Target: Rabaul (39 page)

Saratoga
, like
Lexington
, was extensively redesigned. Her upper works were transformed with an 888-foot-long flight deck and a large island superstructure on the starboard side, the most spectacular feature being her massive rectangular funnel, designed to vent exhaust from her sixteen oil-fired burners well away from the flight deck. Engineers left the battle cruiser’s propulsion equipment unchanged: sixteen boilers fed steam to four turbine generators, which spun eight electric motors capable of generating more than two hundred thousand horsepower. For all her great size, “
Sara
” once hit a top speed of almost thirty-five knots—approximately forty miles per hour.

With Air Group 3 embarked,
Saratoga
completed numerous peacetime deployments and goodwill exercises. During the late 1920s and ’30s, her flight deck was packed with colorful biplanes. At the height of this period, from July 1935 until June 1937, then-Captain Halsey served as
Sara’
s skipper. The navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics had recently altered the requirements for carrier command—captains of flattops had to be naval aviators—so Halsey, a former destroyerman, completed the entire student naval aviator syllabus at Pensacola, earning his wings of gold
at the age of fifty-two. His only concession was the need to wear eyeglasses to complete the course safely.
^*

The first two years of World War II frequently found
Saratoga
in the wrong place at the wrong time. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, she sailed to Hawaii, then started toward Wake Island with a relief force. But
Saratoga
was recalled to Pearl on December 21, and the garrison at Wake subsequently surrendered. About three weeks later, while steaming southwest of Hawaii, a single torpedo from submarine I-6 hit
Saratoga
amidships on the port side. She limped to Hawaii, where the damaged was deemed beyond the repair capabilities of the dry dock at Pearl; therefore she went on to the West Coast. Over the next three months
Sara
underwent repairs and upgrades, including improvements to her antiaircraft capability. In August 1942, she supported the invasion of Guadalcanal and participated in the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, but just three weeks into the campaign another enemy torpedo knocked her out of action. Repaired at Pearl this time, with additional improvements to her antiaircraft armament,
Saratoga
was back out at sea in mid-November 1942.

During the next eleven months
Sara
was employed only sparingly from her new base at Noumea, New Caledonia. When USS
Enterprise
returned to Pearl Harbor in May 1943 and sailed on to the West Coast for an overhaul,
Saratoga
was the only American flattop left in the South Pacific. HMS
Victorious
was attached briefly, but except for some training exercises,
Saratoga
spent much of summer 1943 moored in port. Because of the two torpedo hits, she had missed out on three epic carrier-versus-carrier battles: Coral Sea, Midway, and Santa Cruz.
Saratoga
thus became known derisively as “the Reluctant Dragon” and “the Pond Lily.” Probably the meanest was “Sara Maru,” which put her in league with the enemy. During her periods of inactivity at Noumea, she was also teased as “the Model Housing Project.” With a crew of more than three thousand men,
Saratoga
got the moniker “because she housed the largest population of any American warship, her cuisine was excellent, and her tenants hardly ever had to move.”

One of the ship’s young officers was Admiral Halsey’s son, William F. Halsey III, whose poor eyesight had prevented him from entering the U.S. Naval Academy. After graduating from Princeton in 1938, Bill Halsey went to work for DuPont. When the war began and induction requirements loosened, he joined the navy and ended up aboard
Saratoga
as the aviation supply officer.

Another crewmember had been aboard the carrier for almost three years. Sergeant John R. Towles, of
Saratoga’
s marine detachment, was in charge of a 40mm Bofors mount on the port bow. He had an excellent view of flight operations and liked to count the planes going out and coming in. He also stood watches as an orderly for the embarked task force commander. Orderlies were required to remain with the flag officer—or immediately outside the entrance to his stateroom—for
four hours at a stretch. Thus privileged to spend time on the bridge, orderlies naturally overheard all manner of exchanges between the admiral and the ship’s captain. Impassive as the guards of Buckingham Palace, they were honor-bound to keep everything they heard to themselves.

Possessing as much pride in their ship as any crew,
Saratoga’
s sailors and marines were weary of the wisecracks from the rest of the fleet. The only cure—one that
Sara’
s crew relished—was an opportunity for action. Still, Admiral Halsey held his lone carrier in reserve. Training and tactical exercises continued throughout the summer, but curiosity perked up in late July with back-to-back announcements: a new task force commander would soon arrive, followed by a new air component to replace the carrier’s original group.

On July 26, 1943, Rear Adm. Frederick C. “Ted” Sherman hoisted the flag of Task Force 36 from the carrier’s topmast. A former
Lexington
skipper, Sherman was an aggressive commander. He had attempted the first raid on Rabaul in February 1942, and was the last man to abandon the
Lexington
when explosions gutted her during the Battle of the Coral Sea. His presence held a promise of action.

As
Saratoga
and the rest of Task Force 36 relocated from New Caledonia to Havannah Harbor, Efate, Air Group 12 arrived. Led by Cmdr. Howard H. Caldwell, the group was comprised of Bombing Squadron 12 (Douglas SBD-5 Dauntless dive-bombers), Torpedo Squadron 12 (Grumman TBF-1 Avenger torpedo bombers), and Fighting Squadron 12, which had just transitioned to F6F-3 Hellcats. Although none of the squadrons had yet encountered combat, the fighter outfit in particular already had a backstory.

Few squadron commanders had garnered as many headlines as Commander-selectee Joseph C. Clifton. A famed Annapolis fullback, he had earned All East and honorable mention All American awards in the mid-1930s. Clifton was known as “Jumpin’ Joe,” but the nickname had nothing to do with his intensity or style of gameplay. “He couldn’t sit still to save his soul,” recalled Marvin B. Harper, one of fifty-two pilots in VF-12’s initial overseas roster. “He just couldn’t do it.”

Harper’s squadron mate, John D. “Mickey” Gavan, remembered Clifton’s addiction to ice cream. “He’d get a gallon of ice cream, and sit there and eat it,” said Gavan. “He was jumping—he was well-nicknamed.”

Neither considered Clifton a great aviator, but they both admired his personality. “He was the only charismatic man I ever met,” recalled Harper. “He was truly charismatic. His whole secret was that he could control people. I played scores and scores of gin rummy games with him, and he’d cheat you any way he could. To him, that was part of the fun.”

In addition to Clifton’s gridiron pedigree, Fighting 12 had bragging rights as the first navy squadron equipped with the Vought F4U-1 Corsair. The squadron acquired the gull-winged hotrod in October 1942, then moved to Hawaii in March 1943 and trained in Maui for the next several months. It was a costly period, however: the squadron lost ten pilots during its first year in operational accidents.
The most tragic occurred when the executive officer led his four-plane division into a thunderstorm at low altitude. None of the four Corsairs emerged.

Despite early problems with the F4U, particularly in the carrier environment, VF-12 completed its qualifications aboard
Enterprise
in May 1943 and proceeded to the Southwest Pacific in June. After training for another few weeks in New Caledonia, Fighting 12 was ordered to fly its Corsairs to Espiritu Santo and turn them over to the Marine Corps.

Picking up new Grumman F6F-3 Hellcats, the pilots commenced “a feverish period of familiarization.” The fighters shared the same Pratt & Whitney eighteen-cylinder powerplant and the same gun arrangement, with three .50-caliber M2 machine guns in each wing. The Hellcat was slower, but offered better overall visibility and smoother handling in the landing configuration.

Ten days after acquiring their new planes, Fighting 12 moved to Efate and began field carrier landing practice with
Saratoga’
s landing signal officers. Shipboard qualifications were conducted successfully less than two weeks later.

IN EARLY AUGUST, Sherman’s command was renumbered Task Force 38. A week later, Capt. John H. Cassady became
Saratoga’
s newest skipper. Already familiar with her, having flown biplanes in her former air group a decade earlier, Cassady trained the carrier’s crew and Air Wing 12 for another two months. Changes continued as the light carrier
Princeton
, a new Independence-class CVL built on a sleek cruiser hull, arrived in the South Pacific in late October. Task Force 38 thus gained its second carrier, which meant
Saratoga
was no longer the only American flattop in the theater.

On the morning of October 29, a week after
Princeton’
s arrival, the task force sortied from Espiritu Santo to support the Bougainville invasion. Three days of steaming brought the fleet (which included two antiaircraft light cruisers and ten destroyers) around the north side of the big island and within launching distance of Buka and Bonis, the last two enemy airdromes in northern Bougainville.

Princeton’
s first combat—and the first in over a year for
Saratoga
—commenced before dawn on November 1. The two carriers launched forty-four aircraft for the strike, but
Sara’
s hard luck continued: two Avengers and a Dauntless landed in the water off the carrier’s bow. The only good news was that all the personnel were recovered except one crewmember from an Avenger.

As for the raid itself, three of
Saratoga’
s Hellcats failed to return, making it an expensive day for Air Group 12. Ensign William T. Welles was strafing ground targets when antiaircraft fire disabled his F6F. After bailing out over the water, he was captured by the Japanese and held for several weeks at the small Kempeitai detachment near Buka Passage. (The other two missing pilots rejoined their carrier several days later.)

A second strike was launched on the afternoon of November 1, plus two more raids the following day. Operational accidents decreased, with only one more Avenger lost during the two days of air strikes, but the effectiveness of the raids was difficult to determine.

Hours before the carrier strikes commenced, “Tip” Merrill’s Task Force 39 had bombarded both Buka and Bonis with 2,700 six-inch and five-inch shells. Leaving the two airdromes in shambles, the cruiser force raced two hundred miles and bombarded the Shortlands on the afternoon of November 1. Afterward, Merrill received the urgent signal to intercept Omori’s warships coming out of Rabaul, which culminated in the Battle of Empress Augusta Bay on the morning of November 2. At the conclusion of that affair, Merrill moved east while refueling his ships, not even resting his crews before heading into the Central Pacific to support the Gilberts campaign.

Because of the damage inflicted by Merrill’s cruisers, the claims submitted by the two carrier air groups were probably compromised, yet the attackers were credited with destroying or damaging thirty-three Japanese planes at Buka and Bonis. The lone aerial victory was credited to Clifton, who shot down a Sally twenty-five miles from the task force.

Regardless of the specific damage, the two days of strikes gave
Saratoga’
s crew something to cheer about. Even better, according to Sherman, the Japanese reported the sinking of one large and one small American carrier, an indication that they had taken the presence of the task force seriously. The enemy’s claims were curious, since Task Force 38 had not been attacked during the two days of strikes. This was a fortunate break for Sherman, as Rabaul lay just two hundred miles to the northwest. American carriers had never come so close to the stronghold. Furthermore, Koga had just reinforced Rabaul with dozens of carrier-based planes for
Ro Operation
. Perhaps
Saratoga’
s luck was finally turning for the better.

Not taking any chances, Sherman moved his warships out of harm’s way immediately after the air strikes. Task Force 38 steamed almost to Guadalcanal to meet a fleet oiler near Rennel Island, arriving on November 3. For the rest of that day and the most of the next, the twenty-one-thousand-ton
Kankakee
, a T-2 tanker with a capacity of nearly six million gallons, refueled Sherman’s fourteen ships off Indispensable Reef.

In the meantime, the 3rd Marine Division landed at Torokina Point on November 1, finding the three hundred Japanese troops surprisingly resilient. Unusually high surf swamped several landing craft, causing delays in unloading the invasion force. Further disruptions resulted from repeated air attacks out of Rabaul. By November 3, the marines had established a narrow beachhead, piled high with tons of jumbled supplies. The situation was tenuous, even vulnerable; however, the Allies remained unaware of the powerful enemy fleet steaming southward from Truk. With a dozen warships and thousands of counterinvasion troops, Admiral Kurita planned to refuel at Rabaul before driving the marines back into the sea.