“True, but they’ll find us out here one way or another, and we can expect to be hit. So it’s a question of how many carriers they find at one time. If I team Shiloh with the Wasp, they would have to split any strike to get at all our flattops.”
“You’re assuming they’ll operate in one group?”
“That’s been their MO in the past. They call it the Kido Butai, and word is that that big battlewagon they have is running with the carriers—the Yamato. All six carriers were together when they hit Pearl, though they broke the four they had into two groups in the Coral Sea when they hit Fletcher.”
“All it took was one group to put Sara and Yorktown down,” said Mitscher.
“I’ll give them that,” said Halsey. “They know what they’re doing when it comes to carrier operations. But our boys are gaining experience and confidence day by day. The Doolittle Raid we pulled off did a world of good for morale, not only here but back home as well. Now I want to deliver a good punch to this Kido Butai if it shows up, and then dance the late rounds if they still have any fight in them. But we may do things a little differently here. This is going to be combat in fairly restricted waters. There are a couple hundred island scattered through this area, and coral reefs everywhere.”
“Alright, you want to split the group, I’ll support that. But Shiloh carries only 24 planes. We might at least think about operating within close supporting distance of each other. That way if one or another group gets targeted, the other might lend a hand.”
“That’ll be the order,” said Halsey. “I’ll detach Shiloh at 12:00 and have her link up with Wasp. A pair of cruisers and five destroyers should be enough to flesh that group out. We’ll designate it TF-17.”
“That was Fletcher’s old handle before he merged it into TF-11,” said Mitscher. “The men get spooky about things like that.”
“Alright then, make it Taffy 18. I like the even numbers anyway.”
“How you figure to hit them?” asked Mitscher. He knew they called Halsey “Bull” for more than one reason, but chief among them was his propensity to be aggressive as a commander, so what he heard next came as a surprise.
“I’ve had a lot of traffic from Nimitz at Pearl,” said Halsey. “He wants me to play a different game down here. Yes, I’d go right at them if we still had Fletcher’s group out there. But the loss of those two carriers is starting to sting. I’m sitting here with the only maneuverable strike element we have in the US Navy now, and we just flat out can’t risk losing it. We’re getting the Essex sooner than we expected, but it still won’t be available until September, so it’s occurred to me that we have another carrier at hand that can serve us equally well in this fight—The USS Suva. Nimitz suggested it, and the more I think it over, the more I tend to agree. So I’m going to transfer in fighters and strike aircraft from the carriers to that base. I’ll want one strike squadron from each of the fleet carriers—your choice when the hat gets passed to the Hornet. Then we’re going to sit up here on the other side of Vanua Levu, so we can have men down there reporting anything they see coming our way. Our mission is to preserve and defend that airfield at Suva, feed in planes, and hammer their own field at Nandi, and any troop or supply convoys they try to bring in.”
“What if the Japs swing around the main islands looking for a fight?”
“Then we swing too, but in the other direction. Now you know me, Pete. You’re a fighting fool just like I am, and you know I wouldn’t run from the devil himself. But the idea here is that we keep the island between us and them, which means they have to overfly anything we have at Suva to get at our carriers. They’ve got an Army Pursuit squadron there with Air Cobras. If we can put enough Wildcats in to back them up, those fighters could break up Jap strike formations aimed at us—but the inverse won’t be true when we go after them with our strike planes.”
Mitscher nodded. “Sounds damn interesting. I like it. In fact, what we need now are a couple good battalions of Seabees and more airfields all over this island group.”
“Damn right, and the planes and pilots to put those airfields to good use. Nimitz says he’s looking to scrape up anyone he can find with experience. Some of the flyers are mustering out of China, and he’s asked for them.”
“The Flying Tigers?”
“The very same—only this time they won’t have to paint those big white teeth on an Army P-40. The Navy is getting a new fighter, the F4U Corsair.”
“I’ve heard they wouldn’t be ready for months. Hell, I’ve been asking for them since Pearl.”
“Sorry Pete, you got passed over. We all did. They only had one squadron available, so they sent it out to Pearl last week. We were at sea, so it ended up on the Shiloh—nine planes. More will be coming soon, but the next bunch goes to the Marines.”
“The Marines? What the hell?”
“That’s where these Tiger pilots moved, right into the USMC. So they’ll have a squadron ready with these new fighters inside a week, but it won’t be enough.”
“Well, we can ferry in planes and set up a de-facto task force of unsinkable aircraft carriers out here on these islands. Sure they can hit those airfields, but if we shadow box them like I think you have it figured, then we can hold our own. It’s a hell of a lot easier to bulldoze over runway craters than it is to build one of these aircraft carriers.”
“That’s the way Nimitz put it, and that’s the way we’ll play it.”
“Intel thinks they sortied with some heavy ships again.”
“More than likely,” said Halsey. “But we’ve got that fast battleship squadron down here now, and I’ll damn well put it to good use. This is becoming a bit of a chess game, and that base at Suva is a good solid pawn, right in the middle of the board. We’re the Knights and Bishops, and we protect that pawn, hold the center, and win through in the endgame with those Marines. Patch and Vandegrift have their marching orders. While we play it cagey out here, the Army and Marines won’t be sitting on defense any longer. They’re going to attack.”
Halsey’s first order of business was to get down and hammer the Jap airfield at Nandi. He did exactly what he planned, advancing in two task forces to hover north of Vanua Levu. What he wanted was a real one two punch, with his SBDs going in first to sweep the Japanese controlled fields with a series of good crisp jabs, then the big right hand haymaker, with the Battle Fleet composed of North Carolina, Washington and South Dakota. The Black Shoe Admiral that had seen his carriers shot out from under him in the Coral Sea was back. Fletcher had transferred to the cruiser Portland, and brought that ship back towards Fiji with the Pensacola and Astoria. The five destroyers he had were also in tow.
With most of his experience running surface ships, Fletcher felt he was finally playing in the correct league. He had been shaken by the sudden defeat that killed the Saratoga and Yorktown, but there would be no time to brood over the loss. Halsey gave him the battleship squadron, and ordered him in to get some payback by hitting the Japanese at Nandi.
There were only two squadrons of enemy planes reported there, both flown in from Noumea where they had been transferred off the light carrier Hiyo some months earlier. There were 12 D3A Dive bombers for a small strike element, and 12 more A5M Fighters. When Halsey’s planes hit the new airfield near Tavua in the north, those “Claudes” as the Americans called them all scrambled to defend the main field at Nandi. One of the Vals out on patrol had spotted the approach of Fletcher’s battleships, and radioed back to his squadron mates. They got into the air and on their way just ten minutes before the SBDs off the Halsey Group came thundering in to start their attack.