“That is most unusual news,” said Hyakutake, as the Army Chief of Staff, Sugiyama had been an unflagging advocate of all these campaigns. “I never thought I would hear this.”
“Nor I,” said Imamura, “but someone has been whispering in Sugiyama’s ear.”
At this Hyakutake simply raised his eyebrows, waiting.
“Ivan Volkov,” said Imamura. “Did you know that man was recently granted a personal audience with the Emperor? Yes, I have that on good authority, and when he emerged from that meeting, he went directly to Imperial General Headquarters with a proposal—no, not a proposal—with an Imperial order!”
“What order?” Hyakutake leaned forward, his breath stilled as he waited.
Part V
Grim Reckoning
“There’s a sin, a fearful sin, resting on this nation, that will not go unpunished forever. There will be reckoning yet … it may be sooner or it may be later, but it’s a coming…”
Chapter 13
Halsey was back, standing on the weather deck off the bridge of the Essex as he watched the battleships arrive from the south. He stood tall and proud, full recovered from his illness, just as the fleet he now commanded had made a remarkable recovery. There beside him were the Lexington and Yorktown, risen from the dead in the shape and form of two more Essex class flattops. The cruisers and destroyers were farther out, but the Admiral wanted the battleships in nice and tight. He had been on the short range radio a moment earlier.
“Looks a little busy out here,” came Fletcher. “Where’s the valet parking?”
“Pull ‘em right in close,” said Halsey. “You can park one right next to each of the three carriers.”
There were North Carolina, South Dakota and Washington, three fast battleships, and the only heavy ships in the fleet that could run with the carriers. They were beautiful ships, their architecture foreshadowing the long sleek lines of the Iowa Class that was now under construction. Fletcher had been operating them independently in the Fiji Group, occasionally pounding Tavua field in the north. Now Halsey wanted them near. They were fast at 28 knots, they had excellent endurance, with a range over 17,000 nautical miles, and they had guns—lots of them. There were 20 x 5.5-inch dual purpose guns, and 15 quad 40mm Bofors—sixty guns. The nine 16-inch guns wouldn’t fire at planes, but there were there to back up Halsey’s cruisers if that ever became necessary. And to thicken the flak stew further, the two Light AA Cruisers San Diego and San Juan arrived with the battleships.
‘Knock ‘em Down Halsey’ was ready for a brawl. They were calling him the ‘Knuckle Swinger’ back home, though his battles often were painful and the source of much anxiety when they would hit the headlines. He had lost the Lexington at Pearl Harbor, bravely challenging an enemy he had no business attacking at that time, though he did not know that then. He had fought hard at the Koro Sea, and lost the Hornet, but he hurt the Japanese even worse.
It was Fletcher’s debacle in the Coral Sea that saw both Saratoga and Yorktown go down that was the real wound inflicted on the fleet. For that, Fletcher had been moved to the battleships, but Halsey never said anything more about the stinging defeat to Fletcher. He would never hit a man when he was down—unless he was Japanese. So Halsey always gave as much as he took in the ring, and always fought his heart out. That’s the way the public saw it, and after Doolittle and his raids into the Marshalls, they had come to love the man. The US had been back on its heels for too long after Koro Sea reduced the fleet to just two carriers. Spruance had kept them safe, as Nimitz wanted. Now, with those three new carriers and a host of new planes to go with them, Halsey was going to attack.
He knew Operation Push on Viti Levu was jumping off on January 7th, so he wanted to take the 1st Marine Paras and 8th Marine Regiment out to sea and surprise the Japanese with an attack on the New Hebrides. The island Nimitz and King had fingered was Efate, centrally located and with good airfields that could be rapidly improved. Halsey was going to give it to them.
To coordinate the attack, he would link up with Spruance in TF-12 to complete the cast of his new ensemble. That would add Enterprise and Hornet to the show, and the two new hybrids, Gettysburg and Vicksburg, would join Shiloh to escort in the transports. The initial rendezvous would be here off the waters of Funafuti in the Ellice Islands. Then the whole group would head for the New Hebrides, with more raw carrier air power than any other operation the US had mounted in the war.
On the other side of the equation, Yamamoto and Ugaki had been planning the development of Japanese power in the lower Solomons. They had Tulagi, and the Raider battalion that took it from them in the old history was busy on Viti Levu. So Now the Japanese were in the process of shipping in aviation support and airfield construction units to get a working airfield at Tulagi. At the same time, a small detachment would be landed amphibiously on Guadalcanal to secure that island, as additional sites had been located and approved for airfields.
That would be a bigger operation than it seemed, for the Japanese were lacking in most essential equipment to adequately build and maintain airfields. They had very few fuel trucks to send from Rabaul, and almost no bulldozers or earth moving equipment. Instead it was pick and shovel work to build a new field, and raw manpower and horses were used on the fields for labor and hauling.
If local labor could not be rounded up and put to work, the garrison troops would have to do the job, and it was hot, sweaty, backbreaking work in the tropical sun. If the troops took to working in the evening or morning to avoid that merciless sun, it was mosquito time, and few avoided bouts of Malaria in the Solomons, though on Fiji that disease was not a problem. Now, in the Monsoon season, the rains could quickly turn an unpaved or reinforced field into a quagmire, and the Japanese would lose more planes to crash landings than to combat in the early days.
Yet in spite of the difficulties, the operation was not aimed at securing Tulagi and Guadalcanal, and two transport groups were already outbound from Rabaul. To cover that operation, Yamamoto had mustered his carrier power into two groups. Carrier Division 1, with the Fleet Flag on Yamato, would bring Kaga and Akagi to the lower Solomon Sea. Meanwhile, Carrier Division 3 under Hara, the victor of Ceylon, would take the outside passage north of the Solomons with Taiho, Tosa, and the light carriers Junyo and Hiyo. Both forces then intended to rendezvous as they approached the Santa Cruz Islands, make a quick strike at the small field at Ndeni, and then return to Rabaul.
Yamamoto had no idea that the US was now planning a major offensive. He and Ugaki were still working out how to transfer in fighter support to Noumea and begin to build up air power at Nandi and Tavua, not knowing the US was intending to launch an all-out attack on those fields. They were aware that the 1st USMC Division had been relieved, noted the arrival of the 25th Infantry in its place, but still believed the Americans incapable of mounting any offensive that could seriously bother two crack Army divisions like the 38th and 48th. As for the impending US attack on Efate, the possibility never entered their minds.