The FReeper Foxhole Remembers The Cactus Air Force - Guadalcanal

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."

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."

Today's classic warship, USS Virginia (BB-13)

Virginia class battleship
Displacement. 14,980
Length. 441'3"
Beam. 76'2 1/2"
Draft. 23'9"
Speed. 19 k.
Complement. 916
Armament. 4 12", 8 8", 12 6", 12 6", 24 1-pdrs., 4 .30-cal. Colt mg., 4 21 " tt.

The USS Virginia (Battleship No. 13) was laid down on 21 May 1902 at Newport News, Va., by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co.; launched on 6 April 1904; sponsored by Miss Gay Montague, daughter of the Governor of Virginia; and com missioned on 7 May 1906, Capt. Seaton Schroeder in command.

After fitting out, Virginia conducted her "shake down" cruise in Lynnhaven Bay, Va., off Newport, R.I., and off Long Island, N.Y. before she put into Bradford, R.I., for coal on 9 August. After running trials for the standardization of her screws off Rockland, Maine, the battleship maneuvered in Long Island Sound before anchoring off President Theodore Roosevelt's home, Oyster Bay, Long Island, from 2 to 4 September, for a Presidential review.

Virginia then continued her shakedown cruise before she coaled again at Bradford. Meanwhile, events were occurring in the Caribbean that would alter the new battleship's employment. On the island of Cuba, in August of 1906, a revolution had broken out against the government of President T. Estrada Palma. The disaffection, which had started in Pinar del Rio province, grew in the early autumn to the point where President Palma had no recourse but to appeal to the United states for intervention. By mid-September, it had become apparent that the small Cuban constabulary (8,000 rural guards) was unable to protect foreign interests, and intervention would be necessary. Accordingly, Virginia departed Newport on 15 September 1906, bound for Cuba, and reached Havana on the 21st, ready to protect the city from attack if necessary. The battleship remained at Havana until 18 October, when she sailed for Sewell's Point, Va.

Virginia disembarked General Frederick Funston at Norfolk upon her arrival there and coaled before heading north to Tompkinsville to await further orders. She shifted soon thereafter to the New York Navy Yard where she was coaled and drydocked to have her hull bottom painted before undergoing repairs and alterations at the Norfolk Navy Yard from 3 November 1906 to 18 February 1907. After installation of fire control apparatus at the New York Navy Yard between 19 February and 23 March, the battleship sailed once more for Cuban waters, joining the fleet at Guantanamo Bay on 28 March.

Virginia fired target practices in Cuban waters before she sailed for Hampton Roads on 10 April to participate in the Jamestown Tricentennial Exposition festivities. She remained in Hampton Roads for a month, from 15 April to 15 May, before she underwent repairs at the Norfolk Navy Yard into early June. Subsequently reviewed in Hampton Roads by President Theodore Roosevelt between 7 and 13 June, Virginia shifted northward for target practices on the target grounds of Cape Cod Bay, evolutions that lasted from mid-June to mid-July. She later cruised with her division to Newport; the North River, New York City; and to Provincetown, Mass., before conducting day and night battle practice in Cape Cod Bay.

Returning southward early that autumn, Virginia underwent two months of repairs and alterations at the Norfolk Navy, Yard, from 24 September to 24 November, before undergoing further repairs at the New York Navy Yard later in November. She subsequently shifted southward again, reaching Hampton Roads on 6 December.

Virginia spent the next 10 days preparing for a feat never before attempted; around-the-world cruise by the battleships of the Atlantic Fleet. The voyage, regarded by President Roosevelt as a dramatic gesture to the Japanese, who had only recently emerged on the world stage as a power to be reckoned with-proved to be a signal success, with the ships performing so well as to confound the doom-sayers who had predicted a fiasco.

The cruise began eight days before Christmas of 1907, and ended on Washington's Birthday, 22 February 1909. During the course of the voyage, the ships called at ports along both coasts of South America; on the west coast of the United States; at Hawaii; in the Philippines; Japan; China; and in Ceylon. Virginia's division also visited Smyrna, Turkey, via Beirut, during the Mediterranean leg of the cruise. Both upon departure and upon arrival, the fleet was reviewed at Hampton Roads by President Roosevelt, whose "big stick" diplomacy and flair for the dramatic gesture had been practically personified by the cruise of the "Great White Fleet".

Following that momentous circumnavigation, Virginia underwent four months of voyage repairs and alterations at the Norfolk Navy Yard from 26 February to 26 June 1909. She spent the next year and three months operating off the eastern seaboard of the United States, ranging from the southern drill grounds, off the Virginia capes, to Newport, R.I. During that time, she conducted one brief cruise with members of the Naval Militia embarked and visited Rockport and Provincetown, Mass. For the better part of that time, she conducted battle practices with the fleet, evolutions only broken by brief periods of yard work at Norfolk and Boston.

Virginia visited Brest, France, and Gravesend, England, from 15 November to 7 December and from 8 to 29 December 1909, respectively, before she-as part of the 4th Division, Atlantic Fleet-joined the Atlantic fleet in Guantanamo Bay for drills and exercises. She subsequently operated in Cuban waters for two months, from 13 January to 13 March 1910 before she returned north for battle practices on the southern drill grounds.

Virginia departed Hampton Roads on 11 April, in company with Georgia (BB-15), and reached the Boston Navy Yard two days later. She underwent repairs there until 24 May before putting to sea for Provincetown. Over the next five days, Virginia operated with the collier Vestal, testing a "coaling-at-sea apparatus" off Provincetown and at Stellwagen's Bank, before she conducted torpedo practices. The battleship returned to the Boston Navy Yard on 18 June.

Virginia maintained her routine of operations off the eastern seaboard-occasionally ranging into Cuban waters for regularly scheduled fleet evolutions in tactics and gunnery into 1913, a routine largely uninterrupted. In 1913, however, unrest in Mexico caused the frequent dispatch of American men-of-war to those waters. Virginia became one of those ships in mid-February, when she reached Tampico on the 15th of that month; she remained there until 2 March, when she shifted to Vera Cruz for coal. She returned to Tampico on 5 March and remained there for 10 days.

After another stint of operations off the eastern seaboard, ranging from the Virginia capes to Newport-a period of maneuvers and exercises varied by a visit to New York at the end of May 1913 for the dedication of the memorial to the battleship Maine (sunk in Havana Harbor in February 1898) and one to Boston in mid-June for Flag Day and Bunker Hill exercises, Virginia returned to Mexican waters in November. She reached Vera Cruz on 4 November and remained in port until the 30th, when she shifted to Tampico. She observed conditions in those ports and operated off the Mexican coast into January of 1914.

Returning to Cuban waters for exercises and maneuvers with the fleet, Virginia sailed for the Virginia capes in mid-March 1914. She maneuvered with the fleet off Cape Henry and in Lynnhaven Roads before she conducted gunnery drills at the wreck of San Marcos (ex-Texas) in Tangier Sound, Chesapeake Bay. Virginia subsequently held experimental gunnery firings on the southern drill grounds before she spent much of April drydocked at Boston.

The American occupation of Vera Cruz in April 1914 resulted in the sizable deployment of American men-of-war to that port that lasted into the autumn. Virginia reached Vera Cruz on 1 May and operated with the fleet out of that port into early October, a period of time broken by target practice in Guantanamo Bay between 18 September and 3 October.

While war raged in Europe, Virginia continued her operations off the eastern seaboard of the United States, ranging from the southern drill grounds to the coast of New England and occasionally steaming to Cuban waters for winter maneuvers. She was placed in reserve on 20 March 1916, at the Boston Navy Yard, and was undergoing an extensive overhaul in the spring of 1917 when the United States declared war on Germany.

On the day America entered World War I, the United States government took steps to take over all interned German merchant vessels then in American ports. As part of that move, Virginia sent boarding parties to seize the German passenger and cargo vessels Amerika, Cincinnati, Wittekind, Koln, and Ockenfels on 6 April 1917.

Completing her overhaul at Boston on 27 August, Virginia sailed for Port Jefferson, N.Y., three days later, to join the 3d Division, Battleship Force, Atlantic Fleet. Over the ensuing 12 months, the battleship served as a gunnery training ship out of Port Jefferson and Norfolk; service interrupted briefly in early December 1917, when she became temporary flagship for Rear Admiral John A. Hoogewerff, Commander, Battleship Division 1. She subsequently became flagship for the 3d Division commander, Rear Admiral Thomas Snowden.

Overhauled at the Boston Navy Yard in the autumn of 1918, Virginia spent the remainder of hostilities engaged in convoy escort duties, taking convoys well over half-way across the Atlantic. She departed New York on 14 October 1918 on her first such mission, covering a convoy that had some 12,176 men embarked. After escorting those ships to longitude 22 degrees west, she put about and headed for home.

That proved to be her only such wartime mission, however, because the armistice was signed on 11 November 1918, the day before Virginia set out with a France-bound convoy, her second escort run into the mid-Atlantic. After leaving that convoy at longitude 34 degrees west, Virginia put about and headed for Hampton Roads.

The cessation of hostilities meant the return of the many troops that had been engaged in fighting the enemy overseas. Similar in mission to the "Magic Carpet" operation that followed the end of World War II, a massive troop-lift, bringing the "doughboys" back from "over there," commenced soon after World War I ended.

With additional messing and berthing facilities installed to permit her use as a troopship, Virginia departed Norfolk eight days before Christmas of 1918. Over the ensuing months, she conducted five round-trip voyages to Brest, France, and back. Reaching Boston on Independence Day 1919, ending her last troop lift, Virginia ended her transport service, having brought some 6,037 men back from France.

Virginia remained at the Boston Navy Yard, inactive, until decommissioned there on 13 August 1920. Struck from the Navy list and placed on the sale list on 12 July 1922, the battleship, reclassified prior to her inactivation to BB-13 on 17 July 1920, was subsequently taken off the sale list and transferred to the War Department on 6 August 1923 for use as a bombing target.

Virginia and her sistership New Jersey were taken to a point three miles off the Diamond Shoals lightship, off Cape Hatteras, N.C., and anchored there on 5 September 1923. The "attacks" made by Army Air Service Martin bombers began shortly b efore 0900. On the third attack, seven Martins flying at 3,000 feet, each dropped two 1,100-pound bombs on Virginia, only one of them hit. That single bomb, however, "completely demolished the ship as such." An observer later wrote: "Both masts, the bridge; all three smokestacks, and the upperworks disappeared with the explosion and there remained, after the smoke cleared away, nothing but the bare hull, decks blown off, and covered with a mass of tangled debris from stem to stern consisting of stacks, ventilators, cage masts, and bridges."

Within one-half-hour of the cataclysmic blast that wrecked the ship, her battered hulk sank beneath the waves. Her sistership ultimately joined her shortly thereafter. Virginia's end, and New Jersey's, provided far-sighted naval officers with a dramatic demonstration of air power and impressed upon them the "urgent need of developing naval aviation with the fleet." As such, the service performed by the old pre-dreadnought may have been her most valuable.

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