Neptune's Inferno_ The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal - James D. Hornfischer [62]
The officers in Bob Hagen’s ship, the Aaron Ward, were slowly learning the foibles of the strange new piece of equipment in their chart room. The destroyer’s SC radar required its operator to point the antenna manually by turning a hand wheel. Its “A scope” displayed any contacts located on that particular bearing as spikes on an x–y axis, where x denoted range and y the strength of the signal and hence the size of the object. If there were many targets to track, the radar officer would be a busy man, slewing the transmitter back and forth to acquire them and plotting the data by hand. When the machinery failed, it required an inordinate amount of time for radiomen and electricians to put it back in order. In one respect it outperformed hopes: Because the boxy receiver-indicator console drew a lot of power and accumulated its heat, it offered a handy surface on which to keep a coffeepot warm.
Untroubled with new technology to master, the Japanese had refined the task of optical target spotting to lethal effect. After Mikawa’s masterly performance in the Battle of Savo Island, Admiral King’s staff could do little else but marvel: “It is to be hoped that we will profit by their example and in the future turn against them the lessons they have so ably taught us.”
Admiral King saw the need to relearn his trade from the ground up. He understood that in the art of war, amateurs talk tactics but professionals talk logistics. Ernest King was a professional. “The war has been variously termed a war of production and a war of machines,” he wrote. “Whatever else it is, so far as the United States is concerned, it is a war of logistics. The ways and means to supply and support our forces in all parts of the world—including the Army of course—have presented problems nothing short of colossal and have required the most careful and intricate planning. The profound effect of logistics on our strategic decisions are not likely to have full significance to those who do not have to traverse the tremendous distances in the Pacific. It is no easy matter in a global war to have the right materials in the right places at the right times in the right quantities.”
The path from Nouméa northward into the southern Solomons had an important waypoint in the New Hebrides, at the base of Espiritu Santo, about 625 miles south of Guadalcanal. On August 10, Ghormley designated it as a strongpoint for the support and reinforcement effort. Espiritu Santo, even less developed than Nouméa, offered plenty of space for expansion: wharves, cargo piers, airstrips, and anything else the 6th and 7th construction battalions would find the means to build. Rear Admiral McCain immediately saw its value as an airfield site; he directed the construction and ordered a five-thousand-foot runway cut ino the coconut plantation and jungle. Ghormley rerouted to Espiritu all of the equipment—a tug, two barges, a pontoon wharf, and ship-mooring buoys—once earmarked for the occupation of Santa Cruz, an original objective of Task One that was canceled in favor of landings on Guadalcanal. He directed construction of a large wharf with a timber crib sturdy enough to support a heavy crane, several piers for the rapid handling of light cargo, and a second channel nearer the airfield. The focal point of the entire logistical apparatus, of course, was the island that was the newest and most hazard-ridden property of the U.S. Marine Corps.
On August 12, a McCain staffer landed on Guadalcanal