Target: Rabaul (40 page)

AERIAL COVERAGE OF the seaways between Rabaul and Truk was improving, thanks to shared patrols by long-range aircraft of the Fifth Air Force, RAAF, and
U.S. Navy, but the area was vast, and the frequent bad weather favored the Japanese. Even a big fleet could stay well hidden beneath squall lines. Luck was on Halsey’s side, however, by a slim margin. A Liberator flown by Lt. Robert J. Sylvernale of the 400th Squadron/90th Bomb Group, patrolling from New Guinea to beyond the equator, spotted Kurita’s force as it headed for the western approach to Saint George’s Channel.

The Japanese loathed the detection. Heavy, intense, and accurate antiaircraft fire forced Sylvernale to seek shelter in the clouds; the cruisers also launched floatplanes to shoot him down. Able to avoid them, Sylvernale and his crew shadowed the fleet for two hours while sending position reports.

There was irony in the effort. Two years earlier, in the same location, an RAAF Catalina crew had tried to shadow a big Japanese fleet on its way to invade Rabaul. Shot down for their trouble, Flight Lieutenant Robert H. Thompson and four of his crew survived—but they were currently sitting in a POW camp in Japan.

AT HIS ADVANCE headquarters on Guadalcanal, Halsey received news of the enemy cruiser force with grave concern. He had little time to grapple with it. “Presumably they would fuel,” he later recalled, “then run down to Torokina the following night and sink our transports and bombard our precarious positions.”

And there were additional worries. Not only was the beachhead barely secured, but an American convoy of eight high-speed transports (converted flush-deck destroyers from World War I) and eight LSTs had already left Guadalcanal carrying more than 3,500 marines and five thousand tons of supplies. Besides a few escorting destroyers, the convoy was unprotected. Merrill was well on his way to the Central Pacific, leaving Halsey with no capital ships to oppose the enemy fleet. Anticipating a slaughter, Halsey later wrote: “This was the most desperate emergency that confronted me in my entire term as COMSOPAC. Even if Tip Merrill had been within reach, and fresh, he would not have had a prayer of stopping such an armada, yet Cherryblossom’s success—perhaps the success of the South Pacific War—hung upon its being stopped.”

WHILE HALSEY FRETTED about the Japanese cruiser force, members of his staff bent over a chart table and began to work out possible solutions. Halsey had brought some gifted individuals aboard his staff, including Capt. Harry R. “Ray” Thurber, the SOPAC operations officer. Described as “energetic, sleepless, but always urbane,” he was responsible for writing many of the plans used during the Solomons campaign. No one admired Thurber’s “brilliant solution of operations problems” more than Halsey, who had never needed the captain’s intelligence more urgently.

In reviewing the available assets, Thurber noted a strong asset relatively close at hand: Sherman’s fast carrier force. Halsey had sent him to refuel his ships near Rennel Island, wanting the carriers well away from Rabaul-based bombers but not so distant that the force would be unavailable “for anything that might develop.”

The “anything” had indeed developed. Fortunately for Halsey, his operations officer lived up to his brilliant reputation. Rather than thinking defensively, Thurber thought it might be possible to hit the Japanese fleet while it refueled. Knowing that every ship in Task Force 38 was built for speed, Thurber and his staff made some quick time-and-distance calculations. After checking their math, they drafted a message that would send Sherman on a dash to attack Simpson Harbor the following morning.

Before taking the draft to Halsey for consideration, Thurber and his assistant briefed Halsey’s chief of staff, Rear Admiral Carney. He verbally approved the draft, and all three men walked over to Halsey’s quarters at Camp Crocodile to present the draft in person. The admiral’s face was pinched with worry. Without looking at the message he asked, “You’re not going to send Merrill to Rabaul, are you?”

“No sir,” they answered. “This is Ted Sherman again.”

The men watched Halsey’s reaction carefully, knowing that young Bill Halsey was aboard
Saratoga
, and that the elder Halsey had already been through the wringer once. Back in August, Bill had flown to Noumea on a TBF to pick up some spare parts. After visiting with his father overnight, he had hopped a ride back to Efate with a flight of three Avengers, none of which arrived. The admiral was informed two days later that his son was missing, and two more days passed before the emergency ended happily. The personnel from all three aircraft, which had ditched near an island, were rescued; however, from the admiral on down, it had been a troubling reminder of the hazards faced by every flyboy in the Pacific.

Now Halsey was staring at a plan that would send his only son straight into the dragon’s jaws. “Every one of us knew what was going through the admiral’s mind,” recalled Carney. “It showed in his face, which suddenly looked 150 years old.”

After studying the message in silence for a few moments, Halsey handed it back to Carney with his firm approval: “Let ’er go!”

This was Halsey at his best, making a difficult decision without waffling. He believed that both
Saratoga
and
Princeton
would be damaged or perhaps even lost, and expected the air groups would be “cut to pieces.” Yet he had to send them. It all came down to Bougainville. If the carrier strike failed to prevent Kurita’s warships from destroying the American beachhead, the entire operation might unravel.

TASK FORCE 38 had just completed refueling when the urgent dispatch arrived from COMSOPAC on the afternoon of November 4. The orders to Sherman were straightforward: he was to move Task Force 38 at all possible speed to a position south of Bougainville, where
Saratoga
and
Princeton
would launch a strike against Rabaul at first light. Targets were prioritized: enemy cruisers first, destroyers second.

Relaying the message immediately to Cassady, Sherman then used the radio telephone to inform
Princeton
and the commander of the screening force. Next, the navigator worked out the logistics. In order to position the air groups close enough to
the target—about two hundred miles from Rabaul—the task force would have to steam five hundred miles in fifteen hours. With the course plotted, Sherman ordered his ships to proceed northwesterly at flank speed. Soon, the entire task force had worked up to its “maximum formation speed” of twenty-seven knots (about thirty-one miles per hour), which it maintained throughout the night. “All of a sudden we were charging along,” recalled Marvin Harper. “The cans could hardly keep up with us,” agreed John Gavin, referring to the popular nickname for destroyers in World War II: “tin cans.”

During the all-night dash, the staffs of
Saratoga’
s Air Group 12 and
Princeton’
s Air Group 23 scrambled to find information about Rabaul. Lacking aerial photographs and comprehensive charts, the planners had to ad lib. The only man remotely familiar with Rabaul was Sherman, who’d never actually been there. As captain of the
Lexington
in 1942, he had gotten within four hundred miles of Rabaul. Now he would finally get another opportunity.

Saratoga’
s three-thousand-man crew was highly motivated. Tired of ridicule, they wanted a chance to redeem their reputation. The circumstances certainly looked good, recalled Sergeant Towles, who stood duty as a marine orderly during the run toward Rabaul. While keeping his vow to protect sensitive information, Towles later recalled that Sherman commented aloud about what lay ahead, calling it “one of the most important and dangerous assignments ever handed to the
Saratoga
.”

The remark was probably directed at Cassady, who then called Commander Caldwell and
Sara’
s squadron commanders into his cabin near the bridge. “Boys,” he told then, “we are hitting Rabaul tomorrow morning. This is a hell of a tough assignment.” He explained the threat to the marines at Bougainville, and assured the aviators that
Saratoga
would be within reach when the pilots came off the target. His conclusion was blunt: “You have damn little time. God bless you, boys.”

In the squadron spaces, operations and intelligence officers spent the entire night working out the strike plan. Within hours, the pertinent information was typed on carbon paper, duplicated in the ship’s printing center, and delivered to the various ready rooms in time for the early morning briefings. Every detail was outlined on legal-sized pages: mission objectives, launch times, weapons loading, radio channels and kilocycle settings, contingency launch plans (in case of enemy counterattack), emergency procedures, and authentication codes.

During the squadron briefings, pilots sat down with their lap-sized plotting boards and took notes. Intelligence officers handed out strip maps, which displayed the navigational details needed to reach the target. Placing the strip map beneath a clear compass rose on their lap boards, the pilots plotted the path of the carrier, thereby simplifying (in theory) navigation during the return leg.

Because enemy fighter opposition at Rabaul would be heavy, Halsey had ordered a maximum effort strike by both air wings.
Saratoga
and
Princeton
would commit every available fighter to the raid. To protect the task force while the fighters
were busy, Major General Twining, Commander of Aircraft in the Solomons (ComAirSols), arranged for two land-based navy squadrons in New Georgia to provide the necessary patrols. Fighting 17, based at Ondonga, and VF-33, based at Munda Point, would provide CAP over the task force and even trap aboard to refuel. The Jolly Rogers of VF-17, equipped with F4U Corsairs, had to reinstall their fighters’ tail hooks for the operation.

Aboard
Saratoga
, intelligence officers and squadron commanders conducted final briefings. Many fliers gathered for an impromptu prayer. Clifton sat on a couch in Fighting 12’s ready room, pulled a pocket-sized Bible from his flight suit, and read aloud from the 23rd Psalm.

Elsewhere aboard the carrier, Petty Officer Paul T. Barnett approached Caldwell with a request. Barnett, a photographer’s mate attached to Bombing 12, seldom got an opportunity to fly in the squadron’s two-seat SBDs. On this morning, he volunteered to photograph the attack. Caldwell gave his approval and told Barnett he could fly as a fourth man in his TBF Avenger, which would orbit high above Rabaul during the strike.

At daybreak on November 5,
Saratoga
and
Princeton
reached a desirable launch position sixty miles southwest of Cape Torokina. Sherman was pleased with the weather conditions: a smooth sea, a steady breeze, and overcast skies with occasional rainsqualls to screen his task force from enemy snoopers.

VICE ADMIRAL KURITA’S powerful cruiser force glided into Simpson Harbor at dawn on November 5. The warships disturbed Vice Admiral Kusaka, the ranking naval officer at Rabaul. Learning that Kurita was coming south from Truk, Kusaka had immediately voiced his objections to the commander in chief, Admiral Koga. Unlike the other admirals, Kusaka believed that the premise of sending a cruiser force to attack the American beachhead on Bougainville was based on flagrant exaggerations.

Despite being defeated at Empress Augusta Bay on the morning of November 2, Rear Admiral Omori had convinced Koga and others that the outcome had been favorable. For evidence he relied on a statement from the crew of submarine I-104, which reported, “We saw many enemy seaplanes and surface ships busily engaged in rescue operations, indicating that a number of enemy ships were sunk in the battle.”

A small transport convoy had managed to land more than nine hundred troops on Bougainville during the night of November 2–3, after which the commander reported no opposition from American ships. Believing that Merrill’s force had retired to “mend the wounds it received from the Omori force,” Koga sent Kurita’s cruisers to mop up the remnants at Bougainville. Having kept the cruisers in reserve for many months, Koga saw this as his best opportunity to send them into battle. “He felt that the patient waiting had paid off,” wrote destroyer captain Hara, “and that his chance had come for a showdown with the enemy in the Solomons.”

Koga was complacent, as was Kurita, who had not seen combat for more than a year. Kusaka objected to the deployment of the cruiser force, but could not “explain his skepticism of Omori’s claims or his general uneasiness in terms convincing and meaningful to Koga.”

When Kurita’s fleet arrived, Hara’s reaction echoed the concerns he shared with Kusaka:

I gaped as flagship
Atago
nonchalantly dropped anchor in the narrow harbor, now jammed with seven cruisers and some 40 auxiliary ships. These new arrivals made me apprehensive and uneasy.

At 0700 that same morning a patrol plane reported an enemy force of five heavy cruisers, seven destroyers, and two transports in position 150 miles distant, bearing 140 degrees from Cape St. George. Rabaul headquarters concluded that these ships presaged a landing attempt. Reactions were casual since staff officers had become accustomed to enemy landing operations in recent months.”

Of course it wasn’t an amphibious fleet that the reconnaissance plane detected, but Sherman’s task force. Given the two hour difference between Tokyo time and that used by Allied forces (Greenwich Mean Time plus eleven), the discovery of the American fleet occurred just as
Saratoga
and
Princeton
prepared to launch their planes.

SHERMAN WAS UNAWARE that his force had been detected, but it made no difference. With the temperature already in the eighties, the sweating flight deck crews began the launch evolution at 0700 local. The first to take off from the tapered flight deck of
Saratoga
was Clifton, followed by fifteen more F6Fs. Then sixteen TBF Avengers roared aloft, led by Lt. Cmdr. Robert F. Harrington, commanding officer of Torpedo 12. Next, twenty-two Dauntless SBDs of Bombing 12, led by Lt. Cmdr. James H. Newell, made their deck runs. Finally, the executive officer of Fighting 12, Lt. Cmdr. Robert G. Dosé, led another sixteen Hellcats off the deck. A seventeenth F6F, flown by Ensign Carlton W. Roberts, took off last to provide close escort for Caldwell’s TBF over the target. The entire evolution took almost two hours.