US History/US History (Bureau Development Inc.)(1991).ISO/dp/0078/00785.txt

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$Unique_ID{USH00785}
$Pretitle{77}
$Title{The Amphibians Came to Conquer:  Volume 1
Chapter 10A  Savo The Galling Defeat}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dyer, VAdm. George C.}
$Affiliation{USN}
$Subject{admiral
turner
rear
japanese
air
navy
ships
sighting
report
war}
$Volume{Vol. 1}
$Date{1973}
$Log{}
Book:        The Amphibians Came to Conquer:  Volume 1
Author:      Dyer, VAdm. George C.
Affiliation: USN
Volume:      Vol. 1
Date:        1973

Chapter 10A  Savo The Galling Defeat

The Battle of Savo Island

     When the Astoria visited Japan in 1939, with Captain Richmond Kelly
Turner commanding, a Japanese poet drew on the muses for the following words:

           The spirit, incarnate, of friendship and love
           Deep in the Heart of history.
           The record of the human world, full of changes and vicissitudes.
           The people of Japan, where cherries bloom,
           In the future far away
           Will never forget their gratitude to the Astoria.

     20 April 1939 - Bansui Doi

     The "changes and vicissitudes" led the Japanese to "forget their
gratitude to the Astoria" on 9 August 1942.

     Commander Expeditionary Force (CTF 61) set the radio call authenticator
for 9 August 1942, to be used on that same day by all ships in his command to
verify their messages, as "Wages of Victory."  It was a prophetic choice, for
the "Wages of Victory" at Tulagi and Guadalcanal was Savo Island.

     No American can be happy about the Battle of Savo Island.  A good many
professional United States naval officers feel a stinging sense of shame every
time the words "Savo Island" are uttered.

     A distinguished former Commander in Chief of the United States Fleet,
and, in 1942, Chairman of the General Board of the Navy, Admiral Arthur J.
Hepburn, U.S. Navy (Retired), mentally active and physically vigorous, spent
over four months between 23 December 1942 and 13 May 1943 inquiring into the
Savo Island disaster, personally questioning the principal commanders in the
South Pacific and Southwest Pacific Areas, and the Commanding Officers still
alive, as well as gathering a large amount of documentary evidence.

     A two-volume Strategical and Tactical Analysis of the Battle of Savo
Island has been published by the U.S. Naval War College at Newport, Rhode
Island.  Several full-length books on the battle, one labeling Admiral Turner
"a blacksmith's son," have been written for popular consumption.  Morison
devotes a lengthy chapter to the subject in his 15-volume history of United
States Naval Operations in World War II and much space in his other writings
about that war.

     It is not the intention to rehash in detail here this sad story of the
U.S. Navy in its first night heavy surface ship fight with the Japanese Navy.
if there are any readers who are not familiar with this night battle, such
readers should consult Morison before going further in this Chapter.  Suffice
it to record here that it occurred at the Savo Island terminus of a skillfully
concealed Japanese dash south from Rabaul.  It was carried through by a
hastily gathered eight ship cruiser-destroyer force, which in the early hours
of 9 August effected complete surprise and one-sided damage in turn to two
different five-ship Allied cruiser-destroyer units patrolling to protect our
transports at Tulagi and Guadalcanal.

     The Japanese Navy achieved a stunning victory.  It was aggressive in the
planning concept of this operation and it was equally aggressive in carrying
it out.  Their night-time operational ability was far superior to that of the
U.S. Navy ships companies which they encountered.  They cleared from the
roster three United States heavy cruisers and one Australian heavy cruiser
with minor damage to their own ships.  They placed the waters lying between
the islands of Guadalcanal and Tulagi on the books as "Iron Bottom Sound" and
manned it with an initial complement of United States Navy and Australian Navy
ships.

     Admiral Turner's comment in 1960 on the 1942 battle was as follows:

     Whatever responsibility for the defeat is mine, I accept.

     Admiral Hepburn, who, in 1942 investigated the defeat for Admiral King
did a first-rate job.  The Naval War College in 1950, did the most thorough
analysis possible.  I had my chance to comment on the Hepburn report to
Admiral Nimitz, before he placed his comments thereon.  My comments contained
the following:

     'I desire to express myself as entirely satisfied with this admirable
report.  It is accurate, fair, logical, and intuitive.'

     We took one hell of a beating.  The Japs sank four cruisers, but missed
their greatest opportunity during the war to sink a large number of our
transports with surface ship gunfire.  This was at a time when it would have
really hurt, because we didn't have 50 big transports in our whole Navy.  We
got up off the deck and gave the Japs one hell of a beating, and the so and so
critics can't laugh that off.

     For a long time after the ninth of August, I kept trying to fit the
pieces together to change our defeat into a victory.  It all boiled down to
needing better air reconnaissance, better communications, better radar, a more
combative reaction, and a greater respect for Jap capabilities.

     In response to a question, if he expected to be relieved of command
because of the disaster, Admiral Turner commented:

     Only if the Navy found it necessary to satisfy the desire of the American
people for a goat.  Fortunately for me, the Navy resisted any pressure there
might have been for this end.

     In this connection, Admiral Nimitz was asked the question by this writer:
"Did you contemplate having Admiral Turner relieved after the defeat at Savo
Island?"

     He replied, "No, I never did, not for an instant.  I thought he did very
well."

     This decision not to relieve Rear Admiral Turner was labeled by Samuel
Eliot Morison in 1954 "wise and just."

     However, Morison's 1954 appraisal of this decision is hardly supported by
his later writings.  In 1962, Morison wrote that Turner made a "bad guess"
that the Japanese were not coming through that night, and that:

     This was not Turner's only mistake that fatal night.  He allowed his
fighting ships to be divided into three separate groups to guard against three
possible sea approaches by the enemy. . . .  Turner was so certain that the
enemy would not attack that night that he made the further mistake of
summoning Crutchley in Australia to a conference on board his flagship,
McCawley, twenty miles away, in Lunga Roads, Guadalcanal . . . [for a
consultation] to decide whether the partly unloaded transports should depart
that night or risk repeated Japanese air attacks without air protection [the
next day].

     In 1963, Morison, the great and good god of World War II Naval History,
wrote:

     Dogmatically deciding what the enemy would do, instead of considering
what he could or might do, was not Turner's only mistake on that fatal night.
He allowed his fighting ships to be divided into three separate forces to
guard three possible sea approaches by the enemy.

The Hepburn Investigation

     The reason that Admiral Turner applauded the Hepburn Investigation is not
difficult to find.  In it there was no direct or implied criticism of Rear
Admiral Turner's action or decisions.

     One can take his pick - either (1) the ever changing appraisals of the
semi-official naval historian; (2) the inordinately biased hocus-pocus of the
popular fiction writer; (3) the analysis of the Naval War College as to why
Savo Island happened and what was the degree of responsibility of the various
seniors present, including Commanding Officers of the various ships; or (4)
make up his own mind from the existing official record.

     Admiral King, never one to flinch from damning an officer whom he
believed to have erred badly, in his endorsement on Admiral Hepburn's
Investigation Report said:

     I deem it appropriate and necessary to record my approval of the
decisions of and conduct of Rear Admiral R. K. Turner, U.S. Navy, and Rear
Admiral V. A. Crutchley, Royal Navy.  In my judgment, those two officers were
in no way inefficient, much less at fault, in executing their parts of the
operations.  Both found themselves in awkward positions, and both did their
best with the means at their disposal.

     Admiral King was thoughtful enough to provide a copy of his endorsement
to Rear Admiral Turner and Rear Admiral Crutchley.

     To complete the picture, the following should also be quoted from the
King endorsement:

     5. . . . Adequate administrative action has been taken with respect to
those individuals whose performance of duty was not up to expectations.

     Captain George L. Russell, at that time Flag Secretary to Admiral King,
and the reviewing officer on the staff of the Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet,
for the Admiral Hepburn investigative Report gave more detail on the
administrative action.  He later was Judge Advocate General of the Navy and
then a Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy.  His review was passed on and concurred in by
the Deputy Chief of Staff, Rear Admiral W. R. Purnell, later Vice Admiral, U.
S. Navy, and the Chief of Staff, Vice Admiral R. S. Edwards, later Admiral, U.
S. Navy.

     In this review, Captain Russell pointed out that:

        (a) Vice Admiral Ghormley, who was head man in the area, and therefore
answerable for the operation, was relieved not long afterward. Regardless of
the fact that no reason for his change of duty was announced, there was a
stigma attached to it, with everything indicating that he was relieved because
of this defeat. . . .

     (b) Admiral Hepburn mentions the failure of Rear Admiral McCain to search
out the area in which the Japs must have been, after Rear Admiral Turner, in
effect, asked him to do so, but apparently does not feel that he should be
called to account for it. . . .

     (c) Admiral Hepburn gives Admiral Turner pretty much a clean bill of
health.

     (d) Vice Admiral Fletcher and Rear Admiral Noyes have been relieved of
their commands.  Again no reason has been assigned, but the inference is that
the latter, at least, has been tried and found wanting.  In other words,
something has already been done, administratively.

     It does not necessarily follow that because we took a beating somebody
must be the goat . . . to me it is more of an object lesson in how not to
fight, than it is a failure for which someone should hang. . . .

     The two-volume Naval War College analysis, in its 23 pages of "Battle
Lessons," mentions no personalities, but some of the biting "Lessons" apply
directly to specific actions of specific command personalities.  There are 26
Lessons.  One of these was pertinent to Rear Admiral Turner personally.
Nearly all of them are pertinent to every naval officer exercising command in
the nuclear age, as well as in World War II, and several will be mentioned
later in the chapter.

The Primary Cause - Inadequate and Faulty Air Reconnaissance

     Admiral Turner, when asked, in 1960, if he would name "the primary cause
of his defeat at Savo Islands, and the thing about this primary cause which
stuck in his craw the hardest," said:  "Inadequate and faulty air
reconnaissance and more faulty than inadequate."

     Before making this particular answer, he carefully considered a list
drafted by this author and discarded the following as not being the primary
cause:

     a. Lack of respect for Japanese aggressiveness.

     b. Lack of a specific night action battle plan in the Screening Group in
event of an undetected surprise raid.

     c. Lack of combat reaction at the command level in the cruisers and
destroyers of the Screening Group, or lack of a specific night action plan for
these units.

     d. Delay of Screening Group Commander in rejoining his command.

     e. Withdrawal of Air Support Force.

     f. Command organization.

     g. Personnel fatigue.

     h. Lack of night battle training.

     i. Lack of appreciation of the limitations of radar, or radar failures.

     j. Communication delays, or failures.

     k. Failure to have more picket destroyers.

     l. Division of heavy ships (CA and CLAA) of Screening Force into three
groups.

     m. Failure to maintain the prescribed condition of ship readiness in the
heavy cruisers.

     n. The United States Navy's obsession with a strong feeling of technical
and mental superiority over the enemy.

     The official history of the Army and the monographs of the Marine Corps
as well as Newcombs popular The Incredible Naval Debacle, all give the
impression that air reconnaissance, or perhaps osmosis, furnished information
of such a nature that Rear Admiral Turner knew that a Japanese Naval Force was
approaching the lower Solomons.  These are the words these books use:

     Word of this approaching force reached Admiral Turner at 1800, and when
Admiral Fletcher notified him shortly thereafter that the carrier force was to
be withdrawn, Turner called Vandegrift to the flagship, McCawley, and informed
the general that, deprived of carrier protection, the transports must leave at
0600 the next day.

     At 1800 on 8 August, Admiral Turner received word that the Japanese Force
was approaching.

     Turner had it [the despatch] too, and he knew he was in trouble.

     Later, they could not say for sure when they first knew it, but for
certain the fleet knew by midafternoon that the Japanese were coming.

     Japanese surface forces were heading his way; everybody knew that.

     The Army history and the Marine monograph cite as their authority the
following entry in the 8 August 1942 War Diary of Rear Admiral Turner as
Commander Amphibious Force South Pacific Force.

     About 1800 information was received that two enemy destroyers, three
cruisers, and two gun boats or seaplane tenders were sighted at 1025Z at 50 49
5, 156 degrees 07 minutes E course 12 degrees, speed 15 knots.

     This entry, except for the first six words and the zone time of the
sighting, was almost a Chinese copy of the first part of a dispatch originated
at General MacArthur's Combined Headquarters at Townsville, Australia, at 1817
that evening which read:

     Aircraft reports at 2325Z/7Z 3 cruisers 3 destroyers 2 seaplane tenders
or gunboats.  05-49 S 15607 E course 12 degrees true speed 15 knots.  At
0027/8Z 2 subs 07-35 S 154-07 E course 15 degrees true.

     This information was not in fact passed on by the aviator who made the
actual sighting for seven hours and 42 minutes after the sighting, when a
despatch was originated at his home base, after his return thereto, and time
dated in New Guinea at 1807.  The despatch was then

     passed over the Australian Air Force circuit from Fall River to Port
Moresby and thence to Townsville . . . [and thence to Brisbane and thence]
over the Navy land-line circuit to Canberra in COMSOWESPACFOR 081817 [only ten
minutes later] for transmission over the air on the Canberra BELLS broadcast
schedule.  Canberra then transmitted on the BELLS [broadcast] schedule to the
Australian Forces, and to Pearl Harbor for transmission on the HOW FOX
schedule to the U.S. Forces.

     Canberra completed its transmission at 081837, and Pearl Harbor completed
its transmission on the Fleet (or FOX) broadcast schedules at 081843.

     It was received in the McCawley via the FOX broadcast schedule, as the
McCawley had only two transmitters and five radio receivers, and could not
spare one of the receivers to guard the Australian BELLS circuit.  The
message, not in the air until 1843, was decoded and available on the Flag
Bridge of the McCawley about 1900, and not about 1800 as the War Diary entry
would indicate.  Rear Admiral Crutchley in the Australia received the message
via the Australian BELLS broadcast circuit at 1837, since the Australian ship
guarded this circuit in lieu of the American FOX schedule.  He did not pass it
to Rear Admiral Turner in the McCawley.  This factual difference of one hour
between the times many have assumed the message was available, and the time it
was actually available to Rear Admiral Turner is important.

     The sighting of the Japanese task force was some eight and a half hours
old.  The Japanese ships were 40 miles east of the town of Kieta situated on
the east central shore of the island of Bougainville as shown in the map on
page 363.  They were not "In the Slot" but well east of it.  Their reported
course was not the course "Down the Slot," nor a course that would put them
"In the Slot."  Their reported speed was far from the 22-26 knots necessary to
get them the 340 miles to Guadalcanal island the night of 8-9 August.

     Instructions governing Army Air Force reconnaissance missions stipulated
that:

     A plane making contact at sea is to remain in the vicinity of the sighted
target until recalled or forced to retire.

     The pilot of the Royal Australian Air Force Hudson Plane A16/218 on
Search Mission FR623, originating at Fall River Field at Milne Bay, New
Guinea, who sighted Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa's Cruiser Force headed south,
shall remain unidentified, and alone with his own conscience, as far as this
writer is concerned.

     He quite erroneously identified the seven cruisers and one destroyer that
were in the waters below him.  According to Morison:

     Instead of breaking radio silence to report as he had orders to do in an
urgent case, or returning to base which he could have done in two hours, [he]
spent most of the afternoon completing his search mission, came down at Milne
Bay [tip of Papua] had his tea, and then reported his contact.

     He not only failed to identify what he saw, but he failed to trail his
contact, and he failed to report promptly.  Four of the five Japanese heavy
cruisers were sister ships, alike as peas in a pod from a distance.

     After the war, an examination of Japanese action reports revealed that
this plane was in sight from various Japanese cruisers of Vice Admiral
Mikawa's force from 1020 to 1036, certainly long enough for the Hudson crew to
get a good look at the formation.

     A later sighting of Vice Admiral Mikawa's Cruiser Force was made at 1101
by another of General MacArthur's Hudsons on Flight A16/185.  This 1101
sighting suffered an even longer delay before reaching the officers who needed
the information.  The aviator did not get this sighting on the air for nine
hours and 46 minutes after the occurrence.  This 080947 report, when
considered alongside the previous one, further confused the picture as seen by
Rear Admiral Turner.

     The second despatch read:

     Air sighting 0001Z/8 Position 05-42 South 15-05 East.  Two Cast Affirm
Two Cast Love one small unidentified.  One cruiser similar Southampton class.
When plane attempted correct approach ships opened fire.  At zero one two zero
slant eight sighted small merchant vessel in 07-02 South 156-25 East course
290 speed 10.

     The Naval War College version of this despatch places an "or" between the
two CAs and two CLs.

     The fact that the Australian plane attempted a "correct approach" on what
to the aviator looked like a British heavy cruiser indicated that there was a
question in the aviator's mind as to whether or not these were Allied ships.
The fact that he was fired at probably riveted his attention on the ship
immediately before him rather than the six other cruisers and one destroyer in
the immediate area "and within visual signal distance," it should be noted
that the Japanese Flagship Chokai sighted this aircraft, immediately after
four of the five Japanese heavy cruisers had finished recovering their
seaplanes at 1050, and while the seven large ships were forming up into a
single column.  The Chokai opened fire on the plane at 1100. The plane
retreated and disappeared from sight of the Chokai at 1113.  Vice Admiral
Mikawa reported that his ships were on the northwesterly course of 3000 and
that the plane was in sight for 13 minutes.

     How the Japanese ships all in sight of each other sighted the plane, and
the plane did not correctly count the number of ships below it, lacks a ready
explanation, except for the "fog of war.

     This second sighting report added perplexity to the mystification already
existing on the McCawley's Flag Bridge.  The position reported indicated the
Japanese force, if it was the same force as reported some 35 minutes
previously, had moved northward and westward 7.5 miles.  Since the Australian
aviator, in this second sighting report, had not included a course and speed
of the ships below him and since a plot of the two positions checked out the
previous report by the pilot of A16/218 of a leisurely speed of 15 knots,
Admiral Turner guessed that the seaplane part of the force as first reported
was proceeding on to Rekata Bay and that part of the covering force was
returning to Rabaul.

     It is an amazing fact, but one showing the vagaries of radio
communications, that Vice Admiral Ghormley apparently was not cognizant of the
1025 sighting of the Japanese Cruiser Force until after Rear Admiral Turner
arrived back in Noumea and told him of it.

     A "Memorandum for Admiral Ghormley" prepared jointly on 14 August 1942 by
his Staff Aviation Officer and his War Plotting Room Officer, while listing
the 1101 sighting report, does not list the 1025 sighting despatch among the
despatches received by COMSOPACFOR from COMSOWESPACFOR relating to enemy
surface units on 7 August and 8 August 1942.

     No record of the time of receipt of the second Australian plane's report
survived the flagship McCawley's torpedoing and sinking 10 months later.
COMSOPAC radio watch finished copying the second sighting message at 2136, and
it still had to be decoded.  On 21 February 1943, six months after Savo
Island, Rear Admiral Crutchley in an official report on Savo island did not
list this message as having been received at all by his flagship, the
Australia.  In 1960, Admiral Turner and one member of his staff reasoned that
the second sighting report was not available on the Flag Bridge when CTF 62
(Turner) drafted and sent out his 081055 just before 10 p.m., or it would have
been referenced in that despatch just as the initial sighting report was
referenced.  The only possible reference in the TF 62 official record
currently available in regard to this second despatch is found in Rear Admiral
Turner's statement:

     All or at least some of these [four highly important] despatches [from
COMSOWESPACFOR] were brought into my cabin during my conference with Admiral
Crutchley and General Vandegrift.

     General MacArthur's Combined Headquarters at Townsville drew the
inference from these two aircraft sighting reports of

     a possible occupation of Bougainville and Buka Islands in strength -
[and] possible use of Kieta aerodrome.

     Rear Admiral Turner had gotten into the guesstimating act at 082155-35
minutes before General MacArthur's guesstimating despatch sought the air. Rear
Admiral Turner's guess, influenced by the fact that a Wasp scout had shot down
a seaplane north of Rekata Bay, was quite as wrong as General MacArthur's.  He
opined:

     Estimate from NPM 706 that Force named may operate torpedo planes from
Santa Isabel possibly Rekata Bay.  Recommend strong air detachments arrive
Rekata Bay early forenoon.  Bomb tenders in manner to ensure destruction.

     When Rear Admiral Turner sent this despatch, he did not know that CTF
63's (Rear Admiral McCain) search planes on the eighth of August, had not
covered the Slot areas which TF 63 had been requested to cover.  CTF 63's
report of his air searches for the 8th was not time dated in his New Caledonia
Headquarters on that day until 2333-27 minutes before midnight.

     The special air reconnaissance in the Choisel-Bougainville Slot Area
requested by CTF 62 (Turner) of CTF 63 failed to provide a contact with the
Japanese cruisers, when the TF 63 Army Air Force planes turned back at 1215
some 60 miles south of the Japanese cruisers and far, far short of the 750-
mile search which had been expected and of which the B-17s were capable.

     Admiral Hepburn commented:

        . . . this important negative information did not become known to Rear
Admiral Turner until the next day. . . .

     It is not unreasonable to suppose that timely information of the failure
of the search plan might at least have resulted in a precautionary order to
the Screening Force to maintain the highest degree of readiness. . . .