Challenge for the Pacific

of control. Heading home with low tanks and only a few remaining bullets, Smith was skimming over the coconuts when he caught a Zero hedge-hopping along the coast. Smith came up behind him, pushed the gun-button, and sent the enemy crashing into the Bay.

Then he landed to receive the congratulations of Cactus Air Force’s new commander, Colonel William Wallace. Wallace led in nineteen more Wildcats under Major Robert Galer and twelve Dauntlesses under Major Leo Smith. They had had a typical arrival, coming in at the height of the battle, and, in the case of the Wildcats, joining it.

Lieutenant Richard Amerine was among the new arrivals. But he did not reach Henderson. His oxygen apparatus went out and he was forced to parachute from his Wildcat over the Guadalcanal jungle. He landed safely at Cape Esperance, and started walking east through enemy lines.

General Vandegrift now had a total of eighty-six pilots and sixty-four planes—three of them Army, ten Navy, the rest Marine—in his Cactus Air Force. This was approximately double the size of the force that had, since August 21, destroyed twenty-one enemy bombers and thirty-nine Zeros while blocking Admiral Tanaka’s reinforcement attempt.

Nevertheless, as Vandegrift knew, the Japanese were now reinforcing more heavily than the Americans. Cactus got thirty-one new planes on August 30, but two days later Rabaul got fifty-eight. The Japanese were also building up ground forces to east and west of Vandegrift’s perimeter. They were fresh troops, whereas the Americans were already emaciated by their twice-daily ration of rice and the exhausting routine of working or patrolling by day and fighting by night; they were racked with dysentery, eaten by the rot, and now, as August ended, the rate of malarial victims was rising with a disquieting steadiness.

Obviously the enemy build-up would continue and grow greater. There seemed to be no way of stopping the Tokyo Express. American warships either could not or would not contest them. Obviously it was up to the planes to hit the Tokyo Express ships before it got dark. But the Dauntlesses and Wildcats were short-range planes. What was needed was long-rangers such as the new Lightning.

Such, basically, was Vandegrift’s thinking, and it was approved and seconded by Slew McCain after the wiry little admiral paid his first visit to Guadalcanal on August 31. Vandegrift broke out his only bottle of bourbon in his honor. There was just enough for about one drink apiece for the two men and their staffs, and then the Japanese siren announced the advent of Japanese bombers. That night a Tokyo Express cruiser bombarded the airfield. In the morning, more bombers arrived. Sitting in Vandegrift’s dugout while the bombs came whistling down, McCain blinked his intense small eyes and said: “By God, Vandegrift, this is your war and you sure are welcome to it. But when I go back tomorrow I am going to try to get you what you need for your air force here.”²

McCain did. He sent a dispatch to Ghormley, MacArthur, Nimitz, and King, declaring:

“Two full squadrons of Lightnings or Wildcats in addition to present strength should be put into Guadalcanal at once with replacements in training to the south… The situation admits of no delay whatever… With substantially the reinforcements requested Guadalcanal can be a sinkhole for enemy air power and can be consolidated, expanded, and exploited to enemy’s mortal hurt. The reverse is true if we lose Guadalcanal. If the reinforcement requested is not made available Guadalcanal cannot be supplied and hence cannot be held.”

Visiting with Ghormley in Noumea, Undersecretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal became concerned by McCain’s reports. He grasped the importance of holding Guadalcanal, and he would, upon his return to Washington, inform the Joint Chiefs of its aircraft needs. But that was yet to be. At the moment, Ghormley asked MacArthur if he could send Guadalcanal some Lightning fighters. MacArthur replied, with truth and reason, that he needed his handful of Lightnings for defense of New Guinea and Australia. Could Ghormley possibly lend him one or two of his four carriers? No, said Ghormley, he needed them to keep the sealanes to Guadalcanal open.

Besides, there were now only three.

Stately old “Sara Maru,” as her crew called Saratoga, was steaming on defensive patrol about 260 miles southeast of Guadalcanal. There had been a submarine scare, but now, at about seven in the morning, the sea sparkled serenely in the sun and a bugle called all hands to breakfast.

Chow lines formed while Sara Maru’s screen moved dutifully around the big ship. Outside the screen, off Sara’s bow, all this was observed with rising excitement by a Japanese officer watching through submarine I-26’s periscope. At about a quarter of eight, six Long Lance torpedoes went hissing from the submarine’s tubes.

A minute later destroyer MacDonough sighted the periscope about thirty feet off her bow. She hoisted the torpedo warning, and moved in. She dropped two depth charges which had no depth setting, and were therefore useless, and then, simultaneously, her hull scraped against the diving submarine’s side and a torpedo porpoised astern.

On Saratoga Captain DeWitt Ramsey swung his rudder hard right and rang up full speed. Slowly, ponderously, old Sara Maru turned toward the torpedo wakes. But not enough… Two minutes later a torpedo smashed her starboard side abreast of the island superstructure.

It did not seem too bad. No one was killed and only twelve men, including Admiral Fletcher, had been slightly wounded. But after Saratoga finally made it with a tow back to Tongatabu, it was discovered that it would require three months to repair her.

Saratoga was out of the fight for Guadalcanal.

Next day, Vandegrift learned of her loss with a sinking heart, for he had also heard of General Kawaguchi’s landing to the east the night before. Crisis was recurring, and he ordered the Raiders and Paratroopers to move from Tulagi to Guadalcanal.

PART THREE At Bay

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

AN HOUR after dark on the night of September 3 a message arrived at Cactus “Operations.” A transport was arriving and the airfield would have to be illuminated.

Seven jeeps bounced to the south end of the strip and switched on their lights. There was a thundering overhead and some of the drivers instinctively ducked. The transport’s wheels cleared them by a few feet and the big plane bumped to a halt. The door swung open and a cold white grizzly bear in khaki stepped down.

Brigadier General Roy Geiger had flown up from the New Hebrides, where he was supposed to be commanding the First Marine Air Wing, to take charge of Cactus Air Force. With him were his chief of staff, Colonel Louis Woods, and his Intelligence officer, Lieutenant Colonel John Munn.

They were three of the most experienced air officers in the Marine Corps, led by a general who won his wings in 1916 and had flown every type of aircraft from the open-cockpit crates of World War I to the newest-model Grumman fighters then parked in Henderson’s coconuts. Roy Geiger was also a Parris Island classmate of Archer Vandegrift, and he had helped him fight Cacos in Haiti by ordering his pilots to load a small bomb aboard a Jenny and drop it on an enemy stronghold simultaneously with a ground attack launched by Vandegrift. The day after Geiger arrived, pitching his tent not far from the Pagoda, he called on his old friend. He brought him a package from Admiral Nimitz marked “fan mail.” Vandegrift opened it. It was a case of Scotch. But Geiger was aware that Vandegrift, a Virginian, subscribed to the Virginian’s belief that a man who drank Scotch rather than bourbon was either a tourist or a show-off, and so, he said, “Archer, I have a case of bourbon, and I’ll trade you level—even though mine are quarts.”¹

Vandegrift was delighted and the two generals placed the Scotch—as rare as bathing beauties on