Part 3

But the Japanese were not totally discouraged. They had the redoubtable Tanaka on their side, and so they went back to supply by the Tokyo Express. The idea was for Tanaka’s fast destroyers to run down The Slot by night to Tassafaronga Point, where sailors would push overboard drums of supplies. Troops ashore would then round up the floating drums in small boats. In that way, Tanaka’s fast destroyers would not have to stop moving and would make a less tempting target for the Tulagi PTs than a transport at anchor.

On November 30, 1942, Admiral Tanaka shoved off from Bougainville Island with eight destroyers loaded with 1,100 drums of supplies. At the same moment an American task force of five cruisers and six destroyers—a most formidable task force indeed, especially for a night action—left the American base at Espiritu Santo to break up just the kind of supply run Tanaka was undertaking.

The two forces converged on Tassafaronga Point from opposite directions. The American force enormously outgunned Tanaka’s destroyers and also had the tremendous advantage of being, to some extent, equipped with radar, then a brand-new and little-understood gadget. Thus the American force could expect to enjoy an additional superiority of surprise.

And that is just the way it worked out. At 11:06 P.M., American radar picked up Tanaka’s ships. Admiral Tanaka’s comparatively feeble flotilla was blindly sailing into a trap.

American destroyers fired twenty torpedoes at the still unsuspecting Japanese, who did not wake up to their danger until the cruisers opened fire with main battery guns at five-mile range.

The Japanese lashed back with a reflex almost as automatic for Tanaka’s well-drilled destroyer sailors as jerking a finger back from a red-hot stove. They instantly filled the water with torpedoes.

No American torpedoes scored. Six Japanese torpedoes hit four American cruisers, sinking _Northampton_, and damaging _Pensacola_, _Minneapolis_, and _New Orleans_ so seriously that they were unfit for action for almost a year. Cruiser gunfire sank one Japanese destroyer, but the rest of Admiral Tanaka’s ships, besides giving the vastly superior American force a stunning defeat, even managed to push overboard many of the drums they had been sent down to deliver.

Tanaka had once more carried out his mission and had won a great naval victory, almost as a sideline to the main business.

On the first anniversary of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1942, Admiral Tanaka came down again with eleven destroyers.

This time it was not a mighty cruiser-destroyer force waiting for him, but only eight PTs from Tulagi. They were manned, however, by some of the most aggressive officers and men in the American Navy. The boats were deployed around Cape Esperance and Savo Island, on the approaches to Tassafaronga.

Two patrolling torpedo boats spotted Tanaka’s destroyers and attacked, but one broke down and the other came to his rescue, so no shots were fired. Nevertheless, the Admiral was spooked by the abortive attack of two diminutive PTs, and retreated. He recovered his courage in a few minutes and tried again.

This time four PTs jumped him and fired twelve torpedoes. When their tubes were empty, the PTs roared by the destroyers, strafing with their machine guns—and being strafed. Jack Searles, in 59, passed down the _Oyashio’s_ side less than a hundred yards away, raking the destroyer’s superstructure and gun crews with 50-caliber fire. The 59 itself was also riddled, of course, but stayed afloat.

Admiral Tanaka, who had run around the blazing duel of battlewagons at the Battle of Guadalcanal to deliver his reinforcements, who had bored through massive day-long air attacks, who had gutted a mighty cruiser force to deliver his cargo to Tassafaronga, turned back before the threat of four PTs, abandoned the mission, and fled back to Bougainville.

The PT navy at Tulagi (and the Marines and soldiers on Guadalcanal) had good cause to celebrate a clear-cut victory on this first anniversary of Pearl Harbor.

Times were too hard for the PTs to get any rest. Jack Searles patched up his bullet-torn 59, and, with another boat, put out two nights later, on December 9th, to machine-gun a Japanese landing barge sighted near Cape Esperance. During the barge-PT duel, one of Searles’ lookouts spotted a submarine on the surface, oozing along at about two knots. Jack whipped off two quick shots and blew a 2,000-ton blockade-running submarine (I-3) into very small pieces. There is no way to deny the submarine to Jack Searles’ bag, because a Japanese naval officer, the sole survivor, swam ashore and told the story of the I-3’s last moments.

On the night of December 11th Admiral Tanaka began another run of the Tokyo Express with ten destroyers. Dive bombers attacked during daylight, but made no hits. The job of stopping Tanaka’s Tokyo Express was passed to the PTs. They zipped out of the harbor at Tulagi and deployed along the beach between Tassafaronga and Cape Esperance.

The night was bright and clear, and shortly after midnight three PTs, commanded by Lieut. (jg) Lester H. Gamble, saw the destroyer column and attacked. The other two boats were skippered by Stilly Taylor and Lieut. (jg) William E. Kreiner III.

The Japanese destroyers turned on searchlights and let go with main batteries and machine guns, but the three torpedo boats got off their torpedoes and popped two solid hits into the destroyer _Teruzuki_. The Japanese ship blazed up, and for the second time Tanaka had had enough of torpedo boats. He went home.

The PTs had not yet had enough of Tanaka, however, for Lieut. Frank Freeland’s 44 heard the combat talk of his squadron mates on the voice radio, and came running. He roared past the burning _Teruzuki_, chasing the retreating destroyers. Two things were working against him; Lieut. Freeland did not know it, but one of the destroyers had stayed behind with the _Teruzuki_, and the flames from the burning ship were lighting the PT boat beautifully for the hidden Japanese gunners.

Aboard the 44 was Lieut. (jg) Charles M. Melhorn, who reports his version of what happened:

“We were throwing up quite a wake, and with the burning cargo ship [he probably mistook the burning _Teruzuki_ for a cargo ship] lighting up the whole area I thought we would soon be easy pickings and I told the skipper so. Before he could reply, Crowe, the quartermaster who was at the wheel, pointed and yelled out ‘Destroyer on the starboard bow. There’s your target, Captain.’

“Through the glasses I could make out a destroyer two points on our starboard bow, distant about 8,000 yards, course south-southwest. We came right and started our run. We had no sooner steadied on our new course than I picked up two more destroyers through my glasses. They were in column thirty degrees on our port bow, target course 270, coming up fast.

“The skipper and I both saw at once that continuing our present course would pin us against the beach and lay us wide open to broadsides from at least three Jap cans. The Skipper shifted targets to the two destroyers, still about 4,000 yards off, and we started in again.

“By this time we were directly between the blazing ship and the two destroyers. As we started the run I kept looking for the can that had fired.... I picked him up behind and to the left of our targets. He was swinging, apparently to form up in column astern of the other two. The trap was sprung, and as I pointed out this fourth destroyer the lead ship in the column opened fire.”

The 44 escaped from the destroyer ambush behind a smoke screen, but once clear, turned about for a second attack. The burning _Teruzuki_ illuminated the 44, and _Teruzuki’s_ guardian destroyer, lurking in the dark, drew a bead on the ambushed PT.

“We had just come out of our turn when we were fired on.... I saw the blast, yelled ‘That’s for us.’ and jumped down on the portside by the cockpit. We were hit aft in the engine room.

“I don’t remember much. For a few seconds nothing registered at all. I looked back and saw a gaping hole in what was once the engine-room canopy. The perimeter of the hole was ringed by little tongues of flame. I looked down into the water and saw we had lost way.

“Someone on the bow said ‘Shall we abandon ship?’ Freeland gave the order to go ahead and abandon ship.

“I stayed at the cockpit ... glancing over where the shell came from. He let go again.

“I dove ... I dove deep and was still under when the salvo struck. The concussion jarred me badly, but I kept swimming underwater. There was a tremendous explosion, paralyzing me from the waist down. The water around me went red.

“The life jacket took control and pulled me to the surface. I came up in a sea of fire, the flaming embers of the boat cascading all about me. I tried to get free of the life jacket but couldn’t. I started swimming feebly. I thought the game was up, but the water which had shot sky high in the explosion rained down and put out the fires around me....

“I took a few strokes away from the gasoline fire, which was raging about fifteen yards behind me, and as I turned back I saw two heads, one still helmeted, between me and the flames. I called to the two men and told them that I expected the Japs to be over in short order to machine-gun us, and to get their life jackets ready to slip. I told them to get clear of the reflection of the fire as quickly as possible, and proceeded to do so myself.

“I struck out for Savo, whose skyline ridge I could see dimly, and gradually made headway toward shore. Every two or three minutes I stopped to look back for other survivors or an approaching destroyer, but saw nothing save the boat which was burning steadily, and beyond it the [_Teruzuki_] which burned and exploded all night long.

“Sometime shortly before dawn a PT boat cruised up and down off Savo and passed about twenty-five yards ahead of me. I was all set to hail him when I looked over my shoulder and saw a Jap can bearing down on his starboard quarter.

“I didn’t know whether the PT was maneuvering to get a shot at him or not, so I kept my mouth shut. I let him go by, slipped my life jacket, and waited for the fireworks.

“The Jap can lay motionless for some minutes, and I finally made it out as nothing more than a destroyer-shaped shadow formed by the fires and smoke.

“I judge that I finally got ashore on Savo about 0730 or 0800. Lieutenant Stilly Taylor picked me up off the beach about an hour later.”

Lieut. Melhorn was in the water between five and six hours. Only one other sailor survived the explosion of the 44’s gas tank. Two officers and seven enlisted men died.

Flames on the _Teruzuki_—the same flames that lit the way to its fiery death for the 44—finally ate their way into the depth-charge magazine, and just before dawn the Japanese destroyer went up with a jarring crash.

More important to the fighters on Guadalcanal than the sinking of the _Teruzuki_ was the astonishing and gratifying fact that Admiral Tanaka, the destroyer tiger, had been turned back one more time by a handful of wooden cockleshells, without landing his supplies. The big brass of the cruiser fleet that had been unable to stop Tanaka at the Battle of Tassafaronga must have been bewildered.

After the clash between Tanaka and the torpedo boats on December 11th, no runs of the Tokyo Express were attempted for three weeks. The long lull meant dull duty for the PTs, but was a proof of their effectiveness in derailing the Tokyo Express. Japanese soldiers on Guadalcanal were down to eating roots and leaves—and sometimes even other Japanese, according to persistent reports among the Japanese themselves—before their navy worked up enough nerve to try another run of the Tokyo Express.

On January 2nd, ten destroyers came down The Slot. One was damaged by a dive bomber’s near miss, and another was detached to escort the cripple, but the other eight sailed on.

That night, eleven PTs attacked Tanaka’s destroyers with eighteen torpedoes, but had no luck. Tanaka unloaded his drums and was gone before dawn.

No matter. As soon as the sun came up, the PTs puttered about Iron Bottom Bay, enjoying a bit of target practice on the drums pushed off the destroyers’ decks. One way or the other, the torpedo boats of Tulagi snatched food from the mouths of the starving Japanese garrison.

A week later a coast watcher up the line called in word that Tanaka was running eight destroyers down The Slot. Rouse out the PTs again!

Just after midnight on January 13th, Lieut. Rollin Westholm, in PT 112, saw four destroyers and called for a coordinated attack with Lieut. (jg) Charles E. Tilden’s 43.

“Make ’em good,” Lieut. Westholm said, so Lieut. Tilden took his 43 into 400-yard range before firing two. Both missed. To add to his disastrous bad luck, the port tube flashed a bright red light, a blazing giveaway of the 43’s position.

The destroyer hit the 43 with the second salvo, and all hands went over the side, diving deep to escape machine-gun strafing. The destroyer passed close enough so that the swimming sailors could hear the Japanese chattering on the deck.

Lieut. Clark W. Faulkner, in 40, drew a bead on the second destroyer in column and fired four. His heart was made glad by what he thought was a juicy hit, so he took his empty tubes back home.

Lieut. Westholm, in 112, took on the third destroyer and was equally certain he had put one into his target, but two of the destroyers had zeroed in during his approach run, and two shells blew his boat open at the waterline. Lieut. Westholm and his eleven shipmates watched the rest of the battle from a life raft. The other PTs fired twelve fish, but didn’t even claim any hits.

Either Lieut. Westholm or Lieut. Faulkner had scored, however, for the _Hatsukaze_ had caught a torpedo under the wardroom. The Japanese skipper at first despaired of saving his ship, but damage-control parties plugged the hole well enough so that he was able to escape before daylight.

When the sun rose, the PTs still afloat picked up survivors of the two lost torpedo boats and then went through the morning routine of sinking the 250 floating drums of supplies the destroyers had jettisoned. The starving Japanese watching from the beach must have wished all torpedo boats in hell that morning.

The Japanese did come out to tow in the wreckage of the PT 43, but a New Zealand warship stepped in with a few well-placed broadsides and reduced the already splintered torpedo boat to a mess of matchwood before the Japanese could study it.

Nobody but the Japanese High Command knew it at this point, but the plane and PT blockade of the Tokyo Express had won; the island garrison had been starved out.

During the night between February 1st and 2nd, coast watchers reported 20 Japanese destroyers coming down The Slot. The American Navy had no way of knowing it, but the Tokyo Express was running in reverse. The decks of those destroyers were clear—they were being kept clear to make room for a deckload of the starved-out Japanese on Guadalcanal. Japan was finally calling it quits and pulling out of the island.

Whatever the mission of the Japanese ships, the mission of the American Navy was clear—to keep the Japanese from doing whatever it was they were doing and to sink some ships in the process.

Three American mine-layers sprinkled 300 mines north of Guadalcanal, near Savo Island, in the waters where the destroyers might be expected to pass. Eleven PTs waiting in ambush attacked the destroyers as they steamed by the minefield. The PTs rejoiced at a good, solid hit on a destroyer by somebody—nobody was sure whom—and the destroyer _Makigumo_ admittedly acquired an enormous hole in the hull at that very moment, but the Japanese skipper said that he hit a mine. He said he never saw any PTs attacking him.

Postwar assessment officers say that he probably hit a mine while maneuvering to avoid a PT torpedo. Avoid a torpedo attack he never even saw? Someone is confused. Some of the PT sailors who were sure of hits on the _Makigumo_ have a tendency to get sulky when this minefield business is mentioned, and nobody can blame them. The _Makigumo_, at any rate, had to be scuttled.

Regardless of what damage they did to the Japanese, the PTs themselves suffered terribly in this battle.

Lieut. (jg) J. H. Claggett’s 111 was hit by a shell and set afire. The crew swam until morning, fighting off sharks and holding up the wounded. Two torpedo boatmen were killed.

Ensign James J. Kelly’s 37 caught a shell on the gas tank and disappeared in a puff of orange flame. One badly wounded man survived.

Ensign Ralph L. Richards’ 123 had stalked to within 500 yards of a destroyer target when a Japanese glide bomber slid in from nowhere, dropped a single bomb, and made possibly the most fantastically lucky hit of the war. The bomb landed square on the tiny fantail of the racing PT boat. The boat went up in a blur of flames and splinters. Four men were killed.

In spite of the fierce attacks of the PT flotilla, Tanaka’s sailors managed to take the destroyers in to the beach, load a shipment of evacuees, and slip out again for the quick run home.

This was the last and by far the bloodiest action of the PTs in the Guadalcanal campaign. The PTs had lost three boats and seventeen men in the battle and had not scored themselves—unless you count the destroyer _Makigumo_, which PT sailors stubbornly insist is theirs.

An over-all summary of their contribution to the campaign for Guadalcanal, however, gives them a whopping score:

A submarine and a destroyer sunk [not counting _Makigumo_]

Two destroyers badly damaged

Tons of Japanese supply drums riddled and sunk

Dozens of disaster victims pulled from the water

Two massive bombardments just possibly scared off

And—by far the most important credit—the Tokyo Express of Rear Admiral Raizo Tanaka ambushed and definitely turned back twice after a powerful cruiser force had failed at the job.

Even after the postwar assessment teams cut down PT sinking credits to a fraction of PT claims, there is still plenty of credit left for a force ten times the size of the Tulagi fleet.

3. Battering Down the Gate: the Western Hinge

Toward the end of 1942, as the Japanese defense of Guadalcanal was crumbling, American forces began to inch forward elsewhere in the Pacific, most notably on the island of New Guinea, almost 600 miles to the west of Guadalcanal.

New Guinea is the second largest island in the world (only Greenland is larger). Dropped over the United States, the island would reach from New York City to Houston, Texas; it is big enough to cover all of New England, plus New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, and all of Tennessee, except for Memphis and its suburbs. Even today, vast inland areas are unexplored and possibly some tribes in the mountains have never even heard about the white man—or about the Japanese either, for that matter. The island is shaped like a turkey, with its head and wattles pointed east.

Mindanao Palau Is. Celebes Timor Arafura Sea Guam Caroline Islands Micronesia New Guinea Hansa Bay Nassau Bay

Early in the war, right after the fall of the Philippines and of the East Indies, the Japanese had landed on the turkey’s back. The Australians held the turkey’s belly. The Japanese had tried to cross the grim Owen Stanley Mountains, to get at the turkey’s underside, but tough Australian troops had slugged it out with them and pushed them back. The fight in the mountains was so miserable for both sides that everybody had tacitly agreed that the battle for New Guinea would be decided along the beaches.

Splitting the very tip of the turkey’s tail is Milne Bay, a magnificent anchorage. Whoever held Milne Bay could prevent the other side from spreading farther along the coast. Australians and Americans, under the command of General MacArthur, moved first, seized Milne Bay in June of 1942, and successfully fought off a Japanese landing force.

A curious example of the misery the homefolks can deal out to front-line fighters is the mix-up caused by the code name for Milne Bay. For some obscure reason, the Gili Gili base, at Milne Bay, was called “Fall River.” Naturally, according to the inexorable workings of Murphy’s Law (if anything _can_ go wrong, it _will_) many of the supplies for Milne Bay were delivered to bewildered supply officers at Fall River, Massachusetts.

Despite this foul-up, by the end of October, 1942, Milne Bay was safely in the hands of the Allies and ready to support an advance along the bird’s back. All movement had to be by sea, for there were no roads through New Guinea’s jungles, and the waters around the turkey’s tail were the most poorly charted in the world. Navigators of deep-draft ships were horrified to have to sail through reef- and rock-filled waters, depending on charts with disquieting notes like “Reef possibly seen here by Entrecasteaux in 1791.” No naval commander in his right mind would commit deep-draft ships to such uncharted and dangerous waters for nighttime duty. Which means that the times and the coastal waters of eastern New Guinea were made for PT boats, or vice versa.

On December 17, 1942, less than a week after the PTs of Tulagi had fought the last big battle with the _incoming_ Tokyo Express, the PT tender _Hilo_ towed two torpedo boats into Milne Bay and set up for business. Other PTs followed. For seven more months motor torpedo boats were to be the entire surface striking force of the U. S. Navy in the Solomon Sea around the tail of the New Guinea turkey.

By the time the _Hilo_ had arrived at Milne Bay, the fight for the turkey’s back had moved 200 miles up the coast to a trio of villages called Buna, Gona, and Sanananda. Two hundred miles is too long a haul for PT boats, so the _Hilo_ stayed at Milne Bay as a kind of rear base, the main striking force of PTs moving closer to the fighting. They set up camp at Tufi, in the jungles around Oro Bay, almost within sight of the Buna battlefield, and began the nightly coastal patrols that were to stretch on for almost two weary years before all of New Guinea was back in Allied hands.

First blood was drawn on Christmas Eve. Ensign Robert F. Lynch celebrated the holiday by taking out the PT 122 for a routine patrol, looking for small Japanese coasters or submarines running supplies and reinforcements into Buna. The night was dark and rainy, and the PT chugged along without much hope of finding any action. PTs had no radar in those days, and a visual lookout was not very effective in a New Guinea downpour.

Even in New Guinea, however, the rain cannot go on forever. When the rain clouds parted, a bright moon lit up the sea and a lookout snapped to attention.

“Submarine,” he hissed. “Dead ahead, a submarine.”

Hove to on the surface was a Japanese I-boat, probably waiting for Japanese small craft to come from the beach for supplies, or else recharging its batteries, or probably both. Ensign Lynch began his silent stalk and closed to 1,000 yards without alarming the submarine’s crew. He fired two torpedoes and kept on closing the range to 500 yards, where he fired two more. The submarine went up in a geyser of water, scrap iron, and flame.

Ensign Lynch thought he saw a dim shape beyond his victim and was alert when another surfaced I-boat shot four torpedoes at him. He slipped between the torpedo tracks, but could do nothing about retaliating, because he had emptied his tubes. He had to let the second I-boat go. Postwar assessment gives Ensign Lynch a definite kill on this submarine.

The same Christmas Eve, two other PTs from the Oro Bay base sank two barges full of troops.