Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun (32 page)

More Cactus attacks followed at 12:45 and 2:00 p.m., with three transports sunk. Destroyers rescued survivors. A B-17 strike, another
Enterprise
attack, and a series of mixed raids, ending with a big punch before sunset, sent another transport to the bottom. Tanaka managed to evacuate or pull from the water some 5,000 soldiers and sailors, quite impressive under the circumstances. At SOPAC, clutching the latest situation report, Bull Halsey exulted to his staff, “We’ve got the bastards licked!”

Only four transports were left. Admiral Tanaka was in a quandary. Though they were not far from Cactus, regrouping the convoy would add delays. Air search had revealed an Allied cruiser-destroyer group (actually Lee’s force) racing to intercept, while Mikawa’s shot-up cover unit had had to withdraw. Tanaka did not know whether Kondo would come up in support. But Combined Fleet ordered the transports ahead to beach on Guadalcanal. Then a dispatch from Admiral Kondo informed him the Advance Force was, in fact, coming to the rescue. Tanaka pulled into a cove on the New Georgia coast to finish regrouping and await the Kondo fleet. The delays meant he could not make Starvation Island before dawn. There was nothing to be done about that. As Kondo approached, Tanaka put back to
sea. Shortly before midnight Tanaka’s warships saw Advance Force vessels loom out of the darkness. But the United States was out there too. And the Americans were not cruisers. They were battleships.

The Allied airpower romp was possible because of the latest failure to neutralize newly reprovisioned Henderson Field—and the nearby presence of the
Enterprise
. South Pacific commanders were also blessed with good information in the form of excellent air search results that morning. These revealed not only the Mikawa force and Tanaka convoy, but also the Kondo force and even the Kakuta carrier unit. Radio fixes confirmed the information. Cactus air took advantage, but so did SOPAC. Bull Halsey had ordered Admiral Kinkaid to detach his battleship group the previous day. Rear Admiral Ching Lee and his battleships were to move in on Savo Island, thus covering withdrawal of the Allied cruisers and blocking The Slot. Halsey had been stunned to discover, when Kinkaid radioed back, that Task Force 16’s position was such as to preclude the battleships reaching the scene until morning. The detachment was in fact accomplished. Admiral Lee issued a general instruction by signal lamp: “THIS FORCE TO OPERATE SOUTHWARD OF SOLOMONS. OBJECTIVE ENEMY TRANSPORT FORCE OR THOSE ENCOUNTERED. BE ALERT FOR AN ATTACK.” By morning Lee had reached a position about fifty miles from Guadalcanal with his battleships
Washington
and
South Dakota
and four destroyers. Avoiding contact with the Japanese enemy then became important, so he maneuvered below Cactus most of the day. At midafternoon Bull Halsey instructed Lee to be in position off Savo at midnight. Here SOPAC hazarded battleships off Guadalcanal.

A SOUTH PACIFIC EVENING

Admiral Kondo, for his part, gathered to push through and sustain the convoy with his battleship bombardment. He summoned Captain Iwabuchi’s
Kirishima.
After a brief call at Shortland she left to meet the Advance Force. Kondo joined during the night of November 13–14. The Advance Force commander had been oddly quiescent during the Abe sortie. At this juncture Kondo made a further error of omission that cost him dearly. His
Second Fleet included battleships
Kongo
and
Haruna
in addition to those that had already been in action. These ships were at sea: U.S. snoopers had seen them repeatedly in company with the
Junyo
, at Shortland, or elsewhere. Kondo, in fact, used them to help refuel his destroyers. The Advance Force had an excellent staff, including Captain Yanagizawa Kuranosuke as senior officer, Commander Yamamoto Yuji (no relation to the admiral) as operations staffer, plus Rear Admiral Shiraishi Kazutaka as boss. These were experienced men and, like Kondo, almost professional staff officers. Shiraishi had been with Kondo at the Battle of the Java Sea, where he thought Japanese tactics poor, and surely wanted to avoid those mistakes. Yamamoto looked up to Kondo almost as a father. There
must
have been discussions in the flag plot of
Atago
on whether to include the other heavy ships, but what these were is lost to history.

There is only conjecture as to Kondo’s reasoning. He left no account of it. Perhaps his motive was as simple as a desire to shield the
Kongo
, on which Kondo had twice served. Maybe he thought SOPAC’s surface forces had been effectively eliminated—yet he knew that battleships had been seen alongside the
Enterprise.
Kondo may have considered that carrier
Junyo
required heavy ships in support. It could have been a question of conserving fuel. The most likely explanation concerns mission. Since he was to bombard Henderson Field, Kondo may have thought the
Kongo
and
Haruna
not well supplied to perform that task. The special incendiary shells considered ideal for this purpose were in short supply. On “The Night,” the two participating battleships had taken the entire stock. Now, a month later, only a certain number of the new shells were available, and it is possible that Abe had had all of them. In any case, Admiral Kondo took the
Kirishima
and left the others behind.

The admiral’s flotilla also included flagship
Atago
; another heavy cruiser, the
Takao
; light cruisers
Nagara
and
Sendai
; and nine destroyers. He planned to send three tin cans plus the
Sendai
to sweep ahead of the bombardment unit, then screen behind them. Observers of this battle frequently draw attention to the fact that the American destroyers had not served with one another before, came from different divisions, and had no unit commander. The same was largely true of the Japanese. Both of Kondo’s destroyer squadrons were composed of different ships than a month earlier. Four of the six vessels of Destroyer Squadron 10 had been in the Abe battle only the previous day. The escort had been thrown together from whatever ships were available. Commander Iwahashi Toru’s
Asagumo
, among the last to finish refueling, topped off from the
Haruna
at 5:55 a.m. on November 14.

Kondo’s Advance Force headed toward Guadalcanal before dawn. SOPAC airpower, engaging its forces to destroy Tanaka’s convoy, paid no heed. Kondo’s flagship
Atago
, however, had to evade torpedoes from the U.S. subs
Trout
and
Flying Fish
in the afternoon. Ensign Nakamura Toshio in the
Asagumo
watched as three torpedo tracks came right at him. The tin fish passed underneath the
Asagumo
at 4:35 p.m. The American sub had apparently set torpedo depths to strike the heavy ships. Commander Iwahashi’s destroyer counterattacked with depth charges. The American sub escaped.

About a half hour earlier, Red Ramage of the
Trout
had sent a contact report in such haste he did not encode it. Kondo’s radio monitors intercepted the message. By late afternoon Kondo knew the enemy would oppose him. The flotilla sent floatplanes for a final daytime probe, but they reported only cruisers and destroyers. So the admiral warned his fleet to expect a few cruisers. He signaled Tanaka at 7:00 p.m. that he would clear away the enemy so the Army convoy could finally reach Cactus.

Kondo received an R Area Force contact report that misidentified Lee’s battleships at 8:45 p.m., and later one that mistakenly took the Tanaka convoy for another U.S. cruiser force. Admiral Kondo could have had three battleships to Ching Lee’s two, but his decision had reversed the odds. There would be two American battlewagons to one Japanese. In the darkness off Guadalcanal, battleships would meet in surface combat for the first time in the Pacific war.

Willis Lee’s behemoths were on the scene. Admiral Lee fully expected to grapple with the enemy. The previous night, still miles away, Ching Lee and Glenn Davis, captain of battleship
Washington
, had had a confab with ships’ officers in the wardroom where the leaders went over every aspect of the coming engagement. Captain Davis asked his navigator, a new fellow, whether he was up to the job. At dawn the
Washington
went to general quarters. Davis appeared on the bridge, as did the navigator. In the U.S. Navy it was customary for the navigator to control the helm when the ship went to battle stations. At other times the officer of the deck had the conn. That
morning Lieutenant Raymond P. Hunter was officer of the deck, nearing midwatch, and looking forward to action. Hunter was the gun captain of the number two sixteen-inch turret and the man responsible for the main battery gang overall. But Captain Davis asked Hunter to stay on the helm. Lieutenant Hunter would have the conn throughout the day—and the battle—steering the
Washington
for more than twenty-four hours. Other preparations proceeded. Sailors removed paint from ship’s surfaces. Every potential flammable substance was being minimized. The other warships did the same.

Bridge lookouts aboard
Washington
first glimpsed Cactus soon after dawn of November 14. Admiral Lee altered course to the west and steered to stay hidden under rain squalls. There were numerous radar contacts with bogeys, and flak fired at one JNAF snooper late that morning. A dispatch from Halsey during the afternoon gave Lee complete freedom of action. Shortly before sunset the force assumed a heading that would take it to Savo Island. The horizon to the northwest was lit by flashes from the last bit of the Tanaka convoy battle. Ching Lee posted his four destroyers in line ahead of the battleships, which steamed with the
Washington
first and
South Dakota
in trail. Admiral Lee suffered from the same weakness as previous U.S. flotillas—and Kondo’s: lack of experience working together. His tin cans were simply the four destroyers with Kinkaid that had had the most fuel when Lee detached for his mission. The force steamed due north. Near Savo, Admiral Lee shifted to an easterly course. The sea was dead calm and the sky lit by a bright last-quarter moon.

As he looked for trouble, Lee almost got some. Radiomen heard English-language chatter, uncoded or in codes they did not have. One message reported two battleships, nationality unknown. Ching Lee realized the transmissions were about his own vessels. PT boats were on the prowl and could attack the American fleet at any moment. Lee’s nickname, “Ching,” came from prewar service in China, where he had been renowned for love of Peking opera and had befriended Marine officer Alex Vandegrift. Admiral Lee now radioed Cactus and got Vandegrift to call off the PT boats. As it happened, this ought not to have been necessary: Several hours earlier Radio Cactus had informed the Tulagi PT base that Task Force 64 could be in the area that evening. Now it was about 9:45 p.m.

Vice Admiral Kondo entered Indispensable Strait at nine o’clock. An hour later, with no sign as yet of Allied warships, Kondo ordered his vessels into tactical array. Expecting cruisers, the admiral provided for his destroyer groups to mass ahead of his main body rather than screen it. With tin cans clearing the way, Kondo would follow and execute his bombardment. Rear Admiral Hashimoto, in the
Sendai
, took three destroyers to make the preliminary sweep past Lunga Point. They would enter east of Savo. Rear Admiral Kimura would skirt the western side of the island with
Nagara
and four destroyers. Kondo kept a pair of tin cans to bring up his rear, and led with his flagship, then
Takao
, followed by
Kirishima
.

On the American side, Rear Admiral Lee had decided to troll for the enemy. He circled Savo, set course toward Lunga, and, at 10:52 p.m., Lee came around to steam along the south side of Savo. To judge from the track charts Imperial Navy officers prepared for U.S. intelligence experts after the war, the Japanese spotted the Americans above Savo while still approaching themselves. At 11:13 the
Sendai
glimpsed ship silhouettes, and she went to battle stations five minutes later. By 11:28 Hashimoto was confident he was looking at two heavy cruisers, and minutes later four tin cans as well. There are claims the
Atago
made visual contact early, but her record is silent on this, and Admiral Kondo took no action. The Japanese chart notes the sighting at 11:17 p.m.