Robert Leckie - Strong Men Armed

American troops had never before been exposed to such cannonading and would never be so again. Even the great naval shellings that would one day fall upon the Japanese would not be comparable, for the Japanese would be in coral caves or huge pillboxes of ferro-concrete, while these Americans crouched in dirt holes, within shelters of mud and logs.

Henderson Field’s bombers were blown to bits, set afire, crushed beneath collapsed revetments. Shelters shivered, sighed and came apart. Foxholes buried their occupants. Men were killed—41 of them, among them many pilots—and many, many more men were wounded. But the over-all effect upon men’s souls was devastating.

In that cataclysm, when every shell seemed to explode with the pent-up flame and fury of a full thunderstorm, some men might glance at their buddies and see in horror how their features had dissolved in a nerveless idiot mask. Men whimpered aloud. Others burst into sobs and rushed from the pits rather than betray their weakness, if such it was, before comrades. There were Marines who put their weapons to their heads. Men prayed with lips moving silently across the backs of others against whom they lay huddled, prayed in confusion —mentally murmuring Grace or a childhood refrain as though it were the Lord’s Prayer—prayed for the strength to stay where they were, to suppress that nameless thing fluttering within them.

The bombardment lasted an hour and twenty minutes, and then Haruna and Konga and their nine sister furies masked their guns and sailed north.

The bombers remained until dawn.

And at dawn Pistol Pete resumed action.

But the Marines and soldiers came above ground anyway. There had been no attack, and who would fear a six-incher after having felt the lash of 14-inch naval rifles?

They were dull-eyed and dazed, but they were already pluming themselves on having “really had it rough,” already forgetting the fierce vows of the night in the profane oaths with which they asked God to take a look at the size of those 14-inch base plates and enormous shell fragments that were displayed to them by day.

The airfield was a shambles. The main strip was unusable. Of 38 bombers, only four survived the shelling. But these four went roaring skyward from Fighter Strip One to strike at the Japanese transports which had put Maruyama’s troops ashore during the night. They sank one, and flew back to an airfield where Marine engineers and Seabees were already hauling fill to the big strip. Bulldozers were butting earth into yawning shell-craters and anxious squadron commanders were conferring with repair officers on the chances of getting airborne.

“What’s left, Lieutenant?”

“You’d need a magnifying glass to find it, Colonel.”

“Well, start using one then. How about Number 117?”

“Her? Oh, she’s great—wasn’t even scratched. Except that she needs an engine change. Other than that, all she needs is both elevators, both stabilizers, the right auxiliary gas tank, right and center section flaps, right aileron, windshield, rudder, both wheels and the brake assembly. But she’s still in one piece, sir, and I guess we can get her up in six days.”

“Six days!”

“Dammit, Colonel, back in the States it’d take six months to do it!”

“All right, all right—but let’s keep those junk-pickers of yours busy.”

They patched together ten more bombers that day. They filled gas tanks by hand, hauled bomb trailers by hand, and lifted the big eggs into the racks with straining, sweating bodies. They did this while Japanese bombers swept over Henderson Field again and again, for Cactus Air Force must be ready to go by the next day, when the remaining Japanese cargo ships would surely return to unload General Maruyama’s supplies.

And then it was discovered that they were running out of gasoline.

Not even the arrival of six more Dauntlesses that afternoon of October 14 raised the drooping spirits of men who heard that news.

General Geiger began issuing orders. He sent a flight of Army B-17’s back to Espiritu Santo, for the Flying Fortresses drank too much gasoline. He ordered the tanks of wrecked planes drained. He sent out a search party to find a cache of 400 drums of gasoline which had been buried outside the airfield in the early days. He instructed Marine air transports to fly in nothing but gasoline. He got fast destroyers headed toward Guadalcanal with more drums lashed to their decks. He called off individual fighter sallies to husband his strength, for he wanted to use all that he had at dawn the next day.

But during the night the big cruisers Chokai and Kinugasa sped down The Slot to enter the Bay and hurl 752 eight-inch shells into Henderson and its defenders. At dawn, Marines standing atop the southern ridges looked westward to a place called Tassafaronga to contemplate the chilling spectacle of six squat Japanese ships calmly going about the business of unloading supplies.

Behind them on the battered airfield there were but three Dauntless dive-bombers able to fly.

“Always pray, not that I shall come back, but that I will have the courage to do my duty,” wrote Lieutenant Anthony Turtora to his parents on a day before his squadron came to Guadalcanal.

In the daylight of October 15, Lieutenant Turtora climbed into the cockpit of his patched-up Dauntless and flew down to Tassafaronga to do his duty. He did not come back. But he and many others of the same spirit did what they set out to do.

By ten in the morning, after a flurry of single-plane sallies, the patchwork, ragtag Cactus Air Force was rising to the attack. It was incredible. They had no right to be airborne. Departing Chokai and Kinugasa had assured the transports that American airpower was now as defunct in fact as in the communiques of Imperial Headquarters. But here they were coming with the sun glinting off their wings—Wildcats, Dauntlesses, Avengers, Army P-39’s and P-400’S, and later Flying Forts from Espiritu. Henderson mechanics had not slept for three days but they had made good their vow to salvage all but bullet holes. Thousand-pound and goo-pound bombs fell among the Japanese ships and beached supplies, bullets flayed and scattered enemy shore parties—while Marines on the ridges wildly cheered the Tassafaronga parade. And then, a great shout of delight broke from their throats to see a clumsy Catalina flying boat lumber into the air with two big torpedoes under her wings.

It was the Blue Goose, General Geiger’s personal plane.

Mad Jack Cram was at the controls. Major Cram had never heard of a PBY making a daylight torpedo attack before, nor had he ever fired torpedoes. But he had flown into Guadalcanal at dusk of the preceding day and been told that there were no Avengers to use the big fish nestled beneath his wings. In that case, he replied testily, he would launch them himself. He had received five minutes’ instruction from a fighter pilot whose brother flew a torpedo bomber, and then, gathering his crew, had climbed into the big Cat.

Now Cram was nursing his ship up. He made for a rendezvous with eight fighters and a dozen Dauntlesses a few miles east of Henderson, far from 30 Zeros flying cover for the ships. Major Duke Davis’ Wildcats were roaring down the runway behind him, taking off even as Pistol Pete ripped at the field again.

The Dauntlesses were at 9,000 feet. They were going over. The lead plane rolled over on its back, flashing down. The Zeros above them began peeling off, riding them down. Flak rose from Tassafaronga. The Blue Goose was going over. She was almost vertical, going for a Japanese transport a mile away. Cram rode the controls with his eyes devouring the speedometer needle. A Catalina was built for 160 miles an hour. Blue Goose was coming down at 270. Her great ungainly wings wailed and flapped in an agony of stress. She would surely come apart.