The Battle of Tassafaronga

In the last days of November 1942 the struggle for Guadalcanal changed its character. After the defeat of the Japanese convoy in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in the middle of the month, neither side was able to deal the other a decisive blow. The Americans tried to push the Japanese further west of the airfield, while the Japanese were fighting above all to keep their soldiers on the island from starving to death. The two strands came together on 30 November. The ground offensive that had begun on 18 November had stalled a few days earlier in front of the Japanese positions beyond Point Cruz, and during the night of 30 November–1 December five American cruisers intercepted eight Japanese destroyers carrying food off Tassafaronga Point. Despite superior strength and radar, the Americans suffered one of their navy’s heaviest defeats of the war.

Hunger on Guadalcanal

At the end of November Lieutenant General Harukichi Hyakutake’s Japanese 17th Army still had many thousands of soldiers on the island, but fewer and fewer means of feeding them. In the middle of the month eleven transports carrying the rest of the 38th Division, supplies and equipment were to have reached them. American aircraft sank most of them at sea, and the four that got through and were beached were destroyed during the day on 15 November. From then on the command at Rabaul did not dare send slow ships to Guadalcanal.

By day the waters around the island were dominated by the aircraft of the Cactus Air Force from Henderson Field; by night American PT boats from Tulagi operated ever more boldly, and the bright nights around the full moon made their hunting easier. From 16 November, therefore, the Japanese carried supplies by submarine: every night one of the sixteen boats assigned to the task delivered 20–30 tonnes of food, roughly one day’s ration for the whole army. These loads then had to be carried on men’s backs through the jungle to the units at the front. An attempt to set up a chain of bases for small boats in the central Solomon Islands collapsed under air attack.

On 26 November, the day on which Lieutenant General Hitoshi Imamura took command at Rabaul of the new Eighth Area Army, responsible for the Solomon Islands and New Guinea, the 17th Army staff reported a critical shortage of food. Some front-line units had received no supplies for six days, and even soldiers in the rear were eating a third of the ration. Exhaustion, malaria and dysentery were killing more Japanese than American fire. Imamura also had to think of New Guinea, where the Allies had been attacking the beachhead at Buna since 19 November, and it was there that he sent the main reinforcements.

The navy therefore returned to destroyers – to the night runs that the Americans called the Tokyo Express. The staff of the Eighth Fleet devised a new method of unloading for them. Cleaned-out fuel drums were filled with food and medicines, leaving enough air in them to float, and roped together in long chains. A destroyer was to run in close to the shore, make a sharp turn and drop the drums, and a swimmer or a boat from the shore would haul the end of the rope onto the beach, from where soldiers would pull in the whole load. The ship did not have to anchor, so it could turn back after a few minutes and be out of range of the aircraft from Henderson Field before dawn.

The offensive west of the Matanikau

War chronologies usually record under 21 November that the American army set out to drive the Japanese from the western end of Guadalcanal. That is a fair summary of the intention; the execution was another matter. The offensive began on 18 November and on 23 November it bogged down only a few kilometres from the airfield.

At the beginning of the month General Alexander Vandegrift’s Marines had routed the Japanese units on the Matanikau and at Koli Point, but on 11 November, with a large convoy approaching, they were pulled back to the east bank of the river and the bridges were blown. After the naval battle, once the threat had passed, the Americans returned to the plan of advancing on Kokumbona, where the 17th Army had its headquarters. This time the main burden fell on the army. Command in the western sector was taken by Brigadier General Edmund Sebree of the Americal Division, who had at his disposal the already experienced 164th Infantry Regiment, the 8th Marine Regiment and two battalions of the 182nd Infantry Regiment, which had been landed on the island only a few days earlier.

On 18 November the 2nd Battalion of the 182nd crossed the Matanikau by a footbridge and occupied Hill 66, the highest point of the ridge west of the river. There were no Japanese on the hills, but the soldiers, freshly arrived from a cooler climate and loaded down with ammunition, water and food, collapsed from exhaustion on the steep, grassy slopes. The next day the regiment’s 1st Battalion advanced along the beach and halted just short of Point Cruz. A gap of more than a kilometre was left between the two battalions.

The Japanese had no intention of waiting passively. The 17th Army had a plan of its own: the fresh regiments of the 38th Division, brought to the island from the beginning of November, were to cross the Matanikau and seize positions for artillery on the east bank ahead of another assault on the airfield. At dawn on 20 November they struck the left flank of the 1st Battalion, 182nd Infantry. Some companies on the low ground by the beach fell back several hundred metres, and only Sebree, who came up to the line in person, brought the confusion under control. According to the US official history, the regiment was then in “considerable confusion, with some straggling”. The lost position was retaken by morning, but by the evening it was clear that more troops were needed. During the night Sebree sent two battalions of the 164th Infantry into the gap.

On 21 November, the date usually given in the chronologies, the Americans attacked along the whole line. The 1st Battalion of the 182nd finally cleared Point Cruz itself, but could get no further west. The battalions of the 164th attacked from the ridge of Hills 80 and 81, in front of which lay a ravine several dozen metres deep, with more ridges beyond it. In the course of a week the Japanese had dug positions there on the reverse slopes, sheltered from American artillery, with machine guns at the mouths of the ravines and shallow pits roofed with logs on the flat ground by the shore. Fire stopped the 164th’s attack after a few dozen metres. 22 November went no better.

On 23 November the 8th Marines passed through the army’s lines. They were preceded by a half-hour artillery preparation, and in the course of the day the batteries fired more than 2,600 rounds; one of them slightly wounded General Hyakutake himself in his command post near Kokumbona. Even so, the Marines took neither the ravine nor Hill 83. The command decided that a further advance would be too costly and ordered the troops to dig in on the line of Hills 66, 81 and 80 and Point Cruz. According to the official history, the 164th Infantry alone lost 117 killed and 208 wounded between 19 and 25 November, and several hundred more soldiers were put out of action by wounds, malaria and dysentery; on 25 November the regiment had fewer than two thousand men fit for combat.

The American attack thus gained no ground, but it did thwart the Japanese plan to seize the east bank of the Matanikau. The front west of the airfield froze for six weeks, until the January offensive in which Kokumbona finally fell to the Americans. Throughout this time the fate of the Japanese on the island depended on what the destroyers could bring them.

Tanaka and Task Force 67

The first drum run was entrusted to Rear Admiral Raizō Tanaka, commander of the 2nd Destroyer Squadron, who since August had led most of the night runs to Guadalcanal and knew those waters better than anyone on the Japanese side. Eight ships were assigned for the night of 30 November. The flagship Naganami and Takanami sailed as escort, while the other six – Kuroshio, Oyashio, Kagerō, Suzukaze, Kawakaze and Makinami – each carried 200–240 drums. To lighten the crowded decks, the reload torpedoes were left behind in the Shortland Islands; each transport destroyer had only the eight torpedoes in its tubes. The drums were to be dropped near Tassafaronga Point, on the north-west coast of the island, behind the Japanese front line.

On the American side Admiral William Halsey, commander in the South Pacific since October, reorganised his forces after the November battle. On 24 November Task Force 67 was formed at Espiritu Santo: the heavy cruisers Minneapolis, New Orleans, Pensacola and Northampton, the light cruiser Honolulu and four destroyers. The battle plan was drawn up by Rear Admiral Thomas Kinkaid, drawing on the lessons of earlier night actions. The radar-equipped destroyers were to steam ahead of the cruisers, make a surprise torpedo attack and get out of the line of fire. The cruisers were to open fire at a range of 9–11 kilometres, and their floatplanes were to illuminate the target with flares.

Kinkaid, however, was transferred to the North Pacific, and on 28 November the force was taken over by Rear Admiral Carleton H. Wright, who had no experience of night fighting. He kept his predecessor’s plan. A day later American intelligence read a signal warning the 17th Army of the coming run. Halsey ordered Wright to intercept the Japanese, and just before midnight on 29 November the force left Espiritu Santo with more than 900 kilometres to cover. On the way it was joined by two more destroyers, Lamson and Lardner, returning from convoy escort; there had been no time to brief their captains on the plan, so Wright placed them at the rear of the formation. The departure of the Japanese destroyers from the Shortland Islands was reported by radio by the Australian coastwatcher Paul Mason, hidden on Bougainville. Tanaka, for his part, knew from one of his own airmen that there were Allied ships off Guadalcanal, and warned his captains that if they met the enemy, destroying him took precedence over unloading.

The battle

On the evening of 30 November the Japanese destroyers entered Ironbottom Sound, passed south of Savo Island and headed along the coast of Guadalcanal towards Tassafaronga. Wright approached from the opposite direction, through Lengo Channel. A few minutes after 11 p.m. Minneapolis’s radar picked up echoes at a range of more than 20 kilometres, and at 11.14 p.m. the destroyer Fletcher, leading the column, had a clear picture on her screen of Takanami and the leading drum-carrying ships. The Americans had everything they had lacked in previous night battles: superior strength, radar and surprise. The Japanese, busy preparing to unload, had not yet seen them.

At 11.15 p.m. the destroyer commander, Commander William Cole, asked by radio for permission to make a torpedo attack at a range of about 6.4 kilometres. Wright replied two minutes later that the range was too great. Cole answered that it was just right. Permission came after another two minutes. In the meantime the Japanese had moved from a favourable position ahead of the American destroyers’ bows to abeam of them, so the torpedoes had to chase them at the limit of their range. At 11.20 p.m. Fletcher, Perkins and Drayton fired twenty Mark 15 torpedoes. None hit. American torpedoes of this period often ran too deep or failed to explode, a defect that was not identified and corrected until 1943.

Almost simultaneously Wright ordered fire to be opened, and at 11.21 p.m. Minneapolis fired the first salvo, followed by the rest of the cruisers. Cole’s destroyers fired star shell and withdrew at full speed so as not to get in the cruisers’ way. Most of the fire fell on Takanami, which was closest to the Americans. She managed to fire her eight torpedoes, but within a few minutes she was ablaze and out of control. She was the only Japanese ship hit that night.

The gun flashes, meanwhile, had given away the position of the American column, and the rest of Tanaka’s force reacted as it had been trained to do for years. The flagship Naganami turned back, firing and laying a smokescreen, while Suzukaze and Kawakaze turned the other way. Unloading was now out of the question. Between 11.23 and 11.33 p.m. ship after ship launched torpedoes towards the flashes, and when the leading destroyers had passed the burning Takanami, Kuroshio and Oyashio added theirs. Forty-four Japanese Type 93 torpedoes were running towards Wright’s cruisers, which held their course and speed – oxygen-powered, almost invisible because they left no trail of bubbles, and capable of travelling more than 20 kilometres. At the time the Americans did not know that a torpedo of such range existed at all.

At 11.27 p.m. two of them hit Minneapolis. One set off the aviation fuel tanks forward of the first turret, the other knocked out three of her four boiler rooms; the ship’s bow drooped at an angle of several dozen degrees. Less than a minute later a torpedo struck New Orleans abreast of her first turret. The explosion of her magazines tore off the whole forward part of the hull as far as the second turret; everyone in both turrets was killed. Pensacola passed both ships to port and at 11.39 p.m. was herself hit by a torpedo beneath her mainmast. Burning oil spread through her interior and across her deck. Only Honolulu increased speed to 30 knots, made violent turns and passed through the battle area unscathed. Northampton, at the rear, did not change speed, and at 11.48 p.m. she was hit by two torpedoes from Kawakaze. Her engine room flooded, and the ship heeled over and caught fire.

At 11.44 p.m. Tanaka ordered his ships to break off the action, and they withdrew to the north. Two destroyers went back for Takanami, but left when they detected American ships. Cole’s destroyers, which had circled Savo Island, returned to the scene of the battle when it was all over. The whole engagement lasted less than half an hour.

Losses and assessments

Northampton’s crew were unable to bring the fires or the list under control, and after an hour and a half they began to abandon ship. The cruiser sank at about 3 a.m. on 1 December a few miles off the coast of Guadalcanal; the destroyers Fletcher and Drayton picked more than 770 survivors out of the water. The three other damaged cruisers limped into Tulagi in the morning. There Minneapolis and New Orleans were given makeshift bows of palm logs and could not leave for the dockyard until December; all three returned to service after many months of repair, in the summer and autumn of 1943. According to American figures, almost 400 sailors were killed: 183 on New Orleans, 125 on Pensacola, 50 on Northampton and 37 on Minneapolis.

The Japanese lost one destroyer. Takanami blew up while her crew were abandoning her; the division commander and the ship’s captain were killed. Of her crew of about 240, according to American studies, 48 reached the shore of Guadalcanal, 19 of whom were later taken prisoner by the Americans.

It is often said that the Japanese ships sank one American cruiser and damaged three others. That is correct, though it should be added that the damage was so severe that it put three heavy cruisers out of action for many months, and that one Japanese destroyer was also sunk in the battle. Both sides exaggerated in their reports. Wright claimed to have sunk four destroyers and damaged two, and since he did not believe that torpedoes fired from where he had seen the Japanese could reach his ships, he attributed the hits to submarines. Tanaka reported sinking a battleship and two cruisers. Wright received the Navy Cross, but was later moved to a shore posting and was not promoted. Halsey laid the blame mainly on Cole, who in his view had fired from too great a range.

The American naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison judged the battle bluntly: it was “a sharp defeat inflicted on an alert and superior cruiser force by a partially surprised and inferior destroyer force”. Together with the Battle of Savo Island in August, it is counted among the American navy’s heaviest defeats of the war. In Japan it was called the Night Battle of Lunga Point, and after the war Tanaka attributed the victory above all to the training of his sailors.

Place in the war

Tassafaronga showed how little the Americans had so far learned about fighting the Japanese navy at night. The victory off Cape Esperance in October and the night battle off Guadalcanal had not convinced the command that cruisers in a close column, firing at a radar-detected target, were defenceless against torpedoes whose range they had no idea of. The assessment of the battle hastened change: destroyers were given freedom to attack independently, and Cole’s experience was taken up by the commanders who won night actions in the Solomons in 1943, such as Arleigh Burke, author of the principle that destroyers attack at first contact without waiting for orders, and Frederick Moosbrugger, the victor of the Battle of Vella Gulf.

Strategically the battle changed nothing. Tanaka did not deliver the food, and later attempts only confirmed that Japan was unable to sustain its army on the island. On 3 December ten destroyers dropped 1,500 drums, but aircraft sank all but 310 of them before they could be hauled ashore. On 7 December PT boats turned back another run, and on 11 December they torpedoed Tanaka’s flagship Teruzuki, which had to be scuttled; of 1,200 drums, the soldiers recovered only 220. Tanaka, wounded, lost his command. On 31 December Imperial General Headquarters, with the consent of Emperor Hirohito, decided to evacuate Guadalcanal. In the first week of February 1943 destroyers – the same ships that had failed to feed the garrison – took off more than 10,000 emaciated soldiers in Operation Ke. The victory at Tassafaronga thus turned out to be a victory in a battle that Japan lost along with the whole campaign.