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Carrier Task Force (Task Force 61)

Rear Adm. Thomas C. Kinkaid

TASK FORCE 16

Enterprise (CV)

(Rear Adm. Kinkaid)

South Dakota (BB)

Portland (CA)

San Juan (CLAA)

Cushing (DD)

Preston (DD)

Smith (DD)

Maury (DD)

Conyngham (DD)

Shaw (DD)

Porter (DD)

TASK FORCE 17

Hornet (CV)

(Rear Adm. George D. Murray)

Northampton (CA)

Pensacola (CA)

San Diego (CLAA)

Juneau (CLAA)

Morris (DD)

Anderson (DD)

Hughes (DD)

Mustin (DD)

Russell (DD)

Barton (DD)

Battleship Task Force (Task Force 64) (off Rennell Island)

Rear Adm. Willis A. Lee

Task Force 64

Washington (BB)

(Rear Adm. Lee)

San Francisco (CA)

(Rear Adm. Norman Scott)

Helena (CL)

Atlanta (CLAA)

Aaron Ward (DD)

Benham (DD)

Fletcher (DD)

Lansdowne (DD)

Lardner (DD)

McCalla (DD)

The American scout pilots who spotted Nagumo’s carriers were quickly intercepted and driven into the clouds by the enemy combat air patrol. Two other Enterprise Dauntlesses heard the sighting report, navigated to locate the enemy fleet, and winged over into steep dives. Targeting the light carrier Zuiho, Lieutenant Stockton B. Strong and Ensign Charles B. Irvine planted a five-hundred-pound bomb into the after part of her flight deck. The fifty-foot hole would knock her out of the fray, but her strike pilots were already aloft, winging toward Kinkaid’s carriers.

The two American carriers embarked 137 operational planes between them (64 fighters, 47 dive-bombers, and 26 torpedo bombers). Their four Japanese counterparts carried 194 (76 fighters, 60 dive-bombers, 57 torpedo bombers, and a reconnaissance plane). But more important than numbers was the speed with which planes could locate and strike their targets. With this small but telling first blow, which destroyed the Zuiho’s arresting gear and robbed her ability to recover aircraft, the Battle of Santa Cruz was joined.

The Japanese in the Battle of Santa Cruz

Support Force

Vice Adm. Nobutake Kondo

ADVANCE FORCE

Vice Adm. Kondo

Junyo (CV)

Kongo (BB)

Haruna (BB)

Atago (CA)

Takao (CA)

Myoko (CA)

Maya (CA)

10 destroyers

STRIKING FORCE

Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo

Shokaku (CV)

Zuikaku (CV)

Zuiho (CVL)

Kumano (CA)

8 destroyers

VANGUARD FORCE

Rear Adm. Hiroaki Abe

Hiei (BB)

Kirishima (BB)

Suzuya (CA)

Tone (CA)

Chikuma (CA)

Nagara (CL)

7 destroyers

For commanders making split decisions amid great uncertainty, it was far from clear which approach prudence urged: sending out planes to strike as quickly as they left the carrier deck, or having them gather in strength near their carriers before turning out after the enemy. With the two U.S. task forces operating independently, separated by about ten miles, it was not easy to combine the aircraft formations in any event. The pilots on the Enterprise received conflicting instructions on that score. What ensued was far from an orderly affair.

With the Japanese two hundred miles distant, fuel was too precious to burn circling to rendezvous. The principal strikes from the Hornet and Enterprise were hastily launched and ordered to seek the Japanese as soon as they were airborne. An Enterprise flight deck crewman held aloft a sign—“PROCEED WITHOUT hORNET”—indicating that each carrier’s strike group was on its own. By eight twenty, a gaggle of twenty-seven Dauntlesses, twenty Avengers, and twenty-three Wildcats, loosely organized in three groups, was winging after Kondo.

The leading American planes were airborne for barely thirty minutes when the Japanese strike came within view on a reciprocal flight path. Thus began an impromptu melee as nine Zeros peeled off from escort duty and dove down on the American flight about sixty miles northwest of the U.S. carriers.

The commander of Torpedo Squadron 10, Lieutenant Commander John A. Collett, flying in the leading four-plane section of Avengers, felt his aircraft shudder and his starboard wing dip. As the turret gunner opened up with his fifty-caliber machine gun, Collett’s radioman, Thomas C. Nelson, Jr., got no response from his pilot over the intercom. Collett, forced to abandon his burning cockpit,