Challenge for the Pacific

Up went the Army craft beside four Dauntlesses. They found the enemy convoy and they attacked. But they failed to sink them and the Japanese ships pressed on.

Back at Henderson Field, Seabees and Marine engineers drove themselves to repair the airfields. Squadron commanders conferred anxiously with their repair officers.

“What’s left, Lieutenant?”

“You’d need a magnifying glass to find it, Colonel.”

“Well, start using one then. How about Number 117?”

“Her? Oh, she’s great—wasn’t even scratched. Except that she needs an engine change. Other than that, all she needs is both elevators, both stabilizers, the right auxiliary gas tank, right and center section flaps, right aileron, windshield, rudder, both wheels and the brake assembly. But she’s still in one piece, sir, and I guess we can get her up in six days.”

“Six days!”

“Dammit, Colonel, back in the States it’d take six months to do it!”

“All right, all right—but let’s keep those junk-pickers of yours busy.”⁶

Henderson’s mechanics patched up ten more bombers that day. They did it even as bombs fell upon them from twenty-five unchallenged Betty bombers which came winging in at noon; an hour later, when fifteen more bombers and ten Zeros arrived overhead, they had twenty-four fighters aloft and waiting. Nine bombers and three Zeros were shot down, at a cost of two Marine pilots and one Army flier.

And then it became clear that Cactus Air Force was out of gas.

Admiral Ghormley’s headquarters was aware of the critical situation at Henderson Field. General Vandegrift’s urgent message requesting twenty bombers “immediately” had been received by Vice-Admiral Aubrey Fitch—who had replaced Admiral McCain as commander of South Pacific Air—but the best Fitch could do was send six more Dauntlesses to Guadalcanal.

In Espiritu Santo, Admiral Turner readied another emergency shipment of gasoline. Destroyer McFarland, now converted to a seaplane tender, was loaded with 40,000 gallons of gasoline, in tanks below and in drums topside, together with a dozen torpedoes, airplane flares and supplies of 37 -mm shells.

McFarland would get to Guadalcanal about the same time as the slower barge- towing convoy which had set out from Espiritu two days before.

Admiral Yamamoto was elated by Admiral Kurita’s reports of the destruction of Henderson Field. His carriers could now venture close to Guadalcanal without fear of land-based air, and he notified Admiral Kondo to move toward the island at top speed.

Kondo’s mission was to destroy the American naval forces which Yamamoto mistakenly believed to be in the vicinity, and to support General Hyakutake’s attack on the American airfield.

In the meantime, Admiral Mikawa would pick up where Kurita had left off.

Again Louie the Louse, again the flares, again the long sleek shapes gliding down The Slot—and once more Guadalcanal’s earth quivered while cursing Americans blundered blindly through the darkness toward their holes.

This time it was Gunichi Mikawa with flagship Chokai and big Kinugasa, the lucky battler of Cape Esperance. They began shelling even as six transports from the Shortlands began unloading troops and supplies off Tassafaronga, only fifteen miles west of the Marine perimeter.

Chokai and Kinugasa hurled 750 eight-inch shells into the American beachhead. Racing north unmolested, Mikawa jubilantly radioed Yamamoto that the enemy airfield was zemmetsu: wiped out.

With dawn of October 15, Marines on the southern ridges could look west past Kukum and see, with chilled hearts, the Japanese ships calmly unloading, while destroyers screened them to seaward and enemy planes patrolled the skies above them.

Behind these dispirited but not yet despairing Marines there was a ruined airfield, only three Dauntlesses that could fly, and not a drop of gasoline.

“No gasoline?” Roy Geiger thundered. “Then, by God, find some!”⁷

Then Geiger radioed Espiritu Santo to fly in nothing but fuel that day, while his startled supply officers hurried from the Pagoda to start hunting gasoline. First, they drained the tanks of two wrecked Flying Fortresses, getting four hundred gallons out of one of them, and next someone remembered four hundred drums of Japanese aviation gasoline that had been cached outside the airfield’s outer rim during the early days.

It was enough to contradict Admiral Mikawa’s estimate of Henderson Field’s fighting capacity.

“Always pray,” Lieutenant Anthony Turtora had written to his parents, “not that I shall come back, but that I shall have the courage to do my duty.”⁸

Shortly after daybreak on October 15, Lieutenant Turtora climbed into one of Henderson’s three flyable Dauntlesses. His motor roared and the stubby powerful ship went zigzagging down the bomb-pocked runway, struggling aloft while ground crews watched with caught breath. Then Turtora flew down to Tassafaronga to do his duty. He did not return, but after him came scores of pilots who also had the courage to do their duty.

They should not have been airborne, by every law of logic Admiral Mikawa should have been right; and yet, all day long the ragtag Cactus Air Force struck at the enemy transports. Flying on gasoline supplies which were always on the verge of giving out, until another Army or Marine transport roared in from Espiritu, the Wildcats and P-400s and Airacobras tangled with Japanese Zeros or swept in low to strafe enemy troops. Seated in the cockpits of Dauntlesses and Avengers which Henderson’s magnificent mechanics had patched together in fulfillment of their vow to salvage everything but the bullet holes, the bombers showered the enemy ships with 1000- and 500-pound eggs, or dove down through streamers of antiaircraft fire to strafe and to blast supply dumps.

Late in the day Flying Fortresses came up from Espiritu to join the Tassafaronga assault, their majestic formation provoking cries of delight from Marines atop the ridges who had been cheering on the airmen throughout the day. And then a great shout broke from their lips. They had seen a clumsy Catalina lumbering west with two torpedoes tucked under its belly.

It was the Blue Goose, General Geiger’s personal plane, and Mad Jack Cram was at the controls.

Major Cram had flown into Guadalcanal to deliver torpedoes. He had begged the use of one of them, and an ensign who had already been down to Tassafaronga told him he could have both. Then Cram gathered his crew and climbed back into Blue Goose.

He nursed the awkward Cat into the sky. He made for a rendezvous with eight fighters and a dozen Dauntlesses a few miles east of Henderson. Beneath him, Major Duke Davis and his Wildcats were cakewalking down the runway between the bursts laid down by Pistol Pete.

Blue Goose was roaring along with the Dauntlesses and Wildcats toward the transports and thirty Zeros flying cover above them. Then the dive-bombers were going over, flashing down through the flak, and big bulky Blue Goose was going over with them.

She was built to make 160 miles an hour, this Catalina, but she was diving at 270. Her great ungainly wings shook and shrieked in an agony of stress. She would surely fall apart.

Cram pulled the stick back. He leveled off at one thousand feet. Then he went over again. Blue Goose came thundering over two transports at seventy-five feet. She shuddered and bucked in their flak blasts. Cram sighted off his bow at a third transport. He yanked the toggle release. His first torpedo hit the water and began running straight and true. He yanked again, and the second fell. It porpoised, righted—and followed the first into the transport’s side.

Blue Goose had broken the transport’s back. She was done. Her skipper drove her up on the beach. Soon two more transports were beached, and the other three had turned and raced back toward the Shortlands.

Now Blue Goose was fighting for her life. Five Zeros went after her. Cram stood