BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC: Victory off Guadalcanal

Last week the Japs had a big edge on naval strength in the South Pacific. This week that edge had been whittled down, particularly in the vital cruiser category. As if to answer critics of the Navy , the forces under Vice Admiral William F. (“Bull”) Halsey met the Japs and slugged it out. Three bloody days later the Japs were retreating northward from Guadalcanal waters and the Navy had won one of the most satisfactory victories of the war.

The Results. Jap losses: one battleship (the first claimed by the Navy), three heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, five destroyers, twelve transports. U.S. losses: two light cruisers, six destroyers. Another Jap battleship and six destroyers were damaged. (The Navy does not ordinarily announce damage to its own ships.)

The Approach. Early in the week General MacArthur’s bombers flew over the northern Solomons and reported the Jap convoy steaming toward Guadalcanal—”packed to the gunwales. . . . We were never able to view the entire thing at one time.” There were other harbingers of a big attack. One day 35 dive-bombers screened by 17 Zeros attacked Guadalcanal’s Henderson Field. Next day 31 Jap planes, 23 of them carrying torpedoes, tried to hit Navy forces that were shelling Jap positions. U.S. Wildcats shot down 30.

“Bull” Halsey, the old carrier task-force specialist, now almost without aircraft carriers, braced himself.

The Japs’ mighty convoy sped on. Their naval forces bore down from the north; transports, assembled at Buin and Rabaul, sailed on the right flank.

The Action. The first Japanese naval force included two battleships of the Kongo class, two heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, ten destroyers (no carriers were mentioned). This force slithered into three groups, primed to bombard Henderson Field. This was no repetition of Aug. 8-9, when the U.S. lost three heavy cruisers and the Australians one in a surprise night attack. This time Halsey apparently obtained the surprise. His guns opened at point-blank range; his torpedoes went home. In the resultant confusion two of the Jap groups fired on one another.

Rear Admiral Daniel J. (“Uncle Dan”) Callaghan was killed in this action, the third U.S. admiral to lose his life in battle (the others: Rear Admirals Isaac Kidd and John Wilcox).

Some Jap Navy units came back about 24 hours later to pave the way for troop landings. Halsey’s land-based airmen went out to meet the transports, sank eight of twelve. The remaining Jap transports went on toward Guadalcanal. The U.S. warships closed in again. Next morning four more transports were found beached at Tassafaronga, seven and a half miles west of Henderson Field. Presumably some of their troops had landed under fire during the night. But the Jap armada had fled.

Significance. Last week’s battle was not, as some reporters hastily proclaimed it, the greatest naval battle of the war. That distinction still belongs to Midway. It was the greatest surface battle, and it cost the Japs more men than Midway—one estimate said three-quarters of the 30,000 involved. The Japs can afford to lose men, but they cannot afford a battleship and five cruisers. The Japs have now lost at least 18 cruisers to the U.S. Navy, which means trouble for any fleet. Last week brought the Jap a good stiff lacing but it did not mean that he could not have still another try at Guadalcanal.