Neptune's Inferno_ The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal - James D. Hornfischer [234]
The last group to bear the designation Task Force 18 had been the star-crossed unit containing the Wasp, Vincennes, and Quincy, all of them now lost. The Chicago was a blooded veteran of these waters, too, having served, on the night it all began, as the interim flagship of Rear Admiral Crutchley’s southwestern cruiser screen. Her captain at the time, Howard D. Bode, had assumed temporary command when his British superior left station on August 9 to confer with Turner and Vandegrift about the sightings of Japanese ships and the imminent withdrawal of Fletcher’s carriers. Making contact with a mysterious squadron, then taken under fire and torpedoed in the bow, Bode’s ship had steamed away from the action, searching for phantoms as Gunichi Mikawa made his lethal run.
Now, under a new captain, the Chicago stood in harm’s way again. The flames on the water from the fuel of the crashed Betty cast her as a lucrative silhouette for other pilots. They lined up on her and dropped. Two of their torpedoes struck the cruiser on the starboard side, collapsing compartments and stilling three of her four screws. The ship’s crew labored to flood port side tanks to bring her back from a starboard list. The Louisville took her in tow.
The following morning, Task Force 18 huddled around the Chicago as relays of Wildcats from the two escort carriers, and the Enterprise, too, tried to shield her from follow-up attacks. But there was no denying the Japanese this prize. After an early-afternoon chess match between search planes from Rabaul and the American combat air patrol, Japanese strike aircraft found the Chicago again around 4 p.m. It was unfortunate that most of the other ships of the group had been ordered to withdraw to Efate. The Chicago needed help against the planes. The Japanese bombers put four more torpedoes into the stricken cruiser. She rolled over and sank within twenty minutes, taking sixty-two officers and men to their graves.
THE REMOVAL OF GIFFEN’S cruiser group from the order of battle on February 1 was a boon to Operation KE. That day a force of twenty destroyers under Rear Admiral Hashimoto, who had succeeded Raizo Tanaka as commander of the Reinforcement Unit and who had fought Willis Lee the night of November 14, departed from Shortland Island for the first run at evacuating Guadalcanal’s garrison. Labeled by long habit, the Reinforcement Unit had a mission now that was quite the opposite of what its name suggested.
As Hashimoto plunged south, aircraft from Henderson Field spied him north of Vella Lavella in the early afternoon. Soon swarms of Cactus Air Force planes were slashing at his ships, ninety-two planes in two waves. A near miss smote the destroyer Makinami, forcing the detachment of two more destroyers to stand by her. A second destroyer was hit and forced to turn back as well. After nightfall, Tulagi’s PT boats piled in. The remaining Japanese destroyers contended with eleven of them attacking in pairs and trios. Lieutenant John Clagett’s PT-111 was taken under fire by the destroyer Kawakaze. One shell struck home, and the boat exploded into flames that claimed two men. The PT-37, hit three times and set afire, went down with her entire crew save one. The PT-123 was attacked by a Pete reconnaissance floatplane, which deftly planted a bomb on her fantail, sinking her in flames.
Despite the opposition, Hashimoto got six destroyers through to Cape Esperance, and six more to Kamimbo Bay. Small boats from the destroyers motored to shore to begin gathering the men of the 17th Army. This first evacuation run would recover 4,935 men, most of them emaciated and disease-ridden. On February 4, a second run extracted 3,921 more, including the three-star generals Harukichi Hyakutake and Masao Maruyama, the commanders of the 17th Army and the 2nd (Sendai) Division, respectively.
General Patch was thoroughly fooled by the deception. On the seventh, he announced that the two recent runs of the Tokyo Express had landed more troops—an additional regiment with supplies, he said. That same