The ground troops at Cape Torokina could be expected to carry out their missions efficiently only if they were unhampered by Japanese aircraft and warships. Therefore the real battle for the beachhead was fought in the air and on the sea. The primary mission of South Pacific aircraft and warships during the first days of November was protection of the newly won beachhead. In this mission they fought hard and with excellent results.
(This section is based on Craven and Cate, The Pacific: Guadalcanal to Saipan, pp. 257-61, 325-28; Halsey and Bryan, Admiral Halsey's Story, pp. i8o85; Morison, Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, pp. 305-37; Sherman, Combat Command, 201-08; CTF 33 War Diary; Southeast Area Naval Operations, III, Japanese Monogr NO. 50 (OCMH), 14-29; Outline of Southeast Area Naval Air Operations, Pt. IV, Japanese Monogr No. 108 (OCMH), PP. 48-68.)
Air and Surface Action, 1-11 November
When Admiral Omori led his task force out of Rabaul in late afternoon of 1 November, he had orders to escort Imamura's troops and to attack Wilkinson's transports in Empress Augusta Bay. But after joining with the troopcarrying destroyers in Saint George's Channel between New Britain and New Ireland, Omorl was sighted by a US submarine. Further, an unidentified plane dropped a bomb near the light cruiser Sendai. The Japanese, sure that their intentions had been deduced, postponed the troop movement, but Omori was allowed to take his task force of two heavy and two light cruisers and six destroyers to Empress Augusta Bay with the intention of destroying the American transports and cargo ships which he thought would still be there.
Meanwhile, Admiral Merrill's Task Force 19 had sailed to the vicinity of Vella Lavella after the two bombardments on 1 November. Four of his eight destroyers were refueling in the late afternoon of 1 November when General Twining's reconnaissance planes spotted Omori and flashed a warning. Halsey ordered Merrill out to intercept Omori. Receiving continuous, accurate plots of Omori's course and speed, Merrill set his course and speed so that his four light cruisers and eight destroyers would intercept west of Empress Augusta Bay.
At 0229, 2 November, a few miles from Cape Torokina, Task Force 39 made contact with Omori and attacked at once. In this engagement, the Battle of Empress Augusta Bay, Merrill sank one light cruiser and one destroyer; except for the destroyer Foote, which lost her stern to a Japanese torpedo, the American ships received light damage. The flashes from gunfire and explosions were visible to Commodore Reifsnider's four cargo ships, which had put out to sea, and to the marines ashore. The engagement lasted until dawn, when Omori, tacitly acknowledging failure, took his surviving ships back to Rabaul.
Near as he was to Rabaul, Merrill expected to suffer air attack at dawn, and he was not wrong. When a Japanese patrol plane sighted him 18 dive bombers and 8o fighters promptly took off from Rabaul to the attack. Bad weather on the morning Of 2 November had kept most of the Allied fighters on the New Georgia fields, but 8 F6F's, 1 F4U, 3 P-38's, and 4 New Zealand P-40's, vectored by a destroyer still in Empress Augusta Bay, hurled themselves at part of the Japanese formation and shot down several planes.
The remaining enemy planes came upon Task Force 39 shortly before 0800 and promptly attacked. The task force maneuvered rapidly, sailing clockwise in a great circle and shooting 5-inch, 40mm., 20-mm., and even 6-inch guns at the diving Japanese with considerable success. The light cruiser Montpelier suffered two bomb hits which wounded several men, but the other ships went unscathed. The Japanese broke off the action, but on the way home lost more planes to Allied fighters. More planes from Rabaul would doubtless have come out after Merrill that day but for the Fifth Air Force's raid on the airfields, which the Japanese carrier pilots contested so hotly.
Merrill's ships, after two busy days that included two shore bombardments, the night action of Empress Augusta Bay, and the morning air attack, now escorted Relfsnider's retiring cargo ships as far as Rendova, then steamed for Florida and concluded their eventful, successful cruise. On the other hand, the Japanese had lost two ships and numerous aircraft, and had not inflicted anything like equivalent damage to the Americans. But Admiral Koga had not given up. When he was informed of the landings at Empress Augusta Bay, he ordered Vice Adm. Takeo Kurita to take seven heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, four destroyers, and a fleet train from Truk to Rabaul. Kurita arrived safely on 4 November, although later ships were hit by Twining's B-24's.
This force of heavy cruisers at Rabaul posed a serious threat to the new beachhead at Empress Augusta Bay, and created, wrote Admiral Halsey, "the most desperate emergency that confronted me in my entire term as COMSOPAC. (Halsey and Bryan, Admiral Halsey's Story, pp. 180-81.)
He knew that he had to stop them, but he had only two naval task forcesMerrill's, which was exhausted after its performance of 1-2 November, and Sherman's carriers. Up to now carriers had been employed against land bases only in the most gingerly fashion. The South Pacific staff calculated that Sherman, from his refueling position near Rennell, could strike Kurita before Kurita would strike Empress Augusta Bay.
So Halsey ordered Sherman to hit Rabaul. When he gave these orders the South Pacific commander expected the carrier air groups to be "cut to pieces" and the carriers "stricken." (Ibid., p. 181.)
"I fully expected that they [Sherman's carriers] would be lost." (Halsey's preface to Sherman's Combat Command, p. 8.) " . . but we could not let the men at Torokina be wiped out while we stood by and wrung our hands." (Halsey and Bryan, Admiral Halsey's Story, p. 121)
Halsey was never a man to stand idly by and wring his hands, or to allow anyone else that emotional luxury.
Halsey directed South Pacific landbased air (Task Force 33) to provide cover for Sherman during his daylight approach and retirement. This job was done by Navy fighters from New Georgia, which of course were capable of landing on carrier decks. Thus Sherman was able to send all his aircraft against Rabaul instead of keeping some of them overhead for protection.
Task Force 38 reached its launching point in the Solomon Sea 57 miles southwest of Torokina and 230 miles southeast of Rabaul at 0900, 5 November. The weather was fine for carrier operations; a steady breeze was blowing, and there were frequent rain squalls where the ships could hide in case of air attack. The two carriers sent out 97 planes: 23 torpedo bombers, 22 dive bombers, and 52 fighters. They arrived over Rabaul and dived through a hole in the clouds to take the Japanese by surprise.
AIRCREWMAN WOUNDED IN STRIKE ON RABAUL is helped out of his plane on
flight deck of aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, 5 November 1943.
Though faced by intense antiaircraft fire they bored in with resounding success. They did not sink any ships, but damaged three heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and two destroyers so severely that months passed before any of them were fit to fight again. This was done at a cost of fifteen men killed or missing, ten planes lost. Halsey's gloomy expectations were not fulfilled.
Twenty-seven B-24's and fifty-eight P-8's from the Fifth Air Force reached Rabaul in the afternoon. As practically all the Japanese planes were out after Task Force 38, Kenney's men bombed the wharves. The Japanese failed to find Sherman, but they attacked an LCI, an LCT, and a PT boat near the southern arm of Empress Augusta Bay, and claimed a tremendous but nonexistent victory. (For details see Morison, Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, p. 329.)
Sherman's victory, on the other hand, was real. Next day Koga decided to pull his heavy cruisers back to Truk, and the threat to Cape Torokina was ended. Thereafter no more heavy Japanese ships went to Rabaul.
Meanwhile Kusaka's 11th Air Fleet and the carrier planes, besides attacking Merrill and Sherman, had been striking day and night against Cape Torokina, hammering at reinforcement convoys, and fighting almost constantly with Allied fighter planes. They damaged three ships and sank one, but kept losing planes to ship- and shore-based antiaircraft guns and to Twining's fighters.
Air Command, Solomons, made a maximum effort to keep the enemy's Bougainville bases out of action and to keep the Rabaul-based planes away from Cape Torokina and the reinforcement convoys. For example, on 10 November there were 712 take-offs and landings at Munda airfield alone.
Rabaul was still a primary target for General Kenney. The weather prevented an attack on 6 November, but 10 November saw a heavy attack, and next day RAAF Beauforts and Fifth Air Force planes struck in the morning before heavy clouds piled up over Rabaul.
The additional carrier task group of the Fifth Fleet that Admiral Nimitz had promised to Halsey reached the South Pacific on 7 November. Commanded by Rear Adm. Alfred L. Montgomery, it consisted of the carriers Essex, Bunker Hill, and Independence. Halsey planned to use Montgomery's ships as well as Task Force 38 in a double carrier strike against Rabaul on 11 November.
Sherman sailed to a point in the Pacific Ocean near Green Island, northnorthwest of Bougainville, and launched planes. They reached Rabaul in bad weather about 0830, struck at ships, and returned to the carriers, which retired southward without being detected.
Montgomery launched his strike from a point in the Solomon Sea about 16o miles southeast of Rabaul. His planes hit at ships too, then returned to their mother carriers. The Japanese found Montgomery and delivered a series of furious though unsuccessful air attacks which inflicted only slight damage. They lost thirty-five planes to ships' antiaircraft guns and to Allied fighters from New Georgia.
In eleven days of the RO operations against the Allied lines of communication and the Torokina beachhead, the Japanese pilots had reported enormous damage to Allied ships and planes, whereas in reality they had accomplished very little and had suffered the real damage themselves. (The Japanese reported sinking 5 battleships, 10 aircraft carriers, 19 cruisers, 7 destroyers, and 9 transports between 27 October and 10 December.)
Koga had sent 173 planes and 192 men down from Truk, and by the end of 11 November 121 planes had been destroyed and 86 of the men were dead. The 11th Air Fleet had lost about 70 planes. These losses "...had put the carrier air force in a position where further combat would rob it of even a skeleton force around which to rebuild ..." (Southeast Area Naval Operations, III, Japanese Monogr No. 50 (OCMH), 25- 26.)
Koga may have believed his pilots' claims, but he also recognized the significance of his own losses. On 12 November he withdrew the carrier planes to Truk. The withdrawal, first of the cruisers and then of the planes, ended Rabaul's offensive threat. Thereafter it was a formidable defense position only, and after Armistice Day Southwest Pacific planes were able to cease their attacks against it and concentrate against enemy bases to the west.
The damage that Sherman's pilots inflicted on the heavy cruisers and Koga's losses in carrier planes had repercussions that were felt far beyond Empress Augusta Bay. Koga had planned to use the Combined Fleet to seek out and destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet if the Americans invaded the Gilberts or Marshalls, but when Admiral Nmutz' forces moved into the Gilberts on 21 November 1943, Koga did not stir out of Truk; the cruiser damage and aircraft losses had completely immobilized the Combined Fleet. (See Wilds, "The Admiral Who Lost His Fleet," United States Naval Institute Proceedings, Vol. 77, No. 11 (November 1951); Crowl and Love, The Seizure of the Gilberts and Marshalls, Ch. IV.)
This series of events, wherein the Japanese shifted forces back and forth to meet Allied threats from different parts of the Pacific, and lost as a result, was an advantage the joint Chiefs of Staff had in mind when they ordered two advances rather than one. The series illustrates also the strategic importance of Rabaul, and the advantages that their interior lines gave to the Japanese.
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