The Kates were single engine carrier attack planes normally used for torpedo attacks against ships, but today they were carrying bombs for a land target.

This was the same strike that Fletcher’s radar had detected at 1320 heading south.

It had been launched from the carrier Ryujo.

The American fighters tore into the formation with everything they had.

16 Wildcats against six bombers and 15 zeros.

The sky over Guadal Canal erupted with gunfire and traces and aircraft maneuvering violently.

Several Japanese aircraft were shot down before the bombers reached their target, but enough got through.

The Cape pilots held formation and pressed their attack despite taking losses.

At 14:30, bombs fell on Henderson Field.

The Japanese bombarders were accurate.

They left a neat cluster of craters on the runway and in the surrounding area.

Explosions marched across the airfield.

Dirt and debris flew into the air.

Then 90 fighters, separate from the bomber escort, probably a second wave, dove out of the sky and strafed the airfield.

They shot up anything they could see.

Parked aircraft got riddled with bullets.

Buildings took hits.

The runway got peppered with machine gunfire.

Then they turned north and raced for home at full throttle.

The American fighters pursued the retreating Japanese aircraft and inflicted heavy losses.

The sky became a running gunfight.

Wildcats chasing Zeros and Kates.

Zeros trying to protect the bombers.

Aircraft trailing smoke and spinning down toward the ocean.

By the time the air battle was over and the survivors had straggled back to their carriers, the Japanese had lost four Cape bombers and three Zero fighters.

The Americans lost three Wildcats.

And what about Henderson Field? Despite the accurate bombing, the damage was surprisingly light.

Most of the bomb craters were in empty areas between buildings.

A few structures were damaged, but nothing critical.

No aircraft were destroyed on the ground.

The runway had some holes in it, but nothing that couldn’t be filled and graded within a few hours.

Given the losses suffered by the Japanese air group, compared to the minimal damage inflicted, the raid had to be counted as a failure.

The Marine pilots landed back at Henderson Field and celebrated enthusiastically.

First blood.

First major aerial victory for the Cactus Air Force.

But Fletcher, still 200 m to the south aboard Saratoga, didn’t know the details yet.

All he knew was that Henderson had been attacked by carrier aircraft, which meant at least one Japanese carrier was close enough to launch strikes.

Close enough to be a threat.

And he still didn’t know where it was.

Still didn’t know where the other two were.

Still operating blind despite all the search planes he’d sent out.

While the Marines were fighting off the attack on Henderson, Enterprises afternoon search continued reporting contacts.

Most were just amplifying previous reports.

That carrier to the northwest, or at least the area where it had been spotted hours ago, those surface units steaming south.

Nothing new, nothing that changed the tactical picture.

Then at 1525 came a transmission that changed everything.

One of the Enterprise search pilots was on the radio.

His voice was excited, urgent.

The transmission was garbled.

Atmospheric interference turned parts of it into incomprehensible static.

But a few key words came through clearly enough.

The pilot had spotted carriers, multiple carriers.

He’d attempted to attack them, but his bombs had missed, and their decks were full of aircraft.

The radiomen on Saratoga and Enterprise frantically tried to get clarification.

What’s your position? How many carriers? What course are they on? But the transmission was breaking up more static.

fragments of words, then silence.

What they’d heard, what they thought they’d heard was terrifying enough.

Two CVs with decks full.

CV was the Navy designation for aircraft carrier.

Two carriers with aircraft on their flight decks ready to launch.

That was it.

No location, no course, no speed, no bearing, no distance, nothing.

Just that one garbled transmission and then radio silence.

Somewhere in this immense sector, somewhere within a few hundred miles of Task Force 61, two Japanese fleet carriers had been cited.

The real threat, the main force, Shokaku and Zuikaku, most likely the veterans of Pearl Harbor, the carriers that had been hunting for him all day, and they had aircraft on their decks, which probably meant they were preparing to launch, or maybe already launching.

Fletcher had kept a small reserve strike ready on Enterprise in Saratoga for exactly this moment.

A handful of dive bombers and torpedo planes, maybe a dozen aircraft total, armed and fueled and waiting for a target.

Now those two carriers had finally appeared.

The moment he’d been waiting for all day, the opportunity to hit the main Japanese force.

But with no coordinates, he couldn’t launch.

He couldn’t send his aircraft out to search thousands of square miles of ocean, hoping to stumble across the enemy by sheer luck.

They’d run out of fuel and ditch long before finding anything.

The agony of knowing the enemy was there, close enough to strike, close enough to matter, close enough to be the decisive factor in this battle, but not knowing where.

Fletcher considered sending his reserve strike northwest toward the area where that first carrier had been reported.

Maybe the pilot who’d spotted those two carriers was in the same general vicinity.

Maybe the reserve could search that area and get lucky.

But before he could make that decision, word arrived from Commander Felt strike group.

They’d found something after all.

At 15:50, 3:50 in the afternoon, felt dive bombers and torpedo planes appeared over a Japanese carrier, not where the 0935 sighting had been, somewhere else.

They’d kept searching after coming up empty at the initial coordinates, and they’d gotten lucky.

It was Ryujo, the light carrier that had launched the strike against Henderson Field.

She was steaming in a box pattern, waiting to recover her aircraft when the Americans found her.

Ryujo was a small carrier just under 11,000 tons displacement.

built in the early 1930s when Japan was still experimenting with carrier designs.

She’d been at Pearl Harbor, participated in the invasion of the Philippines, supported operations all across the Pacific, and now off Guadal Canal, her luck was about to run out.

70 fighters were flying combat air patrol above the carrier.

standard defensive screen.

But for reasons that would never be fully explained, those fighters didn’t aggressively engage the incoming American attack.

Maybe they were low on fuel.

Maybe they’d been in the air too long and their pilots were exhausted.

Maybe the attack developed too quickly for them to react effectively.

Whatever the reason, the Zeros’s response was ineffective.

felt split his formation.

The larger group, most of the dive bombers, would attack Ryujo herself.

The smaller group would go after a cruiser steaming nearby.

Divide the defenses, maximize the chances of getting hits.

The dive bombers rolled into their attacks first, one after another, screaming down from 12,000 ft at near vertical angles.

Ryujo’s captain saw them coming.

He ordered hard right rudder, turning the carrier in a tight, evasive maneuver.

It worked for the first wave.

Every bomb missed.

Splashes erupted in the water around the carrier, but no hits.

Felt and the remaining dive bombers had been heading for the cruiser, but when they saw the first attack miss, they quickly diverted to the carrier instead.

Better to concentrate the attack on the primary target than split the effort.

This time, the aim was better.

At least 3,000 lb armor-piercing bombs struck Ryujo.

One hit near the island superructure.

Another penetrated the flight deck amid ships.

A third exploded near the stern.

The torpedo planes followed immediately after the dive bombers.

They came in low and fast, skimming just above the wavetops at 150 knots.

Ryujo was already trailing smoke and starting to list from the bomb hits.

The torpedo planes bore in from different angles to overwhelm the defenses.

At least one Mark 13 torpedo struck the carrier’s starboard side below the water line.

Ryujo was finished.

Multiple bomb hits topside and at least one torpedo hit below the water line.

Fires erupted across her flight deck.

Secondary explosions ripped through her hanger as aviation fuel and ordinance cooked off.

Black smoke poured into the sky, visible for miles.

The American aircraft turned and headed south toward Guadal Canal.

Remarkably, not a single plane had been lost in the attack.

The ineffective response from the Japanese Combat Air Patrol had allowed them to press home their attacks without taking casualties.

Ryujo’s air group, the Kates and Zeros that had attacked Henderson Field, returned to find nowhere to land.

Their carrier was burning and clearly doomed.

Every aircraft had to ditch in the ocean.

Most of the air crews were rescued by the escorting destroyers, but all the aircraft were lost.

Destroyers came alongside Rujo to take off survivors.

The crew abandoned ship in good order, but the carrier lingered for hours, burning and listing progressively further to starboard.

Finally, at 2000 hours, 8:00 that evening, she rolled over and slipped beneath the waves.

120 men went down with her.

Back on Saratoga, Fletcher received the news with mixed feelings.

relief that the strike had been successful, satisfaction that at least one enemy carrier had been destroyed, but also frustration that it had been Ryujo, a light carrier, a secondary target at best.

The real prizes, those two fleet carriers that had been spotted with decks full of aircraft were still out there somewhere, still unlocated, still hunting.

And Fletcher had just expended his main striking power on a target that wasn’t the primary threat.

Exactly what he’d been trying to avoid.

Exactly the mistake he’d made at Coral Sea.

hit the secondary target while the main force escaped.

He was still considering what to do with his small reserve strike when the decision was taken completely out of his hands.

Radar lit up, multiple contacts, large formation, 88 m out and closing fast.

Fletcher’s worst fears were about to be realized.

Lieutenant Commander Oscar Pedison stood in the flag plot aboard Saratoga and summarized the situation with brutal honesty.

Pedison was the air operations officer for Task Force 61, the man responsible for coordinating all the carrier aircraft operations.

He’d been watching this disaster develop all afternoon, tracking the contacts, plotting the positions, doing the math in his head, and the math wasn’t good.

To say the least, he would later write, “We were in a bad predicament.

All the attack planes were committed on missions far from the carriers.

Commander Felt strike group was somewhere over Guadal Canal by now, having found and destroyed Ryujo, but too far away to help with what was coming.

The small reserve strike had been launched northwest and was equally unavailable.

That meant the carriers had no offensive capability left, no way to hit back at the Japanese.

All they could do was defend.

Meanwhile, the main enemy force, those two fleet carriers with decks full of aircraft, remained unlocated somewhere north, somewhere close, somewhere within striking range.

And now their planes were inbound.

The best we could do, Pedison concluded, was get ready for an air attack and hope for the best.

Hope wasn’t much of a tactical plan, but at this point it was all they had.

The incoming strike showed on radar as a solid mass of contacts 88 mi to the northwest.

The radar operators counted the returns carefully.

Approximately 30 to 40 aircraft.

Hard to get an exact number.

Radar returns from multiple aircraft flying in close formation tended to merge together on the scope, creating single large blips instead of individual contacts, but definitely a major strike.

Definitely enough to do serious damage if they got through.

The formation was under the command of Lieutenant Commander Mamaru Seki, an experienced carrier pilot, veteran of multiple operations, he led 27 III dive bombers, the aircraft the Americans called VAL after the first two letters of its designation.

Escorted by 10 Mitsubishi Zero fighters, 37 aircraft total.

They’d launched from the carriers Shokaku and Zuiaku about an hour earlier.

The same two fleet carriers that had been spotted with decks full of aircraft.

The same carriers that had been hunting Fletcher all day.

The same carriers that had won the reconnaissance battle by finding the Americans first.

For those following this story, it’s time to lift the fog of war for a moment.

Time to see what Fletcher couldn’t see from his position 200 m to the south.

Those two Japanese fleet carriers, Shukaku and Zuaku, had been just north of Task Force 61 the entire time.

Not 1300 m away like intelligence had estimated.

Not days away from arriving.

right there, close enough to launch strikes, close enough to be a mortal threat, but hidden by weather, by distance, by the sheer vastness of the Pacific Ocean.

They’d found Fletcher before he found them.

They’d launched their strikes before he could strike them.

In carrier warfare, that was everything.

Find first, strike first, win.

Simple as that.

Now their aircraft were inbound and Fletcher was about to face his moment of reckoning.

The first priority was getting fighters airborne.

As many as possible, as fast as possible.

Enterprise and Saratoga both turned into the wind.

The bridge gave the order.

Launch fighters.

On both carriers, the flight decks erupted with controlled chaos.

Plane handlers sprinted to their positions.

Deck crews pulled chocks from wheels and yanked away tie- down chains.

Wildcat fighters, their engines already running, their pilots already strapped in, began taxiing toward the launch positions.

One after another, the fighters roared down the flight decks, engines at full power, propellers clawing at the air.

Each Wildcat accelerated down the deck, reached flying speed, lifted off from the bow, and immediately pulled into a steep climbing turn.

wheels retracting, banking hard to clear the flight deck for the next aircraft, climbing desperately for altitude.

Within minutes, 53 Wildcats were airborne.

Every fighter, both carriers could get into the air.

Pilots from multiple squadrons, different levels of experience, different amounts of fuel and ammunition, but all of them heading toward one objective intercept that incoming strike before it reached the carriers.

53 against 37.

Good odds numerically.

The Americans had more fighters than the Japanese had total aircraft.

If the intercept worked, if the Wildcats could get to the right place at the right time, they could shred that strike before it ever threatened the carriers.

But numbers weren’t everything in air combat.

Position mattered, altitude mattered, coordination mattered, and all of those things were about to go wrong.

The next priority was clearing the flight decks.

Fletcher still had that small reserve strike spotted on both carriers, maybe a dozen dive bombers and torpedo planes total.

They’d been held back in case those other Japanese carriers appeared.

Now they were just dangerous cargo.

Armed aircraft sitting on a flight deck during an attack were a nightmare.

Each plane was essentially a bomb waiting to go off.

Fuel tanks full, ordinance loaded.

One hit anywhere near them and the entire flight deck could turn into an inferno.

That’s what had happened to the Japanese carriers at Midway.

Caught with planes on deck, caught with bombs and torpedoes stacked everywhere.

One American bomb hit and boom.

Carriers exploding like ammunition dumps.

The order went out.

Launch the reserve strike immediately.

Head northwest toward the last known position of those Japanese fleet carriers.

Maybe they’d find something worth hitting.

Maybe they wouldn’t.

Didn’t matter.

What mattered was getting those armed aircraft off the carriers before a Japanese bomb turned them into floating volcanoes.

The reserve strike launched and headed northwest into the empty ocean.

Within 20 minutes, both carrier flight decks were clear.

No aircraft topside except for the combat air patrol.

No ordinance exposed on deck.

No fuel lines running everywhere.

The flight deck crews shut down and drained the fueling systems.

Damage control parties took their positions with hoses and firefighting equipment ready.

Watertight doors were dogged shut throughout both ships.

Both carriers were as ready as they were going to be, buttoned up, prepared for the worst.

Now everything depended on the fighter pilots.

The fighter director officer sat in the combat information center deep inside Enterprise.

Dark room, radar scope glowing green in front of him.

Radio headset connecting him to every fighter in the air.

His job was to control all 53 wildats, vector them toward the incoming strike, get them to the right altitude, position them for the best possible intercept.

On paper, it should have been straightforward.

Radar showed him where the enemy was.

Radar showed him where his own fighters were.

All he had to do was bring the two together at the right point in space.

In reality, it was about to become a disaster.

Radar showed the enemy formation now 44 miles out and closing.

The fighter director made his call.

He ordered 11 Wildcats to vector northwest as the primary intercept group.

16 more would follow in support.

Get out there and hit them as far from the carriers as possible.

Break up the formation.

Shoot down as many as you can.

Don’t let them reach the ships.

But the fighter director had two major problems working against him.

Two variables he couldn’t control.

Two factors that were about to ruin the intercept.

Problem number one, altitude.

Radar in 1942 could tell you where an aircraft was in two dimensions.

It could show you the bearing, north, south, east, west.

It could estimate the distance, how many miles away, but it couldn’t tell you altitude.

It couldn’t tell you if that contact was at 5,000 ft or 15,000 ft.

That third dimension was invisible to radar.

So the fighter director had to guess based on experience, based on knowledge of typical enemy tactics, based on what altitude dive bombers usually operated at.

He estimated the incoming strike at 12,000 ft.

That was a reasonable guess, standard operating altitude for most dive bomber formations.

He vetoed his fighters to intercept at 13,000 ft, slightly above the estimated enemy altitude, so the Wildcats would have the advantage of height.

Diving down into an attack was always better than climbing up into one.

His estimate was wrong.

The Japanese were actually at 16,000 ft, 4,000 ft higher than anticipated.

That 4,000 ft would make all the difference.

Problem number two, radio discipline, or more accurately, the complete lack of it.

All 53 wildats were on the same radio frequency.

One circuit, one channel.

Standard procedure for the time.

easier than trying to coordinate multiple frequencies.

But it created a fundamental problem.

Only one person could talk at a time.

When one pilot keyed his microphone to transmit, everyone else’s radios went silent.

They couldn’t transmit.

They couldn’t hear anything except that one pilot’s voice.

The fighter director’s instructions were blocked.

Other pilots warnings were blocked.

Everything was blocked until that one pilot released his microphone button.

In theory, pilots were trained to keep radio transmissions brief and essential.

Report what you see.

Acknowledge orders.

Give warnings when necessary.

Nothing more.

In practice, in combat, with adrenaline pumping, with enemy aircraft approaching, with young pilots who’d never been in a real fight before, that discipline broke down fast.

Taliho, someone shouted over the radio.

The traditional call meaning I see the enemy.

Where? Another pilot responded immediately, blocking the circuit.

I see them too.

A third pilot called out.

More blocking.

Which ones? Over there.

I got one.

Watch out.

Where’s the formation coming from the north? No.

Northwest.

Zeros.

At 3:00.

The radio circuit dissolved into chaos.

Dozens of pilots all trying to talk at once.

each transmission blocking the next.

Information overload, confusion, multiplying confusion.

And through all of this, the fighter director couldn’t get a word in.

He tried to transmit course corrections.

Blocked.

He tried to update the enemy position.

Blocked.

He tried to coordinate the different fighter groups.

blocked again.

All he could do was sit there in the combat information center, watching his carefully planned intercept fall apart, listening to his pilots talking over each other, unable to do anything about it.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Commander Seki was executing his own plan.

He’d spotted Task Force 61 earlier at 1620.

Two American carriers steaming in formation with their escorts.

Beautiful targets.

Exactly what he’d been sent to find.

But Seeki didn’t attack immediately from his current position to the northwest.

That would be predictable.

That’s where the Americans would expect the attack to come from.

Instead, he turned his formation east, away from the carriers, circling around to attack from a different angle.

He wanted to come at them from the north, hit them from their blind side, confuse the defensive response, make it harder for American fighters to intercept because they’d be looking in the wrong direction.

It was smart tactics, professional flying, exactly the kind of careful planning that separated experienced carrier pilots from beginners.

And it worked perfectly.

The American fighters were positioned to intercept a strike coming from the northwest at 12,000 ft.

Instead, Seki’s formation came from due north at 16,000 ft.

Wrong bearing, wrong altitude, wrong everything.

The Japanese formation flew right over the American fighters 4,000 ft above them.

The Wildcat pilots looked up and saw enemy aircraft passing overhead.

Too high, too far, already past them.

The pilots tried to climb and intercept.

Throttles pushed to the firewall, noses pitched up.

But the Wildcat wasn’t a particularly good climbing aircraft.

It was tough.

It could take damage, but it wasn’t fast, and it wasn’t a good climber.

By the time the fighters gained enough altitude to matter, Seki’s bombers were already through the outer defensive screen and heading for the carriers.

A few wild cats managed to engage the zero escorts.

Brief dog fights at the edge of the formation.

Guns firing.

Aircraft maneuvering.

One zero was shot down.

But the bombers, the real threat, the aircraft carrying the,000lb bombs that could sink a carrier, got through completely untouched.

Not a single American fighter managed to shoot down a single Japanese dive bomber before they reached their attack positions.

The defensive intercept had failed completely.

At 1638, Lieutenant Commander Seki reached his dive point.

Ahead of him, clearly visible in the late afternoon sun, two American carriers steamed in formation, maybe 5 miles away now, close enough to see details, close enough to pick targets.

Both carriers were turning hard, trying to throw off the aim of the dive bombers.

Saratoga turning one direction, Enterprise turning the other, both picking up speed, both trying to be as difficult a target as possible.

Si made his decision.

He split his formation.

18 dive bombers would attack Enterprise.

Nine would attack Saratoga, divide the attack, overwhelm both targets.

better chance of getting hits.

The anti-aircraft fire started immediately.

Every 5-in gun in the task force opened up at maximum rate.

The big guns fired shells with time delay fuses that exploded at preset altitudes.

Black puffs of flack began appearing in the sky around the Japanese aircraft.

curtains of shrapnel, walls of steel fragments.

Then the 40 mm guns joined in.

Shorter range but faster firing streams of traces arcing up toward the bombers.

And finally, the 20 mm cannons, close-range weapons that filled the air around the ships with a curtain of lead.

The noise was incredible, deafening.

Gun crews on both carriers were firing as fast as they could load.

Spent shell casings piled up on deck.

The smell of cordite hung thick in the air.

Officers shouted fire control orders that could barely be heard over the thunder of the guns.

The Japanese pilots ignored it all.

They’d trained for this.

They knew what to expect.

One after another, the dive bombers nosed over into their attacks.

A dive bomber attack was a precise and terrifying thing.

The aircraft rolled inverted, then pulled through into a nearvertical dive.

70° dive angle, sometimes steeper, accelerating rapidly as gravity added to engine power.

250 knots, 260, 270.

Screaming down through the anti-aircraft fire with a,000 lb bomb slung beneath the fuselage.

The pilot couldn’t maneuver much during the dive.

minor corrections only.

He had to hold the aircraft steady to keep his aim.

Point the nose at the target and trust his dive brakes to keep the speed manageable.

Watch the carrier growing larger in his bomb site.

Wait for the right moment.

Then release the bomb and pull out hard, six or seven G’s, pressing him down into his seat as the aircraft arked back toward level flight.

Pull out too early and the bomb misses.

Pull out too late and you fly into the ocean or crash into your own target.

It required skill and nerves and a willingness to fly into a storm of anti-aircraft fire without flinching.

At 1641, Enterprises ordeal began.

The first bombs missed.

Close.

Close enough that the explosions sent up geysers of water that drenched the flight deck, but misses.

Enterprises captain was throwing the ship through violent turns.

hard to starboard, hard to port, changing course every few seconds, making it nearly impossible for the Japanese pilots to predict where the carrier would be when their bombs arrived.

Then one hit.

The bomb struck near the number three elevator toward the stern of the ship.

It punched through the flight deck.

3 in of armored steel that might as well have been paper.

Kept going through the gallery deck below.

Punched through a third deck.

Finally exploded deep in the ship’s interior three decks down from where it had entered.

The explosion was devastating.

It ripped through crew birthing areas where sailors were at their battle stations.

Shrapnel tore through bulkheads.

The blast wave killed men instantly.

Others were wounded, burned, cut by flying metal, knocked unconscious.

Fires erupted immediately in multiple compartments.

Electrical systems shortcircuited.

Ventilation ducts became channels for smoke to spread throughout that section of the ship.

Seconds later, another hit.

This one also near the aft elevator area.

Another explosion deep inside the ship.

More fires, more casualties.

The entire stern section of Enterprise was now a chaos of flame, smoke, and destruction.

Then a third bomb struck.

This one hit the flight deck almost dead center closer to a midship.

It exploded on impact, blowing a 10-ft crater in the armored flight deck.

Steel plating peeled back like aluminum foil.

The flight deck, the single most important feature of any aircraft carrier, the surface that planes had to land on and take off from, now had a hole big enough to drop a small car through.

The last three Japanese dive bombers in that formation saw Enterprise burning and decided to look for easier targets.

They pulled out of their dives and headed for the battleship North Carolina steaming nearby.

But the battleship’s anti-aircraft batteries were ready and waiting.

Wall of fire.

All three bombs missed.

Spectacular geysers erupted around the battleship, but no hits.

Meanwhile, the nine dive bombers heading for Saratoga were having their own problems.

Some of the Wildcat fighters that had missed the initial intercept had managed to climb and were now tearing into this second group.

Aggressive attacks from multiple angles.

The Wildcat pilots were furious at having been bypassed earlier.

Now they were taking it out on these bombers.

Faced with determined fighter opposition, the Japanese pilots made a tactical decision.

Abandon Saratoga as a target.

Hit Enterprise instead.

She was already burning, already damaged.

Finish her off.

But on their way to Enterprise, the formation took heavy losses.

Two dive bombers were shot down by wildcats.

One of them was the flight leader for this group.

With their leader gone and American fighters swarming around them, the formation fell apart.

Individual pilots made their own decisions about where to attack.

Four dive bombers went after North Carolina.

Again, all four missed.

The battleship was turning so hard that her stern was throwing up a massive wake.

Visibility was obscured by spray and smoke.

The Japanese pilots did their best, but hitting a violently maneuvering battleship was nearly impossible.

Four more near misses.

Four more geysers.

No damage to the ship.

The remaining three dive bombers from this group made it through to Enterprise.

They dove toward the wounded carrier through a storm of anti-aircraft fire.

But Enterprises gunners had found their rhythm now.

The fire was accurate and intense.

All three bombs missed.

Close, but misses.

The survivors of the Japanese strike turned north and headed for home at maximum speed.

That’s when the real killing began.

The Wildcat pilots who’d failed to intercept on the way in were absolutely determined not to let these bombers escape.

They’d been at the wrong altitude, wrong position, wrong place at the wrong time.

They’d watched helplessly as the Japanese bombers flew over them and attacked the carriers.

Now they had a chance for redemption.

The Wildcats fell on the retreating Japanese aircraft with everything they had.

No mercy, no quarter.

The dive bombers were slow now.

They dropped their bombs, but they were still at low altitude.

After pulling out of their dives, easy targets for fighters with altitude and speed advantage.

The Zero Escorts tried to protect them.

They turned to engage the wild cats, trying to draw them away from the bombers.

But the Zeros were outnumbered and low on fuel themselves.

Some of them had battle damage.

They did what they could, but it wasn’t enough.

The running air battle stretched across 30 m of ocean.

Aircraft twisting, turning, diving, climbing, guns firing.

Traces arcing through the sky, planes trailing smoke and flames spiraling down toward the water.

Both sides taking losses, but the Japanese losing far more heavily.

By the time the survivors straggled back to Shokaku and Zuikaku, the butcher bill was brutal.

19 dive bombers lost out of 27 launched.

Six zero fighters lost out of 10.

25 aircraft total from a strike force of 37.

A loss rate approaching 70%.

Catastrophic.

Unsustainable.

The Americans lost five wild cats in the engagement.

Five pilots killed or missing.

A far better exchange ratio.

But the real question, the only question that mattered to Fletcher and his staff was what those Japanese bombers had accomplished before being destroyed.

What price had they paid for their 70% losses? Enterprise was on fire, burning from stern to midship.

Three bomb hits, causing massive damage.

Her flight deck cratered, her aft compartments in flames.

casualties mounting.

From a distance, she looked finished.

Dead in the water, out of the fight.

But Enterprise wasn’t finished.

Not even close.

The damage control parties aboard Enterprise were legendary.

They trained endlessly for exactly this kind of disaster.

Drills every week.

practice after practice after practice.

They knew their jobs.

They knew the ship’s systems.

They knew what to do when everything went to hell.

And they got to work immediately.

Fire hoses snaked across the decks, thick canvas lines pulsing with water pressure.

Damage control teams in firefighting gear pushed into compartments filled with smoke and flame.

They couldn’t see.

They could barely breathe even with their masks.

The heat was incredible.

But they pressed forward anyway, dragging hoses, setting up barriers, fighting the fires systematically.

Other teams shored up damaged bulkheads with wooden beams to prevent flooding from spreading through the ship.

Still others worked to restore electrical power to damaged sections, splicing cables and bypassing destroyed junction boxes.

Medical teams set up aid stations and began treating the wounded.

On the flight deck, repair crews attacked that 10-ft crater with remarkable speed.

They couldn’t fix it properly.

That would require a shipyard and weeks of work.

but they could patch it.

Steel plates were dragged into position.

Welders fired up their torches.

Sparks flew.

Within minutes, the hole was covered with a makeshift patch.

Not pretty, not permanent, but functional enough to land aircraft on.

Within 1 hour of being hit, Enterprises fires were contained.

Not out.

They’d burn for hours longer, but contained under control.

The flight deck was patched well enough to operate, and incredibly, almost impossibly, flight operations resumed.

Aircraft that had been airborne during the attack began landing.

One by one, they came aboard, catching the arresting wires.

rolling to a stop on a flight deck that had been a burning crater just 60 minutes earlier.

The landing signal officer waving them in with his paddles.

Deck crews pushing each aircraft forward to clear the landing area for the next one.

Business as usual, or as close to it as you could get after taking three bomb hits.

Aboard Saratoga, two miles away, Fletcher watched Enterprise recover aircraft and felt overwhelming relief.

They’d survived the main blow.

Enterprise was hurt, badly hurt, but still operational, still capable of flight operations.

Still in the fight, Saratoga was completely untouched.

The Japanese had thrown their Sunday punch and failed to knock out either carrier.

That was something.

Maybe they’d get through this after all.

It was a brief moment of relief, a sense that maybe, just maybe, the worst was over.

Then at 1651, radar picked up a new contact 50 mi out.

Multiple aircraft inbound.

Second strike.

Lieutenant Takahashi commanded this follow-up formation.

27 more Aayichi dive bombers.

Nine more.

Zero escorts.

36 aircraft total.

They’d launched from Shukaku and Zuikaku about 30 minutes after Seki’s first strike.

Their mission, finish whatever the first wave had damaged.

Find the burning American carriers and put them on the bottom.

And things were about to get much worse for Enterprise.

Those three bomb hits had caused more damage than was immediately visible from the outside.

Deep inside the ship, electrical systems were wrecked, cables severed, junction boxes destroyed, power distribution systems shortcircuited.

The damage control teams were working on it, but there was only so much they could do quickly.

One of those damaged systems controlled the steering engine.

the hydraulic mechanism that moved the carrier’s massive rudder.

At some point after the attack, reports vary on the exact timing.

Enterprises steering system shorted out.

The rudder locked in position hard to starboard all the way over and it wouldn’t respond to any commands from the bridge.

The helmsman tried everything.

Spinning the wheel.

Emergency procedures.

Nothing worked.

The steering gear was jammed.

Locked.

Dead.

Enterprise began turning in a tight circle to starboard.

Around and around like a dog chasing its tail.

10 knots forward speed, turning continuously to the right.

The captain ordered the engines adjusted, trying to compensate with differential thrust, but it barely helped.

The carrier just kept turning.

And a second Japanese strike was inbound.

50 mi away and closing.

From Saratoga, Fletcher watched in horror.

Enterprise was helpless, steaming in circles, unable to maneuver.

Unable to evade, a giant wounded target painted in gray steel, turning uselessly while enemy aircraft approached for the kill.

This would be it.

The coup grass Enterprise couldn’t dodge, couldn’t turn, couldn’t do anything except steam in circles and wait for the bombs to fall.

She’d be finished.

The radar operators on both carriers tracked the incoming strike with growing dread.

50 m 45 40.

Still closing steadily.

Still heading directly toward the task force.

The fighter director tried to organize another intercept.

Vector every available wildcat toward the threat.

But many of the fighters were critically low on fuel or ammunition after the first engagement.

Some had already landed to refuel and rearm.

Some were damaged and limping home.

The defensive screen was thinner this time, weaker, less capable.

35 m 30 25.

Then something bizarre happened.

something nobody expected.

The Japanese formation didn’t come straight in.

It flew an arc around the task force.

Instead of heading directly toward the carriers, the contacts on radar curved to the south.

The radar operators watched in confusion.

What was Takahashi doing? Why wasn’t he attacking? 20 m now.

The formation was south of the task force, still not attacking, still maneuvering.

Then the formation turned west away from the carriers, heading back toward the northwest where it had come from.

At 1827, the radar contact faded off the screen to the northwest.

The Japanese strike disappeared.

gone.

It was never seen again.

To this day, nobody knows exactly what happened to Takahashi strike.

Why didn’t they attack? Several theories have been proposed over the years.

Maybe Takahashi’s navigation was off and he never actually found the American carriers.

Maybe he mistook a different group of ships for Task Force 61 and wasted time searching in the wrong area.

Maybe low fuel forced him to turn back before reaching the target.

Maybe communications problems prevented him from getting accurate targeting information.

Maybe something else entirely.

Equipment failure, tactical confusion, miscommunication with the Japanese carriers.

Whatever the reason, the second strike never materialized over Task Force 61.

Some critical failure on the Japanese side.

Some unknown problem that saved Enterprise from certain destruction.

Through incredible luck, through enemy error, Enterprise was spared.

At 1853, Enterprise regained steering control.

The damage control teams had managed to juryrig the steering system, bypassed the damaged circuits, restored hydraulic pressure to the rudder.

The carrier stopped turning in circles and came back under command.

She could maneuver again.

Recovery operations began in earnest.

Aircraft that had been airborne for hours finally came home.

The reserve strike returned from its fruitless search northwest.

Felt strike group eventually made it back from Guadal Canal.

Fighters from the defensive combat air patrol landed with bullet holes in their fuselages and vapor in their fuel tanks.

The last aircraft landed at 2303 11:03 that night.

Over 6 hours after the attack had begun.

In somewhat anticlimactic fashion, the carrier clash at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons was over.

Both sides had thrown their punches.

Both sides had taken damage.

And now, in the darkness, both carrier forces were withdrawing from the battle area.

But the operation itself wasn’t finished.

Not yet.

Because while the carriers withdrew, there was still that Japanese convoy to deal with.

The one heading for Guadal Canal, the one carrying troops to retake Henderson Field.

And that’s where the real decision of the day would be made.

That evening, updated intelligence reports arrived in Fletcher’s flag plot.

A powerful Japanese surface force was steaming south at high speed.

Battleships, cruisers, heavy destroyers.

Admiral Condo’s force, the same powerful surface fleet intelligence had warned about days earlier.

They were racing toward Task Force 61’s last known position.

Estimated contact time sometime after midnight.

Fletcher could reverse course and engage them.

Send his cruisers and destroyers north to intercept.

Maybe even bring the carriers within range to provide air support at first light.

Go on the offensive.

Hit the Japanese where they were vulnerable.

Admiral King would certainly want that.

Aggressive action, taking the fight to the enemy.

But Fletcher’s staff ran the numbers, and the numbers weren’t good.

The Japanese had more ships.

Their battleships were bigger.

Their cruisers were better armed.

And most importantly, their crews were trained and equipped for night surface combat in ways American forces simply weren’t.

Savo Island had proved that brutally.

The kawakazi sinking blue had proved it again.

Japanese night fighting capabilities were simply superior.

Task Force 61 was also low on fuel.

Days of high-speed maneuvering in the battle area had drained the bunkers.

Some destroyers were below 50%.

If they committed to a night battle followed by continued operations the next day, some ships might literally run out of fuel.

Enterprise was damaged.

Still operational, but hurt.

She needed real repairs in a real shipyard, not just patches from the damage control teams.

Every hour she stayed in the combat zone was another hour she risked further damage she might not survive.

And those two Japanese fleet carriers, Shokaku and Zuikaku, were still out there, undamaged, still dangerous.

They’d withdrawn north after launching their strikes, but they could be back at dawn.

If Fletcher committed his surface forces to a night battle, and those carriers showed up in the morning, Task Force 61 could be caught in a trap with no way out.

Fletcher made his decision.

Withdraw.

Task Force 61 would retire south.

Get Enterprise to safety where she could be properly repaired.

Refuel the destroyers before they ran dry.

Avoid a night surface engagement that would likely go badly.

Live to fight another day.

As the orders went out to the task force, Fletcher turned to his staff with a rofful smile.

The exhaustion showed on his face.

He’d been awake for over 24 hours, making decisions, watching his ships fight, wondering if each decision would be the one that cost lives.

“Boys,” he said quietly, “I’m going to get two dispatches tonight.

The staff officers looked at him waiting.

“One from Admiral Nimmitz,” Fletcher continued, telling me what a wonderful job we did.

He paused.

“And one from Admiral King asking why in hell we didn’t use our destroyers to make torpedo attacks against that Japanese surface force.

” Another pause.

And by God, they’ll both be right.

The staff officers managed tired laughs.

Nervous laughter from men who’d been through combat and weren’t entirely sure their commander had just made the right decision or thrown away a chance for victory.

Fletcher’s prediction proved accurate.

The criticism came exactly as expected.

Admiral King was furious that the surface forces hadn’t been used more aggressively.

Why hadn’t destroyers been sent north to intercept? Why withdraw when the enemy was right there? Where was the offensive spirit? Where was the killer instinct? But looking at the tactical situation objectively, really examining what Fletcher had available versus what the Japanese could bring to a night surface battle, the decision to withdraw made sense.

The Japanese had superior numbers, superior training for night combat, and superior torpedoes.

American surface forces charging north in the darkness would likely have been savaged for minimal gain.

Task Force 61 turned south and retired from the battle area.

Enterprise nursing her wounds, but still steaming under her own power.

Saratoga untouched and ready for another round.

The escorting battleships, cruisers, and destroyers forming a protective screen.

All heading away from the enemy.

All heading towards safety.

Dawn brought a surprise.

American search planes launched at first light found the waters north of Guadal Canal empty.

The Kido Bhai had withdrawn during the night.

Shukaku and Zuikaku were gone, heading back toward their bases.

Admiral Condo’s surface force had also turned back north.

Ironically, both sides had decided to quit at roughly the same time.

Fletcher withdrew south.

The Japanese withdrew north.

Both sides broke contact.

Both sides retired from the field, neither willing to continue the battle into a second day.

The carrier battle was over.

Enterprise damaged but operational.

Ryujo sunk.

Heavy aircraft losses on both sides.

No clear winner.

No decisive result.

But the operation wasn’t over because while the carriers withdrew, there was still that Japanese convoy.

Still heading for Guadal Canal, still carrying troops to retake Henderson Field.

And 200 m away, the Cactus Air Force was preparing to have the final word.

The carrier battle had been fought for one reason.

One strategic objective that overshadowed everything else.

The Japanese needed to land troops on Guadal Canal to retake Henderson Field.

Everything, the carriers, the air strikes, the surface forces, all of it was designed to cover that convoy heading toward the island.

And astonishingly, despite the indecisive carrier battle, despite Ryujo being sunk, despite heavy aircraft losses, the convoy pressed on, still heading south, still intent on completing its mission.

There were no American carriers nearby to stop it.

Fletcher had withdrawn south with Task Force 61.

Enterprise needed repairs.

Both carriers needed to refuel their escorts, which meant stopping that convoy was now up to the Cactus Air Force.

Rear Admiral Riso Tanaka commanded the Japanese convoy, an experienced officer, aggressive and capable.

His force consisted of four transport ships carrying roughly 1,500 troops.

Escorted by the light cruiser Jinsu, his flagship, plus several destroyers, Tanaka had received reports throughout the day about the carrier battle.

He knew Ryujo had been sunk.

He knew the main carrier force had withdrawn.

But his orders were explicit.

Continue to Guadal Canal and land the troops.

Everything depended on getting those soldiers ashore.

So Tanaka pressed on through the night of August 24th, his convoy steaming steadily south, confident that by morning they’d be off Guadal Canal, ready to land under cover of darkness.

But the Americans knew he was coming.

A radar equipped PBY had spotted the convoy during the night, tracked it, reported its position, course, and speed.

By dawn on August 25th, the Cactus Air Force knew exactly where Tanaka was.

Henderson Field came alive before sunrise.

Ground crews prepped aircraft in the darkness.

Eight dive bombers, five Marine SBDs, and three Navy SBDs from the carriers, 10 Wildcat fighters as escorts.

The mission was simple.

find that convoy and destroy it.

The strike launched shortly after dawn.

The aircraft formed up over the island and turned north, heading toward the last reported position of Tanaka’s force.

The fighter escorts had to turn back about halfway.

Fuel.

The Wildcats didn’t have the range to make the round trip.

They peeled off and headed back, leaving the dive bombers to continue alone.

It didn’t matter because when the bombers found Tanaka’s convoy, they discovered something remarkable.

The Japanese ships had no air cover whatsoever.

No combat air patrol overhead, no fighters circling protectively.

Nothing.

just a convoy steaming south in broad daylight within range of an enemy air base with absolutely no air protection.

The Japanese had made a catastrophic tactical error.

With Ryujo sunk and the main carriers withdrawn, there were no aircraft available to cover the convoy.

Tanaka should have turned back.

Should have waited.

Instead, he’d pressed on.

And now he was about to pay the price.

The five marine dive bombers went after Tanaka’s flagship, the light cruiser Jinsu at the head of the convoy.

They rolled into their dives from 10,000 ft.

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