The Conquering Tide (21 page)

The ridge—remembered later as “Edson's Ridge” or, alternately, “Bloody Ridge”—ran from northwest to southeast for a distance of some 1,000 yards. It rose to a series of bumps or spurs just a few hundred yards from the jungle tree line. Vandegrift deployed Colonel Merritt Edson's battalion of raiders and parachutists to dig into defensive positions on one of the forward spurs. A battery of howitzers was brought up from Lunga Point to provide fire support. Two battalions were kept in reserve.

Admiral Tanaka's “Rat Express” continued to run supplies and troop reinforcements into the island almost every night. Costly experience had taught Tanaka that he must not attempt daylight operations in air-striking range of Guadalcanal. To make matters worse, the Japanese navy's command setup in the region was in evident disarray, and Tanaka was receiving contradictory orders from the Combined Fleet and the two rival subordinate naval commands at Rabaul: the Eleventh Air Fleet and the Eighth Fleet. On August 29, a new invasion force under Major General Kiyotake Kawaguchi arrived at Shortland Island in the transport
Sado Maru
. Two nights later, General Kawaguchi and most of his force, about 3,000 men, were landed successfully from eight destroyers on a beachhead east of the marines, near Taivu Point. The rest of his force attempted to reach the island in landing barges from Gizo Harbor, a tactic Tanaka had warned against, to no avail. More than a dozen of these heavily loaded barges were caught in the open sea and sunk by sixteen SBDs of Scouting Squadron Five (VS-5 of the
Enterprise
). But Tanaka's persistent destroyer operations gradually added to General Kawaguchi's force. By September 12, it numbered more than 6,000 troops. They bivouacked around the villages of Kokumbona and Tasimboko, about twelve miles east of the American beachhead.

September 11 and 12 were as intense as any two-day period the marines had yet experienced. A large strike of G4Ms crossed overhead at noon and walked a pattern of bombs across the populated area just south of the field. Not enough fighters were aloft to break up the attack. That afternoon, twenty-four Wildcats of VF-5, made homeless by the torpedoing of the
Saratoga
, set down on Henderson Field. Their arrival was welcome, but it also put pressure on the gasoline reserve, which was running dangerously low. That night, the marines enjoyed especially heavy shelling by cruisers and destroyers in the sound. September 12 was one long unremitting series of Japanese air raids, and many marines spent the entire day in bomb shelters. At nine that night, the ships returned to give the Americans a three-hour working over with the big naval guns. Harold Buell recalled “a monstrous shelling on a scale unlike any before. . . . The shells were cutting trees off right over our heads, and the shrapnel was falling around us like hailstones. All of us in the trench survived, but the marines of VMSB-232 nearby were not so fortunate. A shell hit on top of their shelter, killing Lieutenants Rose and Baldinus and wounding two others. The whole thing was a nightmare.”
⁴²

Kawaguchi's attack on the ridge began at 7:30 p.m. on the thirteenth. A red flare was fired from the tree line, and a wave of Japanese soldiers charged Edson's line. The fighting quickly degenerated into a series of vicious hand-to-hand encounters. One wave of attackers followed another, and the weight of these repeated attacks threw the marines back to within a quarter mile of the airfield. A counterattack on Kawaguchi's east flank by the reorganized Parachute Battalion forced the Japanese to pull back into the tree line. Constant artillery fire by a battery of 105mm howitzers apparently claimed heavy casualties among the Japanese. “That night was hell: savagery on both sides,” recalled David Galvan, a radioman-gunner in one of the SBD squadrons. “That night everything was firing; nothing was held back. Shells went flying over our head: We were very close to the battle and could hear the artillery, the gunfire, the screaming.”
⁴³

At the height of the battle, small groups of Japanese soldiers broke through Edson's lines, and a few reached the edge of the airfield before they were cut down. Several SBDs were positioned so that their rear-facing, .30-caliber machine guns could be trained toward the ridge. A marine assigned to guard one of the SBDs killed an enemy soldier as he climbed onto the wing. “I knew that any Jap that got this far would try to destroy the plane by putting a hand grenade into the cockpit. So I just sat there waiting, and sure enough here came this gook right up onto the wing. I put my automatic piece against his chest and gave him a short burst—bastard never knew what hit him.”
⁴⁴
Vandegrift's command post, about 300 yards south of the ridge, came under direct attack at dawn, but the attackers—two soldiers and an officer wielding a samurai sword—were killed within direct sight of the general.

Morning found the Japanese in retreat and Edson's battalion in possession of the ridge. General Geiger sent up several P-400s to strafe the remaining enemy units. Patrols went into the jungle and killed a few stragglers, but Kawaguchi was in headlong retreat. More than 800 Japanese dead were counted on the ridge and adjacent positions. The total number of Japanese casualties was about 1,200, most of whom were killed in action or later died of wounds. The marines lost 143, killed and wounded combined.

The Japanese infantryman was fast losing whatever mystique he had earned in the early phase of the war. For more than twenty years, the Japanese army had emphasized “fighting spirit” over tactics or technology, and adopted the
banzai
charge as its main offensive doctrine. Against disciplined troops dug into fortified lines and supported by artillery, those tactics
were ruinous. Twice in three weeks, a fanatical bayonet charge had been repelled, with casualty loss ratios of about ten to one. Among the marines, spirits rose. They listened to Radio Tokyo's broadcasts with mordant good humor. At the village of Kukum, a big billboard was erected at a crossroads known as “Times Square.” On it was reported all of the news of the day, including the numbers of enemy aircraft claimed in air combat overhead and the latest baseball scores from home.

Morale was further boosted on September 18, when an unexpectedly large transport fleet anchored off Lunga Point and began disembarking supplies and 4,000 marine reinforcements (the 7th Marines). These fresh troops were warmly welcomed, as were the lavish quantities of food, medical supplies, ammunition, and construction equipment unloaded onto Beach Red. Martin Clemens later recalled, “We were terribly excited, and licked our chops at the prospect of a square meal.”
⁴⁵

T
HE
E
NTERPRISE
,
MAIMED AT THE
B
ATTLE
of the Eastern Solomons, had been obliged to part ways with the
Saratoga
and withdraw to Pearl Harbor for extensive repairs. Fletcher's Task Force 61 was soon reinforced by the arrival in the Solomons of two more carrier groups—Task Forces 17 and 18, built around the
Hornet
and the
Wasp
, respectively.

Ghormley deployed this powerful task force between San Cristobal and the Santa Cruz Islands, in a rectangular zone measuring approximately 160 miles (east-west) by 60 miles (north-south). In this “centrally-located” position, Fletcher could move quickly to counter any Japanese advance into the Solomons while also providing air cover to Turner's transport fleet as it ran supplies and reinforcements into Ironbottom Sound. But Ghormley's orders had the perilous effect of tying Fletcher down in a specific area. The carriers, ringed by their accompanying cruisers and destroyers, continually traversed the same waters—heading southeast at night, then reversing course and steaming northwest in the early morning hours. Enemy air and submarine reconnaissance was bound to discover these patterns and react accordingly. Captain Davis of the
Enterprise
reported to Nimitz on the quandary after his arrival in Pearl Harbor:

During the past month the strategic situation has required long continued presence of carrier task forces in limited areas within at
least approximate range of the enemy. Such risks, of course, must be accepted. They should, however, be minimized in every possible way. The percentage should always be played. The widest possible variation should be made in general location from day to day while still meeting strategic requirements. Higher speeds, even at some increase in fuel expenditures, should be used. There should be no hovering during a given day in the same general vicinity. . . . Occasional departure, whenever the strategic picture permits, entirely away from the area should be undertaken so as to leave the enemy guessing where we have gone and when and where we will appear next.
⁴⁶

Unhappily, these astute remarks were also prophetic. Knowing full well that the Americans must run convoys between Noumea, Espiritu Santo, and Guadalcanal, Admiral Yamamoto had deployed a scouting line of submarines 150 miles southeast of San Cristobal. The Allied sailors whose duty it was to navigate that submarine-infested corridor gave it a nickname: “Torpedo Junction.” On the last day of August, at 7:48 in the morning, the
Saratoga
took a single torpedo in her starboard side, just aft of the island. The explosion tore away her blister plating and destroyed the electrical controls for her propulsion system, bringing her to a dead stop. The blast injured a dozen men (including Fletcher) but killed none. Her destroyers scattered depth charges all around the task force, but the attacker (Japanese submarine
I-26
) dove deep and escaped.
Saratoga
's crew got the damage under control, and the carrier was able to limp away under her own power, but she would have to follow the
Enterprise
to Pearl Harbor for dry-dock repairs and would not get back into the war until November.
⁴⁷

The following two weeks brought almost daily submarine contacts, either by sound gear or by aerial sightings. On September 6, the pilot of a
Hornet
TBF Avenger, flying antisubmarine patrol over Task Force 61, caught sight of a torpedo track pointed at the
Hornet
and dropped a depth charge on it. The torpedo broached, veered off course, and detonated harmlessly. Another torpedo exploded prematurely a few seconds later. A third narrowly missed the
Hornet
, continued on its course, and also narrowly missed the battleship
North Carolina
. Later that afternoon, one of the
Hornet
's long-range scouts saw an enemy submarine on the surface and dropped depth charges on it, with uncertain results. The next day, as Nimitz reported to King, “Four different contacts, which may or may not have been false, kept the Task Force dodging most of the day.”
⁴⁸

In mid-September, Ghormley deployed his two remaining carrier groups to provide distant cover for the transport convoy carrying the 7th Marines to Guadalcanal. The reinforcements were landed successfully, but Task Force 61 again tested its luck in the treacherous waters of Torpedo Junction, and this time its luck ran short. On the afternoon of September 14, the
Wasp
—in company with the
Hornet
, the battleship
North Carolina
, and more than a dozen screening ships—was proceeding at 16 knots on the familiar northwesterly course. At 2:15 p.m., she turned into the wind to launch planes, then at 2:42 turned back toward her base course of 280 degrees. Before she had completed the turn, her lookouts sang out and pointed to three incoming torpedo tracks close off the starboard bow. The fish were on target and nearly home; the
Wasp
had no chance of evading any of the three.

The first struck home just forward of the island. The powerful blast lifted the entire ship and hurled her forward, flinging two F4F fighters into the sea and throwing hundreds of her crew from their feet. Ensign John Jenks Mitchell, a twenty-two-year-old Naval Academy graduate, was thrown 30 feet into the air and landed 60 feet away. He recalled the impact of the first torpedo as “a loud, unruly noise—something like a railroad train going up a flight of stairs—and the next thing I knew it was ten days later and I wanted a cigarette.” (From his hospital bed in Noumea, two weeks after his injury, Mitchell joked to a reporter: “I am thinking of putting in my chit to qualify for landings on the flight deck.”)
⁴⁹
The second and third torpedoes struck in quick succession, each causing the entire length of the ship to leap again. On the hangar deck, planes were lifted and dropped with such force that their landing gear was crushed, and two fighters that were triced up overhead broke loose and fell on the planes below.

The U.S. Navy could take justifiable pride in its damage-control equipment and training, and with a little luck the
Wasp
might have survived. Captain Forrest P. Sherman conned his stricken ship with sangfroid even while a maelstrom of secondary explosions blew debris around the bridge. He maneuvered the
Wasp
to put the wind on her starboard quarter so that the flames were blown forward and to port.
⁵⁰
That allowed many hundreds
of her crew to take refuge astern. Commander William C. Chambliss noted that the men reacted coolly and efficiently, “cracking their usual gags with their usual vivacity.”
⁵¹

But the
Wasp
had been struck at the worst possible moment in the most vulnerable part of her hull—near the aviation gasoline storage tanks, which exploded into incandescent flames. Having just launched planes, the
Wasp
's fuel lines were full and the fires traveled through the hoses to the forward part of the hangar deck. (The deadly predicament was similar to that of the Japanese aircraft carriers on the morning of June 4 at the Battle of Midway.) Secondary explosions occurred quickly and with devastating effect. In the hangar, the inferno enveloped fueled-up planes. Their wing tanks exploded, their bombs and torpedoes detonated, and their .30- and .50-caliber guns began firing haphazardly. Lieutenant Chester M. Stearns, an engineering officer, made his way up to the hangar deck and noted that a torpedo was roasting under a burning TBF Avenger. He dived flat on deck in time to protect himself against the powerful explosion. When he looked up, “neither plane nor torpedo nor deck were there.” Several bombs left on racks near the bomb-arming station had apparently detonated, leaving a “vast hole through [the] elevator pit,” with a “seething mass of flames.”
⁵²