Challenge for the Pacific

weapons and life jackets away from sailors struggling desperately to save their ship.

Above, Joe Bauer saw McFarland plodding along at barely five knots. She was a helpless target for about five Vals which had still to make their dive. With his gas tanks nearly empty, Bauer went wolfing swiftly among the enemy.

He shot down four of them before he came down with bone-dry tanks.

McFarland was saved, as well as her precious cargo of ammunition.

Rugged Joe Bauer, Indian Joe Bauer, one of the most inspirational of flying leaders, and also the pilot whom all Marines regarded as “the greatest,” had brought off the most astonishing single feat of aerial arms in the annals of Guadalcanal. In the words of his adoring wingman:

“The Chief stitched four of the bastards end to end.”⁹

CHAPTER TWENTY

“IT NOW appears that we are unable to control the sea in the Guadalcanal area,” the admiral reported. “Thus our supply of the positions will only be done at great expense to us. The situation is not hopeless, but it is certainly critical.”

It was not Ghormley the pessimist who wrote those words on October 15, 1942, but rather Nimitz the optimist.

And his grim estimate of the situation came at a time when it was next to impossible for Admiral King in Washington to divert any additional ships or supplies or men to the South Pacific. Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa, was gathering. President Roosevelt had insisted that American troops be committed against Germany at some time in 1942. His Joint Chiefs of Staff had argued for a cross-Channel invasion of France but their British counterparts had objected; backed by Prime Minister Churchill they held out for the North African venture, and Roosevelt had agreed with them.

A vast concourse of ships, a logistics problem as yet unrivaled, was involved in transporting some 90,000 men to North Africa from bases as far away as England and the United States.

Moreover, Admiral King’s hands were also very full contending with German U-boats, which sank eighty-eight ships and 585,510 tons of cargo in the Atlantic during October, and with supplying British forces in Egypt via the long route around the Cape of Good Hope. General Marshall was solidly for Torch, now that Roosevelt had given it the green light, and General Arnold, although not equally enthusiastic, still cherished his never-to-be-realized dream of bringing Germany to her knees by strategic bombing, which meant concentrating aircraft in Europe.

Admiral King and General MacArthur might argue that disaster must not be courted in the Solomons and New Guinea just to get into action against the Germans, thus boosting morale on the home front as well as perhaps providing for the eventual invasion of Europe, but the Commander-in-Chief of American armed forces, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was not to be moved. Torch still burned with the green light.

And so Nimitz knew that the Guadalcanal situation was critical simply because the Japanese Navy was concentrating all its forces there and he had not equal forces to oppose them.

Then, on October 16, the day the Sendai marched south on Guadalcanal, Nimitz received a shattering message from Admiral Ghormley.

“This appears to be all-out enemy effort against Guadalcanal. My forces totally inadequate to meet situation. Urgently request all aviation reinforcements possible.”

The following day Ghormley came through with an estimate of what he needed to save the day: all the submarines in MacArthur’s area, all the cruisers and destroyers in Alaska, all the PT boats in the Pacific except those at Midway, a review of the entire destroyer assignment schedule in the Atlantic and the Pacific, and from the Army Air Force ninety heavy bombers, eighty medium bombers, sixty dive-bombers, and two groups of fighters, including those Lightnings which General Arnold was reluctant to release.

Nimitz, a calm and orderly man, was staggered. Obviously such recommendations did not spring from a hopeful mind. Such forces, even if they could be made available, could not be furnished instantly. And the time was one for instantaneous action with the forces that were available. Chester Nimitz sighed and came reluctantly to a decision.

Back in Washington on that same day—October 16 in Washington, the seventeenth in the South Pacific— Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox was meeting the press. Came the question: Can Guadalcanal be held?

“I certainly hope so,” the Secretary said. “I expect so. I don’t want to make any predictions, but every man out there, ashore or afloat, will give a good account of himself.”

That night on Guadalcanal the Marines heard of the Secretary’s shy little pep talk with hoots of derision.

“Didja hear about Knox? It was on the ’Frisco radio. He says he don’t know, but we’re sure gonna give a good account of ourselves.”

“Yeah, I heard—ain’t he a tiger?”¹

The following day a four-engined Coronado flying boat circled above Admiral Ghormley’s flagship, Argonne, in the harbor at Noumea.

The pilot eased back on the throttle and brought the plane down gently on the water’s surface. An admiral with a craggy face and tufted gray eyebrows clambered out just as a motor whaleboat drew alongside. The admiral jumped into the tossing whaleboat.

A young junior grade lieutenant stepped up to him, saluted, and handed him a sealed envelope marked “Secret.”

The admiral tore it open and read. He read it again, blinking, and then he handed it to his Marine adviser and friend, Colonel Julian Brown. It said:

YOU WILL TAKE COMMAND OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC AREA AND SOUTH PACIFIC FORCES IMMEDIATELY.

“Jesus Christ and General Jackson!” Bull Halsey swore. “This is the hottest potato they ever handed me.”²

On Guadalcanal, men who had never once lost hope of victory, who were entering their eleventh week of battle still confident of it, heard the news with shouts of jubilation.

A real tiger was taking over.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE ARRIVAL of the 164th Infantry Regiment’s three thousand soldiers had given Archer Vandegrift 23,000 men on Guadalcanal, with another four thousand under General Rupertus on Tulagi. Guadalcanal, however, was the prize; and Vandegrift again reorganized his defenses there.

Sector One comprised seven thousand yards of beachfront held by a composite force of Marines from the Third Defense Battalion, Special Weapons, Amtracks, Engineers, and Pioneers. On its right or eastern flank it joined the 164th holding Sector Two, a 6500-yard line south along the Tenaru which curved back west short of Bloody Ridge. Here it tied in with Sector Three held by the Seventh Marines, less one battalion, for another 2500 yards west to the Lunga, Sector Four, defended by the First Marines, less one battalion, stretched an additional 3500 yards west until it merged with Sector Five, which, held by the Fifth Marines, curved back north to the sea.

Essentially, this was the same perimeter which the Marines had been holding since August 7, except for one new feature: a battle position on the east bank of the Matanikau.

Here two independent battalions of Marines, backed up by artillery and 75-mm half-tracks, held a line from the river mouth left to Hill 67 about a thousand yards inland. Although this position was about three thousand yards