The first six months of the war in the Pacific were fought mostly with ships, planes and men already in the Pacific when Pearl Harbor was attacked. They had been worked up to a high state of combat readiness by their fleet commander, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel. Even after Kimmel was relieved of duty following the attack, the surviving forces acquitted themselves well.
The Pacific Fleet was hard pressed. They had lost four of their six large aircraft carriers in combat, and the remaining two, USS Saratoga and USS Enterprise, were just returning from extensive repair.
Some Pacific Fleet assets had been diverted to the Atlantic for the invasion of North Africa. That invasion now over, ships were moving through the Panama Canal to reinforce the Pacific.
That was the good news. The bad news is that the ships, their officers and their admirals weren't accustomed to operating in the Pacific. Not only was the tactical challenge different from the Atlantic, there was a less tangible difference of attitude.
The Atlantic Fleet was a "spit and polish" outfit. The Pacific Fleet was more a "get the job done" operation. That was especially true of the aviators and submariners.
| RADM Giffen's Formation |
RADM Robert C. "Ike" Giffen, a favorite of Atlantic Fleet Commander Admiral King, had just arrived in the Southwest Pacific with heavy cruiser USS Wichita and escort carriers Chenango and Suwanee, all having just completed the invasion of North Africa.
Giffen had experience against German submarines, but none against Japanese naval air forces. He also had very limited experience operating aircraft carriers. The two escort carriers were slow. Converted oilers, they could make no more than 18 knots. Worse than that, the wind was from the southeast, opposite from the direction Giffen needed to go.
Giffen had no concept of Japanese naval skills at operating both warships and aircraft at night.
Giffen's task force of three heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, eight destroyers and two escort carriers left Efate January 29. Destination: Guadalcanal by way of Rennell Island. Mission: Support a four-ship resupply mission for the marines, then sweep up through the "slot" to find and destroy Japanese ships.
Giffen ordered radio silence. Japanese submarines and aircraft tracked the force from the time it left Efate.
 |
| Louisville Towing Chicago |
Under the circumstances, strict radio silence made little sense. The ships used their air and surface search radars, which the Japanese could detect at about the same range as the UHF radios used for line of sight communications. Most importantly, this order prevented the cruisers from communicating with the aircraft launched by the carriers.
Early the afternoon of January 29, Giffen worried that he wouldn't be at his rendezvous point on time. He ordered the two carriers, along with two destroyers, to continue at best speed, while the remainder of his force increased speed to 24 knots, remaining in a formation designed to protect against submarines rather than aircraft attack. Steaming at that speed increased the force's self noise so greatly as to render the sonar used to detect submarines nearly useless. It also announced the presence of the task force out to almost as great a distance as UHF radios would have.
Shortly after increasing speed, radar operators on the cruisers began picking up radar blips of unidentified aircraft ("bogies"). The US radars were equipped with an IFF feature to electronically distinguish friend from foe, but operators deemed it unreliable. To find out whether the radar blips were friendly or hostile aircraft would have required fighter-director personnel to send aircraft from the carriers to visually identify the aircraft. But they couldn't do so because of radio silence.
Radio silence made no sense.
At sunset, Giffen ceased zigzagging his force and proceeded on a set course to his rendezvous. The bogies were about sixty miles to the west, approaching fast. They were in fact hostile, Japanese twin-engine land-based bombers, armed with torpedoes. The Bettys maneuvered around Giffen's force and attacked from the east, where they sky was dark, but with Giffen's ships silhouetted against the evening twilight.
Giffen's ships put up a barrage of anti-aircraft fire, and the first wave of bombers did not damage any of the ships. USS Louisville was struck by a dud torpedo, but there was no damage. Giffen issued no orders, and the force continued as before.
A second Japanese air group dropped flares alongside Giffen's cruisers in the moonless night. At 7:38 pm, the lead Betty crashed in flames off USS Chicago's port bow, brightly silhouetting the ship for the following aircraft.
One air launched torpedo hit Chicago in the starboard side, flooding the after fire room. Two minutes later, another torpedo hit at number three fireroom. Three of the ship's four shafts stopped turning, the rudder jammed, and soon the ship was dead in the water. Another torpedo hit the flagship Wichita but did not explode.
Chicago's crew managed to control flooding with the list at 11 degrees. At first, they had only electrical power from the emergency diesel generator. Soon they were able to relight one boiler and generate more electricity to use more powerful pumps.
Giffen ordered USS Louisville to take Chicago in tow. By midnight, The tow was underway at three knots, headed for Espiritu Santo.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment