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By Root 1889 0

this ignorance was to see four proud ships, two of them fitted with the new radar that had proven decisive in more capable hands, “picked off like mechanical ducks in a carnival shooting gallery,” as Samuel Eliot Morison would put it. Only the Honolulu, a sister ship to the Helena, had been able to avoid the burning wrecks ahead and zigzag clear of the torpedo water. The Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Pensacola were put out of action for almost a year.

Generous in defeat, Wright recommended all five of his cruiser captains for the Navy Cross, writing speciously that each had “contributed greatly to the destruction of all enemy vessels within range.” He made the wildly inaccurate claim that Task Force 67 had sunk two light cruisers and seven destroyers and praised the Northampton’s captain for the speed with which his crew abandoned ship. The award to Captain Roper of the New Orleans would puzzle survivors of that ship—“He did nothing heroic in any sense,” one would write. Having crushed Wright’s force, Tanaka faced a predicament comparable to the one his countryman Mikawa had faced in August. As he regrouped fifty miles from Guadalcanal’s beach, he found that his ships were low on torpedoes. With only two destroyers fully loaded, he decided he was no longer in shape to risk another fight. He gave the order to return to Rabaul. Though his reputation was high among Americans, Tanaka would take lumps at home for declining to exploit his victory by delivering his supplies to the island. Here as in August, the Americans, for all their failings, could interpret a ghastly result as a win.

Order of Battle—Battle of Tassafaronga

(November 30, 1942)

U.S.

TASK FORCE 67

Rear Adm. Carleton H. Wright

Minneapolis (CA) (flagship)

New Orleans (CA)

Pensacola (CA)

Northampton (CA)

Honolulu (CL)

Fletcher (DD)

Drayton (DD)

Maury (DD)

Perkins (DD)

Lamson (DD)

Lardner (DD)

Japan

REINFORCEMENT UNIT

Rear Adm. Raizo Tanaka

Naganami (flagship)

Takanami (DD)

Oyashio (DD)

Kuroshio (DD)

Kagero (DD)

Makinami (DD)

Kawakaze (DD)

Suzukaze (DD)

(Photo Credit: 40.1)

* * *

WITH THE IMPERIAL JAPANESE Army’s transport force decimated, and attrition to his destroyers reaching critical levels, Yamamoto was hard-pressed to provision the Imperial Army on Guadalcanal. The Japanese soldiers ashore were nourished by a withering vine. Of the thirty thousand men serving there at the end of November, it was estimated that just forty-two hundred were fit to fight. One three-thousand-man regiment reportedly had just sixty to seventy men capable of service. Admiral Ugaki called the cargo load of supplies landed in the last week of November “just chicken feed for thirty thousand men.” On December 3, fifteen hundred drums were delivered without heavy opposition from the American fleet, but only about a third of the drums were recovered by the troops. On December 7, the Tokyo Express ran again, eleven destroyers under Captain Torajiro Sato. Planes from Henderson harassed them, and eight PT boats roared in after them, too. It was an inconsequential skirmish, but the unexpected presence of enemy combat forces compelled the Japanese to withdraw.

As new American naval forces steamed toward the South Pacific, a decisive victory was no longer within Yamamoto’s grasp. Only after it had slipped from his fingers would he recognize the opportunity he had had within his reach in September and October. The time for the battle had passed. It had been preempted, if not won, by Scott, Callaghan, Lee, and, in his way, Wright. The U.S. Navy’s narrow victories of November allowed it to absorb a catastrophe like Tassafaronga. This defeat resembled the first one, the Battle of Savo Island, in that it shored up, at fearful cost, the position of the men on the island and allowed them to build up strength to fight in their own defense.

Tanaka’s final “drum runs” in December provoked no further large naval battles. No significant American formations were mustered to meet him, but he met fierce resistance from Henderson Field’s aviators and the PT boats from