World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC: Guadalcanal’s Week

This week, the eleventh of the Battle of the Solomons, the U.S. was confronted by some figures and a crisis: U.S. Marines, soldiers and sailors had damaged 51 and sunk eleven ships and destroyed 340 planes in the Solomons area since Aug. 7, while their own announced losses had been only a fraction as high. But the U.S. forces were in trouble as they had not been since Bataan fell. Against the Guadalcanal beachhead held by Marines (plus some recent Army arrivals) the Japs poured wave on wave of cruisers, destroyers, planes and transports brimming with men.

The week’s fighting, as summarized by Navy communiqués, was practically continuous. First off some Marine planes damaged two cruisers while others bombed anti-aircraft installations and strafed seaplanes at the enemy’s Rekata Bay, 115 miles north of Guadalcanal. The Jap came back at Henderson Field with 35 bombers and 30 fighters. Twelve were shot down at a cost of only two U.S. fighters. The Marines managed to enlarge their three-by-six-mile territory on 25-by-80-mile Guadalcanal. At night the Jap landed more reinforcements on either side of the Marines’ toehold. The Navy brought up a task force in an attempt to stop these landings; it sank a Jap cruiser, four destroyers and a transport, lost only one destroyer.

> Returning to Pearl Harbor from Guadalcanal, Admiral Nimitz was confident that the men on the spot “will hold what they have and eventually start rolling northward.”

Daily, General MacArthur’s heavy bombers hit Jap reinforcement bases to the north. U.S. reinforcements arrived and unloaded just before the Jap returned with a battleship-supported surface force, proceeded to bombard Henderson Field at will.

That night the Jap Navy was back again, lobbing more shells into U.S. shore positions. U.S. torpedo boats went into action for the first time, probably hit a cruiser.

> In Washington Secretary Stimson announced that Army reinforcements (ground and air) had been sent to Guadalcanal under command of Major General Millard F. Harmon.

Closer & Closer. Early in the morning of Oct. 15 the Jap swept past little Savo Island, was able to make daylight landings for the first time on the northwest tip of Guadalcanal, only 15 miles from the Marines’ toehold. He paid heavily. Haggard American flyers hit a battleship, fired three transports that still burned late that afternoon. But the Jap still came. He lost 17 more planes in one attack on Henderson Field. At week’s end the Jap landed artillery and brought it close enough to shell U.S. positions, now under attack from land, sea and air. The Jap was willing, and apparently able, to pay the price. Near Shortland Island, 300 miles north of Guadalcanal, he held ready a heavy concentration of ships.

This week U.S. warships again moved in, blew up ammunition the Jap had just landed on Guadalcanal’s northwest tip. The Jap retaliated by sending 40 planes at Henderson Field. Grumman Wildcat fighters clawed down 19 of them, lost only two of their own.

In Washington Secretary Knox said only that he hoped and expected that the Americans would hold.