Seventy Years Ago: Battle Of The Santa Cruz Islands

"Halsey's arrival in Noumea sent American morale skyrocketing throughout the region, as did his assurances to General Alexander A. Vandegrift, the Marine commander on Guadalcanal, that the Navy would give the Marines all possible support within its means. Halsey kept his word...."

"On October 23, as the Marines and Americal soldiers repelled a second violent Japanese assault, the Big E and her task force rendezvoused with Hornet east of Espiritu Santo, forming Task Force 61, under Rear Admiral Thomas Kinkaid. Halsey, anticipating a Japanese move into the waters northeast of Guadalcanal, ordered Kinkaid to sweep north of the Santa Cruz islands - a small, malaria-infested chain 700 miles north of New Caledonia - to engage the Japanese fleet...."

"Dawn on October 25, then, found the Combined Fleet and Task Force 61 steaming aggressively towards each other, closing range at close to 30 miles every hour. Confrontation was inevitable...."

"Anticipating the Combined Fleet would make a move towards Guadalcanal, Halsey ordered Kinkaid's Task Force 61 - consisting of Enterprise's TF 16 and Hornet's TF 17 - on an aggressive sweep northwest of the Santa Cruz Islands, hoping to outflank the Japanese fleet as it steamed southwards from Truk."

Admiral Kinkaid's two carriers and 169 aircraft were up against Admiral Nagumo's four aircraft carriers and 212 aircraft. Each force found the other the morning of October 26, 1942. By 0900 they had launched strikes.

Details of the ensuing battle are posted on the web site of the Enterprise CV-6 Association at http://www.cv6.org/1942/santacruz/santacruz.htm. The story reads like a novel. The web site's story continues here and here and here.

By the time the battle ended, USS Enterprise was damaged and USS Hornet, the Doolittle raider, was sunk. As of October 26, the US Navy had no operating aircraft carriers in the Pacific.

Even so, a numerically inferior force had kept Japan from achieving their goals.

"The Consequences

"Though tactically Santa Cruz was a draw, strategically it was a narrow victory for the Americans. Nagumo's carriers and Kondo's battleships had been turned away from Guadalcanal, giving the Marines and soldiers there some much needed relief. Perhaps more importantly, the destruction of the best Japanese naval aircrews, begun in earnest at Midway, culminated at Santa Cruz. Though plane losses were high on both sides - 74 American and 92 Japanese - the loss of airmen pointed to a Japanese catastrophe. Nearly 70 Japanese aircrews - including a number of squadron leaders - never returned to their carriers at Santa Cruz, while all but 33 American airmen did.

"The first hint of the damage done to Japan's naval airpower was seen the day of the battle, in the feeble afternoon strikes at Hornet. A more telling sign came on November 11, when Enterprise - after quick patching by Sea Bees and the repair ship Vulcan - sortied from Noumea, a full air group on her flight deck, ready to fight.

"The only Japanese carriers in the area - Hiyo and Junyo, both slow converted ocean liners - were well north of Guadalcanal, carefully staying clear of the American planes there. Without planes and the crews to fly them, the enemy's fleet carriers were impotent. Although Enterprise and her task force faced significant threat from ground-based air forces and submarines, the simple fact was this: 15 days after Santa Cruz, an American carrier stood off the Solomons, battered but ready for action, and not a single enemy carrier came forth to challenge her."

Seventy Years Ago: Stalingrad

Professor Brad DeLong, who has been "liveblogging" World War II on his economics blog, has posted an essay on our debt to Stalingrad.

The Siege of Stalingrad halted the Wehrmacht advance and began their long retreat to defeat. This was the battle that saved Eurasia from German conquest.

We in the West have never publicly acknowledged the tremendous sacrifice of Soviet defenders. It was not only the soldiers whose heroism halted the Germans. It was the workers.Throughout the siege, factory workers kept producing T-34 tanks in factories partially occupied by Germans. Tanks rolled off the assembly line directly into battle.

The same was true at Leningrad.

It is time we took another look at Soviet history and the many accomplishments of the Soviet Union.

Let's remove our own ideological blinders and examine that period objectively.

Early Voting: Day Eight

Pamlico County Voters cast 274 early votes today, the eighth day of early voting. Total to date: 2,181 votes.Twenty-three percent of Pamlico County's voters have cast votes so far.  Nine more days of early voting and one day of regular elections remaining.

We are not quite at the halfway mark.

Early Voting: Day Seven

Pamlico County turned out 307 early voters today. So far, 1,907 voters out of 9,455 registered have cast ballots. Twenty-three percent of those registered have already voted. Eleven more days remain, including election day.

Training For Election Officials

Members of the County Board of Elections and the Director of Elections frequently receive questions about election law and administration. Usually the questions come from citizens active in their own political party, who have a greater than average interest in the details. Sometimes the questions come from citizens who are certain they already know the right answer.

Election law is complex. From time to time, changes are made by statute or by regulation. Sometimes changes are made in the details of computer programs that assist in administering the elections process. Sometimes changes result from court cases.

To help county elections officials keep up with changes, the State Board of Elections conducts training, usually two or three times a year. In addition, the State Board publishes training presentations on its Election Resources web site.

Anyone having an interest in following these details can access the training materials at: The Election Resource Center home page: http://www.app.sboe.state.nc.us/erc/ERCHomePage.html

Click on : 2012 Annual Training For County Officials - August 14 and 15. This will take you to a list of all the lectures given during that training and printable versions of the training: http://www.app.sboe.state.nc.us/erc/Documents/Conferences/  At the bottom of that page is a link to archives of prior training material: http://www.app.sboe.state.nc.us/erc/Documents/Conferences/~Archives/  That page allows you to access material going back to 2005.

Explore and enjoy.

Early Voting: Day Six

In Pamlico County, 335 voters cast early ballots today in the heaviest turnout to date. The county board of elections also reviewed and accepted 26 mail-in absentee votes. Total votes cast so far: 1600. Eleven more days of early voting and election day still remain for voters to cast their ballots.

Seventy Years Ago: El Alamein, Stalingrad, Guadalcanal, Norfolk

October 23, 1942: North Africa. General Montgomery's 8th Army attacks Germans at El-Alamein. The attack begins with a 1000-gun barrage. After 20 minutes, 30 Corps sends four of its infantry divisions forward into the German minefields on a six mile front. The 8th Australian and 51st Highland Divisions attack toward "Kidney Ridge" while slightly to the south, the New Zealand Division supported by 1st South African Division strike toward the Miteirya Ridge.

Stalingrad: German attacks in the factory district. Heavy fighting. Soviet forces pushed out of 2/3 of the Red October Factory, which is still building T-34 tanks.

Guadalcanal: Japanese forces attempt to cross the Matanikau River. Thrown back with heavy losses.

Convoy US Army forces under command of General George S. Patton, underway from Hampton Roads, Virginia. Destination: North African coast in Morocco.

President Eisenhower's Wisdom

April 16, 1953. President Dwight David Eisenhower:

"The way chosen by the United States [after World War II] was plainly marked by a few clear precepts, which govern its conduct in world affairs.

"First: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be an enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.

"Second: No nation's security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only in effective cooperation with fellow-nations.

"Third: Every nation's right to a form of government and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable.

"Fourth: Any nation's attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.

"And fifth: A nation's hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.

"In the light of these principles the citizens of the United States defined the way they proposed to follow, through the aftermath of war, toward true peace.

"This way was faithful to the spirit that inspired the United Nations: to prohibit strife, to relieve tensions, to banish fears. This way was to control and to reduce armaments. This way was to allow all nations to devote their energies and resources to the great and good tasks of healing the war's wounds, of clothing and feeding and housing the needy, of perfecting a just political life, of enjoying the fruits of their own toil....

"The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated.

"The worst is atomic war.

"The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

"This world in arms is not spending money alone.

"It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

"The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

"It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

"It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

"It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.

"We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.

"We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

"This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

"This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point the hope that come with this spring of 1953.

"This is one of those times in the affairs of nations when the gravest choices must be made, if there is to be a turning toward a just and lasting peace.

"It is a moment that calls upon the governments of the world to speak their intentions with simplicity and with honesty.

"It calls upon them to answer the question that stirs the hearts of all sane men: is there no other way the world may live?