South Pacific:
Savo Island, Part One
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
March 2025

Having undertaken a rather shaky rehearsal at Koro Island in the Fiji group, dubbed Operation Dovetail, the Guadalcanal invasion fleet set out for the lower Solomons on 1 August 1942. Frank Jack Fletcher, a cruiser admiral who had led the Americans to victory in the carrier battles at Coral Sea and Midway, had command of the overall operation, both the carrier force (Task Force 61) and the transports with their escorts and fire support (Task Force 62).

Operation Watchtower called for the Americans to take the small island of Tulagi and its seaplane base from the Japanese, and to secure the partially-completed airfield at Lunga Point on Guadalcanal, across Savo Sound from Tulagi. They would also land Marines on the small island of Ndeni just to the east of Guadalcanal, to establish a seaplane base of their own.

The invasion began before dawn on 7 August, as three American carriers (Enterprise, Saratoga, and Wasp) approached the southern shore of Guadalcanal and launched airstrikes against Japanese positions on Guadalcanal and on Tulagi. The invasion convoy steamed around the western end of Guadalcanal to enter the waters that would become known as Ironbottom Sound.

Transport President Jackson (foreground) and heavy cruiser HMAS Australia (background) during the air attacks of 8 August 1942.

Five battalions of Marines came ashore on the morning of 7 August 1942, advancing only about a mile inland despite the complete lack of opposition. Poorly planned and badly organized, the landing stumbled and only even greater Japanese incompetence prevented a disaster: even a small, well-prepared Japanese ground force could have thrown the Marines into the sea. Even with most of the Japanese construction troops (many of them conscripted Korean laborers) running wildly into the jungle, it took the Marines until the following evening to secure the incomplete landing strip at Lunga Point.

Much heavier fighting awaited the Marines landing on the opposite side of the sound. The Japanese Special Naval Landing Force (SNLF) troops held out on Tulagi until 8 August, and on nearby Gavutu-Tanambogo until the 9th. In addition to the Japanese seaplane base, the islands offered a potentially useful deep-water harbor that the Americans would later use for temporary repair work to damaged warships though it never became a major forward base.

Japanese air forces reacted immediately, though not particularly effectively. A force of 27 G3M bombers and 18 A6M fighters, intended to bomb targets on New Guinea, headed south-east instead to attack the American beachhead. Carrier fighters intercepted them, but the Japanese escort fought their way past. But armed with high-explosive bombs, the Japanese could do little damage to the assembled transports.

A second wave of nine D3A “Val” dive bombers, by contrast, was devasted by American fighters and anti-aircraft fire, scoring one hit on an American destroyer which did only slight damage - Japanese land-based dive bombers were armed with lightweight 120-pound bombs intended for attacking enemy ground troops. Six of the nine were destroyed; the other three made for the seaplane base at the southern end of Bougainville Island, where they attempted to ditch near the seaplane tender Akitsushima. They had been sent to Guadalcanal in the full knowledge that they lacked the range to return to Rabaul. One crew drowned before they could be rescued.

Japanese G3M torpedo bombers make their attack run. 8 August 1942.

A third Japanese attack wave followed on the following morning, with 26 G3M bombers and 15 escorting fighters, the bombers now properly armed with torpedoes. The Japanese hoped to attack the American carriers; a scout plane passed close enough to be spotted by the Americans, but did not sight the carriers. Instead, the bombers went for the transports. They pressed their attacks with suicidal courage, but only managed to sink one transport and damage the destroyer Jarvis.

South of Guadalcanal, the appearance of those Val dive bombers spooked Fletcher. While these planes operated from land bases (as was the case for the nine planes that attacked American ships off Guadalcanal), they also served aboard Japanese carriers as one of their primary strike aircraft. Their presence over Ironbottom Sound could well indicate the presence of one or more Japanese carriers within range of Guadalcanal.

Rather than respond to the reports of Japanese surface ships by moving closer or staying put, Fletcher chose to withdraw all three of his carrier task forces from the Guadalcanal area. Fletcher turned southeast at 1600 on 8 August, and only at 2000, when his ships were about to leave their maneuver area, did he ask his boss, theater commander Robert Ghormley, for permission to withdraw. Fletcher cited low fuel and the loss of fighters (15 out of the 99 F4F Wildcats his three carriers put into the air). While Ghormley did eventually agree, the American carriers steamed on without waiting to hear from him.

While the Japanese pilots attacked with a fury that astonished the Americans, Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa gathered his surface forces for a night attack on the American invasion convoy. The Japanese set out on the afternoon of 7 August, timing their approach for an attack on the night of 8-9 August. Mikawa had his flagship, the heavy cruiser Chokai, the four undersized and elderly heavy cruisers of the Sixth Cruiser Division, two elderly light cruisers and one elderly destroyer. This was not the katana’s edge of Japanese naval power.

Mikawa knew that he would be outnumbered, though not the exact composition of the Allied forces awaiting him. British Rear Admiral Victory Crutchley (seconded to the Royal Australian Navy) had six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and eight destroyers, all of them more modern and carrying considerably more firepower than their Japanese counterparts (except for the powerful Chokai).

The lucky Chokai. Seen at Truk Lagoon, 20 November 1942.

The American submarine S38 spotted the approaching Japanese at 2000 hours on 7 August. Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, commanding the invasion force, did not alert his surface escort, assuming that if the Japanese continued toward Guadalcanal, that air searches would locate them. Two Australian search planes made separate contacts, but those reports only arrived late on 8 August, thanks to lax communications. American naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison would write that the Australian air crew relaxed and had tea before reporting. This is a lie, repeated since by many writers. The pilot of the first plane, Sgt. Bill Stutt, immediately broadcast a contact report, and re-iterated the report as soon as his plane landed. Stutt didn’t even like tea.

Stutt did make an error in his report: at the time he spotted the Japanese, two of the cruisers were engaged in recovering their floatplanes. And so, he reported the possibility of two seaplane tenders as part of the Japanese force. Taking this to mean that this was not an enemy surface action group bent on attacking his beachhead, Turner again did nothing to prepare his escort, but did summon Crutchley to a conference aboard his flagship.

The Allied surface forces had been split to cover the eastern and western entry points to Ironbottom Sound. The Japanese seemed much less likely to enter from the east, as shoals split the entryway into narrow channels and to approach form this direction would mean steaming all the way around either Guadalcanal to the south or Florida Island to the north. The two light cruisers (the American San Juan and Australian Hobart) and two destroyers (the American Monssen and Buchanan) covered this area, just in case.

The Japanese approach route.

Savo Island splits the western approach into two channels. The Northern Group covered the waters between Savo and Florida Island, with the heavy cruisers Astoria, Quincy, and Vincennes and two destroyers, Helm and Wilson, all of them American ships. The Southern Group had the American heavy cruiser Chicago, the Australian heavy cruisers Australia and Canberra, and the American destroyers Bagley and Patterson. Two American radar-equipped destroyers, Blue and Ralph Talbot, patrolled to the west of Savo Island to provide early warning of an enemy approach.

Crutchley used his own flagship, Australia, to convey him to the conference with Turner. He would later claim to have transferred command to the senior captains of the Northern and Southern Groups by blinker signal, which left no record. Afterward, both captains, Frederick Riefkold of Vincennes, and Howard Bode of Chicago, would tell a Court of Inquiry that they had never received such instructions. Their behavior during the battle supports their claim; neither made any attempt to assert control over the other ships in their respective groups.

Mikawa steadily approached from the north-west. Fleet operations officer Capt. Toshikazu Ohmae composed a message for Mikawa, evoking both the Japanese concept of ganbaru - doing one’s very best - and Admiral Heihachiro’s signal before the 1905 Battle of Tsushima.

“In the finest tradition of the Imperial Navy,” Chokai flashed to the rest of the task force at 1840, after the sun had set, “we shall engage the enemy in night battle. Every man is expected to do his best.”

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children, and new puppy. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

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