Strong Men Armed

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.”

They patched together ten more bombers that day. They filled gas tanks by hand, hauled bomb trailers by hand, and lifted the big eggs into the racks with straining, sweating bodies. They did this while Japanese bombers swept over Henderson Field again and again, for Cactus Air Force must be ready to go by the next day, when the remaining Japanese cargo ships would surely return to unload General Maruyama’s supplies.

And then it was discovered that they were running out of gasoline.

Not even the arrival of six more Dauntlesses that afternoon of October 14 raised the drooping spirits of men who heard that news.

General Geiger began issuing orders. He sent a flight of Army B-17’s back to Espiritu Santo, for the Flying Fortresses drank too much gasoline. He ordered the tanks of wrecked planes drained. He sent out a search party to find a cache of 400 drums of gasoline which had been buried outside the airfield in the early days. He instructed Marine air transports to fly in nothing but gasoline. He got fast destroyers headed toward Guadalcanal with more drums lashed to their decks. He called off individual fighter sallies to husband his strength, for he wanted to use all that he had at dawn the next day.

But during the night the big cruisers Chokai and Kinugasa sped down The Slot to enter the Bay and hurl 752 eight-inch shells into Henderson and its defenders. At dawn, Marines standing atop the southern ridges looked westward to a place called Tassafaronga to contemplate the chilling spectacle of six squat Japanese ships calmly going about the business of unloading supplies.

Behind them on the battered airfield there were but three Dauntless dive-bombers able to fly.

“Always pray, not that I shall come back, but that I will have the courage to do my duty,” wrote Lieutenant Anthony Turtora to his parents on a day before his squadron came to Guadalcanal.

In the daylight of October 15, Lieutenant Turtora climbed into the cockpit of his patched-up Dauntless and flew down to Tassafaronga to do his duty. He did not come back. But he and many others of the same spirit did what they set out to do.

By ten in the morning, after a flurry of single-plane sallies, the patchwork, ragtag Cactus Air Force was rising to the attack. It was incredible. They had no right to be airborne. Departing Chokai and Kinugasa had assured the transports that American airpower was now as defunct in fact as in the communiques of Imperial Headquarters. But here they were coming with the sun glinting off their wings—Wildcats, Dauntlesses, Avengers, Army P-39’s and P-400’S, and later Flying Forts from Espiritu. Henderson mechanics had not slept for three days but they had made good their vow to salvage all but bullet holes. Thousand-pound and goo-pound bombs fell among the Japanese ships and beached supplies, bullets flayed and scattered enemy shore parties—while Marines on the ridges wildly cheered the Tassafaronga parade. And then, a great shout of delight broke from their throats to see a clumsy Catalina flying boat lumber into the air with two big torpedoes under her wings.

It was the Blue Goose, General Geiger’s personal plane.

Mad Jack Cram was at the controls. Major Cram had never heard of a PBY making a daylight torpedo attack before, nor had he ever fired torpedoes. But he had flown into Guadalcanal at dusk of the preceding day and been told that there were no Avengers to use the big fish nestled beneath his wings. In that case, he replied testily, he would launch them himself. He had received five minutes’ instruction from a fighter pilot whose brother flew a torpedo bomber, and then, gathering his crew, had climbed into the big Cat.

Now Cram was nursing his ship up. He made for a rendezvous with eight fighters and a dozen Dauntlesses a few miles east of Henderson, far from 30 Zeros flying cover for the ships. Major Duke Davis’ Wildcats were roaring down the runway behind him, taking off even as Pistol Pete ripped at the field again.

The Dauntlesses were at 9,000 feet. They were going over. The lead plane rolled over on its back, flashing down. The Zeros above them began peeling off, riding them down. Flak rose from Tassafaronga. The Blue Goose was going over. She was almost vertical, going for a Japanese transport a mile away. Cram rode the controls with his eyes devouring the speedometer needle. A Catalina was built for 160 miles an hour. Blue Goose was coming down at 270. Her great ungainly wings wailed and flapped in an agony of stress. She would surely come apart.

Cram hauled back on the stick. Blue Goose began to level off at 1,000 feet. Cram went over again. Blue Goose came screaming in at 75 feet, flashing past two transports, shuddering at the antiaircraft burst that knocked off her navigation hatch. Now Cram was sighting off his bow at a third transport. He jerked the toggle release. The first torpedo splashed in the water and began its run. Cram yanked again. The second fell, porpoised, righted—and followed the first into the transport’s side.

Five Zeros quit the dogfight to go after Blue Goose. Cram stood the plane on its wing and banked for Henderson Field. Behind him the transport was sinking. But the Zeros were around him, taking turns at making passes at his tail. Cram roller-coasted his ship, diving and rising, diving and rising, while the Zeros raked him homeward. Blue Goose was over the Henderson main strip, but Cram was going too fast to get down. He made for Fighter One, Blue Goose now wheezing through a hundred holes. Still the Zeros struck at his tail.

Cram began putting Blue Goose down. A Zero climbed his tail, just as Lieutenant Roger Haberman was also bringing his smoking Wildcat into the landing circle with lowered wheels.

Wheels still down, Haberman completed his turn, came in behind the Zero and shot it down.

Blue Goose ploughed up the strip in a glorious pancake landing. Mad Jack Cram and his crew emerged unharmed, though it would take much skill and patience to pull Blue Goose together again.

She had accounted for one of the three lost Japanese transports, and helped to drive the others away from Guadalcanal. The Tassafaronga tally-ho had struck a grievous blow at Lieutenant General Masao Maruyama. He had 20,000 men ashore, but he had lost most of the shells for his big guns, much of his food, and nearly all his medical supplies. The last was the worst of all, for beriberi and malaria had already begun to sweep among Maruyama’s earlier arrivals and one of those inveterate Japanese diarists was already setting down his lament:

The lack of sympathy by the headquarters is too extreme. Do they know we are left on the island? Where is the mighty power of the Imperial Navy?

It was coming down The Slot again.

Once again the flares, the night aglow with muzzle blasting, the long sleek shapes in the lagoon, American feet pelting madly in the darkness—and 1,500 shells raining in upon Henderson and the perimeter from the heavies Myoko and Maya.

It went on for an hour, and then there was silence. Fearfully at first, then with growing confidence, weary Marines climbed out of their pits and foxholes and stumbled to rearward sleeping holes that were only better in that they had ponchos drawn across them. Along the airfield the pilots dragged themselves to tents and cots. Among them was Major Galer. He looked around for his friend, Major Smith. He had been talking to him when the shelling began, and they had raced for the dugout together. Galer was worried. He went outside the tent and began calling:

“Smitty? Smitty? Where are you, Smitty?”

There was a momentary silence and then, faintly, from the airfield dugout came the infuriated voice:

“Here I am, dammit! Somebody bring me my shoes, will you? I’ll be damned if I’m going to walk barefooted over all those sharp-assed stones!”

There was another silence, and then, snickering, from Major Galer this time:

“How the hell’d you get out there, Smitty?”

At daylight of October 16, General Geiger calculated that he had lost 41 bombers and fighters to Japanese guns in the past three days, plus 16 more aircraft damaged. He had 25 bombers left in flyable condition, once repairs were made to the victims of Myoko and Maya, but he had only nine fighters. Geiger signaled Efate in the New Hebrides for hurry-up help.