The Battle of Savo Island, also known as the First Battle of Savo Island and in Japanese sources as the , and colloquially among Allied Guadalcanal veterans as the Battle of the Five Sitting Ducks,Leckie, Strong Men Armed, p. 35.Johnson, The Pacific Campaign in World War II, p. 188. was a naval battle during the Solomon Islands campaign of the Pacific War of World War II between the Imperial Japanese Navy and Allied naval forces. The battle took place on 8–9 August 1942 and was the first major naval engagement of the Guadalcanal campaign, the first of several naval battles in the straits later named Ironbottom Sound, near the island of Guadalcanal.
The Imperial Japanese Navy, in response to Allied amphibious landings in the eastern Solomon Islands, mobilized a task force of seven cruisers and one destroyer under the command of Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa. This task force sailed from Japanese bases in New Britain and New Ireland down New Georgia Sound (also known as "The Slot") with the intention of interrupting the Allied landings by attacking the supporting amphibious fleet and its screening force. The Allied screen consisted of eight cruisers and fifteen destroyers under Rear Admiral Victor Crutchley, but only five cruisers and seven destroyers were involved in the battle. In a night action, Mikawa thoroughly surprised and routed the Allied force, sinking one Australian and three American cruisers, while suffering minimal damage in return. Rear Admiral Samuel J. Cox, director of the Naval History and Heritage Command, considers this battle and the Battle of Tassafaronga to be two of the worst defeats in U.S. naval history, surpassed only by the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
After the initial engagement, Mikawa, fearing Allied carrier strikes against his fleet in daylight, decided to withdraw under cover of night rather than attempt to locate and destroy the Allied invasion transports. The Japanese attack prompted the remaining Allied warships and the amphibious force to withdraw earlier than planned (before unloading all their supplies), temporarily ceding control of the seas around Guadalcanal to the Japanese. This early withdrawal of the fleet left the Allied ground forces (primarily United States Marines), which had landed on Guadalcanal and nearby islands only two days before, in a precarious situation with limited supplies, equipment, and food to hold their beachhead.
Mikawa's decision to withdraw under cover of night rather than attempt to destroy the Allied invasion transports was based primarily on concerns over possible Allied carrier strikes against his fleet in daylight. In reality, the Allied carrier fleet, similarly fearing Japanese attack, had already withdrawn beyond operational range. This missed opportunity to cripple (rather than interrupt) the supply of Allied forces on Guadalcanal contributed to Japan's failure to recapture the island. At this critical early stage of the campaign, it allowed the Allied forces to sufficiently entrench and fortify themselves and defend the area around Henderson Field until additional Allied reinforcements arrived later in the year.
The battle was the first of five costly, large-scale sea and air-sea actions fought in conjunction with the ground campaign on Guadalcanal, as the Japanese sought to counter the American offensive in the southern Pacific. These sea battles took place after increasing delays by each side to regroup and refit, until the 30 November 1942 Battle of Tassafaronga—after which the Japanese, due to increasing losses, resorted to resupplying their troops on Guadalcanal by submarine and barges. The final naval battle of the campaign, the Battle of Rennell Island, took place months later on 29–30 January 1943, by which time the Japanese were preparing to evacuate their remaining land forces and withdraw.
Background
Operations at Guadalcanal
On 7 August 1942 Allied forces (primarily U.S. Marines) landed on Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Florida Island in the eastern Solomon Islands. The landings were meant to deny the use of these islands to the Japanese as bases, especially the nearly completed airfield that was being constructed on Guadalcanal. If Japanese air and sea forces were allowed to establish forward operating bases in the eastern Solomons, they would be in a position to threaten the critical supply routes between the U.S. and Australia. The Allies also wanted to use the islands as launching points for a campaign to recapture the Solomons, isolate or capture the major Japanese base at Rabaul, and support the Allied New Guinea campaign, which was then building momentum under General Douglas MacArthur. The landings initiated the six-month-long Guadalcanal campaign.Hogue, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, pp. 235–36.
The overall commander of Allied naval forces in the waters around Guadalcanal and Tulagi was U.S. Vice Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher. He also commanded the carrier task groups providing air cover to Allied forces in the region. U.S. Rear Admiral Richmond K. Turner commanded the amphibious fleet that delivered 16,000 Allied troops to Guadalcanal and Tulagi.Morison, Struggle for Guadalcanal Also under Turner was Rear Admiral Victor Crutchley's screening force of eight cruisers, fifteen destroyers, and five minesweepers. This screening force was tasked with protecting Turner's ships and providing gunfire support for the landings. Crutchley commanded his force of mostly American ships from his flagship, the Australian heavy cruiser .
The Allied landings took the Japanese by surprise. The Allies secured Tulagi, nearby islets Gavutu and Tanambogo, and the airfield under construction on Guadalcanal by nightfall on 8 August. On 7–8 August Japanese aircraft based at Rabaul attacked the Allied amphibious forces several times, setting fire to the U.S. transport ship (which later sank) and heavily damaging the destroyer .Loxton, Shame of Savo In these air attacks, the Japanese lost 36 aircraft, while the U.S. lost 19 aircraft, including 14 carrier-based fighter aircraft.
Concerned over the losses to his carrier aircraft in these initial engagements, anxious about the threat to his carriers from further Japanese air attacks, and worried about his ships' fuel supply, Fletcher announced that he would withdraw his carrier task forces on the evening of 8 August.Hammel, Carrier Clash, p. 99. Some historians contend that Fletcher's fuel situation was not at all critical but that Fletcher used it to justify a premature withdrawal from the combat zone. Fletcher's biographer notes that Fletcher concluded that the landing was a success and that no important targets for close air support were readily at hand. Turner, however, believed that Fletcher understood that he was to provide air cover until all the transports were unloaded on 9 August.Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, pp. 368–85. Even though the unloading was proceeding more slowly than planned, Turner decided that without carrier air cover, he would have to withdraw his ships from Guadalcanal. He planned to unload as much as possible during the night and depart the next day.
Japanese response Unprepared for the Allied operation at Guadalcanal, the initial Japanese response included airstrikes and attempted reinforcement of troops on the island. Mikawa, commander of the newly formed Japanese Eighth Fleet headquartered at Rabaul, loaded 519 naval troops on two transports and sent them towards Guadalcanal on 7 August. When the Japanese learned that Allied forces at Guadalcanal were stronger than originally reported, the transports were recalled.
Mikawa also assembled all the available Japanese warships in the area to attack the Allied forces at Guadalcanal. At Rabaul were the heavy (Mikawa's flagship), the light cruisers and , and the destroyer . En route from Kavieng were four heavy cruisers of Cruiser Division 6 under Rear Admiral Aritomo Goto: the and and the and , totaling 34 8-inch main guns.Dull, Imperial Japanese NavyCoombe, Derailing the Tokyo Express
The Japanese Navy had trained extensively in night-fighting tactics before the war, a fact of which the Allies were unaware. Mikawa hoped to engage the Allied naval forces off Guadalcanal and Tulagi on the night of 8–9 August when he could employ his night-battle expertise while avoiding attacks from Allied aircraft, which could not operate effectively at night. Mikawa's warships rendezvoused at sea near Cape St. George on the evening of 7 August and then headed east-southeast.
Battle Prelude
Mikawa decided to take his fleet north of Buka Island and then down the east coast of Bougainville. The fleet paused east of Kieta for six hours on the morning of 8 August to avoid daytime air attacks during its final approach to Guadalcanal. Mikawa proceeded along the dangerous New Georgia Sound (known as "The Slot"), hoping that no Allied plane would spot his force in the fading daylight. The Japanese fleet was in fact sighted in St. George Channel, where the column almost ran into , lying in ambush. She was too close to fire torpedoes, but her captain, Lieutenant Commander Henry G. Munson alerted the fleet. Once at Bougainville, Mikawa spread his ships out over a wide area to mask the composition of his force and launched four floatplanes from his cruisers to scout for Allied ships in the southern Solomons.
At 10:20 and 11:10, his ships were spotted by two Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Lockheed Hudson reconnaissance aircraft based at Milne Bay in New Guinea. The first Hudson's crew tried to report the sighting to the Allied radio station at Fall River, New Guinea. Receiving no acknowledgment, they returned to Milne Bay at 12:42 to ensure that the report was received as soon as possible. The second Hudson also failed to report its sighting by radio but completed its patrol and landed at Milne Bay at 15:00. For unknown reasons, these reports were not relayed to the Allied fleet off Guadalcanal until 18:45 and 21:30, respectively. U.S. official historian Samuel Morison wrote in his 1949 account that the RAAF Hudson's crew failed to report the sighting until after they had landed and even had tea. This claim made international headlines and was repeated by many subsequent historians. Later research has discredited this version of events, and in 2014, the U.S. Navy's Naval History and Heritage Command acknowledged in a letter to the Hudson's radio operator, who had lobbied for decades to clear his crewmates' name, that Morison's criticisms were "unwarranted.""ABC Television (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) 7:30 Report 27 October 2014"
Mikawa's floatplanes returned around 12:00 and reported two groups of Allied ships, one off Guadalcanal and the other off Tulagi. By 13:00, he reassembled his warships and headed south through Bougainville Strait at . By 13:45, the cruiser force was near Choiseul southeast of Bougainville. At that time, several surviving Japanese aircraft from the noon torpedo raid on Allied ships off the coast of Guadalcanal flew over the cruisers on the way back to Rabaul and gave them waves of encouragement.Lundstrom, 2005, p. 78 Mikawa entered The Slot by 16:00 and began his run towards Guadalcanal. He communicated the following battle plan to his warships: "On the rush-in we will go from S. (south) of Savo Island and torpedo the enemy main force in front of Guadalcanal anchorage; after which we will turn toward the Tulagi forward area to shell and torpedo the enemy. We will then withdraw north of Savo Island."