Joseph Wheelan - Midnight in the Pacific: Guadalcanal—The World War II Battle That Turned the Tide of War

If I were king, the worst punishment I could inflict on my enemies would be to banish them to the Solomons. (On second thought, king or no king, I dont think Id have the heart to do it.)

JACK LONDON

MORNING FOG AND THEN A sultry, daylong haze cloaked the powerful US armadas southerly approach to its target on Thursday, August 6, 1942. Six days earlier the fleet had departed Fiji. Although it had so far eluded detection, the danger was greater now as it neared the Solomon Islands, patrolled by Japanese naval aircraft. The eighty-two warships of Operation Watchtower made up one of the largest naval forces ever assembled. Haze prevented three float planes, sent aloft at dawn from Japanese-occupied Tulagi Island, from detecting the armada.

By sunset the ships, carrying 19,105 Marines, their food and supplies, and 234 Navy combat aircraft, were 120 miles southwest of Sealark Channel. This would be the staging area for the next mornings landings on Guadalcanal, Tulagi, Gavutu, and Florida Islandsthe first US land-sea-air offensive of the eight-month-old Pacific War. Operation Watchtower would also mark the first American amphibious landings since the Spanish-American War, forty-four years earlier.

During the fleets approach to the Solomons the young Marinesthe enlisted mens average age was twentykilled time by speculating about the enemy they had never met, cleaning their weapons, and sharpening their bayonets. Some men tried to stay fit with wrestling matches or good, old-fashioned calisthenics. They played cards and rolled dice. Whenever possible, they went on deck to escape the hot, fetid ships holds.

The approach from Fiji was often turbulent. Private Marlin Whitey Groft of the 1st Raider Battalion counted himself lucky to not be afflicted with seasickness like many of his comrades, who spent long hours topside at the rail, heaving their guts into the sea.

The men were dirty, but their morale was tremendously high; they were patriotic, Depression-era young men used to hard work and few luxuries. At night they jitterbugged to jukebox music, belted out popular songs, and plucked up their courage with forced bravado.

They say the Japs have a lot of gold teeth. Im going to make myself a necklace, said one Marine. Another said, Im going to bring back some Jap earspickled. Sunday services had been heavily attended. The Marines knelt in prayer in the galley, temporarily transformed into a church, and sang hymns and took communion.

As D-Day neared, white mosquito netting was broken out; using strong Navy coffee, the Marines dyed it dark brown in garbage cans on deck. For reasons unknown, however, the netting would never reach ashore. The Marines were issued three days worth of C rations, their staple food, and B rations, which were hardtack crackers.

Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, a short, balding man who commanded the task forces amphibious group from his flagship, the transport McCawley, brooded that night over British military historian Liddell Harts warning about amphibious operations, inspired by the searing 1915 Gallipoli debacle, in The Defence of Britain: A landing on a foreign coast in the face of hostile troops has always been one of the most difficult operations of war. It has now become much more difficult, indeed almost impossible, because of the vulnerable target which a convoy of transports offer to the defenders air force as it approaches the shore.

Operation Watchtower had been hastily improvised at the behest of Admiral Ernest J. King, the US fleets crusty commander in chief. Beginning in January King, an old sea dog so tough that he reputedly shaved with a blowtorch, had alone argued for a South Pacific counteroffensive strategy, which countered the prevailing Washington orthodoxy of Europe First. Mainstream military thinking dictated that a Pacific offensive must wait until early 1943.