Tagged: WWII

The Second Battle of El Alamein: Operation Supercharge

For a week, the battle between Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Panzer Armee Afrika and Lt Gen Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army raged around an obscure railroad terminal in Egypt at El Alamein. In the previous weeks, both sides dug in and laid extensive minefields all the way from the coast to the impassable Qatarra Depression in the south. So far, the Second Battle of El Alamein was a constant cut, parry, and riposte by both sides, as the Eighth Army sought weak points in the German defenses, and slowly ground down Rommel’s forces. From Enigma intercepts, Montgomery knew of Rommel’s supply difficulties; it was only a matter of time before the Axis lines broke.

On 1 November 1942, Montgomery found his weak spot just above the Miteirya and Kidney Ridges in the north of the battlefield. There, dismounted engineers (the “light feet” of Operation Lightfoot, since they wouldn’t set off the anti-tank mines if they stepped on them) had cleared several passages through the German and Italian minefields. That evening, Montgomery reshuffled his forces and formed a composite division under the redoubtable Bernard Freyberg (Crete notwithstanding, Freyberg was still the best division commander the British had) and what remained of his 2nd New Zealand Division.

Just after 0100 that night, Freyberg launched Operation Supercharge to crack the German lines and pass the 1st and 10th Armoured Divisions through so they could engage and destroy the remainder of Rommel’s ever dwindling supply of panzers. After a furious four hour bombardment, the Kiwi and British infantry forced the ridges doggedly defended by dug in Italian infantry, but expended themselves doing so. The only remaining static Axis defense was an anti-tank screen along the Rahman track. Freyberg had no infantry left to clear it, but with the breakout so close, a good old fashioned cavalry charge, Light Brigade-style, had to be tried.

The job fell to Brigadier Currie’s 9th Armoured Brigade, initially attached to Freyberg to fix Rommel’s inevitable counterattack after the infantry pierced the line. Now they were attacking directly into the teeth of German anti-tank guns. Just after dawn with the sun at their backs the British tankers rolled forward desperately trying to close the distance before the dreaded 88s shot them to pieces. But attacks that were suicide earlier in the year were merely exceptionally dangerous now. Thanks to Roosevelt’s stripping of tanks from America’s first armored division and sending them to the Middle East after the Fall of Tobruk, the thin skinned and light gunned Honeys, Cruisers, and Crusaders had been replaced by heavier and newer Churchill, Grant, and Sherman tanks, with thicker armour and longer ranged guns. For 30 intense minutes, Currie’s tanks dueled with Rommel’s guns. He didn’t break through, but there were few anti guns remaining. Rommel reinforced the line. However, only a counter attack could prevent the Eighth Army, a formation that Auchinlek and Montgomery spent months painstakingly building up, from breaking through and cutting the all-important coast road.

About an hour later, a Kiwi brigadier was wondering why the 9th Arm Brigade wasn’t supporting the defense. He found Currie dozing on a stretcher. “Sorry to wake you, John, but where are your regiments?” Currie waved to the half dozen tanks laagered around him. “Not your headquarters, your regiments?” Channeling Picket at Gettysburg, Currie groggily replied, “These are my regiments, Bill.”

Fortunately for Currie, Freyberg, and Montgomery, Rommel had little fuel and few tanks left to effect a counterattack. That afternoon, he threw the Littorio Armored Division and the 15th and 21st Panzer Divisions at the gap, where they were stopped cold by British and Kiwi anti-tank guns and artillery, supported by waves of RAF air support, who by this point in the battle had near complete control of the air. The Germans and Italians lost nearly 100 tanks in what became known as “The Hammering of the Panzers”. It was about the same number of losses as the British, but Rommel had no replacements. He had just 35 tanks remaining, little fuel, and there was a British armoured car squadron rampaging through his rear areas who had slipped through in the confusion. Rommel knew the battle was lost.

However, Rommel was determined to save as much of his command as possible. That night he radioed Hitler directly for permission to withdraw, which Hitler replied the next day that Rommel needed to stand his ground, and ended his message with, “you can show them no other road than that to victory or death.” Rommel decided to compromise, but waiting on Hitler’s reply cost him dearly. He planned on withdrawing six miles, but never had the chance. During the night Montgomery again reorganized his forces and launched three infantry brigades at what was left of Rommel’s defenses along the Rahman Track, and broke through. Only the determined and stalwart defense by several Italian units prevented the PanzerArmee’s complete destruction, as Rommel waited on Hitler’s response. The elite Folgore Parachute Division, which spent most of its existence preparing for an airborne assault on Malta, was encircled and destroyed. They literally fought until the last bullet was expended. The Afrika Korps’ longest serving Italian allies, the Ariete and Littorio Armored Divisions and the Trieste Motorized Division, were also destroyed in desperate rear guard actions to buy Rommel time for the rest to withdraw.

By the morning of the 4th, the situation was hopeless, and Rommel abandoned the line to fall back to Fuka, 50 miles west. But he couldn’t even stop there. Montgomery’s armoured divisions dogged him the entire way, and by the 11th, Rommel was thrown out of Egypt. Rommel deemed Cyrenacia untenable with what remained of his once feared PanzerArmee Afrika, and by 23 November was back at El Algheila, where he started nearly eleven months before. Despite Hitler’s order to stand and die, Rommel’s compromise to withdraw just six miles at the end of the 2nd Battle of El Alamein, turned into a retreat of over 650 miles. He would never return.

After the Second Battle of El Alamein, Churchill noted, “We can almost say that before Alamein, we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat”.

The Battle of Santa Cruz Islands

 “Strike – Repeat, Strike.” With those three words, ViceAdm Halsey unleashed the US Navy in the South Pacific to stop the Japanese juggernaut headed southeast down the Solomon chain. Yamamoto was under the mistaken impression that the Japanese Army on Guadalcanal had seized Henderson Field, or at worst, were close enough to prevent the Cactus Air Force from taking off. This was simply not true. And the Tokyo Express paid for it the next day.
 
Yamamoto sent a vanguard force of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers down the Slot to assist the army in securing the rest of Guadalcanal, and prevent an American evacuation. Ever vigilant Australian coast watchers spotted them, and on the afternoon of 25 October, 1942, the Cactus Air Force sank the cruiser Yura, heavily damaged a destroyer, and forced the remainder to turn around. However, Yamamoto’s staff took the strike as proof that the American carriers were near Guadalcanal, and not that Henderson Field was still in American hands.
 
Halsey dispatched the cruisers and destroyers of Task Force 64, under Rear Adm Willis Lee and reinforced by the battleship Washington (the indefatigable Norman Scott was 2IC because battleship admirals usually outranked cruiser admirals) to assist the Marines with naval gunfire, and if possible seek out and destroy the Tokyo Express. They wouldn’t get a chance. That left just the Japanese carriers. Nagumo would never risk his carriers in the confined waters of the Slot, which meant that they could only approach from the open seas to the north of the Solomon Islands.
 
Nagumo’s plan was to bait the American carriers with an advanced force of battleships and the light carrier Junyo. And then destroy them with a strike from his fleet carriers, the Shokaku and Zuikaku, and another light carrier Zuiho. The first commander to launch a strike on his adversary’s fleet carriers was usually victorious. In the waters south east of Guadalcanal, Nagumo knew the Americans would have the advantage in reconnaissance. His plan was for the American first strike to hit his advance force.
 
Nagumo was right. B-17s and PBYs from Santa Cruz spotted both of the Japanese carrier forces on the afternoon of the 25th. However, unable to reciprocate and find the American carriers, the furious Nagumo prudently turned north and took his ships out of range. During the night, he would close the distance. The move saved his carriers from total destruction. Task Force 61 under Rear Adm Thomas Kinkaid was sprinting north with his own carriers, the Hornet and Enterprise. In the spirit of Halsey, Kinkaid risked a strike which would have caught Nagumo had he not turned around. In the end, it just forced his pilots to land in the dark to the loss of eight planes. As both sides closed the distance that night, the battle would be decided the next day.
 
On 26 October, 1942, both commanders closed to within 200 miles of each other, and both found each other just after dawn. In fact, their opposing strikes ran into each other heading to their respective targets, causing a furball as the escorting fighters from both sides engaged. Nonetheless, they each eventually found their targets. The American flyers set fire and disabled the Junyo and the Skokaku, and heavily damaged another cruiser. The Japanese pounded the Hornet, which would eventually have to be abandoned (The burning hulk was sunk by Japanese destroyers the following morning). And the Enterprise took a few bombs, but she managed to contain the fires and repair the damage. The Enterprise took on as many of the Hornets pilots as it could. Those that couldn’t land, were sent on to Guadalcanal. (As an aside, with each American carrier sunk, the Cactus Air Force got stronger. To the Marines, it seemed that this was the only way they got new pilots and planes.) At dusk both sides retired out of range. There would be no battle the next day.
 
In terms of ships sunk, the Battle off of the Santa Cruz Islands was a solid Japanese tactical victory. Nagumo had two carriers damaged, but two more were unscathed. Kinkaid had one sunk, and one damaged and unable to continue operations. However, the fight north of Santa Cruz was the first taste the Japanese pilots got of state of the art anti-aircraft fire. The Japanese planes had a horrible time penetrating the flak put up by the specialized anti-aircraft cruisers, such as the Juneau and San Juan, whom bristled with radar controlled 5” guns. Moreover, these same guns were thick on the carriers and the battleship South Carolina. It was argued later that the only reason the Hornet was hit was because a new ensign in charge of the Hornet’s forward battery accidentally threw the guns into maintenance mode as the first Japanese bomber began its dive, which locked the barrels straight up in the air. Also, several Japanese planes resorted to flying into the American ships, the Hornet especially, whose flight desk was awash in aviation fuel from one proto-Kamikaze.
 
But the Japanese paid a heavy price. Nagumo lost 100 planes, and 148 aircrew. Kinkaid lost only 37. The Battle off of the Santa Cruz Islands saw more Japanese pilots killed than Midway. Almost 2/3rds of the pilots who participated in the raid on Pearl Harbor were dead. Nagumo turned north that night not for lack of carriers, but for lack of planes and pilots to fly off of them. However, Halsey didn’t know that, and for the next ten days, every workman on Noumea was dedicated to getting the Enterprise, the only remaining American carrier in the Pacific, back in the fight.
 
But because of the Japanese inability to replace its veteran pilots, there wouldn’t be another carrier battle in the Pacific for 18 months. Though they didn’t know it, from this point on in the Second World War, the Americans had nothing to fear from Japanese naval airpower. The Kido Butai was dead.

The Battle for Henderson Field

Since the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Japanese way of war in the Pacific can be characterized as the search for the “Kantai Kessen”, or Decisive Victory, that would end the war, just like the victories that defeated the Mongols in the 13th Century, brought the Tokugawa Shogunate to power in the 17th, or defeated the Russians in the early 20th. In late September, 1942, Yamamoto belatedly recognized that the Americans were committed to holding Guadalcanal, and therefore it could be used as bait for a decisive victory over Nimitz’ Pacific Fleet.
 
The problem was Henderson Field. It had to be captured or neutralized before Yamamoto would risk Nagumo’s remaining carriers and the Combined Fleet’s battleships in the South Pacific. At great pains, the Tokyo Express put two divisions of Gen Harukichi Hyakutake 17th Army on Guadalcanal. They had the task of securing Henderson Field. When this was accomplished, Yamamoto would unleash Nagumo and the battleships to sink the remains of the US Pacific Fleet as it inevitably came to the support of the Marines on Guadalcanal. After several delays, Hyakutake was scheduled to attack on the 23 October, 1942.
 
But the impenetrable jungle creased by steep ravines south of the airfield meant that the 2nd Sendai Division was still not in place by the afternoon of the 23rd. Hyakutake ordered another 24 hour delay. But the message never reached the fixing force that was to attack across the Matanikau River. At dusk on the 23rd, two Japanese regiments surged across the shallow water and along the north beach led by nine Type 97 medium and Type 95 light tanks. The Banzai didn’t even make it across the river. Marine artillery and 37mm anti-tank guns made short work of the tanks, while the waist deep Matanikau made a perfect moat that slowed the Japanese charge down just enough to prevent any breakthroughs. 600 Japanese died in the attempt with an unknown number of wounded. The Marines had about 50 casualties.
 
The attack did cause BGen Geiger to shift some forces west in response to the attack (Vandegrift was meeting with Halsey at Noumea on the 23rd and 24th) to cover the southern flank of the Lunga Point panhandle, which was normally only covered by patrols. They arrived just in time to stop the late flank attack on the Matanikau River line. However, this left Edson’s Ridge and 2500 yards of the southern perimeter covered by just LtCol Lewis B “Chesty” Puller’s 1st Battalion of the 7th Marines. But the Japanese attacked there in September and were slaughtered. They wouldn’t do so again, or so the thinking went.
 
Unfortunately, Chesty Puller’s patrols completely missed the buildup of the 2nd Sendai Division over the previous two weeks. But it mostly wasn’t their fault. The Japanese assembly areas were much further south than they expected. Not that Hyakutake planned it that way. Most of his men thought they were four miles from Henderson Field, but they were actually eight. The Japanese had complete disregard for the Marines and didn’t even conduct reconnaissance in the direction of the airfield, no checking routes to the assault positions, no recce of the defenses, nothing. They figured they’d just do a movement to contact, roll over any Marines they encountered, and seize the airfield.
 
And had the entire division attacked at the same time, they would have at least broken through to the airfield. However, on the afternoon of the 24th, Mother Nature dropped a thunderstorm on the island that threw the Japanese approach marches into chaos. Between the driving rain, and the marches north being almost double the distance than they were expecting, the Japanese attacked piecemeal against Puller’s Marines.
 
Around 2130 that night, one of the Marine listening posts rang up the headquarters, Puller answered.
 
“Colonel, there about 3,000 Japs between you and me.”
 
“Are you sure?”
 
“Positive. They’ve been all around us singing and smoking cigarettes heading your way.”
 
The first attacks began at 2200 and lasted all throughout the night, as individual Japanese units made contact, they attacked. The listening post was mistaken, there wasn’t three thousand but over seven. However, the piecemeal attacks allowed Puller to reinforce threatened parts of his line. Near continuous artillery support and canister fire from the anti-tank guns broke up the attacks. Still, the night was a near run thing, and his headhunter’s staff fought off their share of Japanese. And his water-cooled machine guns got so hot that the water evaporated and had to be replaced with only liquid readily available, urine. Puller requested help and received it from a battalion of the US Army’s 164th Infantry. As the soldiers filtered into the line the next morning, Puller attacked some stubborn Japanese that had pushed a bulge into his line. That was as far as they would get.
 
The Japanese attacked again on the night of the 25th, and received the same fate. By the morning of the 26th, Hyakutake called off the relentless but futile attacks. His men had suffered over 3000 killed, and many more wounded, most of whom would be found dead by the advancing Marines and soldiers in the months that followed.
 
Hyakutake’s assault on Henderson Field was a complete failure. But Yamamoto wouldn’t know that for several more days. In fact he believed the exact opposite: on the evening of the 24th, with the second phase of the battle barely begun, a Japanese soldier reported that he saw green and white flares over Henderson Field, the signal that the air field was captured. The flares were almost certainly American. Nonetheless, Hyakutake’s staff triumphantly reported to Yamamoto’s headquarters that the airfield was secure. Yamamoto ordered his fleet south.
 
At that moment, 900 miles further south, Vandegrift met with his new boss Halsey. Halsey asked him if he could hold, and Vandegrift replied, “I can hold, but I’ve got to have more active support than I’ve been getting.” It might as well have been a shotgun blast to Halsey’s chest. Even though he had been in charge less than a week, it was unfathomable to him that anyone would think his Navy was not doing its job. Halsey assured him that would change.
 
On the evening of the 24th, signals intelligence picked up a massive increase in Japanese traffic, and a bit later in the nearly full moonlight, US Army Air Corps long range reconnaissance spotted the bulk of Yamamoto’s fleet heading south. Just before midnight, Halsey sent a message to his commanders that resonated throughout the theater. It said simply,
 
“Strike – Repeat, Strike.”

The Second Battle of El Alamein: Operation Lightfoot

Ever since Rommel arrived in North Africa in Feb 1941, he used virtually the same tactic to defeat the British: He would make a wide sweeping movement with his tanks in the open desert around the flank of the British line which would inevitably obligate every British tank to counterattack in a grand charge to defeat the German maneuver. Rommel would then ambush and destroy the British force with his long range and very destructive 88mm anti aircraft guns. The only thing left was to pursue the routed and flanked British force.

In mid Sep, 1942, Rommel sought to do this again but the British 8th Army’s new commander, General Bernard Law Montgomery, had other ideas. Instead of gallantly charging into the teeth of German firepower, he let the Germans turn the flank and ambushed them behind the British lines at Alam Halfa Ridge. All of the British armour was dug into defensive positions along the ridge, effectively turning the tables on the German maneuver. The Battle of Alam Halfa was Erwin Rommel’s first serious defeat.

The Panzer Armee Afrika retreated to their former positions and awaited the expected British counter attack. But it never came. Gen Montgomery knew that in order decisively defeat Rommel he had build up an overwhelming superiority in men, weapons and equipment. An immediate counterattack would initially be successful but it would eventually run out of supplies as the British pushed Rommel back towards his own supply bases in Libya. If that happened the see saw campaign in North Africa would continue. So Montgomery used the time after Alam Halfa, when he was still close to his supply dumps in Cairo and Alexandria, to build up an overwhelming superiority in combat power while Rommel was still stuck in Egypt and a thousand miles from his supplies.

On 23 October 1942, just when Rommel was on sick leave in Germany, Montgomery’s Eighth Army launched Operation Lightfoot, named for the infantrymen and engineers who had to clear the anti tank mines but were too light to set them off when they stepped on them. Operation Lightfoot initiated the Second Battle of El Alamein and by 2 November 1942, Montgomery defeated Rommel, and the Axis forces would be in full retreat back to Libya against Hitler’s specific orders to stand and die. Unlike previous withdrawals, Rommel would never recover the lost ground.

Chuikov and Khruschev Hold Stalingrad

In September 1942, the Rattenkrieg, or War of the Rats, in Stalingrad had reached a fever pitch. For almost a month, German General Frederich Paulus’ Sixth Army and Gen. Herman Hoth’s Fourth Panzer Army fought LtGen. Vasily Chuilov’s Soviet 62nd Army in the rubble of the industrial city of Stalingrad. Chuikov instituted a policy of “hugging the enemy” to neutralize the Germans’ superior firepower. In effect, the Germans had to fight for every street, every block, every building, every floor, and every room. Germans complained of seizing “the kitchen” only to be “stopped at the living room”. Entire companies fought pitched battles through holes in the floor or ceiling, or in the sewers beneath the city.

But the Soviets weren’t passive. They were constantly attacking the northern flank of the Paulus’ drive at Kotluban to ease pressure on the city. After Stalin’s “Not one step back” order, more than 15,000 Soviet soldiers and civilians were killed by the NKVD trying to cross the Volga to safety, but it forced the remaining civilian population to join the fight against the Germans, and stiffened the flagging resolve of Chuikov’s troops in the city. Despite horrific losses, the Soviets continued to poor troops into the city by ferrying them across the Volga, which was under constant bombardment by German artillery and the Luftwaffe.

By the second week of October, Paulus and Hoth had for the most part cleared the southern and central portions of Stalingrad, with the exception of a small beachhead in the center, and could place direct fire on the crossing sites in the north, reducing Soviet reinforcement to nighttime operations only. In the north of the city, the Soviets were anchored on three massive industrial complexes, the Red October Steel Works, the Barrikady Ordnance Factory, and the Stalingrad Tractor Factory. Until recently, the Tractor Factory continued to produce T-34 tanks whose issue were fed directly into the fight, sometimes within minutes of leaving the complex. The T-34s had no sights, so the adhoc crews, mostly civilians, had to aim down the empty barrel, then load and fire the main gun. On the 11th and 12th, the Germans ceased major assaults. It was just the calm before the storm.

At dawn, Paulus assaulted the factory complexes with 90,000 men, 300 tanks, 2000 guns, and waves of Stuka dive bombers and Heinkel level bombers, against Chuikov’s 30,000 men and 80 tanks. The German force was not so much a bludgeon as a giant scalpel carving up the city. German radio direction finders pinpointed Soviet headquarters and blasted them, and then turned to Soviet strongpoints, such as Pavlov’s house, many of which had been a thorn in the German side for over a month (Pavlov’s House held out for 58 days defended by single platoon under the command of Lt Ivan Avanaslev and Sgt Yakov Pavlov). But the initial focus on Soviet headquarters had the detrimental effect of allowing the strongholds to prepare and weather the bombardment. Most Soviet units were out of contact with their commands anyway, and the initial Germans assaults were repulsed. However, the surprised Germans regrouped and seized their initial objectives. (Never trust and artilleryman or air force officer who says, “No one can live through that.”)

The fighting dragged for two days as the panzers prowled the factory floors, assault pioneers reduced Soviet strongpoints with explosives and flamethrowers, followed by intense close combat by what remained of the infantry. The Barrikady Ordanace Factory fell on the 13th and the Red October Steel Works on the 14th. That night the entire elite 37th Guards Division died to a man in the Tractor Factory. Chuikov’s army was split in two, and his headquarters was just 800 yards from the Volga. 3500 seriously wounded men were evacuated across the Volga that night alone.

About 2200 on the 15th, Chuikov, “the Stone of Stalingrad”, requested permission to withdraw. His commissar, Nikita Khruschev, demanded he rescind the request and even had him fired later that night. Chuikov was reinstated, but having won his power struggle with Khruschev asked again. However, Khruschev again protested but contacted STAVKA directly. And this time Stalin came down hard on Chuikov’s immediate superior, Gen. Yeryomenko, to provide Stalingrad with more support (Yeryomenko was hoarding troops on the far side of the river for the planned counterattack). On the night of the 15th, the 138th Rifle Division crossed the Volga and reinforced Chuikov’s battered and broken defenses, sometimes within the sight of the river.
By the night of the 16th, the Germans were spent. It says a lot about the state of the fighting that a single understrength and poorly trained, but fresh unit, could turn the tide of a battle. However, four days of no sleep and constant fighting is about all a human being can handle. The factories of Stalingrad for the most part were taken, but Chuikov and the 62nd Army still held on to a small sliver of the city along the river.

Halsey Takes Command

Allied morale in the South Pacific had reached its lowest point on the night of the 16 October 1942, and had the Japanese attacked the Marine perimeter on Guadalcanal at Lunga Point on the 16th or 17th, the fight would have been much chancier than it turned out to be. But the Japanese were having their own problems. They were having issues getting into position. Japanese engineers had hacked only one small trail out of the jungle from the landing areas on the southwest of the island, where the Tokyo Express hastily unloaded, to the assault positions south of the airfield. Even worse, the Japanese were chronically short of food, and even Hyakutake’s newest troops were starving. The Tokyo Express gave priority to men and ammunition during their runs. Moreover, food required transports and docks to unload, and was space prohibitive on the fast destroyers that constituted most of the runs down the Slot. Because the Tokyo Express had to be out of range of Henderson Field by dawn, small boats quickly ferried troops from the destroyers, and supplies were placed in drums and pushed over the side for the tide to take in. Bulk food, especially rice which salt water contaminated, could not be unloaded in this manner. Also, what food did land usually never made it up the trail. Hyakutake had the same problem with food that Rommel had with fuel: the supply line was consuming the bulk of it before it reached the front line troops. Hyakutake told his men to tighten their belts, and in any case, banzai charges usually lessened the Japanese supply burden. However, the starving troops were taking too long to get into position, and the final assault on Henderson Field was continuously pushed back, first to the 21st, then the 23rd.

These delays were critical. On the morning of 17 October 1942, Vice Admiral Ghormley, the American commander in the Southern Pacific, sent a doom filled message to Nimitz that ended, “My forces totally inadequate (to) meet situation. Urgently request all aviation reinforcement possible”. Ghormley was prone to request forces that Nimitz didn’t have and routinely predicted “or else” if he didn’t get them, but this message was the first time that he expected defeat. And Nimitz didn’t have anything more to give without uncovering Pearl Harbor. Ghormley had every operational aircraft carrier remaining, two fast battleships and their escorts, and more Army air assets than were stationed in Great Britain (Remember Germany First?), not to mention those that MacArthur controlled. Ghormley complained that he couldn’t risk his ships in the confined waters of the Slot, but the Japanese had no such problems doing the same thing. And Scott’s Task Force 64 proved they could at the Battle of Cape Esperance a few days before. Even MacArthur commented that Guadalcanal would fall, “unless the Navy accepts successfully the challenge of the enemy surface fleet.” The job had to get done with what was on hand. The only thing that could change was the leadership.

Nimitz said this was one of the toughest decisions he had ever had to make. Ghormley was a good friend to Nimitz’ for his entire career. Their wives played bridge together. No one less than FDR recommended him to lead America’s first counteroffensive of the war. FDR and Ghormley went back to FDR’s Secretary of the Navy days, and “Ghorm” was the senior American military representative to Great Britain in the dark days of 1940 and 41. Ghormley was an administrator and diplomat, and that might have been what was needed in the early summer to deal with the French, Australians, British, and MacArthur, but that was not what was needed in September and October to deal with the Japanese. He was a product of a peacetime Navy where he spent too much time on special assignments and working the system by himself. Now he was trying to do the same at Noumea, and running himself into the ground. Ghormley is Exhibit A of a career officer who micromanaged his career, and couldn’t make the transition to war, when you couldn’t micromanage anything as a flag officer. Late on the night of the 16th, Nimitz’ staff had an intervention with him about Ghormley, “that bordered on insubordination”. The stately Nimitz in his pajamas told the animated officers whom crowded into his room that he understood. Whether he made the decision or not at that point is unknown, but Ghormley’s message the next morning certainly forced the issue.

Vice Admiral William “Bull” Halsey was already enroute to the South Pacific on the 17th. His aircraft carrier Enterprise was fully repaired after the Battle of the Eastern Solomons in September, and was much needed to assist the Hornet, already in theater. (Two carriers were four times more effective than one carrier. If a single carrier had to do combat air patrol and reconnaissance, it could only put up a strike of two dozen or so planes if a target was located. Also, the transition from “duty” ops, to “strike” ops was time consuming. Two carriers allowed one for duty ops, and one for strike ops. A second carrier allowed the first carrier to execute duty ops more effectively and efficiently, while maintaining its entire complement of 90 planes for an immediate strike.) Halsey flew ahead, and when he landed in Noumea’s harbor, one of Ghormley’s aides handed him a message from Nimitz that simply stated, “You will take command of the South Pacific Area and the South Pacific Forces immediately”. The completely surprised Halsey exclaimed, “This is the hottest potato they ever handed me!”

Halsey was Ghormley’s opposite in almost every way. Halsey had a reputation for straight talk and believed naval combat came down to one thing: putting ordnance on target, something he passed on to other fighting admirals, like Norman Scott. His mission orders contrasted sharply with Ghormley’s administrivia. Even before his transition with Ghormley was complete, which it would be by sun down(!), Halsey ordered Scott back into the Slot.

The next day, Halsey realized Ghormley’s predicament. There was simply too much work for a single man to do. He’d have to delegate most of the work to his staff. And Halsey sure as shit wasn’t going to have them do it from the dank recesses of Ghormley’s headquarters ship, the USS Argonne. Halsey was protective of his staff – he overworked them mercilessly when they were on duty, and for that reason he took care them when they were off duty. That morning he sent his chief of staff to speak with the French about administrative space on the island. The French dismissed him. At lunch, Halsey and his Marine security platoon planted the American colors in the French colonial administrative building. They threw out anyone who spoke French as a first language. By that evening, the colonial governor’s gardens were bulldozed for a new recreation center. The French protested to De Gaulle, but he was busy at the moment (See Operation Torch).

The news of the new commander spread like wildfire throughout the South Pacific, and was a “shot of adrenaline” to the soldiers and Marines on Guadalcanal. All of the diary entries, field reports, and recorded conversations of that day agree on only one thing: the tenor of the entire theater changed with Halsey’s assumption of command. There was no more talk of evacuation. The Marines were going to win or go down swinging. More concrete assistance came that night when the cruiser USS Atlanta sat off the coast, and with Marine fire support officers ferried out to the ship, blasted Japanese troop concentrations for eight hours, until the sun came up. The Atlanta was detached from TF 64, which was prowling the Savo Sound. Scott threw a gauntlet down for the Japanese. However, a Japanese I boat spotted Scott’s two battleships, and Yamamoto cancelled the Tokyo Express run for the night.

Nothing had changed but the leadership.

The Americans in the South Pacific did have some fight left in them. That realization came none too soon.

The Low Point

Though the battlecruisers didn’t return, Yamamoto’s cruisers worked over Henderson Field every night. The Haruna and Kongo drank too much fuel, so he didn’t send them back down the Slot after their devastating raid on Henderson Field on the night of the 13th. For the American Commander – South Pacific, Vice Admiral Robert Ghormley, that was just as well. The overworked and stressed Ghormely had barely left his flagship at the docks in Noumea since the Marines landed on Guadalcanal. The French colonial authorities on New Caledonia refused to give him any administrative space on the island, so he and his staff worked out of the dank corridors of the supply ship USS Argonne. If he wasn’t a broken man before, October 13th, 14th, and 15th, 1942, broke him.
 
The Haruna and Kongo’s bombardment put the Cactus Air Force on the canvas. If they would have come back, it would have been over. As it was, it took Herculean efforts to patch the airstrip; not to mention fly 55 gallon drums of aviation gas to the island, or even worse transport them by submarine. 30 or so replacement aircraft were ferried over from “Button” i.e. Espirtu Santo, but there simply wasn’t enough fuel for all the missions. A few frugal supply officers with some foresight stashed some fuel in the jungle, and the mechanics drained every drop from the destroyed aircraft. But it was barely enough for a single sortie. The Japanese convoy was unloading tanks and heavy artillery at Tassaforanga Point barely ten miles away, in full view of Marine scouts, but just out of artillery range. The Cactus Air Force put a dozen fighters and dive bombers into the air but only managed to damage just three transports, and after they had already unloaded.
 
By the 14th, the Japanese had control of the Slot. Their two fleet carriers were on the prowl, and now it was the Americans turn to only operate around Guadalcanal at night. Rear Admiral Scott’s Task Force 64 was held back against the multitude of Japanese ships in the area. A convoy with avgas and ammunition sent that evening was turned back after it was spotted by the ever present Japanese submarines, and its escorting destroyers damaged or sunk by air attack. The only available aircraft carrier, the USS Hornet, was enroute with the battleship South Dakota, but to Ghormely they weren’t enough except to cover the evacuation of the Marines and Army personnel after the inevitable Japanese onslaught on the Henderson Field perimeter.
 
The Japanese had at least 20,000 fresh assault troops on the island. The Marines and Army had 23,000, but Vandergrift had an entire perimeter to defend. Vandergrift’s spoiling attacks and raids over the Matanikou River broke up obvious Japanese concentrations in September, but in the second week of October they were death sentences – there were too many Japanese. And the Americans were tired. Two months of constant vigilance and fighting in the jungle was a long time, and with little sleep. Washing Machine Charley started off as a joke, but two months of being violently woken up every night was no laughing matter. Dysentery, malaria, and jungle rot, among many other horrible tropical diseases, took their toll.
 
It was even worse for the pilots.10-12 hour daily missions broke lesser men. According to medical interviews after the battle, at four weeks of constant operations off of Henderson, a pilot began to slack off mentally, not scanning the sky, inadvertently daydreaming during a mission etc. and made himself an easy target. At six weeks, a pilot began to slack off physically, i.e falling asleep at the stick, and accidents and crashes increased exponentially. At seven weeks, if he didn’t crash, the pilot was a flying zombie. “You might as well paint a flag on some Jap’s plane.” October 15th was exactly six weeks since the first pilots arrived on Guadalcanal.
 
That afternoon, Vandergrift asked Ghormely for another entire division to clear teh Japanese from the island. His men were in no shape to conduct offensive operations, and even if they were, it was all they could do to secure the perimeter. The 164th was badly needed, but much to its commander’s chagrin, Vandergrift broke it up and gave each one of his regiments an army battalion, if only to stiffen the line with fresh men. The 164th’s regimental headquarters company became the airfield quick reaction force, to plug the gaps from the inside. Vandergrift had no way to stop the Japanese build up if the Navy wouldn’t.
 
That evening after the air attack on the transports and in the midst of a bombardment from the new Japanese cannon, the fuelless pilots and ground personnel were told to find some rifles and attach themselves to the nearest Marine unit. Vandergrift’s staff came together to plan the evacuation and began burning their papers.
 
Just before midnight, Vandergrift sent a terse message to Ghormely. It read, “Security of Cactus depends on additional forces not now in sight. Cannot remain effective indefinitely under such conditions.”

All Hell’s Eve

Despite the losses to the Japanese bombardment group off of Cape Esperance, the transport group managed to safely unload its troops and heavy cargo onto Guadalcanal. Yamamoto ordered another run to build up an overwhelming superiority of troops on the island. He assembled another transport group to deliver two more regiments of infantry, with a company of tanks, and two batteries of heavy artillery to Guadalcanal. Since the Japanese had not encountered any American battleships, he concluded that he could risk some of his to escort the convoy, sweep away any remaining American cruisers and destroyers, and then smash Henderson Field with their big 14”guns. This should prevent the Cactus Air Force from attacking the slow convoy as it made its way down the Slot.

On 13 October, the two fast battlecruisers, IJS Haruna and IJS Kongo, sprinted down the Slot ahead of the transport group accompanied by just one cruiser and a few destroyers. They encountered no opposition from Rear Adm Scott’s Task Force 64 which was refueling far to the south at Espirtu Santo, the main American naval base in the South Pacific.

At 0133, on 14 October, 1942, the Kongo and Haruna opened up with their combined sixteen 14” guns, and 32 6” guns from just 16,000 yards off shore. (To put this into perspective, a 14” shell is 356mm, and a 6” shell is 152mm. Most mortars flung at FOBs in Iraq and Afghanistan were 82mm, and the vast majority of the rockets were 107mm or 122mm. The “Big One” that landed outside the dining facility on Camp Victory in 2007 was a 203mm.) For 90 minutes, the Kongo and Haruna fired 973 14” high explosive shells and an untold number of 6” HE shells at the Marine and Army perimeter on Guadalcanal, most of which fell on the small space occupied by Henderson Field. That’s one massive shell every six seconds, and making a conservative estimate that the 6” guns fired three times as fast, that’s one smaller, but still pretty big, shell landing every two seconds; for an hour and a half. It was the heaviest and most concentrated shelling Americans experienced since World War One 25 years before.

The attack caught the entire airfield by surprise. Most Marines casually disregarded the inaccurate Japanese artillery fire or the nightly bombing raids by the notorious “Washing Machine Charley”, who did little but keep everyone from getting any sleep. Vandergrift’s intelligence officer briefed a “shoes off night” because of the victory at Cape Esperance. The concussion from the first shells physically threw everyone out of their bunks. In seconds, 1200 US Army, Navy and Marine Corps personnel sprinted to their trenches, while being thrown about by the explosions. Each shell took a truckload of dirt out of the island and flung it into the air, along with anything else nearby. The ground heaved as if it was an earthquake. One Marine ammo handler said it took him over two minutes to reach a trench a hundred yards away because he would get up, take six or seven steps and be tossed to the side by the next shell, and dazedly repeat the process until he reached the woodline. He was one of the lucky ones.

After “The Bombardment” stopped, and everyone dug themselves out of their foxholes, they found the airfield ablaze and wrecked seemingly beyond repair. The airfield personnel suffered 41 killed and about 200 wounded. 48 of the 90 aircraft of the Cactus Air Force were destroyed, and the rest damaged to some degree. The airfield facilities were flattened including the repair and parts huts, the maintenance area, and the makeshift tower. Vandergrift’s Headquarters took a direct hit, and so did his tent. The runway was cratered and unusable without significant reconstruction. Most of the shell holes were “deep enough to hide a jeep”. The most damaging though was the fate of the stockpile of aviation gas. It was completely destroyed. As far as the Marines knew, there wasn’t a gallon of avgas on Guadalcanal that wasn’t already in an aircraft’s tank. Even if the Cactus Air Force had the aircraft to stop impending the convoy, it didn’t have the fuel to keep them in the air.

The night of 13 to 14 October 1942 would go down in Marine lore as “The Night”, or “All Hell’s Eve”.

The Japanese bombardment group sprinted back up the Slot. And the transport group would continue on, safe in the knowledge that the Cactus Air Force wouldn’t come for them when the sun rose.

The Battle of Cape Esperance

USS Boise after the Battle of Cape Esperance, Nov 1942 (Courtesy of the US Navy)

Just like Nimitz, Yamamoto’s biggest issue in the South Pacific was fuel. Tokyo is actually farther from the Guadalcanal than Pearl Harbor, and like the Americans, the Japanese lacked sufficient tanker capacity. But by October 1942, the Japanese had finally committed to destroying the Americans on Guadalcanal, and enough fuel was allocated for Yamamoto’s big battleships to operate from their anchorage at Truk. For lack of fuel, they had been sitting there for months, derisively referred to by the overworked destroyer and cruiser sailors as “Hotel Yamato” and “Hotel Musashi”.

After the battles at Coral Sea, Midway, and the Eastern Solomon’s, Yamamoto had a healthy respect for American airpower, and Henderson Field was an unsinkable aircraft carrier from which the Cactus Air Force sank everything that came down the Slot in daylight. The only option to neutralize Henderson Field was a run down the Slot at night by fast battleships which could pummel the airstrip. Then, sufficient troops and heavy equipment to secure the island could be landed on Guadalcanal from the big slow transports that Japanese couldn’t use as long as the Cactus Air Force roamed the Slot. Thereafter, Japanese troops on the island would be of sufficient quantity to be able to penetrate the Marine perimeter, and overrun the airfield. With the airfield out of action, Yamamoto could then send the Combined Fleet, spearheaded by the mighty Yamato and Musashi down the Slot without fear of air attack from Guadalcanal, and decisively defeat the American Fleet. The fast battleship run was scheduled for the night of 15 October. Until then, the Tokyo Express would put every ship it had into reinforcing Guadalcanal, and bombarding the airfield in preparation.Throughout September and October, Maj Gen Vandergrift’s Marines on Guadalcanal defeated everything the Japanese had thrown at them, but the Tokyo Express continually poured fresh troops onto Guadalcanal. Even U.S. Marines can’t hold out indefinitely. Additionally, the poor rations, constant fighting and the debilitating effects of living in the jungle were taking their toll on the Americans. Though they would never admit it, the Marines needed help. That help came in the form of the US Army 164th Inf Regt, from the Americal Division which was formed from the AMERIcan defenders of New CALedonia. The convoy from New Caledonia was escorted by cruisers and destroyers of Task Force 64, led by Rear Admiral Norman Scott.

When Scott took command of the American escort force, he was keenly aware of the sorry state of American surface forces. He was not about to repeat the same mistakes as his predecessor, who had been ignominiously defeated at The Battle of Savo Island in August, known amongst the crews as “The Battle of Five Sitting Ducks.” To Scott, night surface action was about one thing, and one thing only: “the first effective salvo, though the second and third didn’t hurt the cause either.”

To this end, Scott instituted a night gunnery training program that had his crews at general quarters every evening and early morning conducting gunnery excercises. He designated areas of the sea and squared his captains off against each other. During these gunnery drills the turrets were offset several degrees so the shells safely landed behind the target. But the big splash to the stern let the opposing crew know without a doubt when they were “hit”. And everyone had friends on the Vincennes, Quincy, and Astoria, resting below in “Ironbottom Sound”. Battle Drills became second nature. Moreover, Scott changed the culture of his surface ships. He lobbied to have his cruisers operate independently of Adm Turner’s transports when they weren’t directly involved in actual escort missions. After Nimitz’ visit to the South Pacific in early September, Scott was granted his wish. His command was elevated to a separate Task Force, Task Force 64, on par with Turner’s transports and Fletcher’s carriers. Scott changed his mission from escort to “screening and attack”, and let his captains know that he intended to take the fight to the Japanese. The Tokyo Express had to be in and out of the waters around Guadalcanal before the sun rose. That made them predictable. Scott planned to exploit that.

Scott got his chance on the night of 11-12 Oct 1942. Rear Admiral Aritomo Goto was escorting a massive Tokyo Express Run of almost 11,000 Japanese troops, and included two sea plane tenders that carried much needed heavy equipment such as trucks and artillery pieces. Goto’s run was divided into two groups, a transport group, with a bombardment group in the lead. As Scott’s task force was escorting the 164th to Guadalcanal, coastwatchers and reconnaissance planes spotted Goto. Scott sent the transports safely away with a few destroyers, and moved to ambush the Japanese north of Guadalcanal’s Cape Esperance. Just before midnight, the Japanese bombardment group, consisting of three cruisers and two destroyers, was picked up on radar and Scott ordered his column of five destroyers, and three heavy and two light cruisers, to change course in order to cross the Japanese T. Goto’s ships relied on flares and visual identification and had no reason to expect cruisers in the area from the so far passive Americans. He had no idea what was about to hit him.

Unfortunately for Scott, the watch officer of the lead cruiser, the San Francisco, didn’t turn where the lead destroyers turned, and instead turned simultaneously with the lead destroyer as soon as the order was given. In Army terms, he executed a “Left Flank, March”, instead of a “Column Left, March”. The rest of the formation followed. This put the lead three destroyers out of position, and even worse, in between the Americans cruisers and the Japanese.

For several critical minutes, confusment reigned in the American formation as Scott and his captains attempted to ascertain the exact location of the destroyers in order to prevent fratricide. All the while, the Japanese closed the distance, to the point where they became visible in the darkness. One exasperated gunner complained, “What are we doing? Waiting to see ‘the whites of their eyes’?” The captain of the new light cruiser USS Boise finally said, “I know what I’m shooting at”, and opened fire. Everyone else followed suit.

American naval doctrine at the time said that distances less than 17,000 yards were “close contact”. Off Cape Esperance, they were less than 4000, and closing rapidly. At this distance, it wasn’t the big manually controlled 8” guns of the heavy cruisers that would be responsible for the bulk of the damage, but the radar controlled rapid fire 6″ guns of the American light cruisers, the Boise and Helena. The Japanese complained they fired “like machine guns”, and at a distance where it was impossible to miss. It also didn’t help that the Japanese ships were initially loaded with high explosive rounds to bombard Henderson, not ship killing armor piercing rounds. The two American light cruisers savaged the two lead Japanese cruisers.

However, not everything worked in Scott’s favor. In the confusion, fire control was lacking and the task force’s fire was not distributed properly. The lead Japanese cruiser, the Aoba, took the bulk of the fire while the rear most Japanese cruiser was initially not fired upon at all. And the Kinugasa made the Boise pay for firing first. Even worse, the American heavy cruisers lacked the new fire control radars of their little brothers, and inadvertently fired upon the wayward destroyer squadron, sinking one and damaging another. In less than 30 minutes, one Japanese cruiser and one destroyer were sunk, with the rest badly damaged, at the cost of two American cruisers and one destroyer damaged and another sunk by friendly fire.

The Battle of Cape Esperance was the first time the US Navy defeated the Japanese in a surface action in World War Two. It provided a much needed morale boost to the Allied destroyer and cruiser crews, who up to this point were consistently outperformed, out-maneuvered and out-gunned by their Japanese counterparts. However, the confusion caused by the San Francisco cost the Americans dearly. In addition to the ships damaged, and sailors killed and wounded in battle, the Japanese managed to unload all of their reinforcements on Guadalcanal. Many Marines and soldiers (The US Army’s 164th Regt would land a day later on the 13th) would pay a heavy price for Goto’s successful Tokyo Express run, even if he didn’t survive to see it

The attritional battle for Guadalcanal would continue.

The Bridge Over the Mae Klong River

The Japanese offensive in early 1942 against the Allies in Burma wasn’t stopped by any successful defensive action on the part of Allied troops, but by the monsoon and lack of supplies. The British just retreated to India faster than the Japanese could advance. Furthermore, the British retreated towards their supply depots while every step forward took the Japanese further from theirs. Moreover, Japanese supplies couldn’t come directly from their bases in Vietnam due to the harsh terrain of the northern Thai Highlands and the Shan Hills of eastern Burma, both “foothills” of the Himalayas. They had to be shipped down around the Malay Peninsula and Singapore, and then back up to Rangoon, where the transports made excellent targets in the confined waters for Allied submarines. In order to mitigate this extended logistics chain, the Japanese decided to build a railroad through the forbidding jungle and over the steep mountains from Bangkok to Thambyuzayat, Burma, where they could be easily ferried to Rangoon. This would cut weeks off the supply timeline, and save countless ships.

To construct the 250 mile long railroad, the Japanese conscripted 270,000 local civilians, many of whom supported the Japanese (Thailand was a Japanese ally in World War Two), and 61,000 British, Australian, Dutch, and American prisoners of war taken during the successful Japanese campaigns in Malaya, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies. The 330,000 workers were overseen by just 14,000 Japanese. Their treatment ranged from lethal neglect to sadistic torture and mass murder. The terrain of western Thailand and southeastern Burma is some of the most forbidding terrain on the planet, and consists of thick jungle, steep gorges, and fast flowing rivers.

The most famous portion of the Burma Railroad was the Bridge over the Mae Klong River, a tributary of the Khwae Noi River whose valley the Burma railroad followed. On 4 October, 1942, the first Australian troops arrived at a prisoner of war camp at Tamarkan, Thailand. They would start work two days later on two bridges over Mae Klong River. Bridge 277 was a temporary wooden trestle bridge. It would be used until Bridge 278 was completed further upstream. Bridge 278 was a permanent metal and concrete structure assembled from a Dutch bridge dismantled in Java and transported to Thailand. The workers were given just 250 grams of rice a day to eat, in addition to what they could scrounge from the jungle. On 6 October, the Australians and British at Tamarkan numbered 1700.

Bridge 277 was completed in February, 1943, and the Bridge 278 in October 1943, about the same time the Burma Railroad itself was completed. The Burma Railroad was completed ahead of schedule but nearly 66,000 workers died as a result, including 1300 during the construction of the Mae Klong bridges. Just 400 remained to repair the damage caused by Allied air attacks later in the war.

The plight of the prisoners at Tamarkan and the construction of Bridge 277 was immortalized in the 1952 of the fictional book “Le Pont de la Rivière Kwai” (The Bridge on the River Kwai) by Pierre Boulle, and the 1957 David Lean movie of the same name, starring Jack Hawkins, Alec Guiness (Obi Wan Kenobi), William Holden and Sessue Hayakawa. “Kwai” (Burmese for water buffalo) is an English bastardization of “Khwae” (Burmese for tributary). Surviving British and Australian workers despised the movie for the “wonderful” treatment of the Allied characters by the Japanese, and Japanese veterans called the movie racist because they were depicted as unable to complete the bridge on time without the willing help of the Allied prisoners.

In 1970, the Thai government renamed to the Mae Klong River to Khwae Yai (“Big Tributary) due to tourists wanting to see “The Bridge over the River Kwai”.