Ironbottom Sound:
Battle of Tassafaronga, Part One
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
February 2025

The fierce nighttime battles in Ironbottom Sound between 12 and 15 November inflicted devastating losses on the Japanese. They had lost two battleships, and ten of eleven fast transports of a re-supply convoy meant for Guadalcanal had been destroyed (the last transport was heavily damaged).

But while the Navy had suffered defeat, the Army’s forces remained on the island and they still needed food, ammunition, and medical supplies. Up to 30,000 soldiers desperately awaited succor, with all but 8,000 of them too debilitated by disease and starvation to fight. The Navy could not abandon them.

The convoy’s destruction left the Japanese fleet command without the ships to mount a repeat operation; Prime Minister Hideki Tojo had balked at the Army’s demand on 22 October to requisition more civilian shipping for the war effort (this would become a formal refusal in December). Already the Japanese economy suffered from the shortage of merchant ships, and food shortages loomed in the Home Islands. The Navy would have to come up with its own means of feeding the troops on Guadalcanal.

The first effort would be made by submarines; Combined Fleet headquarters issued orders on 16 November, as soon as the extent of the disaster in Ironbottom Sound became clear. Senior staffers of the Sixth Fleet, commanding the Japanese submarine force, strenuously objected to risking their vulnerable submarines in the shallow waters off Guadalcanal, where they would have to surface and remain there while their cargoes were unloaded. Re-orienting the submarines to supply runs meant loosening their grip on “Torpedo Junction” south of Guadalcanal, where they had already sunk and aircraft carrier and two cruisers, and damaged a battleship and another aircraft carrier. That was more than the naval aviators had managed, and now the Combined Fleet directive would take away what had been a very effective weapon.

Vice Admiral Marquis Teruhisa Komatsu, the Sixth Fleet commander, shut down all opposition to the scheme. “Our Army troops are starving on Guadalcanal. They used the last of their rations several days ago. More than a hundred men are dying from hunger daily. Many of the rest are eating grass. Very few men are fit for fighting. What are we to do? Let our countrymen starve to death in the jungle? We must help them no matter what sacrifices must be made in doing so!”

Submarine I-17 bombards Ellwood, California. 19 February 1942. This deck gun would be replaced by a Daihatsu landing craft for the Guadalcanal supply operation.

To speed unloading, increase cargo capacity, and vastly shorten the time a submarine had to spend on the surface, the Combined Fleet’s staff developed an idea to use empty fuel drums, properly cleaned to prevent contamination. They would be loaded halfway, mostly with rice and flour but also other supplied, then sealed shut so they would float. Sailors aboard the fleet flagship Yamato found that the drums indeed floated, but tended to drift in all directions. They would therefore be roped together in a string of 50 drums; a submarine would have one such string lashed to its deck. It would surface off Guadalcanal, where the crew would detach it from the deck and kick the drums over the side. The troops on Guadalcanal would use motorboats to tow the string to the beach, where teams of 200 men each would stand ready to pull them ashore. Four large, aged cruiser submarines had one of their deck guns removed and a Daihatsu landing craft fitted in its place, sparing the garrison the need to recover the drifting supply drums.

The first submarine, I-17, attempted to drop off her string of drums on the night of 24 November; driven off by American PT boats and aircraft, she tried again the next night and managed to land 11 tons of supplies. One submarine then made the run every night, but this flow was far too small to maintain the starving men on Guadalcanal.

Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa of Eighth Fleet ordered Rear Admiral Raizo Tanaka of the 2nd Torpedo Squadron to make a supply run as soon as possible. Tanaka had clashed with Mikawa repeatedly; the U.S. Navy’s official historian Samuel Eliot Morison would claim that he carried the nickname “Tenacious Tanaka,” but that appears to be a figment of Morison’s imagination. Within the Japanese naval officer corps, Tanaka carried a reputation for timidity earned at the Battle of the Java Sea the previous February. His superiors disliked his tendency to demand additional support (usually more aircraft) that he knew they could not provide, while his subordinates disdained a perceived lack of courage.

The Timid Tanaka.

“No one who was his subordinate thought he was a great commander,” recalled Capt. Haruo Mayuzumi of the heavy cruiser Tone. “He had to be a commander who was considered brave by his subordinates (in order to gain their respect).”

Tanaka had eight destroyers, with just under 1,100 supply drums ready to be tossed into the waters that his sailors called Shi no Umi, the Sea of Death. He had six of his destroyer captains disembark their torpedo reloads at Rabaul, and replace them with between 200 and 240 supply drums, knotted into strings of five to ten. The smaller strings would allow the Daihatsu landing barges operating around Guadalcanal to scoop them up with their bow ramps or bring the rope end to shore where waiting teams would tug the drums onto the beach.

The other two destroyers, Tanaka’s flagship Naganami and her sister Takanami, would serve as escorts for the six boats conducting transport missions. These two boats, the newest in his squadron, had all of their torpedoes. The destroyer missions, called “rat transport” by the Army’s soldiers (because they scurried about at night, and hid during the day) would take place every three nights.

After loading at Rabaul, Tanaka moved his squadron to the Buin anchorage at the southern end of Bougainville Island, for the dash to Guadalcanal. On the night of 29 November, they headed out of the anchorage to the east, to confuse any American observation planes, before doubling back toward their objective. They entered “The Slot,” the New Georgia Channel between the two rows of islands that made up the Solomons, in the afternoon and went to 30 knots. Low-lying rainclouds covered their approach, but they were already expected.

Recon aircraft had indeed spotted the squadron. The Americans apparently intercepted Japanese radio traffic regarding the mission as well, though the analysts scrambled things somewhat and reported that the Japanese would send a convoy of eight destroyers and six transports. This was not completely wrong, but six of the destroyers would also be acting as transports. A correction would be sent later clarifying that there were no transports, only destroyers acting in that role, but this may not have been received or understood, as the Americans looked for the transports during the battle.

Following their own massive losses of the mid-November night battles, with eighteen American ships sunk or too badly damaged to return to action without extensive repairs, theater commander William F. Halsey had thrown together a new surface action group, Task Force 67. It would have four heavy cruisers, one large light cruiser, and four destroyers. They had come from scattered assignments: the heavy cruisers Northampton, Minneapolis and Pensacola had been part of aircraft carrier screens, and New Orleans had just returned from Pearl Harbor after escorting the damaged Saratoga there. Light cruiser Honolulu had just brought a convoy from the West Coast to Espiritu Santo.

Flagship Minneapolis, on the morning after the battle.

The ships and staff had not worked together as a unit, and Pacific commander-in-chief Chester Nimitz threw another wrench into the works, recalling task force commander Thomas Kincaid. Kincaid had commanded carrier task forces over the previous months, and now would oversee the Aleutians campaign. In his place, Nimitz tapped Carleton Wright, an ordnance specialist by trade who had led the cruiser screen protecting the carrier Saratoga. But he had not, as yet, seen combat in Ironbottom Sound.

Wright had no time to work with his ships, or do little more than introduce himself to all of his captains (Minneapolis had been his flagship when he commanded Saratoga’s cruiser escorts, one of which had been New Orleans, so not everyone was a stranger). Kincaid had prepared a tactical plan to intercept Japanese transport missions, and Wright introduced some modifications of his own. He hoped to use his superior radar to advantage, and so came up with a plan to have his destroyers first launch a torpedo attack at very long range (12,000 yards), and then peel away to allow the cruisers to open fire. No searchlights would be used; men would be stationed on the searchlight platforms with the specific task of preventing them from illuminating by accident.

Tanaka had issued a tactical plan of his own. The Japanese commander knew that his approach had been spotted, and fully expected to engage the Americans. Of the six transport destroyers, three would drop their drums off Tassafaronga Point and the other three off the Segilau River. Each group would have one escort.

“There is great possibility of an encounter with the enemy tonight,” Tanaka told his captains. “In such an event, utmost efforts will be made to destroy the enemy without regard for the unloading of supplies.”

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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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