Neptune's Inferno_ The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal - James D. Hornfischer [78]
The problems Yamamoto faced were those that plagued every commander in the machine age, when ships were more powerful than they had ever been before, but were effectively tethered to bases by their insatiable need for fuel. Situated much like the Americans were, waging war six thousand miles from home, the Japanese struggled all the more because of the large investment of pride they had made in the ships that were least amenable to operating at high tempo. That pride manifested itself in doctrine that vested supremacy in battleships: The Japanese fleet had been created under the idea that it would win a decisive battle over the Americans, at a time and place of its choosing. The pieces were in place. The battleships Yamato, Mutsu, Hiei, and Kirishima were all in the theater at Truk, backstopping Nagumo’s roaming carriers. If the idea of sidelining their heaviest naval armor was dismaying to the Americans, it was downright intolerable to the Japanese, who counted on them to win the “decisive battle.”
The Japanese Army’s hubris and ambition were part of the problem. Famed for its iron discipline, it failed to discipline its ends to its means. The 17th Army stubbornly refused to abandon its failing bid to cross New Guinea’s central range and seize Port Moresby. This strained both resources and attention. The Imperial Japanese Navy saw the limitations more clearly. “Unless Guadalcanal is settled,” Ugaki wrote, “we cannot hope for any further development in this area.” A continuous realignment of means with shifting ends took place as both sides wrestled with complexities of the battlefield that were seldom apparent at the game table.
On September 11, Turner and McCain met with General Vandegrift to plan their resistance to an expected Japanese attack that the U.S. fleet would be in no position to stop. Early that morning, Ghormley wrote Nimitz again to recount the deficits and laxities of the various components of SOPAC, “SITUATION AS I VIEW IT TODAY IS EXTREMELY CRITICAL.” Not wanting the carriers to seek battle unnecessarily, Ghormley ordered Noyes to keep them south of 12 degrees South latitude, about 150 miles south of Henderson Field. With land-based air strength on Guadalcanal down to eleven Wildcats and twenty-two Dauntlesses, once again the marines were left to their devices to endure air attacks, bombardment by naval gunfire, and seaborne landings of enemy reinforcements. On the night of September 13, the defenders of Henderson Field faced their most serious test yet.
That night—just as, on the other side of the world, the earth shook from the German assault on Stalingrad—Vandegrift’s marines faced some seventeen hundred Japanese troops charging their positions about a mile south of the airfield. Skillfully dug in on a high ridge soon to be named in his honor, Lieutenant Colonel Merritt Edson mounted a determined defense, coordinating artillery and mortars with the close-in work of his riflemen. The tenacity of the Japanese was unnerving, their nearness to victory harrowing. They briefly overran a second airstrip under construction east of Henderson Field, named Fighter One. A patrol of infiltrators was killed within fifty feet of General Vandegrift’s tent. Though the casualties of this battle were poorly recorded—the Japanese lost around eight hundred men, as against a hundred or so for the Americans—the Battle of Edson’s Ridge was another resounding victory for the marines. Nevertheless, the savagery and determination of the Japanese attack suggested grim things to come if the nighttime reinforcements were allowed to flow. American reinforcements were on the way.