The Battle of the Eastern Solomons

On 24 and 25 August 1942, in the waters east and north of the Solomon Islands, the third carrier battle in history was fought, after the clashes in the Coral Sea and at Midway. The Japanese Combined Fleet sought to cover a convoy carrying reinforcements to Guadalcanal and, in passing, to destroy the American carriers that had been supporting the Marine landing on the island since 7 August. The Japanese lost the light carrier Ryūjō and several dozen aircraft with experienced crews, and the next day a transport and a destroyer as well, while Rear Admiral Raizō Tanaka’s convoy turned back without putting its troops ashore. On the American side, three bombs struck the carrier Enterprise, killing more than seventy of her crew.

As in the Coral Sea and at Midway, the ships of the two sides never once sighted each other – the entire fight was waged by carrier-borne and land-based aircraft. The battle, which Japanese accounts call the Second Battle of the Solomon Sea, was not decisive. It did show, however, that the airfield on Guadalcanal, which the Marines named Henderson Field, was changing the balance of power across the whole area: by day no Japanese ship could approach the island with impunity.

Japan sets out to retake Guadalcanal

The American landing took the Japanese by surprise, and at first they underestimated its strength. On the night of 8–9 August Vice Admiral Gun’ichi Mikawa’s cruisers smashed the Allied covering force off Savo Island and forced Rear Admiral Richmond Turner’s transports to withdraw, but the landing force itself could not be driven into the sea. The command in Rabaul and Tokyo concluded that there were at most a few thousand Americans on the island and decided to retake it with relatively small forces. The first echelon of Colonel Kiyonao Ichiki’s 28th Infantry Regiment, some 900 men brought in by destroyers, landed on 18 August and on the night of 20–21 August attacked the Marine positions on the Ilu; in the Battle of the Tenaru it was almost entirely wiped out, and Ichiki was killed.

The second echelon was to come slowly, aboard transports. On 16 August three ships – Kinryu Maru, Boston Maru and Daifuku Maru – left the base at Truk atoll with some 1,400 soldiers of the second echelon of the Ichiki Detachment and several hundred men of the Yokosuka 5th Special Naval Landing Force. The escort was commanded by Rear Admiral Raizō Tanaka from the light cruiser Jintsū (of the Sendai class), with several destroyers and patrol boats at his disposal. The landing was planned for 24 August.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet, saw the movement of reinforcements as an opportunity for something more. After the defeat at Midway the Japanese navy still enjoyed numerical superiority, and Yamamoto hoped that the Americans would send their carriers to defend Guadalcanal, where they could be destroyed. He therefore sent the fleet’s main striking forces south: Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo’s force with the large carriers Shōkaku and Zuikaku and the light carrier Ryūjō, Rear Admiral Hiroaki Abe’s Vanguard Force with two battleships, and Vice Admiral Nobutake Kondō’s Advance Force with heavy cruisers, the seaplane tender Chitose and the battleship Mutsu. Once the American carriers had been destroyed, Abe’s and Kondō’s surface ships were to finish off the remaining Allied forces in a gunnery action.

The Japanese fleet had drawn lessons from Midway. The large carriers embarked more fighters than before, air reconnaissance was far more thorough, and surface ships sailed ahead of the carriers to look out for the enemy and draw his aircraft onto themselves. The light Ryūjō, with the heavy cruiser Tone and two destroyers under Rear Admiral Chūichi Hara, was to operate separately, pushed out to the south, and strike Henderson Field. Many studies describe Hara’s force as a decoy meant to divert American attention from the main carriers; Japanese orders spoke above all of attacking the airfield and covering the convoy, but in practice Ryūjō did indeed draw the American strike onto herself.

Fletcher without Wasp

On the American side, Vice Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher’s Task Force 61 was cruising south-east of the Solomons. It consisted of three carrier groups: Saratoga, in which Fletcher flew his flag, Rear Admiral Thomas Kinkaid’s Enterprise, and Wasp. They were screened by the modern fast battleship North Carolina, cruisers and destroyers. Fletcher, criticised for withdrawing his carriers on the eve of the Battle of Savo Island, still believed that they must not be exposed to risk unnecessarily, since they represented almost the entire striking power of the Pacific Fleet.

American radio intelligence, which before Midway had been reading Japanese plans almost in advance, failed this time: the Japanese had changed their ships’ call signs, and as late as 22 August it was not known whether Shōkaku and Zuikaku were in Japanese waters, on their way to Truk or already at sea. Vice Admiral Robert Ghormley, commander of the South Pacific Area, warned only that a Japanese strike on Guadalcanal should be expected between 23 and 26 August. Reconnaissance was flown by PBY Catalina flying boats from Espiritu Santo and from Ndeni in the Santa Cruz Islands, by Army B-17 bombers and by Marine dive-bombers from Henderson Field, where the first American aircraft – the nucleus of the so-called Cactus Air Force – had been based since 20 August.

On the morning of 23 August a Catalina spotted Tanaka’s convoy some 250 nautical miles north of Guadalcanal. Tanaka, knowing that a strike would follow such a report, turned north, and Saratoga’s strike group, sent out by Fletcher in the afternoon – 31 SBD Dauntless dive-bombers and 6 TBF Avenger torpedo bombers – failed to find the target in bad weather and landed on Guadalcanal for the night. The landing was postponed to 25 August. On the evening of 23 August, with no news of the Japanese carriers and relying on reports that they were still at Truk, Fletcher sent Wasp and her escort south towards Efate to refuel. In doing so he deprived himself, on the eve of battle, of his third carrier and her air group, and the numerical superiority in aircraft that the Americans enjoyed for the first time in this war passed to the Japanese.

The sinking of Ryūjō

At dawn on 24 August Nagumo sent Hara’s force towards Guadalcanal. Around noon six Nakajima B5N aircraft carrying bombs and fifteen Zero fighters took off from Ryūjō. Over the airfield they were intercepted by Marine Wildcat fighters and Army Airacobras; the raid did no serious damage to Henderson Field, and each side lost a few aircraft. Meanwhile Catalinas and scout planes from Enterprise several times reported a light carrier some 200 miles north-west of TF61. Fletcher hesitated for a long time before striking: he feared he would send his aircraft against a secondary target while the large Japanese carriers, whose position he did not know, attacked his ships. Only at about 1.40 p.m. did 30 dive-bombers and 8 Avengers take off from Saratoga under Commander Harry Felt.

Felt’s group reached Hara’s force at about 3.50 p.m. At first some of the aircraft were directed at the cruiser Tone, but when the first bombs missed the manoeuvring carrier, Felt ordered all of them to attack Ryūjō. The ship took at least three bomb hits and probably one aerial torpedo; burning, listing and without power, she was abandoned by her crew and sank in the evening. Some 120 sailors were killed. Ryūjō’s aircraft returning from Guadalcanal had nowhere to land and ditched near the sinking ship; their crews, like Ryūjō’s survivors, were picked up by the escorting destroyers. Paradoxically, the Americans long remained unsure whether the carrier had really sunk.

The attack on Enterprise

The Japanese, meanwhile, had found TF61. At about 2 p.m. a floatplane from the cruiser Chōkai reported the American carriers, and shortly before 3 p.m. Shōkaku and Zuikaku launched their first wave – 27 Aichi D3A dive-bombers and 10 fighters – followed an hour later by a second of similar size. Almost at the same moment two American scout bombers from Enterprise spotted both of Nagumo’s large carriers and attacked Shōkaku, but their bombs fell close alongside and did no significant damage. Their report of the Japanese force’s position, transmitted repeatedly, reached Fletcher only after an hour – too late to divert onto Shōkaku and Zuikaku the Saratoga strike group, which was just then attacking Ryūjō.

At 4.02 p.m. the radar of Enterprise detected the incoming Japanese formation at a range of 88 miles. Both carriers put 53 Wildcats into the air, and the bombers and torpedo aircraft still on deck were launched so that they would not burn aboard the ships if they were hit. Fighter direction broke down: the Japanese aircraft came in higher than estimated, the radar screens filled with a jumble of friendly and enemy echoes, and the single radio channel was jammed by pilots’ chatter. Some of the Wildcats nevertheless managed to intercept the bombers, and the remaining Japanese aircraft dived straight into the anti-aircraft fire of the ships, among which North Carolina, with more than a hundred barrels, was an anti-aircraft fortress.

The attack, led by Lieutenant Commander Mamoru Seki, concentrated on Enterprise. The carrier’s commanding officer, Captain Arthur Davis, later judged that it had been pressed home with great determination. At 4.44 p.m. the first bomb pierced several decks near the after elevator and exploded deep inside the ship, killing 35 men. Half a minute later a second struck a 5-inch (127 mm) gun gallery nearby, killing 38 sailors and setting off a fire among the propellant charges. At 4.46 p.m. a third, smaller bomb hit the flight deck near the midships elevator. The whole attack lasted less than a quarter of an hour. Enterprise was burning, but her damage-control parties brought the fires under control and patched the deck so efficiently that by about 5.45 p.m. the carrier was again recovering aircraft and making 24 knots. Shortly afterwards her steering gear failed, and for nearly 40 minutes the ship steamed in circles; fortunately for the Americans, the second Japanese wave, owing to a misread position, passed the task force by several tens of miles and turned back without finding its target.

The Japanese lost more than twenty aircraft in this attack, shot down by fighters and anti-aircraft fire or lost on the way back, and their pilots reported two American carriers ablaze. In the evening a few aircraft from Saratoga, launched at the last moment before the raid, found Kondō’s force: the Avengers missed with their torpedoes, but two Dauntlesses badly damaged the seaplane tender Chitose with near misses, and she struggled back to Truk. After dark Fletcher withdrew TF61 to the south to refuel and to protect the damaged Enterprise. Nagumo and Kondō set off in pursuit in the hope of a night gunnery action, but found no enemy and turned north during the night.

Tanaka’s convoy turns back

Tanaka’s convoy remained at sea without air cover. On the evening of 24 August Tanaka was ordered to withdraw to the north-west, but when the airmen’s reports of two burning American carriers reached Mikawa at Rabaul, the order was changed and the transports again headed for Guadalcanal. During the night five Japanese destroyers shelled Henderson Field, doing little damage. On the morning of 25 August, when the convoy was already some 150 miles from its destination, it was caught by Marine dive-bombers from Henderson Field and by aircraft from Enterprise that had landed on the island the previous day. A bomb struck Jintsū forward, killing 24 sailors; Tanaka, stunned by the blast, shifted his flag to the destroyer Kagerō and sent the cruiser back to Truk. The transport Kinryu Maru, carrying naval infantry, was also hit. When the destroyer Mutsuki (of the Mutsuki class) came alongside the burning ship to take off her men, Army B-17 bombers arrived from Espiritu Santo. High-altitude bombing rarely hit ships under way, but this time the bombs struck the stationary destroyer, which sank, and the burning Kinryu Maru was finished off with a torpedo by the destroyer Mochizuki.

After these losses Tanaka turned back with the rest of the convoy to the base in the Shortland Islands. There the troops were transferred from the transports to destroyers, which from 29 August began carrying them to Guadalcanal by night, in batches and mostly without heavy equipment. Thus was born the system of night runs that the Americans called the “Tokyo Express”: by day the waters around the island belonged to the aircraft from Henderson Field, by night to the Japanese ships.

The reckoning

American losses were relatively light. About 75 men were killed in Enterprise and nearly a hundred wounded; in all, TF61 and the aircraft on Guadalcanal lost some 90 killed, mostly among the crew of the stricken carrier, and some twenty-odd aircraft, though thanks to rescue efforts only a few airmen died. The Japanese lost the light carrier Ryūjō, the destroyer Mutsuki and the transport Kinryu Maru, while Jintsū and Chitose needed repairs. At least several hundred men were killed, and aircraft losses reached about 75. Most painful of all, however, was the loss of airmen: according to American historians, the Japanese navy lost several dozen experienced pre-war aircrews in this battle – the figure most often given is 61, although some estimates put it at more than a hundred. The Japanese navy’s aircrew training system, geared to a small elite, could not replace them quickly.

The frequently repeated statement that Enterprise was heavily damaged in this battle needs qualifying. The three bomb hits did put the carrier out of action and forced a dockyard repair at Pearl Harbor, but they never threatened to sink her – the ship resumed flight operations an hour after the raid, and the repairs were completed on 15 October, in under two months. Tactically, therefore, the battle was an American victory, though an incomplete one: Fletcher did not destroy Nagumo’s large carriers, and the Japanese did not lose the initiative at sea. Strategically, what mattered most was that the reinforcements did not reach the island in time or in concentrated form.

Place in the war

The Battle of the Eastern Solomons closed the first phase of the struggle for Guadalcanal. For the second time in a week Japan learnt that the island could not be retaken with small forces, nor troops delivered to it in broad daylight, as long as Henderson Field was operating. From then on the course of the campaign was decided above all by a supply race: the Americans strengthened the airfield and its garrison, while the Japanese brought in fresh battalions every night aboard the destroyers of the “Tokyo Express”. With their help General Kiyotake Kawaguchi’s brigade landed at the turn of August and September; its assault on the ridge above the airfield on 12–14 September also ended in defeat.

For the American fleet, however, the August victory proved fragile. On 31 August a Japanese submarine torpedoed Saratoga, putting her out of action for almost three months, and Fletcher, wounded in the attack, soon lost his seagoing command. On 15 September another submarine sank Wasp, which had missed the battle because she was refuelling. Only Hornet remained in the South Pacific, and for several weeks the United States had a single operational carrier there. The repaired Enterprise returned to the Solomons at the end of October, just in time for another clash with Shōkaku and Zuikaku – the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands on 26 October, in which Hornet was sunk and the Japanese again lost many experienced airmen.

The battle was the third of the four carrier battles of 1942. Each of them – the Coral Sea, Midway, the Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz – bled white the elite, carefully trained pre-war corps of Japanese naval airmen. Although Shōkaku and Zuikaku came through the August clash unscathed, Japanese carrier aviation never regained its 1941 standard, while American industry and the American training system were already beginning to deliver ships and pilots in numbers Japan could not match.