Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun (31 page)

By this time both Japanese battlewagons were only a few thousand yards away, and Captain Iwabuchi Sanji’s
Kirishima
was blasting away too. Iwabuchi had been following
Hiei
in column, but Abe’s maneuvers left his vessel on the flagship’s starboard quarter.
Kirishima
’s action record claims inflicting four hits on the cruiser illuminated by the
Hiei
, which would have been Callaghan’s
San Francisco.
The shells smashed the bridge and conning tower, killing every officer there except Bruce McCandless, who lived to tell the tale. Captain Cassin Young, who had survived Pearl Harbor and, in fact, won the Congressional Medal of Honor there, perished on the cruiser’s bridge. Ranges came down to a thousand yards or less. Gunnery Ensign John G. Wallace later recalled that it would have been easy to toss a sweet potato onto some of the Japanese ships. The
Kirishima
claimed to have sunk the enemy cruiser. Lieutenant Tokuno Horishi, the battleship’s assistant gunnery officer, recalled that the
Kirishima
received only one hit during the entire battle.

San Francisco
got in her licks on the
Hiei.
Lieutenant Commander William W. Wilbourne had only to press the firing key to send six-gun salvos crashing into the battlewagon. The
San Francisco
’s after turret was masked until McCandless swung the ship around. It had to fire under local control, since the after director had been wrecked earlier that day by the Betty crash.
San Francisco
claimed at least eighteen hits. Others fired too. The
Hiei
endured more than eighty hits. Communications were knocked out; fires erupted near the bridge; Admiral Abe was grazed in the head by flying splinters. Nishida’s ship mutated into a floating derelict, barely under way, with rudder jammed and flooded compartments barring access. The engines were good but the steering so bad that hours later the battleship still lay only a few miles from Savo Island.

Captain Iwabuchi led his
Kirishima
away from the combat zone. At about 2:00 a.m. Abe canceled the bombardment mission anyway and ordered general withdrawal. The Imperial Navy recorded the end of the battle at 2:34. Iwabuchi radioed a preliminary report about half an hour later, while Rear Admiral Kimura in the
Nagara
reassembled the destroyers, detached ships to attend the
Hiei
, and got the others out of Cactus air range. At 3:44 a.m., Combined Fleet postponed Z-day, leaving Rear Admiral Tanaka to withdraw his convoy up The Slot.

At FRUPAC the radio monitors listened to increasingly frantic messages from Captain Nishida. The
Hiei
was not besting her damage. Dawn meant the Cactus Air Force. Nishida’s messages conveniently supplied his position, which U.S. intelligence passed on to Cactus. Meanwhile, Abe wanted to tow the crippled battleship to safety. Some called for beaching her, shelling Guadalcanal until the ammunition ran out, then joining the troops on Starvation Island. Nishida preferred to try to save
Hiei
. But the rudder jam greatly complicated towing. Combined Fleet suggested the jury rig of having the
Hiei
also tow a destroyer behind herself to compensate for the rudder.

Captain Iwabuchi reversed course with
Kirishima
and headed back. His ship would have towed her sister. But U.S. intelligence could have tactical as well as strategic impact. As a result of Ultra, Iwabuchi’s
Kirishima
became a U.S. sub’s target. Strategic warnings had led to some submarines being sent out from Australia. These included the
Trout.
Lieutenant Commander Lawson P. “Red” Ramage’s
Trout
had actually been on the way to repair damage she had suffered patrolling off Truk—where Ramage had succeeded in putting a tin fish into light carrier
Taiyo
. On November 12, sub chief Rear Admiral Ralph W. Christie alerted Red to look out for major warships. Sure enough, in the morning the
Kirishima
appeared. Zigzagging foiled Ramage’s first approach, but later he got close enough to launch five torpedoes. Red claimed no hits, but the Japanese felt one—fortunately a dud. Iwabuchi promptly hightailed it north.

Meanwhile Admiral Abe finally gave up on towing the
Hiei
and ordered her beached at Kamimbo instead. He transferred to destroyer
Yukikaze
after dawn. Beginning at 6:15 a.m., relays of Marine and Navy dive-bombers,
Enterprise
torpedo planes—flying from the carrier to recover at Cactus—and Army B-17s struck the
Hiei
again and again. The JNAF provided some air cover, including from the
Junyo
, but that started out badly—the air force was given the wrong coordinates—and got worse. The first patrol fighters did not reach
Hiei
until nearly noon. At least three American bombs and six or more torpedoes hit the warship. Captain Nishida, preoccupied with the incessant air attacks, did little to beach the ship. Given the mounting danger to the destroyers standing by, Admiral Abe ordered the
Hiei
scuttled and her crew taken off. Yamamoto countermanded that. Abe appealed the decision, twice. By evening the crew had been evacuated and the ship’s seacocks opened. Soon afterward arrived Yamamoto’s repeat order to keep the
Hiei
afloat. The fleet commander refused to give up on saving the ship, but his dispatch, delayed in transmission, arrived too late. An I-boat received instructions that night to proceed to the
Hiei’
s location and ascertain her status. The following morning Commander Yamada Kaoru signaled from the
I-16
that the
Hiei
was no more.

On the American side, Task Group 67.4 had been virtually annihilated. The
Portland
, hit by
Hiei
, once by
Kirishima
, and aft by a
Yudachi
torpedo, circled helplessly in Ironbottom Sound on a remaining screw with her rudder jammed. She managed to limp into Tulagi harbor. Two destroyers sank where they were. Gil Hoover of the
Helena
regrouped the survivors—his light cruiser and a few tin cans. The
Atlanta
,
San Francisco
,
Juneau
, and
Sterett
joined. The
Atlanta
fell out of formation, too waterlogged to survive, and sank near Cactus. Every ship was damaged. McCandless of the crippled
San Francisco
would be awarded the Medal of Honor. Roughly 1,400 survivors landed on Guadalcanal. Captain Hoover led the battered vessels toward Espíritu Santo. The next day, south of Cactus, they stumbled into Commander Yokota Minoru’s
I-26.
Yokota fired torpedoes, which missed the
San Francisco
but hit the
Juneau
instead. She virtually blew up. Besides providing incredible pyrotechnics for the men on Guadalcanal, the first round of this naval battle had been woefully destructive. But there had been no decision. Yamamoto remained determined to have his Z-Day.

Combined Fleet now had a liaison officer on Guadalcanal, Lieutenant Commander Emura Kusao, personally representing the fleet commander.
Emura reported the cripples lying off Lunga Point and various Allied activities in Ironbottom Sound. Air searches discovered Kinkaid’s task force with the
Enterprise
, as well as another Allied convoy. The Japanese were racing against time. Yamamoto ordered Admiral Kondo to finish the job. Kondo could cover arrival of the Japanese convoy in person. Now Kondo advised that his fleet, low on fuel, needed to top off. He put back his bombardment a day.

Not willing to leave Henderson Field unmolested, Combined Fleet ordered a cruiser foray. Rear Admiral Nishimura Shoji departed Shortland at 7:30 a.m. with his Cruiser Division 7 ships
Suzuya
and
Maya
, screened by light cruiser
Tenryu
and destroyers. Vice Admiral Mikawa with a cruiser-destroyer group accompanied Nishimura to reinforce him if a surface action eventuated. Combined Fleet undertook this sortie even as the
Hiei
drama unfolded in The Slot. Yamamoto did not intend to let up. It was possible for Mikawa to have taken all of his ships into Ironbottom Sound to put greater weight of shell on the airfields. The admiral, who prided himself on having read Alfred Thayer Mahan’s
Influence of Sea Power upon History
four times, surely appreciated the value of contesting the waters off Lunga Point. But he kept to his support role. Nishimura separated from Mikawa’s unit about 11:00 p.m. on November 12 and a little over an hour later began his bombardment run. His cruisers shelled Henderson on the outbound leg, and Fighter One on the return. They blasted the fields with nearly a thousand eight-inch shells, destroying a number of aircraft. That night the PT boats intervened. While Nishimura’s cruisers blasted away,
PT-47
and
PT-60
, on patrol out of Tulagi, went up against one of the screening destroyers.
PT-47
fired three torpedoes from close range, certain she obtained a hit. This was apparently mistaken.

Chief of Staff Ugaki at Truk disappointedly noted that many of Nishimura’s shells had impacted between targets and not on them—there had been communication problems with the
Suzuya
floatplane Nishimura launched to spot for him. But the admiral did not stick around to check. He rejoined Mikawa and exited The Slot past the Russell Islands to escape to the west. In the morning Vice Admiral Mikawa’s force experienced the mad hornets. After dawn Lieutenant Commander Glynn R. “Donc” Donaho’s sub
Flying Fish—
also cued by Ultra—found Mikawa and sent six torpedoes toward his cruisers. All missed. Submarine attack was followed by air. Marine and
Navy torpedo planes and dive-bombers, from both Henderson and the
Enterprise
, hacked away at Mikawa’s ships.

First to run the gauntlet of the Cactus Air Force was heavy cruiser
Kinugasa.
She sustained a direct hit from a 500-pound bomb forward of the bridge, which ignited a gasoline fire, sprang leaks that gave her a list, took out an AA gun, and killed both Captain Sawa Masao and his exec. The ship’s torpedo officer took over. The fires were quenched and
Kinugasa
, accompanied by a couple of destroyers, was under way again when several
Enterprise
dive-bombers struck from astern. Their bombs fell close enough to perforate the hull. The cruiser lost both rudder control and engines. Her flooding accelerated. Inside of two hours she capsized, with fifty-one seamen killed, forty-two badly wounded, and thirty-three sailors more lightly injured. Japanese records mention only bomb hits and near misses, though U.S. ones claim three to six torpedo hits.

Next up was Captain Hayakawa Mikio’s
Chokai.
She beat off an early torpedo plane attack, but two hours later came dive-bombers. One missed close enough to wound a sailor. In the heat of action a fire broke out in the boiler rooms and reduced speed to twenty-nine knots, but Hayakawa’s ship reached safety and required only a short repair from the
Arashi
at Truk. Then came
Maya.
Captain Nabeshima Shunsaku had enough warning to use his main battery, expending nine of those incendiary AA shells that might have been usefully plopped on Henderson Field the previous night. One U.S. plane was damaged so badly it crashed on the high-angle gun deck, igniting ready ammo and starting a fire that spread to the torpedo room. Nabeshima jettisoned his torpedoes. A torpedo tube and two heavy flak guns were wrecked, thirty-seven sailors died, and twenty-seven more were wounded, but the ship survived. Last was light cruiser
Isuzu
, attacked by dive-bombers under the
Enterprise
’s master scout, Bucky Lee. Captain Shinoda Kiyohiko’s ship was damaged by near misses that flooded two boiler rooms and left her steering manually, but
Isuzu
, too, lived to fight another day. Given fresh reasons to respect Allied airpower, Mikawa staggered into Shortland late that afternoon.

Rear Admiral Tanaka’s Army convoy had to run the gauntlet too. Already repelled once, Tanaka wondered how many ships would survive. Tanaka had a premonition, and he was right to worry. This day might have
been a nightmare for Mikawa, but for the convoy it was sheer hell, beginning soon after dawn, when the first scouts—both Cactus dive-bombers and SOWESPAC B-17s—made their instant attacks. At that point the convoy had a combat air patrol. Interceptors claimed several of the scout bombers, which inflicted no damage. An hour later a pair of scout bombers from
Enterprise
also were claimed destroyed. But at 11:50 a major strike arrived—more than forty planes, half of them SBDs, and eight each of Avengers and B-17s. Tanaka’s destroyers laid a smoke screen and the transports maneuvered, but the aircraft were upon them. Torpedoes sank two transports, while a third, carrying the Nagoya Division’s commander, was hurt and had to turn back.

From Truk the Combined Fleet desperately demanded the Army shell Henderson Field with everything it had. This was the Army convoy, after all. Success depended upon stopping Allied air attacks. The Army blithely replied that it would bombard the American airfields
the next day
! Besides, the soldiers argued, even if they did neutralize Henderson, the Americans still had an aircraft carrier somewhere out there at sea.