Challenge for the Pacific

was another veteran of that great victory: Rear Admiral Aritomo Goto, the first admiral from either side to sail into Iron Bottom Bay.

Rear Admiral Norman Scott had been in the Bay on that momentous night of August 8–9, but he had been in command of the Eastern Defense Force and had been unable to sail to the aid of Admiral Crutchley in the west. Nevertheless, Scott, an aggressive and thorough sailor, thirsted for revenge.

For three weeks prior to departing Noumea, Scott had been training his men in night fighting. He drove them without stint, and he insisted that his commanders teach themselves the proper use of radar. When Ghormley chose him to lead the force covering the 164th Infantry Regiment which Turner was bringing to Guadalcanal, Scott regarded the mission as an opportunity to avenge Savo.

Twice, on October 9 and 10, Scott led his ships toward Cape Esperance. But General Geiger’s bomber pilots had cleared The Slot. Aerial reconnaissance reported no suitable targets.

On October 11 a Flying Fortress from the New Hebrides reported Goto’s force sailing south. Two more aerial sightings were made, and at six o’clock that night Goto was reported a hundred miles north of Cape Esperance.

Scott eagerly signaled his approach order to his ships. He calculated that the enemy force should appear west of Savo just before midnight.

But Norman Scott would be there first.

There was a sudden rain shower at dawn of October 11. Martin Clemens, lying on a slope outside the Japanese encampment at Gurabusu, felt the water being dammed against his body. He hunched up slightly to release it—and then the Marines around Gurabusu attacked.

The Japanese fought back. They opened fire and Captain Richard Stafford raised his head above his coconut log to see what was happening. He fell back with a bullet between the eyes.

Clemens jumped up and joined the attack. A Japanese officer swung a saber at him. The Japanese missed and a Marine shot him dead. The other enemy soldiers turned to flee and charged straight into the bullets of American machine guns. Suddenly, it was quiet. The skirmish was over. Thirty-two enemy had been killed with only Captain Stafford lost.

Clemens went through the Japanese encampment. He found a gold chalice belonging to the missionaries. It was being used as an ash tray. One of the dead enemy soldiers lay wrapped in the altar cloth he had been using for a blanket. Then Clemens found vestments and the unmarked graves of the priests and nuns whom Ishimoto had murdered. Clemens watched his scouts. They prowled among the bodies, turning them over and shaking their heads in a disappointed negative.

Colonel Hill came back from Koilotumaria. The action there had not been successful. The enemy had run off into a swamp. Only three of them were killed, and two Marines were lost.

But one of the dead Japanese, according to a native scout, was Mr. Ishimoto.

Clemens could never be sure. The wounds inflicted by modern arms tend to make identification difficult. Nevertheless, the former carpenter from Tulagi was never heard from again.

The skies were still overcast when the men aboard Admiral Goto’s ships heard the thundering of aircraft motors above them. They were momentarily fearful, but then, realizing that they were still about two hundred miles north of Guadalcanal, they decided that the unseen planes were their own.

They were. Thirty-five Bettys escorted by thirty Zeros were flying at 25,000 feet. They came over Henderson Field shortly before four o’clock and found, to their dismay, that a shift of clouds had covered the target. More, scores of enemy Wildcats were growling and slashing among them. The bombers fled east, dropping their explosives in the sea.

And some of the bombs fell right in front of the landing boats bringing the Marines from Gurabusu to Aola.

It was as though a Martian cornucopia had been overturned, showering these returning victors with geysering bombs, spurting bullets and cartridge cases that fell on water like pebbles or rang sharply on steel decks.

Suddenly there was a terrible rising scream and a Wildcat came plummeting straight down. The pilot cleared his plane at about a hundred feet above the water and he struck it with such force that his clothing was torn off. He was rescued, but he died ten minutes later. Another Marine pilot crashed into the Bay. He was hauled into Clemens’s boat with an eye hanging out. He was taken to Aola where the efficient Eroni put the eye back in and bandaged it, and the pilot was back in action within a month.

And so Admiral Tsukahara’s stroke to neutralize Henderson Field was a failure. At the cost of these two Wildcats shot down, the Marines had destroyed seven bombers and four Zeros. Henderson had not been harmed. Yet, General Geiger’s fliers had been kept so active that Admiral Goto was able to steal safely down The Slot.

That was why, that midnight at Aola, the Marines and Martin Clemens saw a flashing and heard a rumbling that was neither thunder nor lightning.

There had been glimmerings of true lightning over the dark horizon that night as Admiral Scott’s ships formed into battle column and sailed for Savo.

Three destroyers—Farenholt, Duncan, and Laffey—held the lead, followed by four cruisers, Scott’s flagship San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and Helena, with the tail of the column formed by two more destroyers, Buchanan and McCalla. They swung wide around Guadalcanal’s west coast, moving at top speed. Conical Savo loomed grimly ahead and speed was dropped to twenty-five knots, then to twenty. Scott prepared to launch planes. As Mikawa had done two months ago, so would Scott do on this dark breezy Sunday night.

Catapults flashed aboard San Francisco and Boise and two Kingfishers swooshed off into the black. Helena, which had not been notified, dumped hers overboard as inflammable material. Salt Lake City attempted to launch hers, but the plane was set afire by her own flares and was also jettisoned.

The burning aircraft’s flames could be seen fifty miles to the north by men aboard Admiral Goto’s ships. Goto thought it was Hyakutake signaling from his beachhead or else the seaplane carriers carrying Pistol Pete. He ordered replies blinkered. When no answer was forthcoming, some of Goto’s officers aboard flagship Aoba were suspicious. But Goto continued to flash his signal lights, hoping to lure any American ships in the vicinity away from the landing area. Goto did not really expect to find any, The Slot and Iron Bottom Bay having been such incontestable Japanese preserves during the past few months.

His column sailed on—cruisers Aoba, Furutaka, and Kinugasa, with destroyers Fubuki and Hatsuyuki off Aoba’s beam—a giant T speeding south to shell Henderson Field.

Below, Scott got his first scout-plane report: “One large, two small vessels, one six miles from Savo off northern beach, Guadalcanal.” Could this be the big force reported earlier that day? It did not seem so. Nor was it. It was part of the Supply Force. Scott continued to sail to the west of Savo on a northerly course. At half past eleven he ordered a countermarch to the south.

Goto still rushed toward him.

Inadvertently, Norman Scott had “crossed the T.” His ships were sailing broadside to the approaching enemy column: all his guns could be brought to bear to rake Goto stem-to-stern.

Helena got a radar contact!

Fifteen minutes before midnight Captain Gilbert Hoover broadcast a two-word signal: “Interrogatory Roger,” which meant, “Request permission to open fire.” Admiral Scott thought he meant “Roger” as employed to acknowledge receipt of a previous message. He replied, “Roger,” which also meant “Commence firing!” But Scott did not want to commence firing. Hoover was uncertain. With unsuspecting Aoba closing the range to a mere 5000 yards, with Helena’s gunners fingering their mechanisms in agony, Hoover repeated his former inquiry and Scott repeated his former, “Roger.”

Helena opened fire.