Blazing Star, Setting Sun by Jeffrey R. Cox

Author:Jeffrey R. Cox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Admiral Wright had suffered a humiliating defeat, his career effectively over, but he might have drawn some comfort in that his lone victory out of Tassafaronga – keeping the Japanese from delivering their supplies – had a far, far greater effect than he or anyone could have anticipated.

Those Japanese troops on Guadalcanal still needed to be fed. Admiral Tanaka took his failure to deliver the supplies hard and began preparing for another run as soon as he returned to the Shortlands. He gained reinforcements in the form of the destroyers Arashi, Nowaki, and Yugure, which more than made up for the loss of the Takanami and brought his force up to ten destroyers.187

Admiral Tanaka’s upgraded Tokyo Express left the Shortlands at 1:00 pm on December 3 for Drum Run 2.0. It featured seven transport destroyers covered by three designated escorts – flagship Naganami, Makinami, and Yugure.188 Coastwatchers reported the force’s passing, and an Allied scout plane kept it under surveillance. The Americans prepared a warm welcome – eight Dauntlesses and seven Avengers caught the ten destroyers around dusk some 160 miles from Kamimbo. Their attack was complicated by the decreasing light and by the Japanese air cover. But that air cover consisted of a dozen Mitsubishi F1M floatplanes – biplanes with float pontoons. They were no match for the Americans’ escorting Wildcats, shooting down one F4F at a cost of five of their own. Yet the attack runs by the Dauntlesses and Avengers at “very close range” were mostly ineffective, with one SBD and one TBF shot down to gain just a near miss that slightly damaged the destroyer Makinami. After the debacle at Tassafaronga, there was almost nothing in the way of surface opposition available, so Admiral Tanaka succeeded in dumping 1,500 drums of supplies. For the Japanese, that was much‑needed good news indeed. The bad news was that only 310 of the drums reached the beleaguered army troops. Aircraft from Henderson Field found the floating drums great for target practice.189

Upon returning to Shortland the next day, a frustrated Admiral Tanaka met with Admiral Mikawa, whose flagship Chokai was in for a visit. Tanaka was blunt, telling his superior that these drum runs were hopeless and recommending the evacuation of Guadalcanal.190

Seeing as how the first two supply runs were less than complete successes, but were still, in the Japanese view, the best option available, the drum runs were further modified. The Tassafaronga action convinced Combined Fleet that more escorts were necessary, so three more destroyers – the Tanikaze, Urakaze, and Teruzuki – were now assigned to the drum runs, although the state‑of‑the‑art Teruzuki, who was becoming a sort of troubleshooter for Combined Fleet, was delayed in arriving when she hit a reef at Truk.191 The technique of dropping the drums off was changed as well, the most notable change being dropping them closer to shore.

So December 7 – the first anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor – saw the third drum run leave the Shortlands with now 11 destroyers, of which three were designated escorts.

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