War Stories II (38 page)

A few hours after Mitch Paige and his desperately outnumbered Marines had prevailed in fighting for their lives to hold Bloody Ridge, Admiral Kinkaid and the sailors and airmen of the
Enterprise
and
Hornet
battle groups found themselves engaged in a battle of their own—with about the same odds. Admiral Nobutake Kondo had departed Truk with an armada of four aircraft carriers, five battleships, fourteen cruisers, and forty-four destroyers, intending to support General Kawaguchi's ground offensive.

 

Admiral Thomas Kinkaid commanded the USS
Enterprise
task force and later commanded MacArthur's 7th Fleet.

But he arrived too late. At about 0300 on the morning of 26 October, a PBY out of Espiritu Santo detected Kondo's carriers shortly after he had turned north after receiving word that Kawaguchi's ground attack had failed.

Halsey, hearing the patrol plane's report and looking at his plotting board in Noumea, sent a three-word “flash” precedence message to Kinkaid: “ATTACK. REPEAT—ATTACK.”

At dawn on 26 October, aircraft from the
Enterprise
found Kondo's fleet northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands and promptly holed the flight deck of the light carrier
Zuiho
. But the Japanese counter-attacked immediately, pounding
Hornet
with bombs and torpedoes, leaving the carrier dead in the water, afire and listing.

By midday the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands was over. U.S. bomb and torpedo attacks had crippled the heavy cruiser
Chikuma
and seriously damaged the carrier
Shokaku
. The American pilots and anti-aircraft gunners—particularly those on the battleship
South Dakota
—had killed 102 of Kondo's airmen. But a Japanese sub managed to slam a torpedo into the side of the destroyer
Porter
, and the final air raid of the engagement had put three bombs into the flight deck of the
Enterprise
.

The
Porter
had to be scuttled and
Hornet
went down after dark—joining the remains of seventy-four U.S. Navy pilots who had been downed in the fight. As the
Enterprise
and her escorts limped back to the south as Kondo retired toward Truk, for the first time since the war began, the U.S. Navy had no operational carriers in the Pacific Ocean.

The stunning Japanese losses ashore on Guadalcanal—roughly ten killed for every American casualty—did nothing to diminish Tokyo's insistence that the island be recaptured. By 12 November the Tokyo Express had brought Kawaguchi's ground forces up to nearly 30,000 troops—more than the Americans had ashore. The Japanese continued their persistent probes and contact patrols, creating casualties on both sides every day and night. But they never again mounted another major ground offensive against the airfields.

At sea, however, it was a different story. For the remainder of October and up through the first days of November, the Tokyo Express continued an established pattern of nighttime deliveries of troops and supplies—then
blasting away with naval guns at the U.S. Marines and Army troops ashore—before scooting back up the slot to safety. But on 5 November, Station Hypo code-breakers deciphered a lengthy message ordering another major attack. Cruisers, carriers, battleships, and eleven transports escorted by an equal number of destroyers were directed to deliver 13,500 fresh Japanese troops to Kawaguchi.

After seeing this intelligence, Nimitz called for help. Bombers and fighters were flown out from Hawaii. A regiment of Marines from the 2nd Marine Division and 6,000 more soldiers from the Americal Division recently arrived from the U.S. were rushed to shore up Vandegrift's defenses. Repairs to the
Enterprise
were hastily completed and she was dispatched with the battleships
Washington
and
South Dakota
in company to seek out and destroy the enemy counter-invasion force.

On the afternoon of 12 November, a hastily assembled U.S. cruiserdestroyer force, designated as Task Force 65 and commanded by Rear Admiral Dan Callaghan, took up station at the southern end of the slot to intercept the Japanese Combined Fleet. Task Force 65 consisted of two heavy cruisers: the USS
San Francisco
(Callaghan's flagship, damaged when a Japanese pilot crashed his flaming plane into her) and USS
Portland
; three light cruisers:
Atlanta
(Admiral Scott's flagship),
Helena
, and
Juneau
; and eight destroyers:
Barton
,
Monssen
,
O'Bannon
,
Cushing
,
Laffey
,
Sterett
,
Aaron Ward
, and
Fletcher
—thirteen ships in all. They were no match for the two battleships, heavy cruiser, and fourteen destroyers under the command of Admiral Hiroaki Abe.

It was clear but moonless at 0200 on 13 November when the two forces met at close range in the waters between Guadalcanal and Savo Island. In a furious thirty-minute melee, which the Marines watched from ashore, both Admirals Callaghan and Scott were killed, four American destroyers were sunk, and the cruiser
Atlanta
was set afire from bow to stern and had to be scuttled. The cruiser
Portland
and another U.S. destroyer were left dead in the water and the cruiser
Juneau
, struck by a torpedo, was forced to retire to the south.

But the Japanese didn't fare that well, either. Two of Abe's destroyers,
Akatsuki
and
Yudachi
, were sunk outright and three more of his destroyers
were seriously damaged. And his flagship, the battleship
Hiei
, was so badly damaged that she became a crippled, defenseless target for bombers from Henderson Field, who sent her to the bottom.

By dawn of 13 November, the remnants of Abe's force were fleeing north, pursued by aircraft from Henderson Field and B-17s from Espiritu Santo. The violent encounter might have escaped notice in the U.S. press but for the fate of the
Juneau
. As the damaged heavy cruiser limped south thorough Ironbottom Sound, she was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and went to the bottom with more than 700 aboard—including the five Sullivan brothers from Waterloo, Iowa. They had all enlisted in December 1941 to avenge the death of their friend Bill Ball, who was killed at Pearl Harbor.

 

The five Sullivan brothers killed in the sinking of the
Juneau
.

Seaman Frank Holmgren was a nineteen-year-old captain's orderly aboard the
Juneau
and was with his high school buddy Charlie Hayes when the Japanese torpedo hit the ship's number-one engine room.