• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1976 0

the score under attack by four Wildcats from Henderson, whose machine guns were a welcome addition to the order of battle for the marines. A trio of Cates’s tanks rolled in that afternoon. “We watched these awful machines as they plunged across the spit and into the edge of the grove. It was fascinating to see them bustling amongst the trees, pivoting, turning, spitting sheets of yellow flame. It was like a comedy of toys, something unbelievable, to see them knocking over palm trees, which fell slowly, flushing the running figures of men from underneath their treads, following and firing at the fugitives,” the correspondent Richard Tregaskis wrote. By 5 p.m., about sixteen hours after it had started, most of the Japanese force, more than eight hundred men, lay dead, for thirty-four marines killed and seventy-five wounded. Japanese prisoners numbered just fifteen. Only a few escaped back into the jungle, no doubt to tell sober tales of the Marine Corps’ proficiency with massed defensive firepower. Observing vacantly as the disaster unfolded, Ichiki himself appears to have been a suicide, last seen by one of his men walking straight toward the American lines.

At first Major Mangrum, the dive-bomber squadron commander, missed the significance of the affair. “We thought it was just a Fourth of July celebration about a mile and a half from us, and went on to sleep. We found the next day that our Marines had killed some 830-odd Japs over there, and then we figured that it was really somebody shooting at somebody!” The stout performance of Vandegrift’s men enabled Mangrum to get about his own work without delay. His pilots flew four-plane patrols all the next day to acquaint themselves with the area. August 20 and 21 were a boost to marines who had been largely unsupported by U.S. airpower for two weeks. Boasting their first victory in close-quarters fighting and now in possession of an air force all their own, they readied themselves for the struggle ahead with hopeful and defiant hearts.

When news of the Army’s failure reached Truk, it “shook Yamamoto,” wrote one of his destroyer captains, Tameichi Hara. Meeting in his cabin aboard the super battleship Yamato with task force commanders Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo and Vice Admiral Nobutake Kondo, Yamamoto directed the Combined Fleet to gather its considerable assets and head south to confront what was clearly a significant commitment of American force. He drew up a complex and powerful order of battle. Down from Truk, into the seas east of the Solomons chain, would steam four separate combat task forces: a Striking Force under Nagumo with the large carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku and their escorts; Rear Admiral Hiroaki Abe’s Vanguard Group, with the battleships Hiei and Kirishima, three heavy cruisers, a light cruiser, and six destroyers; the Diversionary Group, consisting of the light carrier Ryujo, a cruiser, and two destroyers; and the Support Group, with the old battleship Mutsu, a seaplane tender, and four destroyers.

Clinging to an unrebuttable belief that the destroyed landing force under Colonel Ichiki would somehow yet seize the airfield, the 17th Army decided to send down the remaining fifteen hundred men of Ichiki’s regiment. An additional thousand Japanese marines—a Special Naval Landing Force—were embarked in three transports escorted by eight destroyers of Admiral Tanaka’s Destroyer Squadron 2. The Japanese carriers would operate east of the Slot, sweeping the seas of their American counterparts, then turn in support of Tanaka’s landing force. This Japanese force nearly rivaled in combat power the group sent to seize Midway. Neither side had a firm idea where the other’s carriers were. Fletcher and his flattops were steaming about 250 miles southeast of Guadalcanal, staying beyond range of enemy air attack, where they could refuel when necessary and send air search patrols over the Slot to supplement the work of the longer-range PBYs and B-17s. Scout pilots flying from Henderson Field faced maddening technical difficulties. One day their radio communications were