Challenge for the Pacific

Heaven, it seemed, had no intention of deserting him; for the storm still raged around his ships.

Rainfall on Guadalcanal muffled Carlson’s Raiders in their approach to an unsuspecting company of Japanese. Guided by Sergeant Major Vouza, the Raiders had moved stealthily up narrow native trails to the tiny village of Asimana on the upper Metapona River. They saw, to their satisfaction, that many of the enemy were bathing in the river. Colonel Carlson waited patiently until his men were in position. Then, he spoke one word:

“Fire!”

There were only a few minutes of massacre. Not one of 120 Japanese soldiers survived. The Raiders left their unburied bodies there to rot in the jungle, quickly resuming their pursuit of the harried Colonel Shoji.

The prospect of foul weather as a cloak to conceal the movement of the Tokyo Express did little to cheer Rear Admiral Raizo Tanaka, sortying from the Shortlands that afternoon. Aboard flagship Hayashio, Tanaka led twelve destroyers, eleven transports and 14,000 men toward Tassafaronga. But he had no faith in the fickle Solomons weather, and he also still thought that it was foolhardy to attempt to reinforce Guadalcanal in the face of Henderson’s air power. Tanaka did not think that Abe would be able to demolish the field any more than Kurita had done so a month ago, and he wondered how many of his ships were going to survive.⁶

As Tanaka’s ships neared Bougainville the weather began clearing.

Jack Read was on the run.

Having been warned by his scouts that the Japanese at Buka Passage were coming after him, he had notified Australia and been advised to flee, maintaining radio silence.

Read moved confidently into the high mountains on northern Bougainville. On the second day of his flight, November 12, a hot hazy morning sun turned into an afternoon downpour. Read and his scouts and the carriers bearing the teleradio slipped and swore while climbing higher to elude the pursuing Japanese.

They reached a mountain peak just as the rain stopped. Sunlight poured through a hole in rapidly dissolving clouds. The mists parted and the horizon became clear. Sailing down it in orderly formation were eleven large Japanese transports protected by twelve destroyers.

They were heading southeast.

Jack Read ordered his radio set up immediately and began broadcasting.

Although the storm was staying with Hiroaki Abe he had no reason to be so confident.

An American Catalina had sighted and reported him early that morning, even as he made rendezvous with Commander Hara’s column, and now, Jack Read had warned Kelly Turner of the Tokyo Express’s approach.

Turner realized immediately that this was the enemy’s big push.

Abe’s big ships were either out to sink Turner’s transports or bombard Henderson Field. Kelly Turner was confident that he could lead the transports, already ninety per cent unloaded, south to safety.

But what of Henderson Field?

It must not be bombarded. It must not because the planes of Cactus Air Force would then be unable to rise to intercept the enemy reinforcements—the heart of the entire Japanese operation—the planes from Enterprise would not be able to land on Guadalcanal to join them, and because one more day, at least, must be gained to allow Admiral Kinkaid’s powerful battleships time enough to enter the battle.

But to save the airfield, to gain the day, to stop the powerful enemy on this ominous and onrushing night of Thursday the twelfth and Friday the thirteenth, Kelly Turner had only two heavy and three light cruisers and eight destroyers. Nevertheless, he ordered them to halt the enemy—to stop the bombardment at all costs.

Turner gave command of this force to Rear Admiral Daniel Callaghan.

Admiral Callaghan had been Vice-Admiral Ghormley’s chief of staff. It was Callaghan who had sat in silence at the acrimonious conference in the Fijis during which Frank Jack Fletcher had curtly advised Turner and Vandegrift that they would receive minimum carrier support for the invasion of Guadalcanal. After Halsey had relieved Ghormley, bringing his own chief of staff with him, Callaghan had gone back to sea.

He belonged there. Handsome with his shock of thick white hair and his jet-black eyebrows, his large dreamy eyes and straight, strong features, he might have been an ancient Celtic wanderer sailing a tossing coracle toward some undiscovered shore. Even his men idolized him, as does not happen often in any navy, and they called him “Uncle Dan.”

But he had neither the experience nor the training for the mission given to him by Turner.

Callaghan was chosen because he was senior to Norman Scott, the victor of Cape Esperance, who was also in the Bay aboard his flag cruiser Atlanta. Scott’s very victory also seems to have had inordinate influence on Callaghan, for he formed his ships in the same sort of column which had crossed the T on Aritomo Goto a month before.

Americans had yet to learn that the column was not the best formation to employ against the night-fighting, torpedo-firing Japanese. But it was chosen because of Cape Esperance, because it made maneuvering in narrow waters less risky, and because, presumably, it made communication between ships easier. So Callaghan set his ships in column: destroyers Cushing, Laffey, Sterett, and O’Bannon in the lead, heavy cruisers Atlanta, San Francisco, and Portland, followed by lights Helena and Juneau in the center; and in the rear, destroyers Aaron Ward, Barton, Monssen, and Fletcher. Unfortunately, Callaghan did not make good use of his best radar ships. They were not in the lead; moreover, Atlanta with inferior radar was ahead of San Francisco with excellent radar. Finally, no plan of battle was issued.

Nevertheless, for all of these oversights and omissions, the Americans led by Callaghan and Scott did possess that single quality which, so often in this desperate struggle, had extricated the unwary or unwise from a defeat of their own devising.

And that was valor.

The Tokyo Express was turning around.

Shortly before midnight Admiral Tanaka received word from Combined Fleet that the landing at Tassafaronga had been delayed until the morning of November 14. Admiral Mikawa was going to follow up Admiral Abe’s bombardment by shelling Henderson Field on the night of November 13, rather than on the morning of that day.

From flagship Hayashio came the signal to reverse course and retire to the Shortlands.

There was tension on Guadalcanal. It was almost a living quality, like the gases composing the atmosphere. It was a quivering electric dread attuned to the jagged flashes of lightning flitting over the island in the wake of the clearing rain. It was brittle, like the emergent bright stars overhead.

General Vandegrift felt it. He was aware of Abe’s approach, and of the outgunned fleet which Admiral Callaghan had to oppose him. The general’s staff also knew that this was the night. They went to bed not only fully clad, as was customary on Guadalcanal, but wearing pistol belts and clutching hand grenades. Some of them expected to use these in the morning. So did all of Vandegrift’s men, crouching beside their guns or perched on the edge of their holes. They spoke in low voices, often pausing to glance fearfully at the sky or to look furtively over their shoulders. It was as though they expected the enemy from every quarter. Upon the sinking of the new moon beneath the dark mountains their voices became hushed and whispering.

Out on the Bay a nine-knot easterly breeze blew gently into the faces of Callaghan’s lookouts. At ten o’clock, Callaghan saw Turner’s transports safely out of the eastern entrance, and reversed course toward Savo. His ships were still in column. He would make no attempt to flank the approaching Abe to launch torpedoes.

It was to be a straight-ahead plunge aimed at the enemy battleships.

It was now Friday the thirteenth and Admiral Abe’s divine squall had fallen behind.

Hiei and Kirishima and their fifteen sister furies had