The FReeper Foxhole Revisits The Cactus Air Force - Guadalcanal - October 27th, 2005

see educational sources | originally posted by SAMWolf 2/4/2003 | Don Hollway

[snippy_about_it]

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Attacking The Bombers

The Japanese bombers were the Americans' real targets. Bettys, with their 20mm tail cannon, were typically attacked from above and to the side, leaving the Wildcat with enough energy to zoom-climb back up for another pass. Missing on one attempt, Foss dove right through a Betty formation. "A thousand feet below," Foss recalled, "I suddenly turned back up and headed toward the belly of the last plane on the left wing of the V echelon. Directly under the bomber, nose pointed straight up, I waited until my plane had lost almost all of its speed and I was on the verge of stalling before pulling the trigger." Not just for its streamlined hull did the Japanese call the Betty the "Flying Cigar"; its fuel tanks hit, this one exploded right on top of Foss -- his fifth kill.



DeBlanc's first victory was a G4M just 50 feet above the water, making a torpedo run against U.S. ships. "I flew through the [anti-aircraft] barrage from the fleet and locked onto the tail of a Betty and opened fire, killing the rear gunner and watching my tracers strike the engines," DeBlanc said. Target-fixated, he nearly collided with the flaming bomber, but he recovered to nail two more -- three kills in one mission. (At the end of January, in a wild dogfight over Vella Gulf, DeBlanc shot down three Japanese floatplanes and two Zekes before being shot down himself. He bailed out, was rescued by a coastwatcher and eventually was flown back to the Canal. Credited with nine kills, he was awarded the Medal of Honor.)

The Navy fighters' radio frequency, meant for communication over the uninterrupted expanses of the sea, was susceptible to interference from intervening land masses. Henderson's Japanese tranceiver could only transmit to the fighters out to about 20 miles but could receive their radios from 100 miles. The controllers in the Pagoda often could only sit helplessly and listen as the battle played out, unable to help direct the action.

Back To Base

"The ground crews would count [the survivors] as they landed," said the 67th's historian. "The ambulance would stand, engine running, ready for those who crashed, landed dead stick, or hit the bomb craters in the runway. Then the work of patching and repairing the battered fighters would start again."

Probably the Americans' greatest advantage was simply their proximity to the base. Pilots had a very good chance of making it back to Henderson Field -- if they could survive being shot down.

After downing three other Zeros during a dogfight on October 25,1st Lt. Jack E. Conger of VMF-212 went into the drink after he rammed a fourth Zero -- since he had no ammunition left. The Japanese pilot also parachuted and insisted the Marine rescue boat pick up Conger first. Conger had to convince the Marines not to shoot the chivalrous enemy pilot and was the first to reach down to pull him aboard. Taking umbrage at the dishonorable prospect of capture, the Japanese pilot, 19-year-old Petty Officer 2nd Class Shiro Ishikawa of the 2nd Kokutai, thrust his 8mm Nambu pistol out of the water into Conger's face and pulled the trigger. The wet ammo misfired and then misfired again when Ishikawa tried to shoot himself. Having had enough, Conger (who would finish with 10 1/2 kills) brained his recent aerial adversary with a five-gallon gas can and hauled him into the boat.

Bombardment

Nighttime brought a new set of annoyances: Tokyo Rose propaganda on the radio; nuisance bombers ("Louie the Louse" and "Washing Machine Charlie," named for the chugging sound of his unsynchronized propellers), mixing the occasional bomb with whistling bottles dropped just to rattle nerves; and troop convoys (the "Cactus Express," later redubbed "Tokyo Express") coming down the Solomons' central channel ("the Slot") to offload troops at Cape Esperance under cover of naval bombardment.

"Throughout most of my first night on Guadalcanal," recalled Foss, "shells streamed above our tents in both directions as Japanese ships in the channel targeted our artillerymen on the island, who returned the fire. The veterans...assured us that the night's shelling was 'light.'" By the end of his first week, Foss believed them. On October 13, Japanese 105mm and 150mm artillery pieces, dubbed "Pistol Pete" and "Millimeter Mike" by the Marines, began lobbing random shells from the surrounding hills, beyond the range of the Marines' 105mm and 5-inch fieldpieces. A heavily escorted Japanese bomber raid arrived over Henderson at noon, cratering the airfield and setting 5,000 gallons of aviation fuel ablaze. That night, in what was to be known ever after as "the Bombardment," the Japanese battleships Haruna and Kongo dropped more than 900 14-inch shells onto Henderson.



Come dawn, Henderson was a scene of staggering destruction, the steel-matted main runway a twisted ruin and the Pagoda damaged. (Geiger ordered the Pagoda demolished to deny the Japanese a target in the future). More than three-quarters of the SBDs and all of the TBFs were destroyed. Forty-one Americans were dead.

But the Americans had a surprise up their sleeves -- an auxiliary airstrip, Fighter One, carved out of the coconut grove southeast of the main field. From there, the Cactus Air Force launched strikes against incoming air raids and the Tokyo Express. On the night of October 14, however, heavy cruisers Chokai and Kinugasa paid a follow-up visit, pelting Henderson with 752 8-inch rounds.

Taking Out Transports

The morning of October 15 found Japanese transports calmly offloading at Tassafaronga, just 10 miles from Lunga.


Mortally stricken by aircraft from Henderson on November 14, Kinugawa Maru, one of "Tenacious Tanaka's" troop ships, lies close to the mouth of the Bonegi River, near Tassafaronga, after being deliberately run ashore. (National Archives)

But the Japanese were to rediscover a truth that has blessed and bedeviled air forces since the dawn of military aviation -- runways, though easily cratered, are easily repaired. Henderson put every available plane in the air to bomb and strafe the ships as well as the troops and supplies already ashore. Flying General Geiger's personal Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina amphibian, Blue Goose, Major Jack R. Cram torpedoed one of the transports, Sasago Maru, for which he would receive the Navy Cross.

The accompanying destroyers riddled the PBY, and three Zeros of the Tainan Kokutai chased it back to Lunga. Haberman, attempting to put his smoking F4F down, pulled off from his approach to Fighter One and shot the last Zeke off Cram's tail (killing Petty Officer 2nd Class Chuji Sakurai). During the action, three transport ships were set afire and beached; one was sunk by more Boeing B-17s sent up from Espíritu Santo.

Trading Blows

Again, before dawn on October 16, the cruisers Myoko and Maya came down the Slot to hammer Henderson, this time firing 1,500 8-inch shells. By dawn Geiger put his total losses at 23 Dauntlesses, six Wildcats, eight Avengers and four Airacobras. Even including those planes that the ground crews cobbled up from cannibalized parts, the Cactus Air Force had only 34 planes left, including just nine Wildcats.



Just as nine Aichi D4Y1 "Val" dive bombers plunged down to finish off the Cactus Air Force, Lt. Col. Harold W. "Indian Joe" Bauer arrived from New Hebrides with 19 Wildcats and seven Dauntlesses. His fuel tanks almost empty, Bauer nevertheless shot down four Vals.

Both sides needed time to recover from the shock. Because Fighter One was too frequently flooded, another strip, called Fighter Two, was smoothed out across the Lunga River. Geiger, 57, who at one point had personally taken an SBD up to drop a 1,000-pound bomb on Japanese troops, finally was transferred out with combat fatigue.

Sinking The Hiei

Meanwhile, Japanese cruisers and destroyers landed more troops on the island, and on November 13 the battleships Hiei and Kirishima came down the Slot to smash Henderson once and for all. Alerted to their approach, American cruisers and destroyers ambushed them. Dawn found Hiei, hit 85 times, almost dead in the water just 10 miles north of Savo Island and less than 40 miles from Henderson. It was payback time.

All day Hiei lay prostrate while SBDs and TBFs punched bombs and torpedoes into her. The Wildcat fighter escort, finding no Zeros, went down to strafe as well. That night the Japanese scuttled Hiei. An American report noted, "It should be recorded that the first battleship to be sunk by Americans in the Second World War was sunk because of a handful of Marine and Navy aircraft."

Educational Sources: www.military.com/ www.daveswarbirds.com/cactus/

[snippy_about_it]

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Turning Point

On November 14, a cruiser force under Vice Adm. Gunichi Mikawa tried to achieve what the battleships had failed to do, shelling Henderson Field once more while an 11-ship troop convoy under Rear Adm. Raizo Tanaka headed for Guadalcanal. Both Japanese forces soon found themselves under attack by every available Cactus Air Force plane and the entire air group off the American carrier USS Enterprise, which had flown in to reinforce Henderson. In the ensuing fight, Indian Joe Bauer, by now an 11 victory ace, went into the water; he was seen swimming but disappeared before he could be rescued. (Bauer was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.) Mikawa lost the heavy cruiser Kinugasa to Enterprise's dive bombers, which also succeeded in damaging the heavy cruiser Maya. Seven transports went down; the others, beached, were destroyed the next day. Only 40 percent of the 10,000 Japanese troops made it onto Guadalcanal, with just five tons of supplies.

It was a turning point. After mid-November the Japanese, although they continued trying to destroy Henderson, gave up trying to recapture it. Instead, they secretly built their own airfield, at Munda on New Georgia, stretching a wire net over the construction to conceal the runway and leaving the tops of palm trees on it as camouflage.

Foss Returns



Foss, with a Distinguished Flying Cross and severe malaria to show for his stint on Guadalcanal, had been rotated rearward but returned to Henderson on New Year's Day 1943. Placed in command of VMF-121, he soon shot down three of the new, square-winged A6M3 Type 32 Zekes to raise his score to 26 -- tied with American World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker. The bet was that Foss would be first to break Rickenbacker's record.

Foss' chance came on January 25, when Japan sent a last-ditch aerial armada down the Slot -- 30 army bombers and fighters, recently moved to Rabaul from Malaya to assist the depleted naval units. Against them Foss had only his eight-plane Wildcat flight -- the "Flying Circus" -- and four Lockheed P-38F Lightning fighters of the 339th Fighter Squadron.

The bombers stayed out of range until their Nakajima Ki-43 fighter escorts could deal with the Americans. But the Ki-43 pilots feared a trap. "By refusing to run away when the odds were clearly and overwhelmingly against us, we instilled [in the Japanese] the deep suspicion that we had many more planes in the air," said Foss. The P-38s were more than capable of handling the few Ki-43s that ran the gantlet, two of which were shot down by Lieutenants Ray W. Bezner and Besby F. Holmes.

With the Wildcats still blocking the way -- and accounting for two more Japanese fighters -- the bombers soon gave up and went home. For turning back that air raid without firing a shot -- and for giving Henderson's safety higher priority than his personal score -- Foss received the Medal of Honor; a few days later he transferred out for good. His 26 kills would make him the highest scoring Marine fighter pilot of the war except for Major Gregory "Pappy" Boyington (who technically scored six of his 28 kills over China as one of the "Flying Tigers"). Foss retired a brigadier general, later serving as governor of his native South Dakota.

Role In History

The Japanese military saved face by evacuating their remaining ground forces in early February, literally under the Americans' noses. The campaign for Guadalcanal was over; Henderson's role in history, however, was not. It was from Fighter Two that 16 P-38s of the 339th Squadron took off on April 18, 1943, to intercept and shoot down a Betty bomber carrying the mastermind of Pearl Harbor, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, as it approached Bougainville. But one of the returning Lightnings landed at a new forward airstrip in the Russell Islands. The war was leaving Henderson behind.

Through January 1943 the Cactus Air Force had lost 148 aircraft shot down and 94 airmen killed or missing. In addition, between August and November 1942, 43 planes were destroyed on Henderson Field, and 86 were lost operationally. During that same period, the U.S. Navy carriers supporting the Guadalcanal campaign lost a total of 49 planes in combat, 72 destroyed on their ships and 184 operational losses. Estimates of total Japanese losses ranged as high as 900 aircraft and more than 2,400 aircrew members. The latter statistic reflected the beginning of a talent drain that would ultimately prove fatal to the Japanese land and naval air forces.

"None realized more the importance of the field that they had so obligingly begun, and so precipitantly abandoned, than the Japanese," wrote one historian. "For they never regained their strategic airfield, and for the lack of it they lost Guadalcanal, the Solomons, and ultimately New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and their bases to the north. Probably never in history have a few acres of cleared ground cost so much in ships, men and treasure as...Henderson Field."

[snippy_about_it]

'When You See Zeros, Fight 'Em'

-- Captain Joseph J.Foss,
Marine Pilot

[snippy_about_it]

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NOW UPDATED THROUGH SEPTEMBER 30th, 2004




The FReeper Foxhole. America's History. America's Soul

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[Soaring Feather]

Good morning everyone!
First one in the FOXHOLE!!

[RasterMaster]

Great post, snippy!

[U S Army EOD]

Glad to see you are back in business briefly. I was looking at our casualty numbers and I was thankful Cindy Shehand wasn't living back then.

[snippy_about_it]

Can you imagine. Heck, she would have freaked out completely had she lived during the War between the States.

[snippy_about_it]

Hi feather. You're #1.

[snippy_about_it]

Thank you RasterMaster.

[wildcatf4f3]

at the risk of sounding naive, maudlin and just a plain sap, these men have been my heros, my ragtag Knlghts in muddy armour all my life. Wake, Coral Sea, Midway and the Canal. This is my image of being an American.

[snippy_about_it]

...and it is a very good image. You sound very wise. ;-)

[U S Army EOD]

Or a British mother on the first day of the Somme. (70,000 in one day)

[snippy_about_it]

Absolutely incredible numbers, almost too many to comprehend. And I thought Vietnam was bad... Imagine that those numbers are bigger than suburban towns and as large as some decent sized cities. Just incredible.

[U S Army EOD]

http://members.home.nl/saen/Special/Zoeken.swp

[snippy_about_it]

"The page cannot be displayed"

Grrr. I'm giving it up until tomorrow. I'll try it from the computer at the store.

[alfa6]

Night Shift bump for the Foxhole

More when I get home in the AM

Regards

alfa6 :>}

[snippy_about_it]

See you in the morning.

[Iris7]

Nice, Snippy.

The War could have been lost in 1942 and the first months of 1943. I mean the whole shooting match.

The big shots really never saw what was happening there until about November 1st, I think, except for MacArthur and Nimitz.

Dang, I should do some 1942 Pacific War pieces. Those were not "merely" good men but great men, down to the least Private Soldier or Marine or Swab.