Inferno - Max Hastings [164]
At 2:16 a.m., the Japanese ceased fire, having achieved a crushing victory inside half an hour. There was a heated debate on the bridge of the flagship about whether to press on and attack the now defenceless American transports beyond, off Guadalcanal. Mikawa decided that it was too late to regroup his squadron, make such an assault, then before daylight withdraw out of range of American carrier aircraft, which he wrongly supposed were at hand. Amid a sky dancing with lightning in a tropical rainstorm, the Japanese turned for home. Chaos among the stricken Allied warships persisted to the end: at dawn, an American destroyer fired 106 5-inch shells at a cruiser before discovering that its target was the crippled Canberra. When it was decided that the Australian warship must be sunk, U.S. destroyers fired a further 370 rounds into the hulk before being obliged to use torpedoes to end its agony. The only consolation for the Allies was that an American submarine torpedoed and sank the Kako, one of Mikawa’s heavy cruisers, during its withdrawal after the action.
In the Guadalcanal anchorage, Admiral Turner continued offloading supplies for the marines until noon on 9 August, when to the deep dismay of the men ashore he removed his transports until more air cover became available. Reviewing the disaster off Savo, he wrote: “The navy was still obsessed with a strong feeling of technical and mental superiority over the enemy. In spite of ample evidence as to enemy capabilities, most of our officers and men despised the enemy and felt themselves sure victors in all encounters under any circumstances … The net result of all of this was a fatal lethargy of mind … We were not mentally ready for hard battle. I believe that this psychological factor as a cause of our defeat was even more important than the element of surprise.” The U.S. Navy learned its lessons: never again in the war did it suffer such a severe humiliation. And the critical reality, which soon dawned on the Japanese, was that yet again one of their admirals had allowed caution to deprive him of a chance to convert success into a decisive strategic achievement. The lost Allied cruisers could be replaced; the landing force was able to hold on at Henderson Field because its supporting amphibious shipping remained unscathed, and soon returned to Lunga Bay. Savo would be redeemed.
The Japanese were slow to grasp the importance of the American commitment to Guadalcanal. They drip fed a trickle of reinforcements to the island, who were thrown into repeated frontal attacks, each one insufficiently powerful to overwhelm the precarious marine perimeter. The Americans holding Henderson Field and the surrounding tropical rain forests found themselves locked in an epic ordeal. Visibility amid an almost impenetrable tangle of vines and ferns, giant hardwoods and creepers, was seldom more than a few yards. Even when gunfire was temporarily stilled, leeches, wasps, giant ants and malarial mosquitoes inflicted their own miseries. The intense humidity made fungal and skin infections endemic. Marines encountering the jungle for the first time were alarmed by its constant noises, especially those of the night. “Whether these were birds squawking … or some strange reptiles or frogs, I don’t know,” said one man, “but we were terrified by any noise because we’d been told that the Japanese signaled each other in the jungle by imitating bird calls.”
Amid incessant rainstorms, they bivouacked in mud, which became a curse of the campaign, and endured short rations and dysentery. Nervous men not infrequently shot one another. There was a steady stream of combat-fatigue evacuees.