Robert Leckie - Strong Men Armed

Cram hauled back on the stick. Blue Goose began to level off at 1,000 feet. Cram went over again. Blue Goose came screaming in at 75 feet, flashing past two transports, shuddering at the antiaircraft burst that knocked off her navigation hatch. Now Cram was sighting off his bow at a third transport. He jerked the toggle release. The first torpedo splashed in the water and began its run. Cram yanked again. The second fell, porpoised, righted—and followed the first into the transport’s side.

Five Zeros quit the dogfight to go after Blue Goose. Cram stood the plane on its wing and banked for Henderson Field. Behind him the transport was sinking. But the Zeros were around him, taking turns at making passes at his tail. Cram roller-coasted his ship, diving and rising, diving and rising, while the Zeros raked him homeward. Blue Goose was over the Henderson main strip, but Cram was going too fast to get down. He made for Fighter One, Blue Goose now wheezing through a hundred holes. Still the Zeros struck at his tail.

Cram began putting Blue Goose down. A Zero climbed his tail, just as Lieutenant Roger Haberman was also bringing his smoking Wildcat into the landing circle with lowered wheels.

Wheels still down, Haberman completed his turn, came in behind the Zero and shot it down.

Blue Goose ploughed up the strip in a glorious pancake landing. Mad Jack Cram and his crew emerged unharmed, though it would take much skill and patience to pull Blue Goose together again.

She had accounted for one of the three lost Japanese transports, and helped to drive the others away from Guadalcanal. The Tassafaronga tally-ho had struck a grievous blow at Lieutenant General Masao Maruyama. He had 20,000 men ashore, but he had lost most of the shells for his big guns, much of his food, and nearly all his medical supplies. The last was the worst of all, for beriberi and malaria had already begun to sweep among Maruyama’s earlier arrivals and one of those inveterate Japanese diarists was already setting down his lament:

The lack of sympathy by the headquarters is too extreme. Do they know we are left on the island? Where is the mighty power of the Imperial Navy?

It was coming down The Slot again.

Once again the flares, the night aglow with muzzle blasting, the long sleek shapes in the lagoon, American feet pelting madly in the darkness—and 1,500 shells raining in upon Henderson and the perimeter from the heavies Myoko and Maya.

It went on for an hour, and then there was silence. Fearfully at first, then with growing confidence, weary Marines climbed out of their pits and foxholes and stumbled to rearward sleeping holes that were only better in that they had ponchos drawn across them. Along the airfield the pilots dragged themselves to tents and cots. Among them was Major Galer. He looked around for his friend, Major Smith. He had been talking to him when the shelling began, and they had raced for the dugout together. Galer was worried. He went outside the tent and began calling:

“Smitty? Smitty? Where are you, Smitty?”

There was a momentary silence and then, faintly, from the airfield dugout came the infuriated voice:

“Here I am, dammit! Somebody bring me my shoes, will you? I’ll be damned if I’m going to walk barefooted over all those sharp-assed stones!”

There was another silence, and then, snickering, from Major Galer this time:

“How the hell’d you get out there, Smitty?”

At daylight of October 16, General Geiger calculated that he had lost 41 bombers and fighters to Japanese guns in the past three days, plus 16 more aircraft damaged. He had 25 bombers left in flyable condition, once repairs were made to the victims of Myoko and Maya, but he had only nine fighters. Geiger signaled Efate in the New Hebrides for hurry-up help.

In came 19 Wildcats and seven more Dauntlesses, led by Lieutenant Colonel Harold (Joe) Bauer—rugged Joe Bauer who had shot down five Japanese aircraft while “visiting Guadalcanal.” Bauer’s Squadron 212 came in just as the Japanese launched a savage dive-bombing attack on the field and the American ships in the Bay. Bauer’s gas tanks were nearly empty, but there were eight enemy Vals plummeting down on a wildly zigzagging destroyer.

Bauer went after them alone. He pulled back on the stick and went slashing up through his own antiaircraft fire and then came snarling down again. He shot down four Vals before he landed and he saved the destroyer. It was swift, as aerial combat goes, but it was then, and has remained, the most extraordinary feat of individual heroism among the Henderson airmen, men who already acclaimed Joe Bauer as the best fighter pilot the Marines had produced. Bauer got a Medal of Honor for it, and it boosted his individual score to 11.

So ended the six-day ordeal begun with the arrival of Pistol Pete. But Pistol Pete was losing his voice. The airmen had put his shells on the bottom, and this would matter greatly in the tide of battle now flowing back to land.

By mid-October of 1942 the struggle for Guadalcanal had become the preoccupation of the Empire. It had long since overshadowed the offensive against Port Moresby in New Guinea, where, in fact, the Australians had not only held but had pushed the Japanese 18th Army back, and had finally been joined by American soldiers in a drive on Buna-Gona.

It was now the 17th Army of Lieutenant General Haruyoshi Hyakutate which was receiving most of the men, munitions, airplanes and ships. At the conference which Fleet Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had called at Truk, General Hyakutate was assured that he would receive the support of the Combined Fleet. Yamamoto was giving him four aircraft carriers, four battleships, eight cruisers, twenty-eight destroyers, four oilers and three cargo ships under the divided command of Vice Admirals Chuichi Nagumo and Nobutake Kondo. Haruyoshi Hyakutate was no longer displeased with the southern Solomons assignment, when, on the night of October 17, a lighter brought him to Guadalcanal to take personal charge of the campaign.

The general landed near Kukumbona and made straight for Maruyama’s headquarters there. He asked Maruyama for his battle plan. He read it carefully. In the dim light, with his thin face and great round eyeglasses, Hyakutate looked something like a lemur.

Maruyama’s plan was a good one. It dovetailed with the Truk strategy whereby the Army would capture the airfield, while the Combined Fleet swept the waters clear of Americans and flew off aircraft to occupy Henderson Field. Maruyama planned three thrusts, two from the vicinity of the Matanikau and a surprise attack from the south.

On October 20 Colonel Oka’s force was to cross the Matanikau far above Nippon Bridge and work down the east bank to be in position to drive behind the exposed American left flank on the night of October 21.

On that same night the remainder of Colonel Nakaguma’s 4th Regiment was to cross the sandbar at the mouth of the Matanikau behind 11 tanks. The armor, drawn from the ist Independent Tank Company, was already hidden in a tunnel cut in the jungle on the edge of the sandbar. When the order came, the tanks would crash through the last few feet of underbrush like metal monsters bursting paper hoops.

On the following night, October 22, with the tanks safely across the river and firing at the Marines in the southern hills, with Oka sweeping around the American left to the airfield, General Maruyama would deliver the surprise crusher from the south.

He had already assembled his main body—the 16th and 29th Regiments of his own Sendai Division, plus part of the 230th Regiment from the 38th Division, some dismounted cavalry-men and a battery of mountain guns—and sent them to the headwaters of the Mamara River, which was about 10 miles south and a bit west of Kukumbona. From there they would march almost directly east until they were opposite the Marines in the hills behind the airfield. Then they would slip left or north to steal up on the Americans undetected. Engineers had already gone ahead of the foot troops to hack out the 35-mile jungle passage which the Sendai commander was already calling the Maruyama Road. The march was expected to take five days. Aerial photographs had shown no difficulties of terrain, and men as tough as the soldiers of the 29th—who had once marched 122 miles in three days, double-timing at the end—should be able to cover the distance easily.