Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal

By James D. Hornfischer

“A literary tour de force that is destined to become one of the . . . definitive works about the battle for Guadalcanal . . . [James D.] Hornfischer deftly captures the essence of the most pivotal naval campaign of the Pacific war.”—San Antonio Express-News

The Battle of Guadalcanal has long been heralded as a Marine victory. Now, with his powerful portrait of the Navy’s sacrifice, James D. Hornfischer tells for the first time the full story of the men who fought in destroyers, cruisers, and battleships in the narrow, deadly waters of “Ironbottom Sound.” Here, in stunning cinematic detail, are the seven major naval actions that began in August 1942, a time when the war seemed unwinnable and America fought on a shoestring, with the outcome always in doubt. Working from new interviews with survivors, unpublished eyewitness accounts, and newly available documents, Hornfischer paints a vivid picture of the officers and enlisted men who opposed the Japanese in America’s hour of need. The first major work on this subject in almost two decades, Neptune’s Inferno does what all great battle narratives do: It tells the gripping human stories behind the momentous events and critical decisions that altered the course of history and shaped so many lives.

Praise for Neptune’s Inferno

“Vivid and engaging . . . extremely readable, comprehensive and thoroughly researched.”—Ronald Spector, The Wall Street Journal

“Superlative storytelling . . . the masterwork on the long-neglected topic of World War II’s surface ship combat.”—Richard B. Frank, World War II

“The author’s two previous World War II books . . . thrust him into the major leagues of American military history writers. Neptune’s Inferno is solid proof he deserves to be there.”—The Dallas Morning News

“Outstanding . . . The author’s narrative gifts and excellent choice of detail give an almost Homeric quality to the men who met on the sea in steel titans.”—Booklist (starred review)

“Brilliant . . . a compelling narrative of naval combat . . . simply superb.”—The Washington Times

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jan 25, 2011
• ISBN: 9780553908077

Reviews for Neptune's Inferno

[martinhughharvey_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My second Hornsicher book although when I acquired it I'd forgotten the first - the superlative "The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors". I'd been meaning to read this book for a while and as I was "in the region", actually the Celebes Sea but close enough, I thought I'd take the plunge. The topic is Guadalcanal and while this is a well-documented campaign this concentrates on the naval side rather than the traditional land aspect.Mr Hornfischer makes a point I'd never thought about - Guadalcanal was a seminal battle in WWII where the allies turned the axis tide - along with Stalingrad and El Alamein.Guadalcanal is thought of as a USMC (marines) campaign, and their due should be noted, but 3 sailors fell for every infantryman.Sitting back when completing this book I reflected as to how I'd summarize the reading experience. The phrase "exceptionally crafted" to me was obvious, however, when I thought further I'd add "emotionally wrung" and "humbling". The description of the actions long and detailed - relentless and impressing so deeply the courage, determination, sacrifice, and carnage on both sides. When ships went down there was no discrimination as to rank. No privilege there. Part way through the book I scribbled down:- you can't run- rank is awful- nobody backed down- the heroism palpable- older commanders a liability- orders are often misinterpreted- destroyers should be renamed destroyedIt's fair to say that naval action in the Pacific is often thought of in carrier terms whereas this campaign was mainly surface ships. The only comparison that comes close in WWII, to me, is the Bismark chase and that was much less in scope and excluded any land component.I must get my emotional breath back before contemplating another Hornsicher book!Semper Fi!

[shrike58 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've probably been somewhat slack in that it took the passing away of the author to elevate his books near the top of my TBR pile, in as much I wasn't sure that Hornfischer had that much to tell me. In that assumption I was very wrong, as this book is the modern narrative that this campaign needed, and though I practically had Samuel Elliot Morrison's the "Two Ocean War" memorized at one point, Hornfischer kept me turning pages, if only because he had come up with side stories of which I was not really aware of. Besides that though, in an age of rising naval competition, and the United States Navy facing its first real challenge in a generation, Hornfischer gives one an exemplary and bracing tale of what happens when your nation's fleet goes stale. About the only small point I'd knock this down for is that there are just a few moments when Hornfischer's prose gets a little too purple; your mileage may differ.

[ecw0647 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Inferno doesn't begin to describe it. Guadalcanal represented the first major invasion by U.S. forces in the 20th century and many hard lessons had to be learned. The oft-repeated charge that the Marines were abandoned there by the Navy is belied by the statistic that for every Marine who was killed on land, five sailors died at sea in the horrific battles there. “The puzzle of victory was learned on the fly and on the cheap.”Hornfischer brilliantly, succinctly (and often horrifically as he describes the dreadful injuries suffered by the sailors) sets the stage discussing the personal and political challenges and conflicts that affected and drove the allocation of resources: the Army v the Navy (McArthur v Nimitz and King) in the Pacific; Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin in the Atlantic, with George Marshall stuck in the middle. The importance of Midway in boosting moral and altering the overall strategy cannot be overstated.Here’s an interesting little detail. Admiral Kinkaid was a day late getting to the staging area because his charts showed the International Date Line in the wrong place. Personally, the thing always confuses me, but his staff were careful not to let the higher brass learn of the error.Things got off to a bad start right from the beginning. Admiral Fletcher, (supported by Nimitz) in charge of the carriers, and Admiral Turner(supported by King), commanding the landing, hated each other. At the planning meeting at Saratoga, Fletcher worried about the risk to his carriers and refused to provide air support for more than 3 days. Turner, knowing the supply ships had not been combat loaded (so the most important supplies could be off-loaded first) knew that he could not afford to have the Marines abandoned after three days. This became infamous as the “Navy Bug-Out.” Whether Fletcher was correct in arguing that the risk to the carriers was far more strategically important is a debate that continues to this day. Hornfischer explains the rationale from both perspectives without coming down on either side.The Japanese were already suffering from “victors’” disease and tended to dismiss the landings as inconsequential and but a diversion aimed at slowing down the Japanese advance on Port Moresby. The Japanese had their own army-navy slugfest of distrust. The Army, in fact, had not told the Navy that the U.S. had broken their operational code. There was no central intelligence gathering unit and army commanders had to rely as much on their instincts as hard intelligence that was virtually non-existent.But the US Navy had a lot of hard lessons to learn. The Battle of Savo Island (otherwise known as the Battle of Five Sitting Ducks) revealed that the three minutes it took to get everyone in place after calling for general quarters was way too long. Especially as it meant having everyone run around changing places from where they had been. Leaving float planes on the decks of cruisers during action meant having aviation-fueled bombs on the rear deck. And captains ignoring the warnings of some of those being supervised could be deadly, not to mention poor communications and reluctance to trust new radar. Admiral Turner summed it up nicely: "The Navy was still obsessed with a strong feeling of technical and mental superiority over the enemy. In spite of ample evidence as to enemy capabilities, most of our officers and men despised the enemy and felt themselves sure victors in all encounters under any circumstances. The net result of all this was a fatal lethargy of mind which induced a confidence without readiness, and a routine acceptance of outworn peacetime standards of conduct. I believe that this psychological factor, as a cause of our defeat, was even more important than the element of surprise".There were lots of lessons to be learned and many heads to roll. Communications was a big problem as frequencies differed between services and even between planes and ships. One little tidbit was that southern boys, of which there were many, had to be kept off the radios since their heavy regional accents often made them incomprehensible to those on the other end of the wireless. Another was the importance of communications and knowing the difference between friend and foe. Many casualties occurred and ships sunk because the combatants couldn't tell the difference at night.Guadalcanal became the trial run for many of the islands that were to follow.

[setnahkt · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

James Hornfischer is the author of a couple of well-regarded books about the US Navy in the Pacific (The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors and Ship of Ghosts); haven’t read those, but they’re on the list. Neptune’s Inferno is about the naval battles off Guadalcanal from August to November 1942. Hornfischer notes that the United States Marines got a lot of good public relations from Guadalcanal – and deservedly so – but about three times as many sailors died in the campaign as Marines and soldiers. (Note: when I mention “Americans” below I also include Australians on board the Canberra and Australia. Sorry.)
Hornfischer is a good writer – this is a page-turner. There’s a lot of information I’ve never come across anywhere else. Of particular note:
* Despite the eventual overwhelming material superiority, the United States was severely short of bunker fuel oil. This kept the older US battleships in port on the US west coast until the fuel shortage lessened, and limited battleship support at Guadalcanal to the newer Washington and South Dakota. Even those ships were generally kept at a distance outside of Japanese land-based aircraft. This, in turn, puts the Japanese decision not to do a third strike at Pearl Harbor against the fuel storage facilities in a different light.
* In general, the Americans made very poor use of their technical superiority. Admittedly, the earliest American radar (“SC”) was difficult to use and interpret (instead of the now familiar circular plot, the SC displayed on an X-Y axis with X showing the distance to the target and Y the signal return strength. The azimuth was determined mechanically; the operator cranked the antenna by hand). The later SG radar, however, produced the now-familiar circular plot that pops into everybody’s head when thinking of “radar”. Unfortunately, American commanders had mixed feelings about the new technology. Admiral Daniel Callaghan and Admiral Norman Scott (particularly Callaghan) put their SG-equipped ships in the rear of the formation and generally ignored the information they provided. Hornfischer comes just short of calling Admiral Callaghan criminally incompetent for taking his cruiser force right into the middle of a Japanese flotilla with two battleships rather than stand back and use his radar superiority. Only battleship task force commander Willis Lee made good use of the radar on the Washington – and annihilated Kirishima in the process.
* The Americans still hadn’t figured out the Long Lance torpedo. American ships hit by torpedoes during the battles didn’t believe that range was possible and generally though they had been torpedoed by a submarine. Americans hadn’t figured out their own torpedoes, either. American surface battle doctrine was still gunfire dominated; which is just as well, because American torpedoes didn’t work.
* As far as it goes, though, American gunfire could be pretty effective. At the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, the light cruiser Helena had ninety seconds to shoot at the destroyer Amatsukaze before the San Francisco moved between them and blocked the line of fire. In that 90 seconds the Amatsukaze was hit by 125 six inch shells. That had to hurt.
The good parts of this book are the repeated use of first-person accounts of the battles, and the excellent character studies of the American participants. I minor problem is an unusual use of terms for what are just about everywhere else called the First and Second Naval Battles of Guadalcanal – Hornfischer calls these The Cruiser Night Action and The Battleship Night Action. The maps are OK, but suffer the problem inherent in static depictions of a fluid naval battle. It would be really interesting to see these animated somewhere; I don’t know if the details of the battle are good enough to do that – i.e., if you can position every ship involved continuously through the battle – but it would be fun to try. The most haunting part is an epilog, where Robert Graff, a survivor of the sinking of the Atlanta at the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, returns and drops a wreath over his ship’s grave.

[oparaxenos · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A thorough and well-written account of the sea battles in the Solomon Islands. Hornfischer writes very well and highlights a lot of little-known information about these hard-fought surface sea battles. He holds the reader's interest throughout.

[csayban · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Hornfischer does a good job of breaking down one of the more pivotal points of the war in the Pacific. The importance of these battles is well supported and I really appreciated the stories of individual soldiers and sailors. While the documentation of Neptune's Inferno was great for a history book, I found the narration to be spotty. Too often Hornfischer lost the thread and wondered off on tangents, failing to maintain the drama of such a drama-filled piece of history. This is a worthy edition to any WWII enthusiast's library, it isn't going to hold the attention of anyone who is just looking for a great war story. Good, but it left me wanting more.

[marshapetry · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Excellent review of naval actions in the Guadalcanal area, but a difficult book to listen to because of the constant reference to names and places. Really needed a set of maps to reference while listening. Still, once I accepted that I wasn't going to have that, the stories were excellent.

[deaconbernie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While much has already been written about this campaign, Hornfischer has managed to provide new details not previously part of the general literature. His in depth reporting of the events of the various battles provides deeper appreciation of the sheer terror faced by all who participated. Perhaps without intending to do so, his description of the thinking and the actions of the commanders clearly establishes a deep chasm to what was important in the peacetime Navy and what happened in war. It is a valuable lesson that probably will have to be relearned any time a nation goes to war.

[stuart10er_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Great book. A detailed view of the events leading up to the Naval battles in the Solomon islands at Guadalcanal. Bloody and depressing, but moving as well. A pretty balanced (to my view) of what we did right as well as what we did wrong, as well as what the Japanese did well or poorly.

[dsha67 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

thoroughly enjoyed Neptunes's Inferno, it was a well written history of the Naval Battle related to Guadalcanal and would encourage all to read it. I do wish their had been more on the land battle, but that was not the focus of this book.

[steve6clason · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

If we know about Guadalcanal, we know about it from the combat that took place on the island during the early part of WWII. Those battles have become famous from books (The Thin Red Line, Guadalcanal Diary), more so from the movies made of them, and for those of us of a certain age – my father served in the Pacific Fleet during the war – have come to stand for privation, suffering, honor, and, most of all, courage.I was surprised to discover that three times the number of sailors died in the battles for the island as soldiers (mostly Marines), and that the series of naval engagements in the Solomons are considered by many historians to be the pivotal battles of the war, and that the higher human attributes were at least as manifest in the Navy as the Marines and were probably more effective in setting the U.S. on the path to victory.Hornfischer focuses intensely, though not exclusively, on the Navy, and that focus allowed him mastery of the source material – he's read everything. With a good sense of pacing, a concentration on people, an ear for the telling anecdote, and a willingness to criticize bad decisions, he has put together a fine history that reads like a novel and presents us with the best, and sometimes the worst, actions of humans in desperate battle.

[jrtanworth · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent tale of the U.S. Navy's support of American forces engaged on Guadalcanal. This engrossing account includes includes coverage of theater strategy, naval surface warfare tactics, and tales related by individuals engaged in the actions.

[creighley_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A great look at the obstacles faced by the Navy around Guadalcanal. Hornfischer points out the basic problem the American Navy had with its lack of experienced commanders who were willing and versed to use available technology and leaders who had actually been in the midst of battle and knew what to do. Training and preparedness of the crew was another problem. Depicted here was much bravery and as in all aspects of war, too much death, many lives sacrificed by poor leadership.

[jamespurcell · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Neptune's Inferno is a vivid, even riveting portrayal of the naval battles that took place in the view and hearing of the marines and soldiers struggling to hold on to Guadalcanal. Because most of the battles took place at night, they often awakened to a sea full of debris, bodies, drifting survivors, damaged and sinking warships. All too frequently the latter were from America or their allies. When it was over, 48 warships(24 from each side) littered Iron Bottom Sound and the other waters around the islands. Over 5,000 sailors and marines died in the sea battles more than three times the fatalities during the 6 month land battle.Using insightful research interspersed with personal stores of participants and survivors, Hornfischer aptly and with penetrating insights, illustrates the steep learning curve that the officers and men of the allied navies went through beginning in August 1942 with an eerily easy landing and ending in Feb 1943 with10,000 Japanese being quietly and successfully evacuated from what they called Starvation Island.This book is a story of courageous officers and men fighting as well as they could despite being put "in harm's way" by oft repeated command decisions from ill prepared and often inept senior officers that were placed in command because of their seniority rather than their competence. Why were no submarines used by the US when the Tokyo Express ran on a schedule as punctual as Japanese trains? Why were the carriers almost always too far away to support the surface ships? Why do you maintain radio silence when the enemy is already firing at your ships? Why have radar if you are not going to use it? In what could be considered the last sea battle of Guadalcanal, the admiral commanding was repeating fatal mistakes made in previous battles months before. And like the commanding captains and admirals before him, he was new to the job and did it the old way.