Neptune's Inferno_ The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal Part 1

Neptune's inferno: the U.S. Navy at Guadalca.n.a.l.

by James D. Hornfischer.

PROLOGUE.

Eighty-two ShipsON FRIDAY, AUGUST 7, 1942, EIGHTY-TWO U.S. NAVY SHIPS MANNED by forty thousand sailors, shepherding a force of sixteen thousand U.S. Marines, reached their destination in a remote southern ocean and spent the next hundred days immersed in a curriculum of cruel and timeless lessons. No fighting navy had ever been so speedily and explosively educated. In the conflict that rolled through the end of that trembling year, they and the thousands more who followed them learned that technology was important, but that guts and guile mattered more. That swiftness was more deadly than strength, and that well-packaged surprise usually beat them both. That if it looked like the enemy was coming, the enemy probably was coming and you ought to tell somebody, maybe even everybody. That the experience of battle forever divides those who talk of nothing else but its prospect from those who talk of everything else but its memory. by forty thousand sailors, shepherding a force of sixteen thousand U.S. Marines, reached their destination in a remote southern ocean and spent the next hundred days immersed in a curriculum of cruel and timeless lessons. No fighting navy had ever been so speedily and explosively educated. In the conflict that rolled through the end of that trembling year, they and the thousands more who followed them learned that technology was important, but that guts and guile mattered more. That swiftness was more deadly than strength, and that well-packaged surprise usually beat them both. That if it looked like the enemy was coming, the enemy probably was coming and you ought to tell somebody, maybe even everybody. That the experience of battle forever divides those who talk of nothing else but its prospect from those who talk of everything else but its memory.Sailors in the war zone learned the arcane lore of bad luck and its many manifestations, from the sight of rats leaving a ship in port (a sign that she will be sunk) to the act of whistling while at sea (inviting violent winds) to the follies of opening fire first on a Sunday or beginning a voyage on a Friday (the consequences of which were certain but nonspecific, and thus all the more frightful).They learned to tell the red-orange blossoms of sh.e.l.ls. .h.i.tting targets from the faster flashes of muzzles firing the other way. That hard steel burns. That any ship can look shipshape, but if you really want to take her measure, check her turret alignments. That torpedoes, and sometimes radios, keep their own fickle counsel about when they will work. That a war to secure liberty could be waged pa.s.sionately by men who had none themselves, and that in death all sailors have an unmistakable dignity.Some of these were the lessons of any war, truisms relearned for the hundredth time by the latest generation to face its trials. Victory always tended to fly with the first effective salvo. Others were novel, the product of untested technologies and tactics, unique to the circ.u.mstances of America's first offensive in the Pacific: that you could win a campaign on the backs of stevedores expert in the lethal craft of combat-loading cargo ships; that the little image of an enemy ship on a radar scope will flinch visibly when heavily struck; that rapid partial salvo fire from a director-controlled main battery reduces the salvo interval period but complicates the correction of ranges and spots.In the far South Pacific, you were lucky if your sighting report ever reached its recipient. Even then, the plainest statement of fact might be subject to two or more interpretations of meaning. You learned that warships smashed and left dead in the night could resurrect themselves by the rise of morning, that circ.u.mstances could conspire to make your enemy seem much shrewder than he ever really could be, and that as bad as things might seem in the midst of combat, they might well be far worse for him. That you could learn from your opponent's success if your pride permitted it, and that the best course of action often ran straight into the barriers of your worst biases and fears. That some of the worst thrashings you took could look like victories tomorrow. That good was never good enough, and if you wanted Neptune to laugh, all you had to do was show him your operations plan.This book tells the story of how the U.S. Navy learned these and many other lessons during its first major campaign of the twentieth century: the struggle for the southern Solomon Islands in 1942. The American fleet landed its marines on Guadalca.n.a.l and Tulagi in early August. The j.a.panese were beaten by mid-November and evacuated in February. What happened in between was a story of how America gambles on the grand scale, wings it, and wins. Top commanders on both sides were slain in battle or perished afterward amid the shame of inquiries and interrogations. A more lasting pain beset the living. Reputations were shattered, grudges nursed. The Marine Corps would compose a rousing inst.i.tutional anthem from the notion, partly true, that the Navy had abandoned them in the fight's critical early going. But the full story of the campaign turns the tale in another direction, seldom appreciated. Soon enough, the fleet threw itself fully into the breach, and by the end of it all, almost three sailors had died in battle at sea for every infantryman who fell ash.o.r.e. The Corps' debt to the Navy was never greater.The American landings on Guadalca.n.a.l developed into the most sustained and vicious fight of the Pacific war. Seven major naval actions were the result, five of them princ.i.p.ally ship-versus-ship battles fought at night, the other two decided by aircraft by day. The nickname the Americans coined for the waters that hosted most of the carnage, "Ironbottom Sound," suited the startling scale of destruction: The U.S. Navy lost twenty-four major warships; the j.a.panese lost twenty-four. Aircraft losses, too, were nearly equal: America lost 436, j.a.pan 440. The human toll was horrific. Ash.o.r.e, U.S. Marine and Army killed in action were 1,592 (out of 60,000 landed). The number of Americans killed at sea topped five thousand. j.a.panese deaths set the b.l.o.o.d.y pace for the rest of the war, with 20,800 soldiers lost on the island and probably 4,000 sailors at sea. Through the end of 1942, the news reports of Guadalca.n.a.l spun a narrative whose twists required no fictionalizing for high drama, though they did need some careful parsing and management, or so the Navy thought at the time. Franklin Roosevelt competed with "Tokyo Rose" to shape the tale on the public airwaves.In their trial against the Imperial j.a.panese Navy (IJN) in the waters off Guadalca.n.a.l, the Navy mastered a new kind of fight. Expeditionary war was a new kind of enterprise, and its scale at Guadalca.n.a.l was surpa.s.sed only by its combatants' thoroughgoing deficits in materiel, preparation, and understanding of their enemy. It was the most critical major military operation America would ever run on such a threadbare shoestring. As its princ.i.p.al players would admit afterward, the puzzle of victory was solved on the fly and on the cheap, in terms of resources if not lives. The campaign featured tight interdependence among warriors of the air, land, and sea. For the infantry to seize and hold the island, ships had to control the sea. For a fleet to control the sea, the pilots had to fly from the island's airfield. For the pilots to fly from the airfield, the infantry had to hold the island. That tripod stood only by the strength of all three legs. In the end, though, it was princ.i.p.ally a navy's battle to win. And despite the ostensible lesson of the Battle of Midway, which had supposedly crowned the aircraft carrier as queen of the seas, the combat sailors of America's surface fleet had a more than incidental voice in who would prevail. For most of the campaign, Guadalca.n.a.l was a contest of equals, perhaps the only major battle in the Pacific where the United States and j.a.pan fought from positions of parity. Its outcome was often in doubt.This book develops the story of the travails and difficult triumphs of the U.S. Navy during its first offensive of World War II, as it navigated a steeply canted learning curve. It emphasizes the human textures of the campaign and looks anew at the decisions and relationships of the commanders who guided it.The novelist James Michener wrote long ago, "They will live a long time, these men of the South Pacific. They had an American quality. They, like their victories, will be remembered as long as our generation lives. After that, like the men of the Confederacy, they will become strangers. Longer and longer shadows will obscure them, until their Guadalca.n.a.l sounds distant on the ear like Shiloh and Valley Forge." The founders of the U.S. Navy, having faced their own moments of decision, from John Paul Jones off Flamborough Head to Stephen Decatur against the Barbary Pirates, would have felt kinship with the men of the South Pacific Forces. There as everywhere, men in uniform fought like impulsive humans almost always have: stubbornly, viciously, brilliantly, wastefully, earnestly, stupidly, gallantly. At Guadalca.n.a.l, so distant on the ear, a naval legacy continued, and by their example in that bitter campaign the long shadows of their American quality reach right on up to the present.

The U.S. Navy at Guadalca.n.a.l[image]Operation Watchtower (as of October 18, 1942)ADM ERNEST J. KING Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet (COMINCH) Washington, DCADM CHESTER W. NIMITZ Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC) Pearl Harbor, HawaiiVADM WILLIAM F. HALSEY, JR.

Commander, South Pacific Forces (COMSOPAC) Noumea, New Caledonia (USS Argonne Argonne)VADM FRANK JACK FLETCHER Commander, Expeditionary Force Task Force 61 (USS Saratoga Saratoga)

RADM LEIGHNOYESCommanderAir Support ForcesTask Group 61.1(USS Wasp Wasp) RADM RICHMONDKELLY TURNERCommanderAmphibious ForceTask Force 62(USS McCawley McCawley) RADM JOHNS. MCCAINCommanderAircraft (land-based)Task Force 63(Efate, New Hebrides) [image]

[image]

VADM FLETCHERTF 11 (USS Saratoga Saratoga) RADM NOYESTF 18 (USS Wasp Wasp)

MGEN ALEXANDER MGEN ALEXANDERA. VANDEGRIFTCommander,1st Marine Division [image]

RADM THOMASKINKAIDTF 16 (USS Enterprise Enterprise)

RADM VICTOR A. C. CRUTCHLEY, ROYAL NAVY RADM VICTOR A. C. CRUTCHLEY, ROYAL NAVY.

Commander, Cruiser Covering Force Task Force 44 (HMAS Australia Australia)

[image](Photo Credit: P.1)"It is better to be bombed into the next world than to live in this one as a slave to anybody or any foreign system. It is that att.i.tude which, we believe, will eventually win this war."-Collier's, "A United People," January 17, 1942 "A United People," January 17, 1942

1.

Trip Wire.

TWO YEARS BEFORE THE WAR BEGAN, AN OLD SPANISH PRIEST IN A Filipino village said to an American journalist, "The Pacific: Of itself it may not be eternity. Yet certainly you can find in it the scale, the pattern of the coming days of man. The Mediterranean was the sea of destiny of the Ancient World; the Atlantic, of what you call the Old World. I have thought much about this, and I believe the Pacific holds the destiny of your New World. Men now living will see the shape of the future rising from its waters." Filipino village said to an American journalist, "The Pacific: Of itself it may not be eternity. Yet certainly you can find in it the scale, the pattern of the coming days of man. The Mediterranean was the sea of destiny of the Ancient World; the Atlantic, of what you call the Old World. I have thought much about this, and I believe the Pacific holds the destiny of your New World. Men now living will see the shape of the future rising from its waters."

The vessel of that ocean held more than half the water on earth, its expanse larger than all the landma.s.ses of the world. Its beauty was elemental, its time of a meter and its distances of a magnitude that Americans could only begin to apprehend from the California, Oregon, and Washington coasts. It was essential and different and compelling and important, whether one measured it by grid coordinates, a.s.sessed it by geopolitics and national interests, or sought its prospects above the clouds. And when war came, it was plain to see that the shape of the future, whatever it was to be, was emerging from that trackless basin of brine.

Whose future it would be remained unsettled in the first summer of the war. The forces of distant nations, roaming over it, had clashed briefly but had not yet collided in a way that would test their wills and turn history. That collision was soon to take place, and it would happen, first and seriously and in earnest, on an island called Guadalca.n.a.l.

It was a single radio transmission, a clandestine report originating from that island's interior wilderness, that set the powerful wheels turning. The news that reached U.S. Navy headquarters in Washington on July 6, 1942, was routine on its face: The enemy had arrived, was building an airstrip. This was not staggering news at a time when j.a.panese conquest had been proceeding smoothly along almost every axis of movement in the Asian theater. Nonetheless, this broadcast, sent from a modest teleradio transmitter in a South Pacific jungle to Townsville, Australia, found an attentive audience in the American capital.

The Cambridge-educated agent of the British crown who had sent it, Martin Clemens, had until recently been the administrator of Guadalca.n.a.l. When it became clear, in February, that the j.a.panese were coming, there had been a general evacuation of the civilian populace. Clemens stayed behind. Living off the land near the village of Aola, the site of the old district headquarters, the Australian, tall and athletic, took what he needed from gardens and livestock, depending on native sympathies for everything. Thus sustained, he launched a second career as a covert agent and a "coast.w.a.tcher," part of a network of similarly situated men all through the Solomons.

Holed up at his station, he had radioed word to Townsville on May 3 that j.a.panese troops had landed on the smaller island of Tulagi across the sound. A month later, he reported that they were on Guadalca.n.a.l's northern sh.o.r.e, building a wharf.

Then from his jungle hide, Clemens saw a twelve-ship convoy standing on the horizon. Landing on the beach that day came more than two thousand j.a.panese construction workers, four hundred infantry, and several boatloads of equipment-heavy tractors, road rollers, trucks, and generators. Clearly their purpose was some sort of construction project. Having detected Clemens's teleradio transmissions to Australia, the enemy sent their scouts into the jungle to find him. As the pressure on Clemens and his fellow Australian spies increased, he kept on the move to elude them, aided by a cadre of native scouts, formidable and capable men. The stress of avoiding enemy reconnaissance planes overhead worked on him. He read Shakespeare to settle his mind. "If I lose control everything will be lost," he wrote in his diary on July 23. His radio batteries were nearly depleted, and his food stores thin, when he spotted a gravel-and-clay airstrip under construction on the island's north-coast plantation plain and reported it from his hide in a hillside mining claim. He had sent many reports. This one would bring salvation.

When the commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet, Admiral Ernest J. King, learned from radio intercepts that j.a.pan had sent airfield construction crews to Guadalca.n.a.l, a new impetus to action came. He and the Army's chief of staff, General George Marshall, had already struck a compromise that would send U.S. forces into the South Pacific with the ultimate objective of seizing Rabaul, the great j.a.panese base in New Britain. The first phase of that operation would be the seizure of Tulagi and adjacent positions. With the arrival of the news of j.a.panese activity on Guadalca.n.a.l across the sound, however, the design of America's first major offensive of the war was redrawn, set to begin on Martin Clemens's forlorn hideaway.

It was as if j.a.pan's expansion southeast from Rabaul had struck a hidden trip wire-the lines drawn on Navy charts tracing the paths of sea communication across the South Pacific to Australia. As anyone could see by taking a compa.s.s and drawing a 250-mile radius centered on Guadalca.n.a.l's airstrip, it would, when operational, enable j.a.panese planes to threaten the sea-lanes to Australia, whose protection was long one of the Navy's core missions. Construction of the airfield might have been low-order business for j.a.panese forces spread thinly along a multi-continental oceanic perimeter, but its discovery would draw the fleet straight to Guadalca.n.a.l.

The island, shaped like Jamaica, with about half its area, had come to the attention of Westerners long ago. Explorers from the old Spanish priest's homeland, pa.s.sing through the Solomons in 1568, named it after a town in Andalusia, sixty miles north of Seville. When Captain James Cook arrived 220 years later, he claimed the Solomons for Great Britain, which hung on for another 154 years, until j.a.panese troops landed. The novelist Jack London visited near the turn of the century and doubted his heart was cold enough to banish his worst enemies to a place so dire, where "the air is saturated with a poison that bites into every pore...and that many strong men who escape dying there return as wrecks to their own countries."

A mountain range ran its entire length like a spine, with summits as high as eighty-three hundred feet. On the southern coast, the mountains fell steeply into the sea, making that sh.o.r.eline a barrier to trade and to war. The north coast's tropical plain was more inviting. Cut through with rivers and forest growth, it was well suited to agriculture-and airfields. The narrow northern beach, guarded by palms and ironwoods and covered in kunai gra.s.s, stretched for miles, overlooked by scattered coral ridges, some of them five hundred feet high.

From the British government outpost at Aola to the small Catholic missions in the west, the human settlements were small and prehistoric. The climate, the insects, and the rampant disease made the place hard to tolerate. A coconut plantation owned by Lever Brothers, the world's largest, drew its employees from the nine thousand resident Melanesians, traditionally divided by culture but now joined imperfectly by one of the few useful things that Britain had brought there: pidgin English.

The U.S. Navy would not have greatly concerned itself with the Solomons, with a census roughly that of Trenton and a population density of ten people per square mile, if not for the accident of its geography, astride the sea-lanes to Australia. Tulagi, the British administrative capital, had the best anchorage for hundreds of miles around. On that rocky volcanic islet nestled against Florida Island, huge trees and mangrove swamps lined the sh.o.r.e where they hadn't been cut back to accommodate the trappings of Western empire: a golf course, a commissioner's office, a bishop's residence, a government hospital, a police barracks, a cricket club, and a bar.

Guadalca.n.a.l lay about twenty miles south of Tulagi. It marked the southern end of a broken and irregular inter-island corridor that meandered northwest between two parallel columns of islands and dead-ended, about 375 miles later, into the island of Bougainville. As the princ.i.p.al route of j.a.panese reinforcement into Guadalca.n.a.l, this watery path through New Georgia Sound would acquire an outsized strategic importance. It would be nicknamed the Slot.

ADMIRAL CHESTER W. NIMITZ, fifty-six, the grandson of a German hotelier from the Hill Country of central Texas, was born to a rare style of leadership: gentle but exacting, gracious but hard and fearless, like a mailed fist in a satin glove. There was no ruthlessness in him unless one counted as ruthless his willingness to burden the people he relied on with his complete and unfaltering trust. That burden fell heavily upon the men who worked for him, but one of his gifts was an ability to turn the burden into a source of inspiration and uplift for those who shouldered it. The U.S. Navy never needed a leader of his kind more badly than in the months following the treachery of December 7, shortly after which he took command of the Pacific Fleet. fifty-six, the grandson of a German hotelier from the Hill Country of central Texas, was born to a rare style of leadership: gentle but exacting, gracious but hard and fearless, like a mailed fist in a satin glove. There was no ruthlessness in him unless one counted as ruthless his willingness to burden the people he relied on with his complete and unfaltering trust. That burden fell heavily upon the men who worked for him, but one of his gifts was an ability to turn the burden into a source of inspiration and uplift for those who shouldered it. The U.S. Navy never needed a leader of his kind more badly than in the months following the treachery of December 7, shortly after which he took command of the Pacific Fleet.

Nimitz's will was ferocious, but held inward and insulated by a kindly temperament that made his ascent to high command a surprise to connoisseurs of four-star ambition. His intensity was apparent only in his close physical proximity, where the heat from his eyes, it was said, could be felt on the skin. Nimitz was an unusually effective organization man, stoic and controlled but demanding. Ascending to theater command had never been his ambition, for ambitions, he felt, were meant not for personal gain but to pursue common goals within the established order of a group. In 1941, a year before circ.u.mstances forced him to accept it, he had turned down the appointment to become commander in chief, Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC). He had done so out of respect for the system, unwilling to vault past the twenty-eight officers who were senior to him. But after the attack on Pearl Harbor his own commander in chief gave him no choice. Franklin D. Roosevelt plucked Nimitz from his post as the Navy's personnel boss and installed him as leader of the most important naval theater in the world. It was a call to duty that allowed no humble refusals. The president told Navy Secretary Frank Knox, "Tell Nimitz to get the h.e.l.l out to Pearl and stay there till the war is won." The Pacific war would be America's war. Running it would be a lonely charge. A commentator for Collier's Collier's magazine would call the Pacific "an unshared front where America's production, her strategy, her skill and valor must stand the acid test alone.... Our national feeling with regard to the Pacific burns with a purer flame. We seem to realize that here is not a war rooted in the age-old hatreds and grudges of Europe. Here, rather, is a war to resolve new and inescapable problems." Those problems would be many and their owner, as far as the Navy cared, was Chester Nimitz. magazine would call the Pacific "an unshared front where America's production, her strategy, her skill and valor must stand the acid test alone.... Our national feeling with regard to the Pacific burns with a purer flame. We seem to realize that here is not a war rooted in the age-old hatreds and grudges of Europe. Here, rather, is a war to resolve new and inescapable problems." Those problems would be many and their owner, as far as the Navy cared, was Chester Nimitz.

Nimitz's chief of staff, Raymond A. Spruance, would call him "one of the few people I know who never knew what it meant to be afraid of anything." His duties were of the kind that exhausted the conscientious and the caring. After the Oahu attack, he had to sort out its myriad administrative consequences-three thousand letters to send to bereaved families, untold gatherings of men and machines to rea.s.sign to useful tasks. As head of the Bureau of Navigation, which handled personnel issues, he had tendered the applications of the ambitious and the vengeful, including more than one U.S. congressman who phoned him after December 7 to lobby for an enlistment. Overwhelmed and sleepless, Nimitz was said to have told his congressional supplicants, "Go back and vote us appropriations. We're going to need them."

On December 19, Nimitz left his office on Const.i.tution Avenue and returned to his apartment on Q Street to share the news of his appointment with his wife. Sensing his reluctance, Catherine reminded him, "You always wanted to command the Pacific Fleet. You always thought that would be the height of glory."

"Darling," replied Nimitz, "the fleet's at the bottom of the sea. n.o.body must know that here, but I've got to tell you."

He had grown to dread the a.s.signment, and would have even if it didn't entail commanding a wounded squadron, the battleships of Task Force 1, whose lifeblood, their oil, still seeped in rainbow ribbons from their broken hulls off Ford Island. He would have dreaded it because he knew his promotion was a zero-sum transaction; it required the demotion of someone else, and that person happened to be one of Nimitz's closest friends, Husband E. Kimmel. Pearl Harbor had burned on Kimmel's watch, so Kimmel paid the price. If the charge of negligence failed by the standard of a trial court, and if the proceeding that tarred him was driven more by political expediency than by examination of a fuller truth concerning who had what level of warning and when, it was also the verdict that the code of naval leadership required. A captain was expected to go down with his ship; why not an admiral with his base? The principle was clean, simple, and predictable in operation. It was the Navy way.

Within a few short years America's fleet would be more powerful and capable than any before it. The same could be said of Nimitz's superior in Washington, the leading U.S. naval commander of the day. Though he worked in guarded isolation, giving subordinates little direct access, no admiral had ever wielded the same degree of personal influence on wartime policy as Ernest J. King. As the commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet (COMINCH) and chief of naval operations (CNO), he was preeminent in both planning and command. His influence and his formidable personal nature made him a figure to be reckoned with within the Navy Department bureaucracy. Ensconced on the front corridor of the fourth floor of "Main Navy," the large headquarters building on Const.i.tution Avenue, he was memorably unlike Nimitz. "Subconsciously he sought to be omnipotent and infallible," his biographer wrote. "There were few men whom he regarded as his equal as to brains; he would acknowledge no mind as superior to his own." He was abrupt and unyielding, visibly intolerant of those he deemed fools. Though his first reflex was always to reject even the best advice, he did once concede to a staffer, "Sometimes my bark is worse than my bite."

King penalized caution wherever it surfaced. In March, he was outraged to learn that one of his admirals in the South Pacific, Frank Jack Fletcher, had decided to return to base to refuel his carrier rather than stand ready to intercept enemy shipping gathering near Rabaul. During the Battle of the Coral Sea in May, he took a dim view of Fletcher's refusal to release his destroyers to pursue the retreating j.a.panese carrier force. When Nimitz subsequently recommended Fletcher for both a promotion and a medal-taking pains to defend his judgment to King by pointing out Fletcher's shortage of destroyers to protect his carriers-King refused to approve either.

King reduced all issues to their impact on keeping his fleet ready for war. No other considerations counted. When officials at the Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service informed him in June that Navy units were targeting whales and other marine mammals during gunnery exercises, King quickly put an end to it, writing Nimitz, "Undoubtedly these acts are committed lightheartedly by the crews without realizing that the killing and injury of whales results in the destruction of valuable war materials of which there is a wholly inadequate supply." King was indifferent to the concerns of marine biologists. To him it mattered only that his fleet needed whale meal and lubricants, resources that the West Coast whaling fleet, thinly drawn by a two-ocean war's demands on shipping, was struggling to provide.

Most people who crossed King's path came to fear him for one reason or another, but the New York Times New York Times war correspondent Hanson W. Baldwin, no stranger to the COMINCH's high mercury, saw something else in his bl.u.s.ter. "His greatest weakness is personal vanity," Baldwin wrote. "He is terrifically sensitive and in some ways has many of the attributes of a woman." This remark probably revealed more about Baldwin than about King, whose virility was actually a mark against him. Women avoided sitting next to him at dinner parties because, it was said, "his hands were too often beneath the table." war correspondent Hanson W. Baldwin, no stranger to the COMINCH's high mercury, saw something else in his bl.u.s.ter. "His greatest weakness is personal vanity," Baldwin wrote. "He is terrifically sensitive and in some ways has many of the attributes of a woman." This remark probably revealed more about Baldwin than about King, whose virility was actually a mark against him. Women avoided sitting next to him at dinner parties because, it was said, "his hands were too often beneath the table."

King's personality was famously and not flatteringly likened to a blowtorch. Some people turned that metaphor to his favor, saying he was "so tough he shaved with a blowtorch." That nuance would have been lost on him, for he was never willing to propel his career by cultivating people's favor. After facing off with King at a meeting once, General Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in his diary, "One thing that might help win this war is to get someone to shoot King. He's the ant.i.thesis of cooperation, a deliberately rude person, which means he's a mental bully." King liked his tough reputation. When he was called to Washington to replace Harold Stark as CNO, King remarked, "When things get tough, they call for the sons of b.i.t.c.hes." It marked the style of King's intellect and independence, and not necessarily for the better, that he mistrusted the judgment of anyone but himself. Those he deemed lesser minds included some formidable figures, including General Marshall, whom King deemed provincially Eurocentric and ignorant of seapower and the Pacific generally, and the one officer who would prove to have the keenest judgment of all the flag officers in the Navy: Chester W. Nimitz. King soon learned that he could give his Pacific Ocean Area chief some s.p.a.ce to operate, but in the early days he was known to treat Nimitz as he did other subordinates. Of Nimitz he had once said, "If only I could keep him tight on what he's supposed to do. Somebody gets ahold of him and I have to straighten him out." Apparently leery of Nimitz's accommodating way, King sent him unsubtle signals about his expectations. Once he wrote to his Pacific commander, "You are requested to read the article, 'There Is Only One Mistake: To Do Nothing,' by Charles F. Kettering in the March 29th issue of Sat.u.r.day Evening Post Sat.u.r.day Evening Post and to see to it that it is brought to the attention of all of your princ.i.p.al subordinates and other key officers." So overriding was his will to action that for a time King made a practice of bypa.s.sing Nimitz in operational matters. If this was a test of fort.i.tude, Nimitz pa.s.sed. Finding the discourtesy intolerable, he confronted King during one of their many meetings and told him the state of affairs had to change. King let Nimitz run the Pacific naval war thenceforth with little overt interference. and to see to it that it is brought to the attention of all of your princ.i.p.al subordinates and other key officers." So overriding was his will to action that for a time King made a practice of bypa.s.sing Nimitz in operational matters. If this was a test of fort.i.tude, Nimitz pa.s.sed. Finding the discourtesy intolerable, he confronted King during one of their many meetings and told him the state of affairs had to change. King let Nimitz run the Pacific naval war thenceforth with little overt interference.

Fair, gentle, courtly, and vigorous, Nimitz was a match for any of the bl.u.s.tery egos surrounding him. He would emerge in time as the Pacific war's essential man, the figure through whom all decisions flowed, on whom all outcomes reflected, and whose judgment was respected from Main Navy all the way down the line. He lay like a valley of humility between two mountains of conceit: Ernest King and General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of the Southwest Pacific Command and the Navy's stalwart intramural rival. The divided ArmyNavy command would be a continuing complication in the war ahead. King and MacArthur had enough weight of will to pull major commanders into their orbits and hold them in place by their gravity. Nimitz, in time, became their fulcrum.

Nimitz generally reserved his thoughts for himself. Complaints he harbored that had no bearing on plans, fruitless reprimands, second and third guesses-he held them within. The emotional pressure they created often left him sleepless. Most nights he awoke at 3 a.m., read till 5:30, then went back to bed. The pace of work at CINCPAC headquarters needed just a few months to exhaust him utterly. By spring 1942 his mind was a turmoil, his spirit gripped by pessimism. The repair of the battle fleet and the reconst.i.tution of Pearl Harbor naval base were moving more slowly than many wanted. He feared his supporters were turning sour. "I will be lucky to last six months," he lamented in a letter to Catherine.

But the season of spring was like a lifetime in that war. Though grievous damage to the fleet was still visible at Pearl, the loss was never as great as it had seemed. All but two of the battleships were sent to the West Coast for repair and modernization and made ready for war within months. The war, of course, did not wait for them. Reconst.i.tuted around its aircraft carriers, and under the leadership of new commanders, the Pacific Fleet struck back in the spring.

The carrier fleet's surging esprit de corps, such a novelty for the battered warriors of Pearl Harbor, carried Chester Nimitz through the six months he had most dreaded. The Pacific Fleet's flattops, under Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., ventured forth and struck targets from the Gilberts to all the way to j.a.pan's home islands. A task force with the carriers Enterprise Enterprise and and Hornet, Hornet, the latter playing host to a flight of strangers, twin-engined Army bombers, launched an audacious raid against Tokyo. After Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle's B-25s had done their work, the Combined Fleet's commander in chief, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, won army backing for his plan to draw out and destroy the nuisance-making U.S. fleet once and for all by seizing Midway and the Aleutian Islands, then targeting Hawaii itself. He also continued the push from Rabaul south toward the stronghold of Port Moresby, New Guinea. He meant to isolate Australia, then continue southeast to threaten U.S. bases as far away as Samoa. the latter playing host to a flight of strangers, twin-engined Army bombers, launched an audacious raid against Tokyo. After Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle's B-25s had done their work, the Combined Fleet's commander in chief, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, won army backing for his plan to draw out and destroy the nuisance-making U.S. fleet once and for all by seizing Midway and the Aleutian Islands, then targeting Hawaii itself. He also continued the push from Rabaul south toward the stronghold of Port Moresby, New Guinea. He meant to isolate Australia, then continue southeast to threaten U.S. bases as far away as Samoa.

In early May, a carrier task force under Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher intercepted a j.a.panese invasion fleet bound for Port Moresby. In the Battle of the Coral Sea, the U.S. Navy sank the j.a.panese carrier Shoho, Shoho, damaged a second, and turned back the invasion. Though the damaged a second, and turned back the invasion. Though the Lexington Lexington was lost and the was lost and the Yorktown Yorktown damaged, American pilots relished their victory and soon re-formed for another crack at the Combined Fleet. During the first week of June, after Nimitz's codebreakers detected an enemy plan to invade Midway Island, a pair of carrier task forces under Fletcher and Spruance sprang an ambush. By the time fliers from the damaged, American pilots relished their victory and soon re-formed for another crack at the Combined Fleet. During the first week of June, after Nimitz's codebreakers detected an enemy plan to invade Midway Island, a pair of carrier task forces under Fletcher and Spruance sprang an ambush. By the time fliers from the Enterprise, Hornet, Enterprise, Hornet, and hastily repaired and hastily repaired Yorktown Yorktown called it a day on June 4, j.a.pan's thrust toward Hawaii was parried, with losses that included four frontline aircraft carriers and 110 pilots. The victory put the U.S. Navy in position, for the first time, to carry the fight to the enemy. called it a day on June 4, j.a.pan's thrust toward Hawaii was parried, with losses that included four frontline aircraft carriers and 110 pilots. The victory put the U.S. Navy in position, for the first time, to carry the fight to the enemy.

The old plan for a Pacific offensive envisioned parallel drives toward Tokyo, one running from New Guinea toward the Philippines, the other through the Central Pacific to the Marianas. Which path received priority for supply, equipment, and reinforcement would depend on the outcome of an important battle yet to be fought-between the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy. General Douglas MacArthur advocated the New Guinea route; Nimitz and the Navy, the Central Pacific. Though the interservice rivalry was well established, the outbreak of war pitted them in compet.i.tion for scarce weapons and materiel. As the first American offensive of the war took shape, the warriors in the Pacific would be constantly pleading their cause to those in Washington who rationed the resources. As it happened, King's ambitions faced obstacles from those who outranked even MacArthur. FDR himself was said to favor European operations.

As King saw it, the events of early June provided the longed-for opening for a Pacific offensive. While he knew his president would cherish sending his beloved fleet into action, King also knew what Roosevelt's overriding aim was in the spring of 1941: helping the Russians. In a May 6 memo to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, FDR wrote, "It must be constantly reiterated that Russian armies are killing more Germans and destroying more Axis materiel than all the twenty-five united nations put together. To help Russia, therefore, is the primary consideration." Despite her infamy, j.a.pan was a negligible threat, Roosevelt thought. With Germany knocked out of the fight, j.a.pan could not hold on, he believed. "The whole question of whether we win or lose the war depends on the Russians," he wrote in June. "We can defeat the j.a.panese in six weeks." King didn't think the Navy's victory at Midway had registered sufficiently with the Allied high command.

As FDR saw it, diverting German forces from the critical Eastern Front and preventing a separate Russian truce with Hitler required a bold American move in Europe. The plan Roosevelt liked best, Operation Sledgehammer, would throw forty-eight divisions, more than seven hundred thousand men, across the English Channel and into France before the end of 1942. The Army's ambitions were constrained by the pessimism of the British and the U.S. Navy's inarguable need to at least hold on in the Pacific. Giving resources to that modest goal, even if it were simply a "maintenance of positions," would compromise Eisenhower's cross-channel plans. An alternative urged by the British, an invasion of North Africa, originally known as Operation Gymnast, then Operation Torch, was less risky from Churchill's point of view, though it still competed for American time, resources, and attention.

From his work with the British, King was aware that, officially, a "Germany first" strategy was operative. But his close involvement in negotiations and personal relationship with George Marshall enabled him to create the leeway to run the Pacific as he saw fit. In many cases he dealt exclusively with Marshall in designing strategy in the Pacific. As far as he was concerned, the strategy all along was "Pacific first." The Navy was clearly most vested there. Four of its five heavy aircraft carriers were in the Pacific, and twenty-seven of its thirty-eight cruisers. "I sent an order to Admiral Nimitz," King wrote after the war, "saying that despite all other orders, large or small, the basic orders are that the Pacific Fleet must, first, keep all means of communications with the West Coast and, second, but close to the first order, to keep all areas between Hawaii and Samoa clear of the j.a.panese and then as fast as it could expand that area toward Australia." His mandate to Nimitz reflected the clarity of the Navy's self-arranged destiny in the west. King considered "Germany first" little more than a political campaign slogan. Let the Joint Chiefs host their debating society with the British. King's Navy had an ocean to conquer.

For General Marshall, a powerful voice on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it would take a fully concentrated effort to beat the Axis decisively in either hemisphere. On July 13, he sent Eisenhower a secret telegram stating that an invasion of North Africa would be a fruitless dispersion of force. "We would nowhere be acting decisively against our enemies," he wrote. With North Africa commanding most of its attention, the Army would have few aircraft, so critical to victory, available in the South Pacific. Winston Churchill pressed the case for North Africa, however. He candidly regarded an amphibious a.s.sault against France in 1942 and even in 1943 as suicide. Marshall was publicly noncommittal. Fearing a compromise that pleased no one, but wishing to strike effectively against the Axis somewhere, somewhere, Marshall expressed a willingness to entertain the Pacific-first offensive strategy that Admiral King envisioned. The general saw the prospect of a Navy offensive in the Pacific as a lever to budge the intransigent British. If landings in France could not be made by early 1943, Marshall wrote to Eisenhower, "We should turn to the Pacific and strike decisively against j.a.pan with full strength and ample reserves, a.s.suming a defensive att.i.tude against Germany except for air operations." Marshall expressed a willingness to entertain the Pacific-first offensive strategy that Admiral King envisioned. The general saw the prospect of a Navy offensive in the Pacific as a lever to budge the intransigent British. If landings in France could not be made by early 1943, Marshall wrote to Eisenhower, "We should turn to the Pacific and strike decisively against j.a.pan with full strength and ample reserves, a.s.suming a defensive att.i.tude against Germany except for air operations."

As King wrote after the war, his idea was to "stop the enemy as soon as we could get the ships, planes and troops to make a stand as far to the westward as possible.... I kept close watch on the area of Guadalca.n.a.l and finally decided, whether or not the J.C.S. would agree, I wanted to make some real move.... The Army still insisted that the time wasn't ripe so I answered them, 'When will the time be ripe since we have just defeated a major part of the enemy's fleet [at Midway]?'"

Knowing that he needed King's support in the continuing arguments with the British, even as he feared unilateral Navy initiatives, Marshall agreed to back a Navy-directed plan in the South Pacific. If this was a bluff to cow the Brits, Eisenhower strengthened it by relaying Marshall's suggestion to Roosevelt. Ike, too, thought that if a cross-channel invasion couldn't be launched from England, then America should "turn our backs upon the Eastern Atlantic and go, full out, as quickly as possible, against j.a.pan!"

The president doubted the value of seizing "a lot of islands whose occupation will not affect the world situation this year or next." Still, King knew FDR wanted action and believed he would not likely block a well-considered plan to turn the fleet loose against the Axis. As far back as March, King had urged Roosevelt to approve "an integrated, general plan of operations" based on the idea of holding six strongpoints that spanned the South Pacific from east to west: Samoa, Fiji, New Caledonia, Tongatabu, Efate, and Funafuti. From those bases the Navy could protect the sea-lanes to Australia, then drive northwest into the Solomons and the Bismarcks. The opportunity to do that had finally come.

Neither King nor Marshall seemed to grasp the degree to which politics would compel Roosevelt to veto an express Pacific-first strategy. For reasons of electoral calculation-to preserve his Democratic majorities in a congressional midterm election-Roosevelt wanted American troops fighting Germans before the end of the year. "We failed to see," Marshall would write, "that the leader in a democracy has to keep the people entertained. The people demand action."

Public opinion was increasingly in favor of pursuing the fight in the Pacific. In January 1942, a Newsweek Newsweek editorialist wrote, "Congressmen are receiving a growing stream of mail from const.i.tuents condemning the conduct of the war. The writers demand to know why Wake, Guam, and Midway garrisons were neither reinforced or rescued, why the Philippines were left with only a meager force of fighter planes while hundreds were sent to Europe, why the Navy has not laced into the j.a.panese fleet, etc." editorialist wrote, "Congressmen are receiving a growing stream of mail from const.i.tuents condemning the conduct of the war. The writers demand to know why Wake, Guam, and Midway garrisons were neither reinforced or rescued, why the Philippines were left with only a meager force of fighter planes while hundreds were sent to Europe, why the Navy has not laced into the j.a.panese fleet, etc."

The answer was the political clout of America's Atlantic ally. "King's war is against the j.a.panese," one of Churchill's advisers had warned him. If London did not commit to Eisenhower's invasion of France, the adviser wrote, "everything points to a complete reversal of our present agreed strategy and the withdrawal of America to a war of her own in the Pacific." On hearing this, Churchill reportedly remarked, "Just because the Americans can't have a ma.s.sacre in France this year, they want to sulk and bathe in the Pacific." That was a dubious characterization of what his Atlantic cousins really wanted. Because the j.a.panese had struck them directly, and Hitler hadn't, what many Americans-or the Navy at least-wanted was a ma.s.sacre in the Pacific. The victory at Midway opened the course.

The Navy would find its war on the boundless battlefield of the western ocean. When Martin Clemens turned on his teleradio in Aola and tapped out news of an airfield in the making, the pattern of the coming days began to take shape in the mind of Ernest King.

2.

A Great Gray Fleet.

"ON CALM DAYS THE LIGHT BLUE HIGHWAY WITH ITS FROTHY CURBSTONES stretches along the great flat ocean to the horizon. This highway needs no signs; it tells friend and foe alike a ship has pa.s.sed this way. If you follow along this road, your seaman-sharp eyes telling you where we zigged and where we zagged, you will come finally to the thrashing turbulence forced out by our screws; you will have arrived at our fantail, the after limits of a waterborne military community. And should you follow along the welded smooth side of our hull, past the splashing overboard discharges, you will soon come to the swishing white bow-wave, jumping constantly clear, and to the sharp stem cleaving the unmarked sea ahead, these extremities of our life." stretches along the great flat ocean to the horizon. This highway needs no signs; it tells friend and foe alike a ship has pa.s.sed this way. If you follow along this road, your seaman-sharp eyes telling you where we zigged and where we zagged, you will come finally to the thrashing turbulence forced out by our screws; you will have arrived at our fantail, the after limits of a waterborne military community. And should you follow along the welded smooth side of our hull, past the splashing overboard discharges, you will soon come to the swishing white bow-wave, jumping constantly clear, and to the sharp stem cleaving the unmarked sea ahead, these extremities of our life."

The froth of bubbles that the USS Atlanta Atlanta had left behind reached all the way to the northeastern seaboard. The young reservist who wrote these words, a New Yorker named Robert Graff, was new to the fleet but already in its thrall. In the rush of the past year, he had learned what his shipmates were capable of. The good ones on the good days became as brothers. Even some of the bad ones were just the kind of men you wanted on your side in a fight. A ship was a small world and one they came to love, even as its narrow steel enclosure restricted their immediate prospects and carried them, with few diversions, toward a deadly struggle. had left behind reached all the way to the northeastern seaboard. The young reservist who wrote these words, a New Yorker named Robert Graff, was new to the fleet but already in its thrall. In the rush of the past year, he had learned what his shipmates were capable of. The good ones on the good days became as brothers. Even some of the bad ones were just the kind of men you wanted on your side in a fight. A ship was a small world and one they came to love, even as its narrow steel enclosure restricted their immediate prospects and carried them, with few diversions, toward a deadly struggle.

The salad days of her prewar launching in New York were a dimming memory. The ceremonial flourish that attended the launch of the ship had been spectacular. The country's most popular purveyor of heavily freighted romance, Mrs. John R. Marsh, better known by her pen name, Margaret Mitch.e.l.l, had been on hand in Kearny, New Jersey, on September 12, 1941, to celebrate the launching. With a quick two-handed swing, the author of Gone with the Wind Gone with the Wind smashed a bottle of champagne over an after turret housing and christened the lead ship of a new cla.s.s of cruiser. Moored in the finishing basin at the Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, their decks fouled with electrical cabling and acetylene hoses and pneumatic hardware, unfinished fixtures and unfixed weaponry, two of the new type stood as sisters: the smashed a bottle of champagne over an after turret housing and christened the lead ship of a new cla.s.s of cruiser. Moored in the finishing basin at the Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, their decks fouled with electrical cabling and acetylene hoses and pneumatic hardware, unfinished fixtures and unfixed weaponry, two of the new type stood as sisters: the Atlanta Atlanta and the and the Juneau Juneau.

Like shipyards coast-to-coast, Kearny, New Jersey, was a festival of naval industry. Half a dozen destroyers and twice that many merchantmen crowded the docks up and down the river. But the Atlanta Atlanta and and Juneau Juneau stood out. What was most noticeable about them, before they were finished out with thousands of fittings, riggings, and shapely facets of superstructure, was the extent of their main battery. The arrangement of the twin-mounted five-inch turrets, three rising forward and three descending aft, with two more in hip positions amidships, helped give them their characteristic lines. The forest of barrels was suited to the mission of the stood out. What was most noticeable about them, before they were finished out with thousands of fittings, riggings, and shapely facets of superstructure, was the extent of their main battery. The arrangement of the twin-mounted five-inch turrets, three rising forward and three descending aft, with two more in hip positions amidships, helped give them their characteristic lines. The forest of barrels was suited to the mission of the Atlanta Atlanta cla.s.s: to provide antiaircraft defense for a task force. They had the largest single broadside of heavy antiaircraft weaponry of any vessel in any fleet, nearly half again that of the latest U.S. fast battleships that were five times their displacement. Though antiaircraft cruisers were fitted with the destroyer's traditional armament of torpedoes and depth charges, the cla.s.s: to provide antiaircraft defense for a task force. They had the largest single broadside of heavy antiaircraft weaponry of any vessel in any fleet, nearly half again that of the latest U.S. fast battleships that were five times their displacement. Though antiaircraft cruisers were fitted with the destroyer's traditional armament of torpedoes and depth charges, the Atlanta Atlanta was the embodiment of a navy built for a new kind of war. She was a welterweight ship with a middleweight jab. Her batteries were numerous enough to fend off multiple destroyers in a surface action, and put a dent in the most vigorous air attack as well. was the embodiment of a navy built for a new kind of war. She was a welterweight ship with a middleweight jab. Her batteries were numerous enough to fend off multiple destroyers in a surface action, and put a dent in the most vigorous air attack as well.

The Atlanta Atlanta's a.s.sistant gunnery officer, Lieutenant Lloyd M. Mustin, showed visitors this thick grove of firepower "with the same pride a mother would introduce her children," said Edward Corboy, another Atlanta Atlanta officer. A new ship was a complex system full of small flaws to fix. Mustin found that the officer. A new ship was a complex system full of small flaws to fix. Mustin found that the Atlanta Atlanta's SC radar transmitter couldn't send signals powerful enough to survive transmission through the foremast's eighty-foot run of coaxial cable, bounce off a target, and return back through the receiver and the long cable to the radar room and produce a usable echo. He arranged for preamplifiers to boost the signal and, with adjustments to the receiver's sensitivity, found that he could detect aircraft at fifty to sixty miles and surface ships at fifteen to twenty. He also saw to it that the Atlanta Atlanta was outfitted with the new Mark 37 gun director. Coupled with the new high-frequency model FD fire-control radar, whose narrow beams returned a precise range on a target after it was located by the search radar, and a late-model power-drive gunsight that enabled him to slew rapidly to acquire targets, they were a powerful package. In impromptu training sessions, director crews zeroed their sights on subway trains carrying oblivious commuters across Manhattan's East River bridges. was outfitted with the new Mark 37 gun director. Coupled with the new high-frequency model FD fire-control radar, whose narrow beams returned a precise range on a target after it was located by the search radar, and a late-model power-drive gunsight that enabled him to slew rapidly to acquire targets, they were a powerful package. In impromptu training sessions, director crews zeroed their sights on subway trains carrying oblivious commuters across Manhattan's East River bridges.

Three months later, on the day before Christmas, the ship was finished and ready for commissioning into the fleet. Under overcast skies at the New York Navy Yard, Margaret Mitch.e.l.l was on hand again. As soon as she finished her remarks, the sun broke through over Brooklyn, catching sharply on the swords of officers and flashing on the gray sides of all those gun turrets. "A rather dull tableau suddenly was a scene of splendor," Edward Corboy said. For the plankowners on the first U.S. warship commissioned following the attack on Pearl Harbor, it was an auspicious sign.

Under command of Captain Samuel P. Jenkins, the Atlanta Atlanta shook down in the Chesapeake Bay, ran speed trials off the Maine coast, and was headed for the Pacific before many of her systems were complete. One didn't have to be a veteran, or even a man, to admire her hard, monochromatic elegance. Elizabeth Shaw, the wife of one of her lieutenants, would write, "To my artist's eye she was a thing of beauty and a true oceanic lady." The wives had followed her on the journey from Atlantic to Pacific coast. At each place they were forbidden to board the ship, just as their husbands were forbidden from going ash.o.r.e. shook down in the Chesapeake Bay, ran speed trials off the Maine coast, and was headed for the Pacific before many of her systems were complete. One didn't have to be a veteran, or even a man, to admire her hard, monochromatic elegance. Elizabeth Shaw, the wife of one of her lieutenants, would write, "To my artist's eye she was a thing of beauty and a true oceanic lady." The wives had followed her on the journey from Atlantic to Pacific coast. At each place they were forbidden to board the ship, just as their husbands were forbidden from going ash.o.r.e. Secrecy Secrecy was the byword of the wartime Navy. Rumors were floated that arctic-weather clothing was due to arrive-"a glorious hoax," Shaw wrote, "to keep the ship's destination a secret even from the officers, for fear someone would tell a wife who would gossip." was the byword of the wartime Navy. Rumors were floated that arctic-weather clothing was due to arrive-"a glorious hoax," Shaw wrote, "to keep the ship's destination a secret even from the officers, for fear someone would tell a wife who would gossip."

When the Atlanta Atlanta arrived at Pearl Harbor on May 6, with orders to join Task Force 16, the arrived at Pearl Harbor on May 6, with orders to join Task Force 16, the Enterprise Enterprise carrier task force, the carrier task force, the Arizona Arizona's commissioning pennant could still be seen flying above the wreck in mournful defiance. Death was persistent still. A thousand and a half bodies were believed to reside within the sunken battleships. The triumphs of j.a.panese airpower strongly suggested the need for task force defenses bolstered by ships like the Atlanta Atlanta.

After taking part in the defense of Midway, the Atlanta Atlanta returned to Pearl Harbor and soon found herself with new orders. When Jenkins announced to his crew that their destination was Tongatabu, the Navy's South Pacific fueling base south of Samoa, all hands wondered why. "I think the answer lies in the Solomons," an officer speculated. returned to Pearl Harbor and soon found herself with new orders. When Jenkins announced to his crew that their destination was Tongatabu, the Navy's South Pacific fueling base south of Samoa, all hands wondered why. "I think the answer lies in the Solomons," an officer speculated.

ON JUNE 22, 1942, thousands of well-equipped riflemen of the 1st Marine Division loaded into troop ships at San Francisco, pa.s.sed Alcatraz, steamed underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, and set out into the Pacific's first long swells. An uncertain future lay dead ahead. The weather decks were packed with men looking back. thousands of well-equipped riflemen of the 1st Marine Division loaded into troop ships at San Francisco, pa.s.sed Alcatraz, steamed underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, and set out into the Pacific's first long swells. An uncertain future lay dead ahead. The weather decks were packed with men looking back.

The convoy carrying forces from the 1st Marine Division, under Major General Alexander Archer Vandegrift, was three days under way when Ernest King informed George Marshall that these men would be the tip of the first spear he would throw at j.a.pan's Pacific imperium. On July 2, King sent Nimitz a "super secret" dispatch that outlined the Navy plan. Code-named Operation Watchtower, it was an invasion plan whose first stage, known as Task One, was the seizure of the Santa Cruz Islands, Tulagi, and "adjacent positions."

Given a "golden opportunity" by the victory at Midway, King directed Nimitz to begin preparations to go on the attack. No one expected an offensive to begin prior to the late fall of 1942. According to cynics, King believed the surest way to draw more resources to the Pacific was to send thousands of infantry where the prospect of their defeat would be intolerable. But it was clearly a genuine strategic threat that moved him most. According to Vandegrift, "What he jammed down the throats of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was that just possibly the mighty j.a.panese had overextended. He saw that just possibly a strike by us could halt their eastward parade."

The signs were clear that the j.a.panese had their own aggressive designs on the deep South Pacific. There were new concentrations of submarines and air units at Rabaul. But with the airfield project revealed, King considered it "absolutely essential to stop the southward advance of the enemy at that point and at that time, at that point and at that time," and stated his views forcibly to Marshall. Conferring with Nimitz, King accelerated planning and subst.i.tuted Guadalca.n.a.l, an "adjacent position" not mentioned in the original plan, for Santa Cruz. "King's reiteration of attack, seize the initiative, and do it now attack, seize the initiative, and do it now was beginning to take on the throbbing insistence of a war drum." was beginning to take on the throbbing insistence of a war drum."

King deflected General Marshall's attempt to give Operation Watchtower to Army control. On June 25, Marshall had written to King that Guadalca.n.a.l and Tulagi fell within the sphere of Douglas MacArthur's Southwest Pacific Command (SOWEs.p.a.c), rather than the Navy's South Pacific Area (SOPAC). Recognizing that the key to any such operation would be Marine Corps infantry who would necessarily operate with the fleet, King quashed the idea immediately, responding to Marshall that the operation "must be conducted under the direction of CINCPAC and cannot be conducted in any other way." Marshall conceded to the Navy the responsibility for the first of the three tasks in the seizure of the southern Solomons. He handed the second and third tasks, the capture of the rest of the Solomon Islands and the neutralization and conquest of Rabaul, to MacArthur. Marshall moved the line dividing SOWEs.p.a.c from SOPAC, originally drawn to run straight through the southern Solomons, slightly westward to give the fleet exclusive domain over Task One. There were still too many cooks in the kitchen, but the hot appetizer would be the Navy's dish to serve.

Guadalca.n.a.l was thirty-six hundred miles from Pearl Harbor. Measuring distance from Pacific Fleet headquarters, an expedition to a.s.sault Yokohama would have been just as long. But King and Nimitz would beat Yamamoto to the punch. D-Day on Red Beach was set for August 1.

WHEN GENERAL VANDEGRIFT was at last given the details of Operation Watchtower, several days under way for his staging area in Wellington, New Zealand, he was aghast at the speed required of him. The timetable allowed precious little time for preparation and training: They were to set foot on hostile sh.o.r.es on August 1. His superior, the commander of the South Pacific Forces, Vice Admiral Robert L. Ghormley, joined General MacArthur in Melbourne, Australia, on July 8 to advise a postponement because of a lack of preparation and the inadequacy of friendly air cover over the invasion target. Though MacArthur had been written out of the invasion plan itself, he would still be relied upon to furnish air support to Navy forces with his long-range bombers, useful for both search and attack. was at last given the details of Operation Watchtower, several days under way for his staging area in Wellington, New Zealand, he was aghast at the speed required of him. The timetable allowed precious little time for preparation and training: They were to set foot on hostile sh.o.r.es on August 1. His superior, t