Knife's Edge: South Pacific Carrier Battles from the Eastern Solomons to Santa Cruz

By Robert C. Stern

While the resounding American victory at Midway in June 1942 blunted Japanese momentum to a great extent, it left the opposing forces precariously balanced, particularly in the South Pacific. In Knife‘s Edge Robert C. Stern provides an account of the Battles of the Eastern Solomons and the Santa Cruz Islands, the two pivotal carrier air battles that followed the initial engagements at the Coral Sea and Midway between the U.S. Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy. Three U.S. aircraft carriers were sunk or badly damaged over the two months following Midway, including USS Enterprise at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons. Had it not been for the fortuitous arrival of USS Hornet at the end of August, the Americans would have been without an aircraft carrier in the South Pacific until Enterprise returned from repairs on 24 October. At that moment, another major Japanese offensive was afoot, again led by two large carriers, this time supported by another light carrier and a mid-sized merchant-hull conversion. The resulting Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands on 26 October 1942 was a solid tactical victory for the Japanese, who managed to sink Hornet and once again damage Enterprise. Stern has written a history of the two final early carrier battles fought between the U.S. Navy and Imperial Japan. These pivotal battles, coming after the triumph of the U.S. at Midway, illustrate lessons learned from these earlier battles of the Pacific War. Readers already familiar with the history of World War II at sea should find this account a riveting new look at a chapter of the Pacific War rarely covered until now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Release date: Feb 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781682478530

Book preview

Cover: Knife’s Edge, South Pacific Carrier Battles from the Eastern Solomons to Santa Cruz edited by Robert C. Stern

Knife’s

Edge

SOUTH PACIFIC CARRIER BATTLES FROM

THE EASTERN SOLOMONS TO SANTA CRUZ

Robert C. Stern

NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS

Annapolis, Maryland

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

© 2023 by Robert C. Stern

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Stern, Robert C. (Robert Cecil), author.

Title: Knife’s edge : South Pacific carrier battles from the eastern Solomons to Santa Cruz / Robert C. Stern.

Other titles: South Pacific carrier battles from the eastern Solomons to Santa Cruz

Description: Annapolis, Maryland : Naval Institute Press, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022034678 (print) | LCCN 2022034679 (ebook) | ISBN 9781682475683 (hardback) | ISBN 9781682478530 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1939-1945—Campaigns—Solomon Islands. | Santa Cruz Islands, Battle of the, Solomon Islands, 1942. | United States. Navy—History—World War, 1939-1945. | Aircraft carriers—United States—History—20th century. | World War, 1939-1945—Naval operations, American. | World War, 1939-1945—Aerial operations, American. | CYAC: World War, 1939-1945—Campaigns—Pacific Area. | BISAC: HISTORY / Wars & Conflicts / World War II / General | HISTORY / Military / United States

Classification: LCC D767.98.S744 2023 (print) | LCC D767.98 (ebook) | DDC 940.54/26593—dc23/eng/20220920

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022034678

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022034679

♾ Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48–1992

(Permanence of Paper).

Printed in the United States of America.

31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 239 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First printing

To Allyn D. Nevitt

(1948–2020)

a kind, generous,

and gentle man.

This world is a

poorer place

without him.

As long as we raise such men we are safe.

—Capt. Thomas L. Gatch, USS South Dakota (BB 57), in reference to his largely untested crew facing the enemy at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, many at automatic weapons in exposed positions.¹

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

How to Read This Book

Dramatis Personae

Introduction

1The South Pacific

The Solomon Islands in Particular and Guadalcanal, to Be Specific

2The Gathering of Forces

The KA Operation (Before 24 August 1942)

3The Battle of the Eastern Solomons

Ryujo Down (24 August 1942)

4The Battle of the Eastern Solomons

The Kido Butai Strikes Back (24 August 1942)

5Eastern Solomons Aftermath (25 August 1942)

6Rats and Ants

An Unquiet Interlude (Late August to September 1942)

7A Second Gathering (Late August to Late October 1942)

8The Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands

Beating Up the Kido Butai (25–26 October 1942)

9The Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands

The Kido Butai Strikes Back Again (26–27 October 1942)

10The Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands

Dispersal and Aftermath

Notes

Sources

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people over many years have helped me gather the materials that have gone into making this book. Sadly, the list is far too long and my memory far too fallible to list them all below, although I will attempt to make this as complete as possible. To any of you whom I have failed to mention, please accept my thanks and my apologies.

Oka Akio, who translated sections of Senshi Sosho for me, and, by extension, American historian Vince O’Hara, who introduced me to Akio and made those translations possible.

Allyn D. Nevitt, for his generous assistance, sharing his extensive knowledge of the activities of Japanese destroyers, and also for making available the invaluable files containing the research into Japanese ship movements created by the late William Gerald Somerville.

Randy Stone, for his extensive knowledge of the Solomons Campaign and his generosity in sharing that knowledge.

Vince O’Hara, Bill Jurens, Beth Stern, Dick Stern, Erci Stern, and Randy Stone have all read some or all of the manuscript at various stages of completion and all have provided valuable feedback.

John B. Lundstrom, Karl Zingheim, and Tony Tully, for their timely answers to questions.

The ever-patient staff at the Modern Military Branch of the U.S. National Archives (officially, the National Archives and Records Administration, or NARA), at College Park, Maryland.

HOW TO READ THIS BOOK

This book contains a wealth of detail about the battles between U.S. and Japanese forces in the Solomons Islands and Santa Cruz Islands. Here is a guide for the reader about the use of dates, times, and unit names; aircraft designations; geography and weather; language; abbreviations and acronyms; and U.S. ship designations.

Nomenclature, Dates, Times, and Units

Place names in this book are those that would have been used by an educated English-speaker in the 1940s. Where those differ from the current name or spelling of a place, the current usage is given in parentheses when the name is first mentioned. Ranks and rates for the men of navies other than that of the United States, except for the Royal Navy, are translated to the closest U.S. equivalent. Japanese ranks generally paralleled those of the Royal Navy.

In most cases, the author has chosen to avoid using Japanese terminology for other military terms when equivalent English terminology is available and more readily understood. For example, the standard English term dive-bomber will be used in the place of the Japanese term for carrier bomber (kanbaku). Similarly, the U.S. Navy term air group commander, or AGC, will be used in the place of the Japanese term hikotaicho. In the place of the all-purpose term sentai, which the Japanese used to denote virtually any organized division of ships, regardless of type, the author has chosen to use American-style notation, such as CruDiv7 to denote Sentai 7, which in August 1942 comprised the heavy cruisers Kumano and Suzuya. The one set of Japanese terms that I do use are shotai and chutai, which refer to the generally three-plane divisions and six-to-nine-plane tactical groups of aircraft—designations that I have always found easier to understand than their English counterparts.

When first referenced, U.S. Navy ships are identified by their hull number—e.g., USS Saratoga (CV 3)—in which the letters designate hull type (CV is used for an aircraft carrier) and the number is a one-up counter of hulls of that type ordered. Royal Navy (and British Commonwealth) ship pennant numbers are given when a vessel is first mentioned, as in HMAS Canberra (D33). Warship prefix designators, such as USS or HMAS, are also used only the first time a ship is mentioned. Some nations, such as Imperial Japan, used no such designator and none is used in this book for Japanese ships.

Japanese warships always kept Tokyo time (time zone I or Item in the phonetic alphabet of that time), which was Greenwich Civil Time (GCT) plus [+] nine hours, meaning that clocks in Tokyo would be nine hours ahead of a clock set to local time in Greenwich, England. The central and southern Solomon Islands and the Coral Sea are two hours further ahead in time zone GCT+11 (time zone L or Love then); to further complicate matters, local clocks in Rabaul—those not kept by the Japanese military—were set to GCT+10 hours, while the Pacific Ocean areas east of the Solomons, where the U.S. Navy ships discussed here operated much of the time, were in time zone M or Mike, which was GCT+12, or a hybrid time zone, GCT+11½. Royal Navy and U.S. Navy ships kept local time, meaning they would generally change their clocks each time they crossed a time zone boundary. For reasons this author has never fathomed, during the period covered by this narrative the U.S. Navy reckoned times east of Greenwich in the form Z- [minus], followed by the number of hours. (Z stood for Zone and was shorthand for GCT.) Times west of Greenwich were designated Z+ [plus]. (In each case, this is the exact opposite of current common usage.) Thus, at this time, Pearl Harbor was keeping Z+10½. Throughout the book I have given events in the local time pertaining to the activity being discussed, explaining where necessary how this differed from the time kept on the ship or at the station concerned. I have not corrected the times given in quoted passages, although I have tried to point out the differences from local time as needed. For the chronology of the two battles described in detail here, where the sequence of events is critical, I have attempted to render all times in the Love (GCT+11) local zone.

Japanese warships not only kept Tokyo time, but also the same date as Tokyo as well. The International Date Line roughly follows the meridian 180 degrees. The date line is skewed to allow all of the Aleutian Islands to remain east of the line and all of the islands of Kiribati (the former Gilbert, Phoenix, and Line Islands) to remain west of the line. As one crosses the line westward, the calendar is advanced a day. Thus, when it becomes 1 January in Manila, it is 31 December in Honolulu. By maintaining Tokyo time as they steamed eastward, the Japanese task force that attacked Pearl Harbor carried clocks and calendars that read 0325 on 8 December 1941 when the first bombs fell; a sailor on Battleship Row in Pearl Harbor glancing at a clock and calendar would have noted it was 0755 on 7 December 1941. By maintaining local time, U.S. Navy warships also maintained local date.

The reader should be advised that almost all of the action described here occurred west of the date line, but anything that occurred east of the date line, such as actions by admirals Nimitz or King in Honolulu or Washington, will be given with the time and dates as those actors would have noted them. When it is necessary, in the author’s opinion, to clarify date and time sequence across these time zones, the local time and date reference will be noted.

To complicate matters further, all high-level communications in the U.S. Navy, such as those recorded in Nimitz’s Command Summary (known as the Graybook), were tagged by the sender using GCT rather than local time. The logic of doing this is undeniable, because if each sender marked message time using local time, sorting out message sequence at the receiving end could be extremely difficult, but for the historian, figuring out when messages were sent and received in local time can be complicated.

Distances over water are given in feet (12 inches/0.3048 meters), yards (3 feet/ 0.9144 meters) and nautical miles (2,025.37 yards/1.853 kilometers). These are the units used by Allied seamen in the 1940s and remain in use in the United States and, to a lesser extent, Great Britain. Gun calibers are given in the system used by the nation to which a ship belonged. Radar wavelengths are given in metric units. Weights are given in those units used by the nation whose weapon or craft is being described. For the United States and the United Kingdom, this was the English system of pounds and ounces; for the Japanese, this was the metric system (1 kilogram = 2.205 pounds; 1 pound = 16 ounces = 453.6 grams).

Aircraft Designations

U.S. Navy aircraft were designated under a complex system that used a letter for aircraft type, a numeral indicating the sequence number of aircraft of that type developed for the Navy by that manufacturer, a letter designating the manufacturer and, following a hyphen, the version number. Thus, the standard fighter aircraft carried on U.S. Navy aircraft carriers at the time of this narrative was the Grumman F4F-4, meaning it was the fourth version of the fourth fighter (F) model built by Grumman (which was given the designator letter F because another manufacturer had already been assigned the letter G). Of course, just to make the system even more complicated, the model number was omitted for the first model by a manufacturer. Thus, Douglas Aircraft’s first scout-bomber (SB) for the Navy was just SBD rather than SB1D. In addition, Navy aircraft were given official nicknames; those in the F4F series were called Wildcats. The U.S. Navy aircraft that appear in this book are

The Navy also used a shorthand designation system to refer to aircraft types, which will show up in some of the quoted passages in the following narrative. The letter V, indicating heavier-than-air aircraft, was followed by a one-or two-letter function designator. Thus, of the types referenced in this narrative, there are: VFs—fighters; VTs—torpedo bombers; VSBs—scout dive-bombers (sometimes shortened to VB or VS); and VPs—patrol aircraft. These designations were carried over to refer to aircraft squadrons. Thus, VF-5 was the fighter squadron assigned to the Saratoga Air Group (SAG) during the Eastern Solomons battle.¹

A small number of U.S. Army Air Forces aircraft are mentioned in this book. The U.S. Army used a much simpler aircraft identification system, normally involving a type letter and a one-up model number without manufacturer designation. Each aircraft model also had a designated nickname. The USAAF aircraft that appear in this book are

The Imperial Japanese Navy used an aircraft designation system almost identical to the U.S. Navy’s with different type letters (for example, A rather than F for fighter) and it did not separate the version number with a hyphen. Thus, the standard carrier fighter at the time of these battles was the Mitsubishi A6M2. The Japanese then added a second designation based on the aircraft’s intended role and the last one or two digits of the year (in the Japanese calendar) of its introduction into service. Thus, that same aircraft was also the Type 0 Carrier Fighter, since it was introduced into service in 1940, the year 2600 in the traditional Japanese calendar.

Before the war, the Japanese were not in the habit of giving their aircraft officially recognized nicknames, but they were aware that other nations did so and that this often had a morale-boosting effect. Starting in 1940, therefore, the IJN sanctioned the adoption of nicknames for new aircraft under development; one of the first to carry a nickname was the Yokosuka D4Y Suisei (Comet).

The Allied Reporting System for Japanese aircraft was devised in the second half of 1942 in Australia by USAAF Capt. Frank McCoy as a means of simplifying the reporting of sightings of Japanese aircraft, whose official designations were complex, confusing, and often unknown to Allied pilots and sailors. These reporting names were only just coming into use in the period covered in this narrative and thus are somewhat anachronistic here, but I use them here for the same reason that they were invented in the first place, because it is easier and simpler to write (and for the reader to remember) Kate as opposed to Nakajima B5N2 Type 97 Carrier Attack Bomber. In McCoy’s system, fighters were given male names; all other aircraft types received female names.

The aircraft that appear in this book include

Geography and Weather

A brief description of the geography of the Solomon Islands and their surrounding waters might be helpful. To the west lies the Coral Sea—a body of water bounded on the west by northeastern Australia, on the north by Papua New Guinea and the Louisiade Archipelago, and on the southeast by the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and New Caledonia. To the east of the Solomons, the Pacific stretches largely empty, dotted by isolated island groups such as the Santa Cruz Islands (Temotu), the Ellice Islands (Tuvalu), and the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati).

At the season and latitude covered in this narrative—winter and early spring, south of the equator—the trade winds coming from the southeast tend to flow without interruption until they encounter the warmer and significantly wetter monsoon winds coming off the Asian continent from the northwest. The two airflows are of approximately equal strength, so they form a relatively stable front that swings south as a warm front or north as a cool front over a narrow band approximately 100 to 200 nautical miles wide, an area known as the intertropical convergence zone. The band runs west to east across the far north of Australia, Papua New Guinea, the northern Coral Sea, the Solomons, and the adjacent Pacific Ocean. Weather inside the band is almost always cloudy with scattered rain squalls, providing excellent cover for a naval force that wishes to remain undetected and often interfering with air strikes and radio reception. Much of the action that takes place in the narrative was to the south of this weather zone, but the Japanese bases at Truk and Rabaul were to the north and Guadalcanal was directly in the middle of it, so any movement of ships or aircraft through this area was likely to be impacted by this more-or-less permanent weather feature.

There are some points to mention about the terminology of U.S. Navy carrier aviation in this era. For pilots to be able to navigate back to their aircraft carriers after a long search or strike mission, they had to know where the carrier would be after the mission was completed—known formally as Point Option. In wartime, when it was inadvisable to loiter around a fixed point in the ocean waiting for aircraft to return, Point Option was given as the course and speed that the carrier would follow while the aircraft were away, allowing each pilot to calculate where his carrier would be depending on the length of the mission.

South Pacific Theater of Operations. Islands, major ports, and points of interest as of late-1942.

The Americans used code names to designate locations in the South Pacific, which will occasionally show up in quoted passages in this narrative. Those encountered in this text include

Language

Warning: the quotations from American sources sometimes contain references to the Japanese that would be considered unacceptable in the twenty-first century. The author has made no attempt to edit these out or tone them down. American society in the middle of the twentieth century was highly racist, with ingrained prejudice against racial and religious minorities, including Asians such as the Japanese—attitudes that easily carried over into demonization of the external enemy at the outbreak of World War II. It would be pleasant to report that the intervening years have improved the treatment of minorities in America, but events occurring while this manuscript was being written demonstrate that we still have a long way to go.

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Note: In U.S. Navy parlance, it was common to refer to the commander of a unit, such as DesDiv14 as ComDesDiv14, with the exception of task designations, in which case the commander of TF14 would most often be referred to as CTF14.

U.S. Navy Ship Type Designators

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

The following persons are the major players in this story. A brief background for each man is given here to avoid interrupting the narrative as it unfolds and to provide the reader with a single place to find this information. They are listed in descending order of authority for each side. Japanese names have been rendered in traditional fashion, surname first.

Allied Personnel

ADM. ERNEST J. KING, USN

At the time of the battles described here, Admiral King held the posts of commander in chief, U.S. Fleet (CominCh) and Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), unifying the administrative and operational control of the U.S. Navy in a single office. For most of the interwar period, the U.S. Navy had been organized under a CinCUS (commander in chief, U.S. Fleet), the operational commander of U.S. naval forces, and a CNO (an office that, despite its name, held administrative command of the naval establishment); these were separate billets until King took over, when they were combined. To understand the responsibilities of the two offices, it is sufficient to know that CinCUS commanded the Navy’s ships, while all the Navy’s myriad support structures—most of them organized into bureaus, such as the Bureau of Navigation (BuNav), Bureau of Ordnance (BuOrd), and Bureau of Construction & Repair (BuC&R)—reported to the CNO. Upon assuming command, King immediately changed the acronym associated with commander in chief, U.S. Fleet, to CominCh, because CinCUS unfortunately was vocalized as sink-us, which reminded too many people of the devastation wrought at Pearl Harbor.

At the beginning of 1941, the Navy was divided into four forces and one fleet: (1) Battle Force, which comprised the American battle line and its supporting ships, including most of the Navy’s aircraft carriers; (2) Scouting Force, which, as the name implied, was made up of the scouting elements of the U.S. fleet, mainly cruisers and patrol aircraft; (3) Patrol Force, which was a relatively small training organization, based in the Atlantic; and (4) Base Force, which comprised most of the fleet’s auxiliaries; and the Asiatic Fleet, a small unit permanently based in the Philippines with a detachment operating off the coast of China—the only geographically specific unit in the interwar fleet. This changed on 1 February 1941, when the Battle Force and Scouting Force were joined into a newly created Pacific Fleet and the Patrol Force was renamed the Atlantic Fleet. This effectively turned the post of CinCUS into a largely ceremonial billet until King assumed it on 20 December 1941. Two days earlier, President Roosevelt had issued an executive order that once again gave CinCUS operational command of all U.S. naval vessels and established his principal office at the Navy Department in Washington.¹

King was a qualified pilot and specialized in naval aviation for much of his later career, including commanding USS Lexington (CV 2) for two years. King earned his wings as part of an initiative pushed by Rear Adm. William Moffett, the first chief of the Navy’s new Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAer), in which senior officers were urged to train as naval pilots or observers. Moffett’s fear was that, should war break out in the near future, the naval officers who had grown up with naval aviation from the beginning would still be too junior to be given command of the Navy’s aviation assets, which would perforce be commanded by officers with little or no aviation experience. Moffett’s program was boosted by congressional passage in 1926 of a provision requiring that all aircraft carriers, aviation-related auxiliaries, and air stations be commanded by qualified naval pilots or observers (10 USC Sec. 5942). After being selected to command the aircraft tender USS Wright (AV 1) early in 1926, King therefore was required to undergo aviation training at NAS Pensacola, where, as a 47-year-old captain, he received his pilot’s wings on 26 May 1927. Other men in this story who benefited from Moffett’s senior officer flight-training initiative include William Halsey and Leigh Noyes (but notably not Frank Jack Fletcher).

King took over command of a rapidly expanding service still bound by peacetime habits and turned it into the most powerful navy the world had ever seen. He made few friends along the way. His tenure as CominCh was sharply focused on grand strategy and making sure that his fleet and area commanders had the tools necessary to carry out that strategy. In general, he resisted the temptation to interfere with the decision making of his subordinate commanders as long as he had confidence in their ability, but he did not always feel that confidence in the early days of the Pacific War.

ADM. CHESTER W. NIMITZ, USN

Appointed to lead the Pacific Fleet just ten days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Nimitz provided exactly the kind of calm and confident leadership that the fleet required. During the early months of his tenure as commander in chief, Pacific Fleet (CinCPac), and as commander in chief, Pacific Ocean Area (CinCPOA), he commanded the only forces available to the United States that were capable of striking back at the rapidly advancing Japanese. This inevitably led to close scrutiny by Admiral King, who appeared to question whether Nimitz was being too cautious with those forces. Nimitz was a soft-spoken man—the exact opposite of King—whose quiet demeanor was sometimes mistaken for a lack of resolve. It took a face-to-face meeting with King in late April 1942 to establish his credibility with his boss and earn him the freedom to manage the war in the South Pacific as he saw fit.

Nimitz was not an aviator. His specialty early in his career had been destroyers and then submarines, and along the way he became the U.S. Navy’s leading expert in diesel power plants; but it was his organizational skill, and his willingness to experiment with new technologies such as underway replenishment that led to his steady advancement in rank and responsibility. He was in command of the Bureau of Navigation when war broke out on 7 December 1941. (As innocuous sounding as its name may have been, BuNav was one of the Navy’s most important entities because it controlled the assignment of personnel; it would be renamed the Bureau of Naval Personnel, or BuPers, in 1942.)

GEN. DOUGLAS MACARTHUR, USA

The son of a U.S. Army general who received the Medal of Honor, Douglas MacArthur seemed fated to a glorious career in his father’s footsteps. Twice nominated himself for the Medal of Honor, for action at Veracruz (1914) and at the Meuse-Argonne (1918), he was perhaps best known before World War II for his leadership of the Army troops that ousted the Bonus Army from its tent encampments around Washington, D.C., in 1932. MacArthur jumped at the chance to become military adviser to the newly created Commonwealth of the Philippines in 1935 and commander of its army. Two years later, he retired from the U.S. Army as a major general, retaining his position in the Philippines, with its considerable salary. In July 1941, with war clearly looming in the Pacific, Roosevelt federalized the Philippine Army, recalled MacArthur to active duty with the rank of lieutenant general, and appointed him to the newly created post of commander of U.S. Army Forces in the Far East. The Philippine Army and the small contingent of American troops sent as reinforcements were overpowered by the Japanese soon after Pearl Harbor, and there is little that MacArthur could have done to prevent their defeat, but his rapid withdrawal to the tunnels in Corregidor while his troops were dying across the strait on Bataan earned him the derisive nickname Dugout Doug. His reputation was in no way enhanced when, in March 1942, he was evacuated to Australia. It didn’t matter to his critics that this had been ordered by the president. Nor did it help when, in an attempt to counter Japanese propaganda, he was hastily awarded his long-denied Medal of Honor, and the citation specifically called out his gallantry and intrepidity … in action during the recent defense of the Philippines.² On 18 April 1942, MacArthur was appointed commander of the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA), putting him on an equal footing with Admiral Nimitz in the Allied order of battle.

VICE ADM. ROBERT L. GHORMLEY, USN

Robert Ghormley had an unconventional rise through the ranks in the U.S. Navy, serving almost exclusively in staff and administrative positions, with only two short stints in command afloat. He served as director of the War Plans Division and assistant CNO, and then as Roosevelt’s special naval observer in London after August 1940.³ When the Pacific Ocean areas were formally established in March 1942, the South Pacific Area (SPA) was set up as a naval responsibility, with its commander reporting to Nimitz and King. Nimitz had favored Adm. William S. Pye to lead SPA, but King objected and suggested Ghormley in his place. For several reasons, it took Ghormley some time to arrive in the South Pacific and set up shop; he had to travel from London and build a command staff from scratch. When he arrived in theater, he found the situation at Nouméa, New Caledonia, his planned base of operations, in total uproar, with the local French administration split by feuding between Vichy and Gaullist factions. Rather than attempt to work in that environment, he established his initial headquarters in New Zealand in June 1942, advancing it to Nouméa only just before the invasion of Guadalcanal. Even so, the problem was that Ghormley appears to have been reluctant to leave his headquarters no matter what its location.

Vice Adm. Robert L. Ghormley (left foreground) and Adm. Chester W. Nimitz (right) confer sometime in 1943, most likely in Hawai‘i. Despite being relieved as ComSoPac by Nimitz in October 1942, Ghormley retained Nimitz’s confidence and was valued for his administrative skills. NHHC

Ghormley’s lackluster energy level and general pessimism eventually became such a problem that Nimitz felt compelled to act. On 28 September, Nimitz arrived at Nouméa and immediately went into conference with Ghormley. Two days later, Nimitz visited Guadalcanal—something that Ghormley had not done in all his time in the South Pacific. On his way back to Pearl Harbor, Nimitz had a second meeting with Ghormley in his headquarters ship, USS Argonne (AP 4), anchored in Nouméa harbor. (Apparently, Ghormley had not been offered accommodations or office space ashore by the French authorities, and he had not insisted they be provided. Argonne was an old ship that lacked air conditioning; Ghormley’s spaces on board Argonne were cramped and insufferably hot and stuffy, which could not have aided his job performance.⁴) After Nimitz returned from this inspection tour, he remained deeply troubled by what he had seen and decided that a shot in the arm was needed, particularly at Nouméa. It just so happened that he had an available jolt in the person of Vice Adm. William F. Halsey Jr. (see immediately below). Halsey had been laid up with a painful and debilitating skin condition since May but had now returned to duty. By pure coincidence, Halsey was on his way toward the South Pacific to inspect Guadalcanal and then Nouméa, before taking over as commander of Task Force 16. Events overtook this plan, however. By 16 October, Nimitz had become so alarmed by Ghormley’s apparent ineffectiveness that he decided he could not wait. He sought and received King’s permission to reroute Halsey, sending him directly to Nouméa. Awaiting him there on 18 October were orders to replace Ghormley as ComSoPac.

VICE ADM. WILLIAM F. HALSEY JR., USN

Bill Halsey was unusual among American admirals in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor in that he retained a very positive image among the general public and was well-regarded by his superiors.⁵ He had commanded an aircraft carrier, USS Saratoga (CV 3), before the war and later was appointed commander of aircraft, Battle Force. At the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, he had commanded Task Force 16 while based on USS Enterprise (CV 6), but for a variety of reasons, mainly related to his health, he missed the two early major carrier air battles of the Pacific War—at the Coral Sea and Midway.

VICE ADM. FRANK JACK FLETCHER, USN

Early in his career, Fletcher was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions at Veracruz, Mexico, in April 1914. His experience in the late prewar period was in commanding cruisers and cruiser divisions in the Pacific Fleet. As commander of Cruiser Division 6 and senior officer of the task force, he was the correct choice to put in command of Task Force 14, which included Saratoga as well as his cruiser division, when it was tasked with the relief of Wake Island on 15 December 1941. When King and Halsey were earning their pilot’s wings, Fletcher had applied for flight training, but was rejected due to poor eyesight.⁶ Other black shoe cruiser admirals went on to success commanding aircraft carriers in battle, including Thomas Kinkaid (see below) and Raymond Spruance. Whether Fletcher was successful in his handling of the Navy’s aircraft carriers in the months that followed Pearl Harbor was one of the major questions addressed by naval historians in the years following World War II. Certainly, this author concluded that Fletcher was more lucky than skillful in his handling of the Coral Sea Campaign, but in the long run, success, deserved or not, is all that mattered.⁷ Thus, despite Fletcher’s critics, he remained in command of U.S. carrier forces at Midway and again in the South Pacific at the beginning of this narrative.

REAR ADM. THOMAS C. KINKAID, USN

Having risen through the ranks in a rather conventional manner, by the time war came to the Americans in late 1941, Thomas Kinkaid was a respected gunnery expert with more than the usual amount of diplomatic experience. One of his last prewar postings was as naval attaché in Rome. He was promoted to flag rank before war broke out and was to take over command of Fletcher’s Cruiser Division 6, but he did not arrive at Pearl Harbor until after the Japanese attack and did not relieve Fletcher in command of the division until 29 December 1941. The cruisers under Kinkaid’s command guarded Lexington and Yorktown (CV 5) at the Battle of the Coral Sea and Enterprise and Hornet (CV 8) at Midway. When Spruance, who had commanded Enterprise and Hornet at Midway in Halsey’s absence, was appointed Nimitz’s chief of staff, Kinkaid was selected to fill in as commander of TF16, based on Enterprise, when it prepared to embark for the South Pacific in mid-July 1942.

REAR ADM. AUBREY W. FITCH, USN

With the possible exception of William Halsey, at the time of these events Aubrey Fitch had more experience leading naval aviators than any flag officer in the Navy. As commander of Task Group 17.5 in the Battle of the Coral Sea, he had nominal command of American naval aviation assets at that critical first carrier air battle, but Fletcher allowed him little freedom of action. He enters our story in September 1942, when he relieved Rear Adm. John S. Slew McCain as commander of naval air forces in the Southern Pacific.

The change of command as ComAirSoPac on 21 September 1942 on board USS Curtiss (AV 4) saw one of the U.S. Navy’s most popular aviation leaders relieving another. Rear Adm. John S. Slew McCain (left) was being replaced by Rear Adm. Aubrey W. Fitch, who would command naval aviation in the South Pacific with great success through mid-1944. NARA, RG80

REAR ADM. GEORGE D. MURRAY, USN

Unlike almost all of the American naval leaders profiled here, Murray was a career aviator, earning his wings in 1915 as only the twenty-fifth U.S. naval aviator. He rose through the ranks serving almost exclusively in aviation-related postings, commanding Enterprise with the rank of captain between March 1941 and June 1942. Promoted to rear admiral soon after, he was given command of Task Force