeros down to Guadalcanal. He ran back inside and signaled:
“Twenty-four torpedo bombers headed yours.”
Twenty-five minutes later, aboard the Australian cruiser
“The ship will be attacked at noon by twenty-four torpedo bombers. All hands will pipe to dinner at eleven o’clock.”
The “bonzer boys up north,” as the Australians described their countrymen of the coastwatchers, had given the convoy’s sailors time to line their bellies for battle, and Admiral Fletcher’s fighter pilots time to climb high over Savo Island to await the oncoming enemy.
Commander Nakajima’s fighters were flying at 13,000 feet. Sixty miles south of Rabaul they passed over Green Island. Saburo Sakai looked down in astonishment. He had never seen such incredibly green hills before. He noticed that the island was horseshoe-shaped and he filed the landmark in his brain.
Over Bougainville the sun beat so harshly upon the canopy of Saburo’s airplane that it made him thirsty. He took a bottle of soda from his lunchbox. Forgetting the high-pressure altitude, Saburo slit the cork—and the soda came foaming into his cockpit, covering everything until it was dried by the cockpit draft. But there was a coating of dried sugar left on Saburo’s goggles and his windscreen and controls. He had to rub them clean. As he did, his Zero wandered all over the formation, and he missed the beauty of The Slot as they winged southeastward over that broad, blue sea-corridor.
Over New Georgia the formation began climbing, crossing the Russells at 20,000 feet. Fifty miles ahead of them the pilots could see Guadalcanal. Next they saw Iron Bottom Bay and gasped at the spectacle of so many ships, such a vast armada cleaving white, crisscrossing wakes in the water. Then they saw the Wildcats. There were six of them, stubby, powerful craft painted olive but for the white underside of their wings. They came plunging down out of the sun. But they ignored Saburo and his comrades. They were diving on the torpedo bombers, heedless of the popping black bursts of antiaircraft fire which rose from the American ships and kept the Bettys respectfully high.
Some of the Zeros raced ahead, firing to distract the Americans. But the Wildcats rolled together and disappeared in dives. They forced the Bettys to bomb wildly, to make foolish attempts to hit moving ships from four miles up. Saburo ground his teeth and wondered why the bombers had not been carrying torpedoes. Perhaps it was because they had been loaded for land bombing against New Guinea. Whatever, it was a waste—and now the Wildcats were growling and spitting among the Bettys. Some of the Japanese planes fell blazing into the Bay.
Nakajima’s Zeros formed up and escorted the bombers as far north as the Russells. Then they turned back to Guadalcanal. And the Wildcats jumped them. Time after time the Americans came plunging out of the sun, fired, rolled back and vanished far below. Each time they fired quick bursts from six .50-caliber machine guns mounted in the wings of each plane. After each pass, the Wildcats climbed into the sun to make their single, massed, slashing attack, and to bank and climb again. Such tactics astounded Nakajima’s pilots. They cut his formation to pieces, and they forced him to flee for safety.
Saburo Sakai was also shaken. Japan’s leading ace gaped at the spectacle of a single Wildcat taking on three Zeros in a wild left-spiraling dogfight. The American had come out on the tail of a Zero and was stitching its wings and tail with bullets when Saburo dove and drove him off. It was then that Saburo Sakai became engaged in the dogfight of his life. Spin for spin, roll for roll, spiral for spiral, the American matched the Japanese master. They fought each other and also those tremendous G pressures which pushed each pilot down in his seat, investing flying suits with the weight of lead and heads with the senseless density of iron. At last Saburo got the upper hand. Again and again he cut inside the American, he wounded him, and then, as the man flew on like a bleeding automaton, Saburo drove in for the kill with a stream of cannon shells that sent the Wildcat spinning seaward in flames and its pilot drifting limply toward Guadalcanal’s beaches beneath a blossoming, billowing parachute.
It was Saburo Sakai’s fifty-ninth kill and within a few minutes he had his sixtieth—a Dauntless dive- bomber.
His blood up, Saburo climbed to 13,000 feet to hunt for further game. He sighted eight aircraft over Guadalcanal. He gunned his motor to come up on them in surprise. He would take the Wildcats on the right and leave the others for three Zeros following him. But the American planes were not Wildcats. They were Avengers, heavy, sturdy torpedo-bombers; they had .50-caliber gunners in top and belly turrets; and they were waiting for Saburo Sakai.
Saburo saw the trap too late. He tried to fireball out of it with overboosted engine and flaming guns. The Americans opened fire.
From twenty yards away Saburo Sakai could see the stuttering muzzles of those massed guns, and then a terrible power smashed at his body, searing spikes went driving into his brain, and his Zero nosed over and fell toward the sea.
Before Tulagi had been assaulted it had been necessary to secure the island’s left flank. This had been accomplished at 7:40 in the morning when B Company of the First Battalion, Second Marines, landed at Haleta Village on Florida Island. Private Russell Miller was the first Marine ashore, thus becoming the first American to tread Japanese-held soil in World War II.
Next it was required to protect the right flank of Gavutu-Tanambogo by occupying the tip of Halavo Peninsula on Florida. Other Marines of the same battalion carried out this mission. Both operations were unopposed.
It was different at Gavutu-Tanambogo. These Siamese-twin islets, joined by a narrow causeway, were both tiny; Gavutu barely 500 by 300 yards, Tanambogo even smaller. Both were steep, ringed by coral, pocked by armored caves, and defended by troops sworn to go down fighting. Marines of the First Parachute Battalion were to take these objectives, beginning with Gavutu. They had to sail around the island to get at the only landing place, a seaplane ramp and pier on the northeastern tip.
About noon of August 7, almost coincidental with the arrival of the Japanese airplanes, Major Robert Williams and his Paramarines sped toward the seaplane ramp.
Automatic fire struck them in the boats. They found that naval shelling had torn the ramp into jagged pieces. Swerving wildly, the boats made for the pier. Some men jumped onto it, getting inland. Most of them were pinned down beside the pier. A hail of fire came from three sides: from a Gavutu hill to the left, from trenches behind the pier and from Tanambogo on the right. Major Williams was hit and command passed to Major Charles Miller. Riddled, the Paramarines called desperately for naval gunfire to knock out the enemy positions. But the covering destroyers dared not run close in uncharted, shoal-filled waters.
A landing boat full of mortars roared to the rescue. Mortarmen vaulted over gunwales and bent swiftly to the task of setting up their unlovely stovepipe killers. Soon shells were
Gradually the Marines gained the upper hand. By midafternoon they held the highest land on the islet and the American flag was flung to the wind there. But the Marines stood atop a volcano. Beneath their very feet was a
