JANUARY 22, 2011
Near a Small Island, a Gigantic Naval Clash
By RONALD SPECTOR
The Guadalcanal campaign was the first Allied offensive of the Pacific War, following closely on the U.S. naval victory at Midway in June 1942. The American seizure, in August, of this small outpost in the Solomon Islands of the southwest Pacific developed into a bloody and protracted campaign that only ended with the Japanese withdrawal of their sick and starving soldiers from the island six months later. It was a defeat from which Japan never really recovered and one routinely celebrated by American popular culture.
Yet to many of those who viewed, say, HBO's recent series the "Pacific," it may come as a surprise that the campaign for Guadalcanal involved the U.S. Navy as well as the Marines. (It also involved two divisions of the U.S. Army and air forces from Australia and New Zealand.) Guadalcanal was in fact a gigantic naval campaign, involving not just the land battles for control of the island but seven major naval actions and numerous raids, skirmishes, bombardments and landings fought by fleets that were roughly equal in size and striking power.
James Hornfischer's "Neptune's Inferno" contributes a great deal toward balancing the picture. The Japanese and American troops on the island could only be re-supplied, reinforced or evacuated by sea, and the peculiar geography of the southern Solomons ensured that the opposing naval forces met early and often. While the fighting ashore was intense, the U.S. Navy lost three sailors for every Marine or soldier killed on Guadalcanal. The Japanese and Americans each lost two dozen major warships and more than 400 planes.
View Full Image
SPECTOR
The USS Wasp after being struck by torpedoes off Guadalcanal.
SPECTOR
Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal
By James Hornfischer
Bantam, 516 pages, $30
Though there have been no shortage of books about this campaign, "Neptune's Inferno" is the first since Samuel Eliot Morison's "The Struggle for Guadalcanal" (1949) to attempt a complete account of the naval operations during the protracted contest for the island. Mr. Hornfischer is the author of two earlier books on the war in the Pacific—including a deservedly praised account of the Battle off Samar during the 1944 Leyte campaign, "Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors" (2004). "Nepturne's Inferno" is a far more ambitious effort yet remains extremely readable, comprehensive and thoroughly researched in all available English language sources, including some firsthand accounts and oral histories that have not been used before.
Though an American victory, the Guadalcanal campaign began and ended with blunders and recriminations. Only two days after the initial landings, Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher, who commanded the aircraft carriers covering the operation, withdrew his ships from the area, leaving the amphibious task force and the Marines without air cover. The next night a Japanese cruiser force under Rear Adm. Mikawa Gunichi surprised the Allied cruisers and destroyers guarding the transports and sank three U.S. cruisers and one Australian. It was in some respects a worse defeat than Pearl Harbor, since the Hawaiian naval station had been attacked unexpectedly during peacetime whereas the American fleet at Guadalcanal was in the midst of a combat operation and anticipating a Japanese reaction.
Then, on Nov. 30, 1942, near the conclusion of the campaign, an American task force of five cruisers and six destroyers, caught a greatly inferior force of Japanese destroyers attempting to deliver supplies off Tassafaronga. The Japanese recovered quickly, sinking one American cruiser and badly damaging three others. Japanese losses were one destroyer. All in all, the Japanese—who had long trained for night fighting and possessed a powerful torpedo with great range—more often than not had the upper hand in the naval battles around Guadalcanal. In every encounter Americans had the considerable advantage of radar but failed to use it properly. Without tactical superiority, what ensured American success in the campaign was the tenacity and luck with which the U.S. military thwarted all Japanese attempts, by sea and land, to capture Guadalcanal's only airfield.
Mr. Hornfischer's focus in "Neptune's Inferno" is the interplay of character and personality with technology and military doctrine. The result is both analytical and entertaining, showing how some men thrive and some fail in the strain of war and how the U.S. Navy "navigated a steeply canted learning curve" in mastering surface warfare. Occasionally the descriptive language goes a bit over the top—as when the author explains that certain types of true warriors had "brains in circuit with the matrix in space where vectors flew toward other vectors and the results of battle followed from the nature of their interactions."
Regardless of whether their brains were in circuit with the matrix, Mr. Hornfischer's approach to the leaders and warriors at Guadalcanal is insightful and judicious. In his discussion of Adm. Fletcher's decision to withdraw his carriers, he shows how an unnecessary and disastrous move in retrospect could be seen at the time as a prudent step. Fletcher commanded the only three U.S. carriers in the Pacific. No new ones would be available for a year. He knew that he would have to fight at least one more Midway-type carrier battle with the Japanese over Guadalcanal. The Marines might have a hard fight, but if the carriers were lost, the war would be lost. In the end what one takes away from Mr. Hornfischer's vivid and engaging account is a feeling for the uncertainty, complexity and ex treme physical and psychological demands of war at sea in 1942.
—Mr. Spector is a professor of history and international relations at George Washington University. His most recent book is "In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia" (Random House).
Near a Small Island, a Gigantic Naval Clash
By RONALD SPECTOR
The Guadalcanal campaign was the first Allied offensive of the Pacific War, following closely on the U.S. naval victory at Midway in June 1942. The American seizure, in August, of this small outpost in the Solomon Islands of the southwest Pacific developed into a bloody and protracted campaign that only ended with the Japanese withdrawal of their sick and starving soldiers from the island six months later. It was a defeat from which Japan never really recovered and one routinely celebrated by American popular culture.
Yet to many of those who viewed, say, HBO's recent series the "Pacific," it may come as a surprise that the campaign for Guadalcanal involved the U.S. Navy as well as the Marines. (It also involved two divisions of the U.S. Army and air forces from Australia and New Zealand.) Guadalcanal was in fact a gigantic naval campaign, involving not just the land battles for control of the island but seven major naval actions and numerous raids, skirmishes, bombardments and landings fought by fleets that were roughly equal in size and striking power.
James Hornfischer's "Neptune's Inferno" contributes a great deal toward balancing the picture. The Japanese and American troops on the island could only be re-supplied, reinforced or evacuated by sea, and the peculiar geography of the southern Solomons ensured that the opposing naval forces met early and often. While the fighting ashore was intense, the U.S. Navy lost three sailors for every Marine or soldier killed on Guadalcanal. The Japanese and Americans each lost two dozen major warships and more than 400 planes.
View Full Image
SPECTOR
The USS Wasp after being struck by torpedoes off Guadalcanal.
SPECTOR
Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal
By James Hornfischer
Bantam, 516 pages, $30
Though there have been no shortage of books about this campaign, "Neptune's Inferno" is the first since Samuel Eliot Morison's "The Struggle for Guadalcanal" (1949) to attempt a complete account of the naval operations during the protracted contest for the island. Mr. Hornfischer is the author of two earlier books on the war in the Pacific—including a deservedly praised account of the Battle off Samar during the 1944 Leyte campaign, "Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors" (2004). "Nepturne's Inferno" is a far more ambitious effort yet remains extremely readable, comprehensive and thoroughly researched in all available English language sources, including some firsthand accounts and oral histories that have not been used before.
Though an American victory, the Guadalcanal campaign began and ended with blunders and recriminations. Only two days after the initial landings, Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher, who commanded the aircraft carriers covering the operation, withdrew his ships from the area, leaving the amphibious task force and the Marines without air cover. The next night a Japanese cruiser force under Rear Adm. Mikawa Gunichi surprised the Allied cruisers and destroyers guarding the transports and sank three U.S. cruisers and one Australian. It was in some respects a worse defeat than Pearl Harbor, since the Hawaiian naval station had been attacked unexpectedly during peacetime whereas the American fleet at Guadalcanal was in the midst of a combat operation and anticipating a Japanese reaction.
Then, on Nov. 30, 1942, near the conclusion of the campaign, an American task force of five cruisers and six destroyers, caught a greatly inferior force of Japanese destroyers attempting to deliver supplies off Tassafaronga. The Japanese recovered quickly, sinking one American cruiser and badly damaging three others. Japanese losses were one destroyer. All in all, the Japanese—who had long trained for night fighting and possessed a powerful torpedo with great range—more often than not had the upper hand in the naval battles around Guadalcanal. In every encounter Americans had the considerable advantage of radar but failed to use it properly. Without tactical superiority, what ensured American success in the campaign was the tenacity and luck with which the U.S. military thwarted all Japanese attempts, by sea and land, to capture Guadalcanal's only airfield.
Mr. Hornfischer's focus in "Neptune's Inferno" is the interplay of character and personality with technology and military doctrine. The result is both analytical and entertaining, showing how some men thrive and some fail in the strain of war and how the U.S. Navy "navigated a steeply canted learning curve" in mastering surface warfare. Occasionally the descriptive language goes a bit over the top—as when the author explains that certain types of true warriors had "brains in circuit with the matrix in space where vectors flew toward other vectors and the results of battle followed from the nature of their interactions."
Regardless of whether their brains were in circuit with the matrix, Mr. Hornfischer's approach to the leaders and warriors at Guadalcanal is insightful and judicious. In his discussion of Adm. Fletcher's decision to withdraw his carriers, he shows how an unnecessary and disastrous move in retrospect could be seen at the time as a prudent step. Fletcher commanded the only three U.S. carriers in the Pacific. No new ones would be available for a year. He knew that he would have to fight at least one more Midway-type carrier battle with the Japanese over Guadalcanal. The Marines might have a hard fight, but if the carriers were lost, the war would be lost. In the end what one takes away from Mr. Hornfischer's vivid and engaging account is a feeling for the uncertainty, complexity and ex treme physical and psychological demands of war at sea in 1942.
—Mr. Spector is a professor of history and international relations at George Washington University. His most recent book is "In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia" (Random House).
Comment