Authors: Bruce Gamble
In the main body of his draft, Moritama pleaded for changes. “[The] aircraft that we are currently using must be improved and strengthened drastically,” he wrote. He also urged better coordination between surface units and air groups. It was his belief that the only path to victory lay in “collaborated operations between air and sea units with no hesitation to die.”
Ironically, the men of the 4th Air Group—or what was left of it—became heroes in Japan. According to the claims submitted to Combined Fleet headquarters by Rear Admiral Yamada, the air units from Rabaul had crushed the enemy fleet at Guadalcanal on August 7 and 8. In his diary, Chief of Staff Ugaki noted the alleged results: “two light cruisers and ten transports sunk, one large cruiser set on fire, one medium cruiser seriously damaged and listing heavily, two destroyers and one transport set on fire, and four planes shot down. This should be called a great result.”
The basis for Yamada’s incredible exaggeration can only be surmised. Meanwhile, the Combined Fleet received a new report that “five enemy cruisers were sunk by a sudden night assault.” This information was much closer to the truth. On August 7, a powerful Eighth Fleet cruiser group commanded by Vice Admiral Mikawa had sortied from Rabaul to attack the American amphibious force. The warships sheltered near Bougainville on the eighth while awaiting nightfall, then slipped down “the Slot” in the darkness and surprised the outer screen of Australian and American warships. In a vicious few minutes off Savo Island, Mikawa’s ships sank four cruisers in exchange for relatively minor damage to two vessels. With the exception of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the battle was one of the worst defeats in the history of the U.S. Navy.
Seizing on the initial reports of the two separate actions, the Combined Fleet Staff allowed themselves to be misled. “
Putting the [results] together
,” Ugaki wrote, “we believe that all the warships and half of the transports have been sunk, and the fate of the battle has now been settled.” Even so, the staff at Truk remained cautious while awaiting confirmation of the
reports. Having experienced blatant exaggerations before, Ugaki urged the staff to “be ready for any change of plans.”
The same could not be said of Imperial General Headquarters or the
Johokyoku
. In a nationwide radio broadcast on August 10, the chief of naval information declared that the American offensive had “ended in a fiasco.” Newspaper headlines the next day boasted that twenty-eight Allied warships and transports had been sunk or damaged at Guadalcanal. Four days later, alleging that the results were based on “verified reports,” the press raised the figures to twenty-nine warships and eleven transports sunk or otherwise destroyed. Friendly losses warranted only a brief explanation: “21 planes of the Imperial Navy crashed themselves against enemy warcraft.” This, too, was a blatant exaggeration, but it served to venerate the fact that so many land attack aircraft had not returned from the mission.
The Allied losses, especially when compared to the total number of ships involoved, were not as disastrous as the Japanese claimed. In addition to the four cruisers sunk off Savo Island, transport
George F. Elliott
was scuttled as a result of the fires started on August 8. The destroyer
Jarvis
, hampered by the aforementioned torpedo damage, was caught in the open sea on the afternoon August 9 by a large force of
rikko
. The captain’s decision to try to reach Australia for repairs led to a rare occurrence—the loss of a warship with all hands. Steaming slowly about 130 nautical miles southwest of Tulagi,
Jarvis
was attacked by thirteen Bettys of the Misawa Air Group escorted by fifteen Zeros. Mistaking the warship for an
Achilles
-class cruiser, the airmen from Rabaul put two more torpedoes into
Jarvis
—but not before the destroyer’s guns shot down two attacking Bettys and damaged several others.
Although the loss of six ships was far less than the Japanese claimed, the U.S. Navy had suffered a severe blow. Even more problematic, especially from the standpoint of the marines on Guadalcanal, Vice Admiral Fletcher withdrew his carrier task force on August 8. In addition to fretting over the loss of more than twenty Wildcats during the first two days of operations, he cited the need to refuel his ships in safer waters. As a result of Fletcher’s decision, the commander of the amphibious fleet also withdrew his ships from Guadalcanal, leaving the marines on their own. The absence of the ships was interpreted by the Japanese as further evidence of a great naval victory, giving them the impression that the Americans on Guadalcanal were weak and demoralized.
The story of the prolonged, bitter struggle that ensued is now legendary. For the Japanese, Guadalcanal became a veritable meat grinder. Tens of thousands of soldiers, most delivered by fast warships from Rabaul, either died from combat or succumbed to disease and starvation. Similarly, the Eleventh Air Fleet launched attacks almost daily from Rabaul, weather permitting, but the losses accrued at an appalling rate. Only the surface units of the Eighth Fleet enjoyed occasional success, particularly in night actions, yet they could not break the Allies’ toehold in the Solomons.
By late September, the strain of the mounting losses over Guadalcanal was contributing to the poor health of Vice Admiral Tsukahara, commander of the Eleventh Air Fleet. Suffering from a combination of dengue fever, malaria, and “a stomach and intestinal ailment,” he was sent home to Japan for recuperation. His replacement, Vice Adm. Jinichi Kusaka, arrived at Truk on October 7 for briefings with the Combined Fleet Staff. Raised in Ichikawa Prefecture, Kusaka had spent the past several years in administrative positions, most recently as director of the naval academy. During his time at Etajima, which followed his posting as director of the bureau of education, Kusaka had grown accustomed to the trappings and privileges of flag rank. Sometime after his arrival at Rabaul on October 8, he was pleased to discover that there were thousands of horses on New Britain. (The South Seas Detachment had brought 4,500 animals and even a veterinary detachment with the original invasion fleet in January.) The fifty-three-year-old admiral typically started his day with an early morning ride, often accompanied by one or more of his staff officers. Refined, with a slender build and pleasant features, Kusaka also had a habit of napping after lunch, even when the war was in full swing at Rabaul.
SHORTLY AFTER Kusaka’s arrival, a major expansion of the aviation presence in and around Rabaul commenced. To support the ongoing battles for Guadalcanal and New Guinea, the Japanese decided to concentrate as many aircraft as possible in the Southeast Area. To make room for additional land- and carrier-based naval air groups, improvements were made to the existing airdromes and construction of several new fields was initiated.
Work on the first new airdrome on New Britain began as early as October 1942, when portions of two coconut plantations east of Kokopo were cleared. Progress was slow, for the Japanese had no bulldozers.
Army tanks were used to push down trees, but much of the effort to clear away the debris was done by POWs and labor gangs. Eventually the field boasted a 4,350-foot concrete runway near the shoreline of St. George’s Channel. The Allies called it Rapopo, borrowing the name of the nearest plantation.
The field at Kavieng, New Ireland, was also expanded, though it was too far from Guadalcanal—approximately 780 statute miles—to support the battle directly. Therefore, the Japanese turned their attention to an existing airstrip on Buka Island, across a narrow passage from the big island of Bougainville. The Japanese had dawdled with improvements since occupying the island in March. Built before the war by the RAAF, the field was deemed unsuitable for major expansion when first inspected by the Japanese in mid-July, but it became much more important when Guadalcanal was invaded three weeks later. Construction personnel installed a power plant and underground fuel tanks, added defensive works, and surfaced the 2,300-foot runway with bitumen, a mixture of crushed coral and asphalt.
Simultaneously, surveyors began laying out a new airfield on the southern tip of Bougainville, near a village called Buin. (The Allies knew the location as Kahili in reference to a smaller but closer native village.) The engineers hoped to have the field ready to handle a
chutai
of Zeros by the third week of September, but excessive rain and harassing attacks by American planes caused delays. Declared operational approximately a month behind schedule, the field was plagued with problems. Rear Admiral Ugaki noted in his diary on October 25 that “
every time it rained heavily
, about ten planes were damaged due to skidding.”
While the new strip at Buin was being completed, the Japanese conceived a plan to build an advance base at Munda Point on New Georgia Island. By late October the American air presence at Henderson Field (named in honor of Maj. Lofton R. Henderson, killed at Midway) had been reduced by attrition, leading the Japanese to believe they could build the new field in secrecy. To disguise its location on the western coast of New Georgia, workers completed most of the perimeter areas first. They labored beneath gigantic screens made by wiring the tops of palm trees together, which created the illusion of intact coconut groves. Despite the clever concealments, the airfield’s presence was reported to Guadalcanal by coastwatcher Donald G. “Danny” Kennedy, a New
Zealander. Reconnaissance flights also revealed extensive small-boat traffic and piles of crushed coral at the construction site. The Allies tried to intervene, but the Japanese had gotten a significant headstart and managed to complete the airfield in early December.
Venturing even closer to Guadalcanal, the Imperial Navy also constructed a seaplane base at Rekata Bay, Santa Isabel Island, practically on the Allies’ doorstep. Located only 155 miles northwest of Henderson Field, Rekata Bay served as a forward base for Mitsubishi F1M (“Pete”) float planes as well as A6M2-N “Rufes.” In addition, it provided a ditching location for aircraft that sustained combat damage over Guadalcanal.
WHILE THE JAPANESE improved existing airfields and built new ones, the Allies were doing the same on New Guinea. By late 1942 the number of bases at Port Moresby had almost quadrupled. The airdromes, named for their distance from town, included Three Mile, Five Mile, Seven Mile, Twelve Mile, Fourteen Mile, and Seventeen Mile. There was even a Thirty Mile strip used occasionally for fighter dispersal and emergency landings. The proliferation was such that new names were in order, simply to avoid potentially dangerous situations involving the takeoff and landing patterns associated with each runway. On November 10, all but the original Kila Kila airdrome (Three Mile) were renamed to honor dead warriors.
Seven Mile, still the biggest field and the hub of aerial operations at Port Moresby, was officially renamed Jackson Field as a tribute to “Old John” Jackson, killed in action while leading 75 Squadron during the desperate defense of Port Moresby. Five Mile was renamed Ward’s Airdrome (also known as Ward’s Strip), honoring the Australian whose battalion had begun construction of the field in mid-1942. Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth H. Ward was killed in action during the Kokoda Trail campaign in late August.
Compared to the deeds of Jackson and Ward, the criteria for some of the other selections were obscure. Twelve Mile was named for Maj. Jack W. Berry, lost on August 4 when his P-39 crashed at sea shortly after taking off from Port Moresby. Lieutenant Charles Schwimmer, 8th Fighter Group, 36th Fighter Squadron, was one of three Airacobra pilots who failed to return from a strafing mission against Lae on May 4, but for unknown reasons he was singled out as the namesake of Fourteen Mile. Another
P-39 driver, Ed Durand, was the first American fighter pilot lost in action over the New Guinea region. Shot down during a fighter sweep over Lae on April 30, he was rumored to have been executed by the Japanese, and Seventeen Mile airdrome was renamed in his honor. Finally, Thirty Mile was renamed Rogers Airdrome for the popular Maj. “Buck” Rogers, commanding officer of the 8th Bomb Squadron, 3rd Bomb Group, whose A-24 dive-bomber was one of several shot down during a disastrous mission against Gona on July 29.
The new field at Milne Bay, which supported the campaign against the enemy strongholds on the northeastern coast of New Guinea, also deserves mention. Completed during the fall of 1942, it was named for Sqn. Ldr. Charles R. Gurney, killed when his B-26 flipped upside down in a swamp on Kirawina Island after a bombing mission against Rabaul.
BY LATE OCTOBER, despite heavy losses in men and materiel, the Japanese still dominated the territory. More importantly, Imperial General Headquarters’ commitment to winning the war in the Southeast Area had not diminished. A new plan to retake Henderson Field, scheduled for late October, received the fullest cooperation of Admiral Yamamoto. It was still his dream that Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo’s carrier fleet would smash the Pacific Fleet in a decisive battle. The opposing forces collided north of the Santa Cruz Islands on October 26, resulting in a tactical victory for the Japanese. Nagumo’s bombers and torpedo planes sank a carrier (USS
Hornet)
and a destroyer, while also inflicting serious damage on another carrier (USS
Enterprise)
and two additional destroyers. In exchange, the Japanese received crippling damage to carriers
Shokaku
and
Zuiho
. Of far greater importance was the loss of nearly 150 naval aviators. The toll was so great, in fact, that two undamaged carriers sailed back to Japan due to the lack of adequate aircrews.
At Truk, the Combined Fleet Staff was informed that Nagumo’s planes had sunk a
“Saratoga-type”
carrier, a
“Yorktown
-type” carrier, two “new type” carriers, a battleship, and one unidentified warship. In addition, the Japanese had allegedly damaged a battleship, three cruisers, and a destroyer. It appeared that Yamamoto’s goal of destroying U.S. sea power in the South Pacific had finally been fulfilled. Although the operation’s goal of capturing Henderson Field failed, the navy was pleased to claim an overwhelming victory at Santa Cruz.