Neptune's Inferno_ The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal - James D. Hornfischer [138]
On October 27, Halsey ordered the San Francisco and the Helena, escorted by several destroyers, to leave Task Force 64 and set course for Espiritu Santo, where they would escort three transports carrying reinforcements to Guadalcanal. Kelly Turner, having promised Vandegrift that the Marine commander’s requests for support “have received most earnest attention,” dispatched the fast transports Fuller and Alchiba from Nouméa to ferry a load of heavy artillery, ammunition, and stores. The 155-millimeter guns, set to arrive on November 2, would boost the infantry’s ability to counter the Japanese artillery that threatened Henderson Field from the surrounding hills. Another convoy carrying reinforcements from the 8th Marine Regiment would bolster Vandegrift’s order of battle and enable him to take the offensive ashore.
The detachment of these ships coincided with the dissolution of Admiral Ghormley’s staff. Halsey’s arrival at Nouméa meant the replacement not just of Ghormley, but also of everyone else in his headquarters. Given the idiosyncrasies of Halsey’s style, it was important for him to work with a handpicked team. It had been said only partly in jest that it took a certain type of sailor to serve well with Halsey: He didn’t want anyone who didn’t smoke, drink, or run around with women. Even if that were just playful rhetoric, it must have given a smile to Admiral King, whose wandering hands and eyes were well known to his peers. It certainly suited the first man from Ghormley’s headquarters, Dan Callaghan, his gregarious chief of staff, to find a seagoing combat command under Halsey. Promoted from captain to rear admiral just days before Operation Watchtower began, Callaghan was a seadog at heart. Halsey sent him back to sea in the San Francisco, which Norman Scott had until a few days before made his working home.
Writing the commanders of his surface units on October 30, Halsey observed that “enemy offensives since September 15 have followed the same general pattern”—the carriers operating within a rectangle of sea northeast of Malaita and their reinforcement convoys tracking in through the Slot, descending from the north-northwest. He pointed out that two or three days’ warning of an enemy naval force’s approach was usually available, thanks to the combined efforts of coastwatchers, submarines, and long-range air search. He emphasized the importance of coordinating search efforts with follow-up air and naval attacks. “Submit comment and proposals by earliest air mail,” he wrote.
Halsey had no way to know the full extent of the Japanese quandary. Increasingly, they were operating in a straitjacket zipped tight by the limitations on their supply and oil lifeline. The destroyers of the Tokyo Express made an average of six runs a month to ferry men, arms, and critical consumables to Guadalcanal’s northern coast, the typical run consisting of six destroyer-transports and two destroyers as combat escorts. Their capacity was entirely inadequate. The 17th Army required far more than thirty-six destroyer loads a month. General Hyakutake’s staff calculated its needs as 5 loads of supplies per night, or 150 every month. If the reinforcements of heavy weapons and supporting equipment were added to this, the necessary portage increased to eight hundred runs per month, plus twenty more from fuel-hungry seaplane tenders. As the historian Jonathan Parshall has calculated, that level of effort would have taken half of the Imperial Navy’s monthly allotment of fuel. Measured