Neptune's Inferno_ The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal - James D. Hornfischer [20]
The wisdom of higher rank did little to dispel either anticipation or foreboding. On Oahu on a summer evening, where the sunset cast the naval base in red and bronze hues, Chester Nimitz had a direct view of Pearl Harbor’s largely vacant dry docks where the cruisers—which belonged to the anachronistically named Scouting Force, once subservient to the battleships of the Battle Force but now powerfully unleashed on their own—had till recently been moored. In the months after the attack, the impression all around the harbor had been of a blooded fleet resurgent: battleships being righted and taken away for repair; carriers, cruisers, destroyers, subs, and auxiliaries coming and going. With the East Loch largely empty now, the fleet under way, Nimitz chafed about the future. He awaited word of the rendezvous in Fiji, and from King the latest news of what reinforcements could be marshaled to support the operation. From MacArthur, no doubt, the next shoe would soon drop in the maverick Southwest Pacific boss’s ongoing campaign to claim leadership of the war against Japan.
Two months ago, as his forces approached Midway, Nimitz had told his commanders, “You will be governed by the principle of calculated risk, which you will interpret to mean the avoidance of exposure of your force to attack by superior enemy forces without good prospect of inflicting … greater damage on the enemy.” As the day of the invasion came closer, he calculated and recalculated his exposure. What balance needed to be struck between prudent defense and aggressive offense? With three carrier task forces in the South Pacific and just one to protect Hawaiian waters, was he now exposed to another Japanese raid on Hawaii? What were the opportunities, and what were the risks?
With the departure of the Operation Watchtower task forces, Nimitz no longer had enough fighter planes at Pearl Harbor to resist a concentrated air attack. His submarine force was scattered to three horizons. Several more Marine Corps regiments were scheduled to reach the Pacific before year’s end, but they hadn’t even begun their amphibious training. Given inadequate fuel and a threadbare destroyer force, the battleships would not be sent to the combat theater. At the end of the day Watchtower was all a very big gamble.
Nimitz pondered these and other questions while shooting targets at the pistol range, a diversion recommended by his doctor as a way to channel the mounting stress. He was sociable enough with his staff, always game to swim or run with younger officers who were willing to be outperformed by an old man. Nimitz’s competitive instincts ran mostly in another direction. As he diverted his tired mind through the iron sights of a target pistol, he was really only concerned with being outperformed by the Japanese.
ON JULY 26, twelve days out from D-Day on Guadalcanal, the Watchtower amphibious task force arrived in the Fiji Islands for rehearsals. Three years before, in 1939, a similar scene had unfolded off a small Puerto Rican island leased by the Marine Corps. The cast of characters then included several of the principal players now, and they had seen firsthand the possibilities and pitfalls of an amphibious war. President Roosevelt, joined by his naval aide Captain Daniel J. Callaghan, observed from the polished teak deck of the heavy cruiser Houston.
Three years later now, at Fiji, it was a misfire. As the landing craft approached their objective, Koro Island, everyone could see that the shoreline was nothing like what was expected. The tide was lower than forecast, and thus the reefs higher. “I saw that its shore was ringed with a coral reef, black and sharp,” wrote a transport officer, “like shark’s teeth that would have chewed our boats to pieces.