A Japanese officer ashore had sent a message: BANZAI. OCCUPIED AIRFIELD AT 2300.
He had done no such thing. Indeed, the very planes spared by that spurious message sank the cruiser the next morning.
Perhaps a more important result of the first PT foray than the hit on a cruiser was the shock to the Japanese nervous system. The Japanese navy had an inordinate horror of torpedo boats—possibly because the Japanese themselves were so diabolically good at surface torpedo attack. The knowledge that American torpedo boats were back on the scene must have been a jolt to their sensitivities.
Nobody can prove that the Japanese admiral called off the bombardment because of the torpedo attacks—after all, he had already shot up Henderson Field for eighty minutes and had expended almost all his special bombardment ammunition—but it is a remarkable coincidence that the shooting stopped almost immediately after the PTs arrived, and the withdrawal followed soon after the torpedoes started swimming around.
Half an hour after their sortie from Tulagi, the PTs saw a vast armada of Japanese ships turn tail and leave the field to them.
The Marines didn’t quibble. They crawled out of their foxholes, those who could, and thanked God for whoever had run off the 14-inchers. Henderson Field had survived, but barely, and the Marines were willing to give anybody credit for running off the battleships, if whoever it was would just keep them off. The PTs were willing to try.
The night between October 14th and 15th was the low point of the Navy’s contribution to the Guadalcanal campaign. Two Japanese cruisers insolently pounded Henderson Field with 752 eight-inch shells, and the Navy could not lift a finger to stop them. The only Navy fighting ships in the area were the four PTs of Squadron Three, but the 60 was still aground on a reef, the 38 had left all of its torpedoes inside a Japanese cruiser the night before, and the other two PTs were escorting two little supply ships across the channel between Tulagi and Guadalcanal. The cruisers had a field day.
The next night two Japanese cruisers fired 1,500 punishing eight-inch shells at Henderson Field.
Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, in Washington, after studying the battle report, could say only: “Everybody hopes we can hang on.”
Admiral Chester Nimitz was even more grim. “It now appears that we are unable to control the sea in the Guadalcanal area. Thus our supply of the positions will only be done at great expense to us. The situation is not hopeless, but it is certainly critical.”