2 Attrition at Guadalcanal
In August 7, 1942, exactly eight months after Pearl Harbor, American Marines landed on Guadalcanal in the southern Solomon Islands, as the first step on the long road to Tokyo. The Japanese reacted violently. They elected to have it out right there—to stop the Allied recovery right at the start and at all costs.
Down from their mighty base at Rabaul, they sent reinforcements and supplies through a sea lane flanked by two parallel rows of islands in the Solomons archipelago. The sea lane quickly became known as The Slot, and the supply ships, usually fast destroyers, became known as the Tokyo Express.
The night runs of the Tokyo Express were wearing down the Marines. As they became more and more dirty and tired they became more and more irritated to find that the Japanese they killed were dressed in spruce new uniforms—sure sign that they were newcomers to the island.
Even worse was the sleep-robbing uproar of the night naval bombardments that pounded planes and installations at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, the only American base where friendly fighters and bombers could find a home. The American hold on the island was in danger from sheer physical fatigue.
The American and Japanese fleets clashed in the waters around the Guadalcanal landing beaches in a series of bloody surface battles that devoured ships and men on both sides in a hideous contest of attrition. Whichever side could hang on fifteen seconds longer than the other—whichever side could stand to lose one more ship and one more sailor—was going to win.
At the very moment of one of the big cruiser-destroyer clashes (October 11-12, 1942)—officially called the Battle of Cape Esperance—American naval reinforcements of a sort arrived in the area. Forty miles east of the battle, four fresh, unbloodied fighting ships were sailing into Tulagi Harbor at Florida Island, just across a narrow strait from Guadalcanal.
It was half of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron Three, four PT boats, the first American torpedo boats to arrive in combat waters since the last boat of Lieut. John Bulkeley’s disbanded Squadron Three had been burned in the Philippines seven months before.
The PT sailors came topside as they entered the harbor to watch the flash of cannonading in the sky to the west where American and Japanese sailors were blowing each other to bloody bits. For them, training time was over, the shooting time was now, and the PT navy was once again on the firing line.
All day on October 13, the PT sailors scurried about, getting the little warships ready for a fight. Their preparations made only a ripple in the maelstrom of activity around the islands.
Coast watchers—friendly observers who hid on islands behind the Japanese lines and reported by radio on ship and plane movements—reported a new menace to Guadalcanal. They had spotted a Japanese naval force coming down The Slot, but they said it was made up only of destroyers.
When Lieut. Commander Alan R. Montgomery, the PT squadron commander at Tulagi, heard that only destroyers were coming, he begged off from the fight—on the extraordinary grounds that he preferred waiting for bigger game.
Montgomery’s decision is not as cocky as it first sounds. The Japanese presumably did not know about the arrival of the PTs on the scene, and if ever a PT was going to shoot a torpedo into a big one—a cruiser or a battleship—it was going to be by surprise. No use tipping off the enemy until the big chance came.
The big chance was really on the way. The coast watchers had underestimated the size of the Japanese force. It was actually built around a pair of battleships, escorted by cruisers and destroyers, all bent on pounding Henderson Field and its pesky planes out of existence.
The Japanese command obviously expected no American naval resistance, because ammunition hoists of the Japanese fleet were loaded with a new kind of thin-skinned shell especially designed for blowing into jagged fragments that would slice planes and people to useless shreds. The bombardment shells would not be much use against armor. The Japanese ammunition load would have been a disaster for the task force if it had run into armored opposition—cruisers or battleships of the American Navy—but the Japanese knew as well as we did that there was little likelihood our badly mauled fleet, manned by exhausted sailors, would be anywhere near the scene. The Japanese sailed down The Slot with one hand voluntarily tied behind them, in a sense, supremely confident that they could pound Henderson Field Without interference.
Shortly after midnight on October 14th, two Japanese battleships opened up on Henderson Field with gigantic 14-inch rifles shooting the special fragmentation and incendiary shells. The two battleships were accompanied by a cruiser and either eight or nine destroyers. A Japanese scouting plane dropped flares to make the shooting easier. An American searchlight at Lunga Point, on Guadalcanal, probed over the water, looking for the Japanese, but American 5-inch guns—the largest American guns ashore—were too short of range to reach the battleships and cruisers even if the searchlight had found them. The big ships hove to and poured in a merciless cascade of explosive.
For almost an hour and a half, Marines, soldiers and Seabees lay in foxholes and suffered while the Cyclopean 14-inchers tore holes in the field, riddled planes with shell fragments, started fires and filled the air with shards from exploding shell casings—shards that could slice a man in two without even changing the pitch of his screams.
At the PT base in Tulagi, Lieut. Commander Montgomery was awakened by the din across the way. He knew that no destroyer force could make that kind of uproar. The earth-shaking cannonading meant that the big boys were shooting up Guadalcanal, blithely assuming that the U. S. Navy was not present.
But it was. Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron Three was on the scene and waiting for just such a target.
Montgomery called in his four young skippers—Lieuts. (jg) Henry S. (Stilly) Taylor of PT 46, Robert C. Wark of PT 48, John M. Searles of PT 60, and his brother Robert Searles of PT 38.
At two o’clock in the morning of October 14th, Commander Montgomery ordered: “Prepare for action. All boats under way immediately.”
It was the first combat order given to PT boats since the debacle in the Philippines.
The PTs left the harbor together but scattered quickly. They had all spotted the Japanese bombardment fleet by the orange flashes of its guns, and they lost each other in the darkness as they deployed to attack.
Somebody on a Japanese cruiser must have been at least mildly nervous, for a searchlight came on, swept the water toward Tulagi, zipped right across Bob Searles in 38, and then went black. Searles stretched his luck; he cut his speed to 10 knots and began a slow stalk of the cruiser that had muffed its chance to sound the alarm.
So cocky were the Japanese that the cruiser was almost dead in the water; even at 10 knots, the 38 closed the range from behind.
Bob Searles greased the 38 along the still waters of the sound, holding his breath and dreading to see the glare of that searchlight again. He could see the target clearly silhouetted in the gun flashes, and it was a brute—a light cruiser, Bob thought, judging from its shape, its size, and the roar of its guns. Searles figured that he would probably be the first and only PT skipper to enjoy the carefully preserved surprise that the PT sailors hoped would bag them a big one—so he had to make his first shot good or waste the chance they had all been hoarding.
A torpedo, like any other weapon that has to be aimed, is more likely to hit the closer you get to your target before you shoot. So Bob went in to 400 yards in stealthy silence. Four hundred yards in a naval battle is the equivalent of arm’s length in an infantry fire fight. At 400 yards, a spread of torpedoes will usually score, but the machine guns and autocannon of a cruiser’s secondary battery, guided by a searchlight, will almost certainly tear up a torpedo boat. Searles, just to be sure of a hit, was doing the same thing as a commando would do if, armed with a high-powered rifle, he crept to within five feet of a sentry armed with a sawed-off shotgun. At any range that rifle is a deadly weapon—like a torpedo—but at close range the shotgun is just as deadly and ten times surer of hitting with the first shot.
At 400 yards Bob fired two fish. He chased along behind them to 200-yard range—almost rock-throwing range—and fired his last two torpedoes. The instant he felt the boat jump from those shots, he poured on the coal and roared past the cruiser, 100 yards astern. As they went by, all hands topside on the PT felt the scorching blast of a double explosion forward of the cruiser’s bridge.
The surprise was over. From here on the whole Japanese task force would be alarmed and shooting back—but that big boy the PT sailors had been after was in the bag. The 38’s crew was sure of it. Searles had the good sense not to hang around the hornet’s nest he had stirred up. His torpedoes were gone anyhow, so he lit out for home, convinced that he had scored the first PT victory of the comeback trail.
The other PTs had scattered, looking for other targets in the dark. There were plenty of targets, for they had penetrated the destroyer screen, without either side knowing it, and were in the heart of the Japanese formation. After the blast from the 38’s torpedo attack on the cruiser, the PTs themselves were as much targets as they were hunters.
Lieut. Commander Montgomery, riding with John Searles on the 60, was stalking a big ship—possibly the same cruiser Bob Searles had already attacked—but the escorting destroyers were roiled up and rallying around.
A searchlight poked about the water, looking for the 60 which had probably been dimly spotted by a lookout. The searchlight never found the 60, but it did silhouette the PT for another destroyer. Japanese shells from the second destroyer screamed over the PT, but Montgomery held steadily to his attack course on the cruiser—or whatever it was—until two of the 60’s fish were off and running.
John Searles spun the rudder over hard left and shoved the throttles up to the stops. Smoke poured from the generator on the stern, to cover their escape, and so the crew of the 60 didn’t see the end of the torpedo run, but it claimed a hit, anyhow, from the sound of a massive explosion.
If it was a torpedo hit and if the hit was on the same cruiser Bob Searles said he hit, that cruiser was in sad shape. Not so the destroyers. They were full of fight and boring in on the 60.
Smoke makes a fine screen for covering escape, but only for a time. After the initial escape is successful, a continuing smoke cloud only marks the course of the fleeing PT boat, just as a tracer’s phosphorescent trail tracks a bullet through the night. So Montgomery shut off the smoke when he thought they were free, but he had waited a moment too long.
Just as the smoke-screen generator hissed to a halt, a destroyer pinned the 60 down in the blue glare of a searchlight and a salvo of Japanese shells, landing 20 feet astern, almost lifted the 60 out of the water.
The Japanese destroyer captain did not know it, probably still doesn’t know it if he is even alive, but when he turned his light on the 60, he simultaneously lost the chance to sink one PT boat by ramming and just possibly saved his own ship from being sunk by still another PT.
Robert Wark’s 48 was sneaking up on the destroyer in a torpedo attack on one side; Henry Taylor’s 46 was roaring across the water, looking for targets on the other side, quite unaware that the destroyer was in its path. When the searchlight glare hit the 60, Taylor saw the Japanese ship dead ahead and put the rudder of the 46 over hard. He barely missed a collision with the can, a collision that would have reduced his little warship to a floating carpet of matchsticks. But, in skimming by the destroyer, Taylor almost rammed Wark’s 48 and spoiled its torpedo attack. Wark lost contact with the destroyer in the wild careering around the sound that followed the double near-collision, and he didn’t get off his torpedoes.
The whole time the Japanese captain was so intent on sinking the 60, pinned down by his searchlight, he apparently missed the near-collisions right under his nose. His shells were creeping up the wake of the fleeting 60 and he doggedly plowed into the stream of 50-caliber bullets from the PT antiaircraft machine-gun battery, willing to take the punishment in exchange for a chance to run the torpedo boat down.
Lieut. Commander Montgomery turned on the smoke generator again and had the inspiration to drop two depth charges into his wake. The charges exploded just ahead of the Japanese destroyer, and the Japanese skipper shied away from the chase, fearful that the closer he got to the PT boat, the more likely he was to be blown in two by a depth charge right under the bridge. The 60 escaped in the smoke, lay close to the beach for the rest of that night, and drifted aground on a coral reef near morning.
Wark, who had picked up his original target again, was still trying to shoot a fish into the destroyer that had abandoned the chase of the 60. Wark did not know it, but he was himself being stalked. From 200 yards away, a Japanese destroyer caught the 48 in a searchlight beam and fired all the guns that would bear.
A searchlight beam is a two-edged tool. It helps the aim of the gunners on the destroyer; at the same time it makes a beautiful mark for the PT’s machine guns. C. E. Todd, the ship’s cook, pumped 50-caliber bullets into the destroyer’s bridge and superstructure until the light was shattered. The destroyer disappeared and nobody knows what damage it suffered, but it is highly improbable that it could be raked by 50-caliber fire from 200 yards away without serious damage and casualties.
The 48’s skipper could say: “He never laid a glove on me.”
Aboard the Japanese flagship, the admiral, apparently alarmed by unexpected naval resistance no matter how puny, ordered a cease fire and a withdrawal. Eighty minutes of shellfire had left Henderson Field in a shambles anyhow. Forever after, Guadalcanal veterans of the night between October 13 and 14, 1942, talked about The Bombardment—not the bombardment of this date or the bombardment of that date. Simply The Bombardment. Everybody knew which one they meant.
What had the PTs accomplished on their first sortie? Bob and John Searles claimed solid hits on a cruiser. Postwar assessment of claims says that there is “no conclusive evidence that any major Japanese ship was sunk” on that night. But the next day a coast watcher reported that natives had seen a large warship sink off the New Georgia coast, to the north on the withdrawal route. Radio Tokyo itself acknowledged the loss of a cruiser that night under the attack of “nineteen torpedo boats of which we destroyed fourteen.”
That last bit—public admission by the Japanese of the loss of a cruiser to a PT—is the most convincing. The Japanese played down their own losses ridiculously. Sometimes they even believed their own propaganda, so much so that they deployed for battle forces which had been destroyed but whose loss they had never admitted, even to themselves.
A curious incident during the almost nightly naval bombardments of Henderson Field shows the Japanese sailor’s fatal desire to believe his own propaganda. Eight Japanese destroyers and a light cruiser bombarded the field the night of October 25, 1942. They sank two small ships, but they called off the shore bombardment after only a feeble effort.
The reason?
A Japanese officer ashore had sent a message: BANZAI. OCCUPIED AIRFIELD AT 2300.
He had done no such thing. Indeed, the very planes spared by that spurious message sank the cruiser the next morning.
Perhaps a more important result of the first PT foray than the hit on a cruiser was the shock to the Japanese nervous system. The Japanese navy had an inordinate horror of torpedo boats—possibly because the Japanese themselves were so diabolically good at surface torpedo attack. The knowledge that American torpedo boats were back on the scene must have been a jolt to their sensitivities.
Nobody can prove that the Japanese admiral called off the bombardment because of the torpedo attacks—after all, he had already shot up Henderson Field for eighty minutes and had expended almost all his special bombardment ammunition—but it is a remarkable coincidence that the shooting stopped almost immediately after the PTs arrived, and the withdrawal followed soon after the torpedoes started swimming around.
Half an hour after their sortie from Tulagi, the PTs saw a vast armada of Japanese ships turn tail and leave the field to them.
The Marines didn’t quibble. They crawled out of their foxholes, those who could, and thanked God for whoever had run off the 14-inchers. Henderson Field had survived, but barely, and the Marines were willing to give anybody credit for running off the battleships, if whoever it was would just keep them off. The PTs were willing to try.
The night between October 14th and 15th was the low point of the Navy’s contribution to the Guadalcanal campaign. Two Japanese cruisers insolently pounded Henderson Field with 752 eight-inch shells, and the Navy could not lift a finger to stop them. The only Navy fighting ships in the area were the four PTs of Squadron Three, but the 60 was still aground on a reef, the 38 had left all of its torpedoes inside a Japanese cruiser the night before, and the other two PTs were escorting two little supply ships across the channel between Tulagi and Guadalcanal. The cruisers had a field day.
The next night two Japanese cruisers fired 1,500 punishing eight-inch shells at Henderson Field.
Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, in Washington, after studying the battle report, could say only: “Everybody hopes we can hang on.”
Admiral Chester Nimitz was even more grim. “It now appears that we are unable to control the sea in the Guadalcanal area. 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.”
Perhaps the PTs had arrived too late to do any good. Certainly a navy that consisted of three torpedo boats afloat and one on a reef was not going to win the battle for Guadalcanal.
The Japanese, beginning on November 2nd, spent a week running destroyer and cruiser deckloads of soldiers down The Slot—65 destroyer deckloads and two cruiser loads in all.
On November 8th, PTs hit the destroyer Mochizuki but did not sink it.
This kind of reinforcement by dribbles was not fast enough to satisfy the Japanese brass, so they planned to stop sending a boy to do a man’s job. At Truk, they organized a mighty task force of two light carriers, four battleships, 11 cruisers and 36 destroyers to escort 11 fast transports to Guadalcanal on November 14th.
Before risking the transports, jammed with soldiers to be landed at Tassafaronga, the Japanese planned to bombard Henderson Field for two straight nights to eliminate once and for all the dangerous Marine airplanes based there.
The climactic sea struggle for Guadalcanal began on the night of November 12, 1942.
American scouting planes and Allied coast watchers sent word that a frighteningly powerful bombardment force was on its way down The Slot, and the most optimistic defenders of Guadalcanal wondered if this was going to be the end. Two Japanese battleships, the Hiei and the Kirishima, a cruiser, and fourteen destroyers were in the Japanese fleet. (The Japanese had learned to fear the PT boats of Tulagi; the fleet commander had posted two destroyers on one advanced flank and three destroyers on the other, as a torpedo-boat screen. In addition, he had assigned three other destroyers, not counted among the 14 under his direct command, to rove ahead on an anti-PT patrol.)
In a swirling, half-hour action on Friday, November 13th—the opening of the three-day naval Battle of Guadalcanal—the United States Navy lost the cruiser Atlanta, the destroyers Barton, Cushing, Laffey, and Monssen, and suffered severe damage to the cruisers Portland, San Francisco, Helena, Juneau, and to three destroyers. Admiral Daniel J. Callaghan was killed.
Limping home after the battle, the cruiser Juneau was torpedoed by the submarine I-26 (whose skipper admits that he was aiming at another ship entirely). The Juneau disappeared in a blast of smoke and flame. In one of the most tragic and inexplicable misadventures of the war, the survivors of the Juneau, floating within easy reach of the PTs at Tulagi, were abandoned, and no attempt was made to rescue them until all but a handful had died of exposure.
It is possible that the PTs—excellent rescue craft manned by sailors eager to help stricken shipmates—were so new to the theatre that the top brass didn’t even know of their presence, or at least weren’t in the habit of thinking about them. At any rate, the PTs were tied up at Tulagi while American sailors drowned almost within sight of the harbor.
On the night between November 13th and 14th, two Japanese heavy cruisers, screened by a light cruiser and four destroyers, steamed toward Guadalcanal with another load of bombardment shells.
The situation on Guadalcanal was grave. The base was crammed with the sick and weary survivors of the naval battle. The veteran defenders knew another punishing flotilla was on its way with possibly the final, fatal load of fragmentation shells aboard—and there were no big American ships near enough to say them nay.
The United States Navy had almost shot its bolt, at least temporarily. Almost but not quite.
Two PTs were still in the fight.
One, commanded by Stilly Taylor, and another, commanded by John Searles, had been screening the heavy cruiser Portland, which had been badly damaged in the previous night’s battle and was being towed to Tulagi.
Stilly Taylor tells what happened in one of the most momentously important torpedo-boat adventures of the Pacific War:
“The Japs began to shell Henderson Field, first putting a very bright flare in the vicinity of the field, and so naturally both of us [the two PTs] started in on them independently....
“As soon as the Japs opened fire it was obvious to us that there was at least one fairly heavy ship. We thought it was probably a battleship.... We could tell it was definitely a heavy ship because of the long orange flash from its gunfire rather than the short white flash which we knew from experience was the smaller fire of the destroyers....
“Due to the light put up by the Nip flares, I was able to use my director for the first time. I set the target’s speed at about 20 knots, and I think he was doing slightly more than this. I kept him in the director for approximately seven of his salvos and really had a beautiful line on him. [PT boats usually were forced, by bad visibility at night and in bad weather, to shoot from the hip. A chance to use a director for visually aimed fire was an unaccustomed luxury well worth gloating over in an action report.]
“After closing to about 1,000 yards, I decided that if we went in any farther we would get tangled up in the destroyer screen which I knew would be surrounding him at about 500 to 700 yards.
“I therefore fired three fish. The fourth misfired and never left the tube. The three fish landed beautifully and made no flash as we fired them.
“We immediately turned around and started back for the base, but we had the torpedoes running hot and straight toward the target.
“I am positive that at least one of them found its mark.
“Certainly the Nips ceased fire immediately and apparently turned right around and limped home.”
Nobody knows what damage these two PTs did that night. Planes the next day found a badly damaged cruiser leaving the scene, and that could well have been Taylor’s victim. At any rate, the material damage inflicted by these two brave seamen and their crews is comparatively unimportant.
What is important is the almost incredible but quite possible fact that the two cockleshells ran off a horribly dangerous Japanese surface fleet prepared to give Henderson Field what might well have been its death blow. As soon as the torpedo boats attacked, the Japanese stopped shooting and ran.
It is not hard to understand why. The American fleet had been badly battered during the previous night’s battle, but so had the Japanese fleet, and Japanese nerves were probably raw and jumpy.
The two PTs achieved complete surprise, and a surprise attack in restricted waters is always unsettling to naval officers, even the most cocksure and well rested. The Japanese could not be sure exactly who was attacking and in what force. They could have had only a dim idea of what damage they had done to the American Navy the night before, and, for all they knew, the torpedo tracks they saw came from a dangerous destroyer flotilla, backed up by who knows how many mighty ships of the line.
With their nerves shaken by the suddenness of the torpedo attack and with no knowledge of what was prowling around out there in the dark, it apparently seemed best to the Japanese commanders to abandon the bombardment quickly and save their ships for another day.
The two glorified cabin cruisers had driven off the Japanese task force when only three planes had been destroyed and 17 damaged (all the damaged planes were in the air before the end of the next day), and Henderson Field was still in action. The next day, November 14th, a smoothly functioning Henderson Field was host not only to the Marine planes permanently based there but also to Navy planes from the carrier Enterprise which landed at Henderson for refueling during shuttle trips to attack 11 fast Japanese transports coming down The Slot.
All-day attacks on November 14th, by the Marine, Navy, and Army planes, saved from destruction by the two PT boats, sank seven of the transports and worked a hideous massacre among the Japanese soldiers on their decks and in their holds. Four of the transports and 11 destroyers survived and at sunset were sailing for the Japanese beach-head of Tassafaronga Point. The destroyers carried deckloads of survivors from the sunken transports.
The destroyer commander was Rear Admiral Raizo Tanaka, perhaps the most brilliant combat officer of the Japanese navy. He repeatedly showed a fantastic devotion to duty that enabled him to carry out his missions in spite of seemingly impossible difficulties. Tanaka was the Tokyo Express.
To give Tanaka a little help with the disembarkation of the troops at Guadalcanal, the Japanese planned to bombard Henderson during the landings as a diversion—and just possibly as a coup de grâce to further American air resistance. They sent a battleship, two heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and nine destroyers to do the job. This time the light cruisers and destroyers were deployed in a formidable anti-torpedo-boat screen to prevent a recurrence of the previous night’s spooking from a measly two-boat PT raid.
The Japanese had lost their chance, however, for much more American naval power than a brace of torpedo boats stood between the Japanese and Henderson Field. Admiral W. A. Lee, on the battleship Washington, had arrived from the south, accompanied by the battleship South Dakota and four destroyers. He sailed north to meet the Japanese across Iron Bottom Bay (so called because the bottom was littered with the hulks of Japanese and American ships sunk in earlier battles. There were so many hulls on the ocean’s floor that quartermasters reported to their skippers that magnetic compasses were deflected by the scrap iron).
The American admiral—known to his intimates as “Ching” Lee—had a bad moment when he overheard two PTs gossiping about his battleships over the voice radio.
“There go two big ones, but I don’t know whose they are,” said one PT skipper.
Admiral Lee grabbed the microphone and quickly identified himself to shore headquarters before the PTs could get off a nervous shot.
“Refer your big boss about Ching Lee; Chinese, catchee? Call off your boys.”
The PT skippers answered, with good humor, that they were well acquainted with old “Ching” and promised not to go after him.
The PT crews watched Admiral Lee sail into the decisive last action of the three-day Battle of Guadalcanal. That night his ships sank the Japanese battleship and routed the Japanese bombardment fleet. But the mixed transport and destroyer reinforcement flotilla was taken, nevertheless, by the stubborn and wily Admiral Tanaka, around the action and to the beach at Tassafaronga where he carried out his reinforcement mission almost literally “come hell or high water.”
The Japanese had made a mighty effort, but American fliers, sailors, and PT boatmen had spoiled the assault. The only profit to the Japanese from the bloody three days was the landing of 2,000 badly shaken soldiers, 260 cases of ammunition, and 1,500 bags of rice.
But the Japanese were not totally discouraged. They had the redoubtable Tanaka on their side, and so they went back to supply by the Tokyo Express. The idea was for Tanaka’s fast destroyers to run down The Slot by night to Tassafaronga Point, where sailors would push overboard drums of supplies. Troops ashore would then round up the floating drums in small boats. In that way, Tanaka’s fast destroyers would not have to stop moving and would make a less tempting target for the Tulagi PTs than a transport at anchor.
On November 30, 1942, Admiral Tanaka shoved off from Bougainville Island with eight destroyers loaded with 1,100 drums of supplies. At the same moment an American task force of five cruisers and six destroyers—a most formidable task force indeed, especially for a night action—left the American base at Espiritu Santo to break up just the kind of supply run Tanaka was undertaking.
The two forces converged on Tassafaronga Point from opposite directions. The American force enormously outgunned Tanaka’s destroyers and also had the tremendous advantage of being, to some extent, equipped with radar, then a brand-new and little-understood gadget. Thus the American force could expect to enjoy an additional superiority of surprise.
And that is just the way it worked out. At 11:06 P.M., American radar picked up Tanaka’s ships. Admiral Tanaka’s comparatively feeble flotilla was blindly sailing into a trap.
American destroyers fired twenty torpedoes at the still unsuspecting Japanese, who did not wake up to their danger until the cruisers opened fire with main battery guns at five-mile range.
The Japanese lashed back with a reflex almost as automatic for Tanaka’s well-drilled destroyer sailors as jerking a finger back from a red-hot stove. They instantly filled the water with torpedoes.
No American torpedoes scored. Six Japanese torpedoes hit four American cruisers, sinking Northampton, and damaging Pensacola, Minneapolis, and New Orleans so seriously that they were unfit for action for almost a year. Cruiser gunfire sank one Japanese destroyer, but the rest of Admiral Tanaka’s ships, besides giving the vastly superior American force a stunning defeat, even managed to push overboard many of the drums they had been sent down to deliver.
Tanaka had once more carried out his mission and had won a great naval victory, almost as a sideline to the main business.
On the first anniversary of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1942, Admiral Tanaka came down again with eleven destroyers.
This time it was not a mighty cruiser-destroyer force waiting for him, but only eight PTs from Tulagi. They were manned, however, by some of the most aggressive officers and men in the American Navy. The boats were deployed around Cape Esperance and Savo Island, on the approaches to Tassafaronga.
Two patrolling torpedo boats spotted Tanaka’s destroyers and attacked, but one broke down and the other came to his rescue, so no shots were fired. Nevertheless, the Admiral was spooked by the abortive attack of two diminutive PTs, and retreated. He recovered his courage in a few minutes and tried again.
This time four PTs jumped him and fired twelve torpedoes. When their tubes were empty, the PTs roared by the destroyers, strafing with their machine guns—and being strafed. Jack Searles, in 59, passed down the Oyashio’s side less than a hundred yards away, raking the destroyer’s superstructure and gun crews with 50-caliber fire. The 59 itself was also riddled, of course, but stayed afloat.
Admiral Tanaka, who had run around the blazing duel of battlewagons at the Battle of Guadalcanal to deliver his reinforcements, who had bored through massive day-long air attacks, who had gutted a mighty cruiser force to deliver his cargo to Tassafaronga, turned back before the threat of four PTs, abandoned the mission, and fled back to Bougainville.
The PT navy at Tulagi (and the Marines and soldiers on Guadalcanal) had good cause to celebrate a clear-cut victory on this first anniversary of Pearl Harbor.
Times were too hard for the PTs to get any rest. Jack Searles patched up his bullet-torn 59, and, with another boat, put out two nights later, on December 9th, to machine-gun a Japanese landing barge sighted near Cape Esperance. During the barge-PT duel, one of Searles’ lookouts spotted a submarine on the surface, oozing along at about two knots. Jack whipped off two quick shots and blew a 2,000-ton blockade-running submarine (I-3) into very small pieces. There is no way to deny the submarine to Jack Searles’ bag, because a Japanese naval officer, the sole survivor, swam ashore and told the story of the I-3’s last moments.
On the night of December 11th Admiral Tanaka began another run of the Tokyo Express with ten destroyers. Dive bombers attacked during daylight, but made no hits. The job of stopping Tanaka’s Tokyo Express was passed to the PTs. They zipped out of the harbor at Tulagi and deployed along the beach between Tassafaronga and Cape Esperance.
The night was bright and clear, and shortly after midnight three PTs, commanded by Lieut. (jg) Lester H. Gamble, saw the destroyer column and attacked. The other two boats were skippered by Stilly Taylor and Lieut. (jg) William E. Kreiner III.
The Japanese destroyers turned on searchlights and let go with main batteries and machine guns, but the three torpedo boats got off their torpedoes and popped two solid hits into the destroyer Teruzuki. The Japanese ship blazed up, and for the second time Tanaka had had enough of torpedo boats. He went home.
The PTs had not yet had enough of Tanaka, however, for Lieut. Frank Freeland’s 44 heard the combat talk of his squadron mates on the voice radio, and came running. He roared past the burning Teruzuki, chasing the retreating destroyers. Two things were working against him; Lieut. Freeland did not know it, but one of the destroyers had stayed behind with the Teruzuki, and the flames from the burning ship were lighting the PT boat beautifully for the hidden Japanese gunners.
Aboard the 44 was Lieut. (jg) Charles M. Melhorn, who reports his version of what happened:
“We were throwing up quite a wake, and with the burning cargo ship [he probably mistook the burning Teruzuki for a cargo ship] lighting up the whole area I thought we would soon be easy pickings and I told the skipper so. Before he could reply, Crowe, the quartermaster who was at the wheel, pointed and yelled out ‘Destroyer on the starboard bow. There’s your target, Captain.’
“Through the glasses I could make out a destroyer two points on our starboard bow, distant about 8,000 yards, course south-southwest. We came right and started our run. We had no sooner steadied on our new course than I picked up two more destroyers through my glasses. They were in column thirty degrees on our port bow, target course 270, coming up fast.
“The skipper and I both saw at once that continuing our present course would pin us against the beach and lay us wide open to broadsides from at least three Jap cans. The Skipper shifted targets to the two destroyers, still about 4,000 yards off, and we started in again.
“By this time we were directly between the blazing ship and the two destroyers. As we started the run I kept looking for the can that had fired.... I picked him up behind and to the left of our targets. He was swinging, apparently to form up in column astern of the other two. The trap was sprung, and as I pointed out this fourth destroyer the lead ship in the column opened fire.”
The 44 escaped from the destroyer ambush behind a smoke screen, but once clear, turned about for a second attack. The burning Teruzuki illuminated the 44, and Teruzuki’s guardian destroyer, lurking in the dark, drew a bead on the ambushed PT.
“We had just come out of our turn when we were fired on.... I saw the blast, yelled ‘That’s for us.’ and jumped down on the portside by the cockpit. We were hit aft in the engine room.
“I don’t remember much. For a few seconds nothing registered at all. I looked back and saw a gaping hole in what was once the engine-room canopy. The perimeter of the hole was ringed by little tongues of flame. I looked down into the water and saw we had lost way.
“Someone on the bow said ‘Shall we abandon ship?’ Freeland gave the order to go ahead and abandon ship.
“I stayed at the cockpit... glancing over where the shell came from. He let go again.
“I dove... I dove deep and was still under when the salvo struck. The concussion jarred me badly, but I kept swimming underwater. There was a tremendous explosion, paralyzing me from the waist down. The water around me went red.
“The life jacket took control and pulled me to the surface. I came up in a sea of fire, the flaming embers of the boat cascading all about me. I tried to get free of the life jacket but couldn’t. I started swimming feebly. I thought the game was up, but the water which had shot sky high in the explosion rained down and put out the fires around me....
“I took a few strokes away from the gasoline fire, which was raging about fifteen yards behind me, and as I turned back I saw two heads, one still helmeted, between me and the flames. I called to the two men and told them that I expected the Japs to be over in short order to machine-gun us, and to get their life jackets ready to slip. I told them to get clear of the reflection of the fire as quickly as possible, and proceeded to do so myself.
“I struck out for Savo, whose skyline ridge I could see dimly, and gradually made headway toward shore. Every two or three minutes I stopped to look back for other survivors or an approaching destroyer, but saw nothing save the boat which was burning steadily, and beyond it the [Teruzuki] which burned and exploded all night long.
“Sometime shortly before dawn a PT boat cruised up and down off Savo and passed about twenty-five yards ahead of me. I was all set to hail him when I looked over my shoulder and saw a Jap can bearing down on his starboard quarter.
“I didn’t know whether the PT was maneuvering to get a shot at him or not, so I kept my mouth shut. I let him go by, slipped my life jacket, and waited for the fireworks.
“The Jap can lay motionless for some minutes, and I finally made it out as nothing more than a destroyer-shaped shadow formed by the fires and smoke.
“I judge that I finally got ashore on Savo about 0730 or 0800. Lieutenant Stilly Taylor picked me up off the beach about an hour later.”
Lieut. Melhorn was in the water between five and six hours. Only one other sailor survived the explosion of the 44’s gas tank. Two officers and seven enlisted men died.
Flames on the Teruzuki—the same flames that lit the way to its fiery death for the 44—finally ate their way into the depth-charge magazine, and just before dawn the Japanese destroyer went up with a jarring crash.
More important to the fighters on Guadalcanal than the sinking of the Teruzuki was the astonishing and gratifying fact that Admiral Tanaka, the destroyer tiger, had been turned back one more time by a handful of wooden cockleshells, without landing his supplies. The big brass of the cruiser fleet that had been unable to stop Tanaka at the Battle of Tassafaronga must have been bewildered.
After the clash between Tanaka and the torpedo boats on December 11th, no runs of the Tokyo Express were attempted for three weeks. The long lull meant dull duty for the PTs, but was a proof of their effectiveness in derailing the Tokyo Express. Japanese soldiers on Guadalcanal were down to eating roots and leaves—and sometimes even other Japanese, according to persistent reports among the Japanese themselves—before their navy worked up enough nerve to try another run of the Tokyo Express.
On January 2nd, ten destroyers came down The Slot. One was damaged by a dive bomber’s near miss, and another was detached to escort the cripple, but the other eight sailed on.
That night, eleven PTs attacked Tanaka’s destroyers with eighteen torpedoes, but had no luck. Tanaka unloaded his drums and was gone before dawn.
No matter. As soon as the sun came up, the PTs puttered about Iron Bottom Bay, enjoying a bit of target practice on the drums pushed off the destroyers’ decks. One way or the other, the torpedo boats of Tulagi snatched food from the mouths of the starving Japanese garrison.
A week later a coast watcher up the line called in word that Tanaka was running eight destroyers down The Slot. Rouse out the PTs again!
Just after midnight on January 13th, Lieut. Rollin Westholm, in PT 112, saw four destroyers and called for a coordinated attack with Lieut. (jg) Charles E. Tilden’s 43.
“Make ’em good,” Lieut. Westholm said, so Lieut. Tilden took his 43 into 400-yard range before firing two. Both missed. To add to his disastrous bad luck, the port tube flashed a bright red light, a blazing giveaway of the 43’s position.
The destroyer hit the 43 with the second salvo, and all hands went over the side, diving deep to escape machine-gun strafing. The destroyer passed close enough so that the swimming sailors could hear the Japanese chattering on the deck.
Lieut. Clark W. Faulkner, in 40, drew a bead on the second destroyer in column and fired four. His heart was made glad by what he thought was a juicy hit, so he took his empty tubes back home.
Lieut. Westholm, in 112, took on the third destroyer and was equally certain he had put one into his target, but two of the destroyers had zeroed in during his approach run, and two shells blew his boat open at the waterline. Lieut. Westholm and his eleven shipmates watched the rest of the battle from a life raft. The other PTs fired twelve fish, but didn’t even claim any hits.
Either Lieut. Westholm or Lieut. Faulkner had scored, however, for the Hatsukaze had caught a torpedo under the wardroom. The Japanese skipper at first despaired of saving his ship, but damage-control parties plugged the hole well enough so that he was able to escape before daylight.
When the sun rose, the PTs still afloat picked up survivors of the two lost torpedo boats and then went through the morning routine of sinking the 250 floating drums of supplies the destroyers had jettisoned. The starving Japanese watching from the beach must have wished all torpedo boats in hell that morning.
The Japanese did come out to tow in the wreckage of the PT 43, but a New Zealand warship stepped in with a few well-placed broadsides and reduced the already splintered torpedo boat to a mess of matchwood before the Japanese could study it.
Nobody but the Japanese High Command knew it at this point, but the plane and PT blockade of the Tokyo Express had won; the island garrison had been starved out.
During the night between February 1st and 2nd, coast watchers reported 20 Japanese destroyers coming down The Slot. The American Navy had no way of knowing it, but the Tokyo Express was running in reverse. The decks of those destroyers were clear—they were being kept clear to make room for a deckload of the starved-out Japanese on Guadalcanal. Japan was finally calling it quits and pulling out of the island.
Whatever the mission of the Japanese ships, the mission of the American Navy was clear—to keep the Japanese from doing whatever it was they were doing and to sink some ships in the process.
Three American mine-layers sprinkled 300 mines north of Guadalcanal, near Savo Island, in the waters where the destroyers might be expected to pass. Eleven PTs waiting in ambush attacked the destroyers as they steamed by the minefield. The PTs rejoiced at a good, solid hit on a destroyer by somebody—nobody was sure whom—and the destroyer Makigumo admittedly acquired an enormous hole in the hull at that very moment, but the Japanese skipper said that he hit a mine. He said he never saw any PTs attacking him.
Postwar assessment officers say that he probably hit a mine while maneuvering to avoid a PT torpedo. Avoid a torpedo attack he never even saw? Someone is confused. Some of the PT sailors who were sure of hits on the Makigumo have a tendency to get sulky when this minefield business is mentioned, and nobody can blame them. The Makigumo, at any rate, had to be scuttled.
Regardless of what damage they did to the Japanese, the PTs themselves suffered terribly in this battle.
Lieut. (jg) J. H. Claggett’s 111 was hit by a shell and set afire. The crew swam until morning, fighting off sharks and holding up the wounded. Two torpedo boatmen were killed.
Ensign James J. Kelly’s 37 caught a shell on the gas tank and disappeared in a puff of orange flame. One badly wounded man survived.
Ensign Ralph L. Richards’ 123 had stalked to within 500 yards of a destroyer target when a Japanese glide bomber slid in from nowhere, dropped a single bomb, and made possibly the most fantastically lucky hit of the war. The bomb landed square on the tiny fantail of the racing PT boat. The boat went up in a blur of flames and splinters. Four men were killed.
In spite of the fierce attacks of the PT flotilla, Tanaka’s sailors managed to take the destroyers in to the beach, load a shipment of evacuees, and slip out again for the quick run home.
This was the last and by far the bloodiest action of the PTs in the Guadalcanal campaign. The PTs had lost three boats and seventeen men in the battle and had not scored themselves—unless you count the destroyer Makigumo, which PT sailors stubbornly insist is theirs.
An over-all summary of their contribution to the campaign for Guadalcanal, however, gives them a whopping score:
A submarine and a destroyer sunk [not counting Makigumo]
Two destroyers badly damaged
Tons of Japanese supply drums riddled and sunk
Dozens of disaster victims pulled from the water
Two massive bombardments just possibly scared off
And—by far the most important credit—the Tokyo Express of Rear Admiral Raizo Tanaka ambushed and definitely turned back twice after a powerful cruiser force had failed at the job.
Even after the postwar assessment teams cut down PT sinking credits to a fraction of PT claims, there is still plenty of credit left for a force ten times the size of the Tulagi fleet.