Nightmare of Attrition

The United States Navy’s August 1942–February 1943 campaign to invade and hold Guadalcanal in the Solomon Island chain might, with good reason, be called the Stalingrad of the Pacific. The Battle for Midway, fought against exceptional odds during 3–7 June 1942—the battle in which American pilots sank four aircraft carriers and delivered a crushing blow to the offensive striking power of the Japanese fleet—marked the beginning of the end for the Imperial Japanese Navy; but it was the campaign for Guadalcanal that delivered such a crippling blow to the enemy’s offensive spirit that they were forced to relinquish the initiative and fall back into a defensive posture. All told it was a close call.

At the time the American public had no idea how near we came to suffering a second Bataan; and even today, among the general public, the facts are not widely known. James Hornfischer’s Neptune’s Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal helps to disperse that cloud of ignorance by furnishing readers with a carefully detailed account of the campaign’s seven major naval actions, an account that presents a revised and comprehensive understanding of what the American victory at Guadalcanal meant and means.

Aside from sporadic and often erroneous newspaper reports—many salient facts had been withheld during the war—Richard Tregaskis’s Guadalcanal Diary (1943) provided the public with its first extended account of parts of the battle. Hollywood immediately transformed elements of the book into a popular film featuring, among others, William Bendix, Lloyd Nolan, and Anthony Quinn, and created a convention that repeated itself endlessly in war movies of the time by concentrating on the actions of a few, “the squad,” drawn from every corner of the nation: Brooklyn, Texas, a midwestern farm, Los Angeles, and elsewhere. The formula worked, and because it proved easier to film infantry fighting than to gather ships and try to re-create battles at sea, the approach became a staple—and, in the case of Guadalcanal, emphasized land action: the capture of Henderson Field, Edson’s Ridge, the engagements along the Tenaru and Matanikau rivers, and “the big push.” Aside from Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison’s The Struggle for Guadalcanal, August 1942–February 1943 (volume 5 of Morison’s monumental History of United States Naval Operations in World Warii)—a book that gives a reputable appreciation of the entire campaign—a majority of authors, while offering brief treatment to the naval battles that littered the depths of Ironbottom Sound, usually concentrated on combat action ashore, with the result that the public’s attention was also focused there, so much so that Guadalcanal became nearly synonymous with the achievements of Major General Alexander Vandegrift’s 1st Marine Division and the other marine units under his command.

Neptune’s Inferno takes nothing away from the U.S. Marines. Their commitment, their courage, and their endurance—along with that of the two army divisions that eventually joined them—through months of combat on a disease-ridden island justify without exception the high opinion with which Americans have always regarded them. Their battle ashore was endlessly horrific, and in the end 1,592 of our men died in bringing it to its successful conclusion. Rather than reduce in any way the achievement of the men fighting ashore, James Hornfischer seeks to expand our grasp of how the battle was won by restoring an understanding of the teamwork that was required to win it.

In order to blunt the Japanese drive, remain ashore, and hold the island, the marines had to be supplied by sea, which meant that control of the air and the seas around Guadalcanal had to be continually maintained by the Cactus Air Force—the name that pilots flying from Henderson Field gave themselves—and by the fighting units of the U.S. fleet.

Through grit and determination the U.S. Navy prevailed; but the butcher’s bill at sea included the loss of two aircraft carriers, six heavy cruisers...