The Battle of Kula Gulf

Shortly before 2 a.m. on 6 July 1943 three American light cruisers opened fire on Japanese destroyers in Kula Gulf, a narrow stretch of water between the islands of New Georgia and Kolombangara in the central Solomon Islands. Within a few minutes the Japanese flagship was ablaze and sinking with the force commander on board. But before the Americans could claim victory, three Japanese torpedoes struck the side of the cruiser USS Helena. The ship, which had survived the attack on Pearl Harbor and two great night battles off Guadalcanal, went to the bottom. The Japanese lost two destroyers, but most of the troops they were carrying got ashore.

Background: New Georgia and the night convoys

Since the end of June the Americans had been fighting for New Georgia. After the landing at Segi Point on 21 June and the main landing on Rendova on 30 June, Admiral William Halsey’s divisions were crossing to the island itself to capture the Japanese airfield at Munda. The Japanese garrison of New Georgia, however, could count on reinforcements. These were brought by night in destroyers from Rabaul and from Buin on Bougainville to the base at Vila on Kolombangara, and from there in barges and boats across Kula Gulf to Bairoko on the north coast of New Georgia and on to Munda. The Americans knew these night runs from the days of Guadalcanal and called them the Tokyo Express.

To cut this route, the Americans decided to put a force ashore on the north coast of New Georgia. On the night of 4–5 July a task group under Rear Admiral Walden Ainsworth – the light cruisers Helena, Honolulu and St. Louis with destroyers – shelled Vila and Bairoko, covering the landing of a Marine Raider battalion and two infantry battalions at Rice Anchorage. That same night three Japanese destroyers that were to land troops on Kolombangara detected the Americans – the new destroyer Niizuki carried radar, which was still a rarity in the Solomons fighting – and fired a spread of torpedoes from more than 20 kilometres. One of them hit the destroyer USS Strong. The ship sank; another destroyer, Chevalier, came alongside and took off 241 sailors, while 46 were killed. The Japanese turned back without landing their troops.

Such accurate fire at so great a range came as a surprise to the Americans. They still did not realise that the Japanese oxygen-driven Type 93 torpedo, which they later dubbed the “Long Lance”, could run several tens of kilometres while leaving almost no wake. It was this weapon that had given the Japanese victory at the Battle of Tassafaronga in November 1942.

Two forces in the dark

Ainsworth was already heading east when, on the afternoon of 5 July, he received word from Halsey that another Japanese convoy was on its way to Kolombangara. He turned back. He had three cruisers and four destroyers: Nicholas, O’Bannon, Radford and Jenkins. Opposing him were ten destroyers under Rear Admiral Teruo Akiyama, commander of Destroyer Squadron 3, which had sailed from Buin. Seven of them were carrying some 2,600 troops with supplies; three – the flagship Niizuki, Suzukaze and Tanikaze – formed the escort.

After midnight on 6 July the Japanese entered the gulf. Akiyama first sent three transport destroyers – Mochizuki, Mikazuki and Hamakaze – straight to Vila, where they began unloading. Behind them came four more, Amagiri, Hatsuyuki, Nagatsuki and Satsuki, and last of all the three escorting ships. Niizuki’s radar warned the Japanese of the approaching enemy, but the Americans had been tracking them on their own radar screens since 1.47 a.m. Ainsworth formed his ships in line and at 1.57 a.m. ordered them to open fire on the nearest target, the three escorting destroyers.

The first minutes belonged to the Americans. Radar-directed fire hit Niizuki, which quickly became a burning wreck and sank with almost her entire crew of some 300 men and Rear Admiral Akiyama. The American ships, however, paid for this effectiveness. Helena had used up her whole stock of flashless powder the previous night and was now firing ordinary charges; every salvo lit the cruiser up in the darkness like a lighthouse. The destroyers Suzukaze and Tanikaze, hidden by the darkness and a smokescreen, each fired eight torpedoes.

At about 2.04 a.m. the first torpedo struck Helena on the port side beneath the forward turret. The explosion, possibly including that of a magazine, tore off her bow. The cruiser was still under way and her after guns were still firing, but two minutes later two more torpedoes struck the hull well below the waterline. The ship broke in two. Her captain, Captain Charles Cecil, ordered her abandoned. For some time the bow and stern still jutted above the water. On the other American ships nobody knew for a long while what had become of Helena; only after 3 a.m. did the radar of the destroyer Radford pick up her protruding bow.

The second phase and the unloading at Vila

Meanwhile the four destroyers of the second transport group returned to the fight. The Americans crossed their course, which allowed them to bring their entire armament to bear, but the Japanese ships escaped with minor damage; Hatsuyuki was hit by three shells that failed to explode. In the confusion Nagatsuki ran aground near Bambari Harbour on Kolombangara, about 8 kilometres north of Vila. In the morning her crew abandoned her, and during the day American aircraft finished off the wreck.

Despite their losses the Japanese accomplished their mission. The transport destroyers landed some 1,600 troops and 90 tonnes of supplies at Vila; the remaining men returned to Buin with the ships. At around 3.30 a.m. Ainsworth withdrew his cruisers towards Tulagi, leaving behind two destroyers to rescue survivors.

Helena’s survivors

Nearly a thousand men were in the water. The destroyers Nicholas and Radford began picking them up before 4 a.m., but three times they had to break off: first because of the returning Suzukaze and Tanikaze, which were looking for Niizuki; then at about 5.15 a.m. because of the destroyer Amagiri, with which they exchanged torpedoes and gunfire; and finally because of Mochizuki, returning from Vila. At dawn, fearing Japanese aircraft, the two ships withdrew with 735 survivors on board. They later received the Presidential Unit Citation for this action. They left four boats in the water.

Captain Cecil declined to board the destroyer and took command of the boats. Each of them towed a raft of men. After many hours of rowing, 88 sailors came ashore on New Georgia, a dozen or so kilometres from the American lines; the following morning the destroyer USS Gwin took them off.

The hardest fate befell those who remained at sea – on the still-floating bow of the ship, on rafts and on wreckage. An American bomber dropped them three rafts, but the currents carried them north-west, away from New Georgia. Without water, without shelter from the sun by day or from the cold at night, some of the wounded died. After two days and nights, on 7 and 8 July, about 165 survivors reached the reef surrounding the Japanese-occupied island of Vella Lavella. There islanders pulled them ashore and alerted the Allied coastwatchers operating inland – men who throughout the Solomons campaign reported the movements of Japanese ships and aircraft by radio.

The islanders and the coastwatchers hid the sailors in several groups in the jungle, away from Japanese patrols; the largest, of more than a hundred men, found shelter in the house of a Chinese trader in the interior of the island. The inhabitants brought them food and watched the tracks. Taking so many men off an enemy-held island was not possible by submarine or PT boat, so two fast transports with an escort of eight destroyers were sent for them. On the night of 15–16 July landing craft picked up from two points on the shore the survivors, a downed American airman, a captured Japanese pilot and several families of Chinese traders. Of Helena’s crew of roughly 1,200 men, 168 were killed.

The balance

In the battle the Americans lost a light cruiser and 168 men, all of them from Helena; two nights earlier the destroyer Strong had gone down. The Japanese lost two destroyers, Niizuki and Nagatsuki, and some 324 killed, including the force commander. In their first reports the Americans greatly exaggerated the number of enemy ships sunk, as was the rule in chaotic night battles. Tactically the engagement thus ended in something close to a draw, with a slight advantage to the Japanese, who had sunk the more valuable ship and delivered most of the reinforcements to Kolombangara.

The battle was a lesson the Americans had still not absorbed after the fighting for Guadalcanal. Radar gave them the edge in detecting the enemy, but their cruisers fought in close line ahead, firing long and brightly lit salvoes, while the Japanese destroyers, trained in night torpedo attacks, were able to exploit the few minutes in which their opponent was most visible. In this respect Helena was a symbol: a ship that had become famous for her rapid fire at the Battle of Cape Esperance and in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal was lost precisely because of it.

Place in the war

The Battle of Kula Gulf was fought in days when the world’s attention was focused on Europe: on 5 July the Germans attacked the Kursk salient, and a few days later the Allies were to land in Sicily. In the Solomons a war of smaller forces was being waged, but for similar stakes – whether Japan could halt the Allied offensive against Rabaul, its main base in the South Pacific.

The reinforcements delivered to Kolombangara allowed the Japanese garrison of New Georgia to hold out longer, and the Japanese kept trying to strengthen it. As early as 9 July they brought in another 1,200 men unopposed, and on the night of 12–13 July an attempt at a further run led to the Battle of Kolombangara, again involving Ainsworth’s force. The survivors on Vella Lavella returned to their own side on the night of 15–16 July. The destroyer Amagiri, which on the morning of 6 July had fought the ships rescuing Helena’s crew, rammed and cut in half the American torpedo boat PT-109 in Blackett Strait on the night of 1–2 August; it was commanded by the future President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. The airfield at Munda fell only on 5 August, and the whole New Georgia campaign lasted longer and cost more than its planners had expected.