Neptune's Inferno_ The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal - James D. Hornfischer [31]
At sunset, with the excitement of D-Day-plus-one waning, Task Force 62 reconfigured itself to confront the night. The carriers withdrew to their night patrol area south of Guadalcanal, out of range of enemy aircraft. At six thirty, Admiral Crutchley directed his heavy cruisers to take station guarding the two avenues into Savo Sound, on either side of Savo Island. The heavy cruisers Vincennes, Quincy, and Astoria, escorted by three destroyers, patrolled the entrance east of Savo Island, under command of the Vincennes skipper, Captain Frederick Riefkohl. The Chicago, joined by the HMAS Australia and the HMAS Canberra, watched the approach southwest of the island. The route into the sound from the east, through Sealark and Lengo channels, was defended by the San Juan, Australian light cruiser Hobart, and two destroyers. Closer to the transport anchorage, destroyers and destroyer-minesweepers guarded against incursions by submarines and torpedo boats. The destroyers Blue and Ralph Talbot were ordered to patrol north of Savo Island as early-warning radar pickets.
It was in the anticlimax of Saturday, August 8, less than forty-eight hours after the first contact of American boots with enemy-occupied Oceania, that the most potent Japanese threat would become manifest. Even as Admiral Fletcher prepared to execute the most controversial decision he would make as commander of the Operation Watchtower expeditionary force, a flashing Imperial Japanese Navy sword was sliding out of a scabbard just over the horizon.
5
Fly the Carriers
KELLY TURNER, THE COMMANDER OF TASK FORCE 62, THE AMPHIBIOUS force, was forged from the same hard brass as his mentor, Ernest J. King, whom he had served as director of war plans in the war’s first months. Turner was hard on subordinates, and carried himself with an edgy intensity. “Whenever he became disgusted,” a sailor who knew him wrote, “he would emit a small spitting sound, stamp his foot lightly and say ‘Balls!’ ”
But he could show warmth when he needed to. “I have seen him ‘blow up’ a junior officer and I was taken in,” a magazine reporter said, “till I saw the look in his eye and the smile that finally came.… He is aware of men’s sensitivities and he recognizes their abilities even when they occasionally annoy him. His men admit he is tough—he admits it himself—but they love to work for him.”
Given the problems that plagued the supply effort at the beach, Turner was fortunate that ground resistance was so light. His cargo ships did not have enough men embarked to haul crates and equipment for forty-eight hours straight. Without the benefit of docks, cranes, or other cargo-handling facilities on the virgin beach, it was impossible to unload directly to shore. Small boats had to ferry the cargo in, and when they reached the beach, hundreds of them gunwale-to-gunwale, human hands did the heavy lifting. Beyond the backbreaking nature of the work itself was the problem of organization and triage. According to the commander of the transport Hunter Liggett, “After dark, conditions reached a complete impasse.” It took waiting boats up to six hours for a chance to land.
The tremors of the interservice argument that would define the first two weeks of the operation arrived quickly. “No small share of the blame for this delay,” the commander continued, “which prolonged by nearly twenty-four hours the period when the ships lay in these dangerous waters, would seem to rest with the Marine Corps personnel and organization. The Marine Corps Pioneers, whose function it was to unload the boats and keep the beach clear, were far too few in numbers.” An officer