Vandegrift argued that he could have the Japanese airfield ready to take American fighters within forty-eight hours, and that he desperately needed the men, and especially the supplies, still aboard the transports. He argued in vain.
The next morning, Sunday, 9 August, Fletcher’s fears seemed to be confirmed. In what became known as the Battle of Savo Island, the U.S. Navy took another whipping: the cruisers USS Vincennes and USS Quincy were both sunk within an hour. The Australian cruiser HMAS Canberra was set on fire, and then torpedoed and sunk by an American submarine to save it from capture. A third American cruiser, USS Astoria, was sunk at noon.
At 1500 that afternoon, ten transports, one cruiser, four destroyers, and a minesweeper of the invasion fleet left the beachhead for Noumea. At 1830, the rest of ships sailed away. On board were a vast stock of weapons and equipment, including all the heavy artillery and virtually all of the engineer equipment, plus rations, ammunition, and personnel.
If it had not been for captured stocks of Japanese rations, the Marines would have starved. If it had not been for captured Japanese trucks, bulldozers, and other engineer equipment (and American ingenuity in making them run) the airfield could not have been completed.
And it was not a question of if the Japanese would launch a major counterattack to throw the Marines back into the sea, but when.
In Jack Stecker’s view, the next few days were going to be a close thing for the Marines on Guadalcanal. For a number of reasons. For one, he had been a longtime observer of the Japanese military. Before the war, he did a tour with the 4th Marines in Shanghai, where he soon realized that the Japanese were not small, trollish men wearing thick glasses whom the United States could defeat with one hand tied behind them; that they were in fact well trained, well disciplined, and well armed.
And so Stecker was not at all surprised after the war started to see the Japanese winning victory after victory. What surprised him was how long it was taking them to mount a massive counterattack on Guadalcanal. Control of the Guadalcanal airfield (now named Henderson Field, after a Marine Aviator who had been killed in the Battle of Midway) was as important to them as it was to the Americans. And unlike the Americans, the Japanese had enormous resources of ships, aircraft, and men to throw into a counterattack.
For instance, when the American invasion fleet sailed off into the sunset, it carried with it the heavy (155mm) artillery of the First Marine Division. That meant the Japanese could bombard the airfield and Marine positions with their heavy artillery, without fear of counterbattery fire from the Americans, whose most powerful cannon was the 105mm howitzer.
And meanwhile, Guadalcanal was a tropical island, infested with malaria and a long list of other debilitating tropical diseases. These weakened the physical strength of the Marines from the moment they landed. That situation, made worse by short rations and the strain of heat and humidity, could easily get desperate. Already Stecker’s Marines were sick and exhausted.
As for the reason they were on the island in the first place, Henderson Field was operational and a second auxiliary airstrip had been bulldozed not far away, yet there had been no massive buildup of American air power. As soon as aircraft were flown in, they entered combat. Although Japanese losses were much heavier than American, the attrition of U.S. warplanes seemed to Stecker to have overwhelmed available reinforcements.
Stecker had a personal interest in Marine Aviation. His son, a Marine Aviator on VFM-229, had barely survived a crash landing in an F4F4 Wildcat. He had left the island a high-priority medical evacuee, covered in plaster and bandages. Despite all the painkilling narcotics the doctors thought he could handle, he was moaning in agony.
The prognosis was, eventually, full recovery. Stecker had his doubts.
A mud-splattered jeep came up to him.
“Major Stecker?” the driver asked.
The driver looked to be fifteen, Stecker thought, and was certainly no older than eighteen.
“Right,” Stecker said, and got in the front seat.
“Sorry to be late, Sir. I got stuck in the mud.”