Lieut. Westholm, in 112, took on the third destroyer and was equally certain he had put one into his target, but two of the destroyers had zeroed in during his approach run, and two shells blew his boat open at the waterline. Lieut. Westholm and his eleven shipmates watched the rest of the battle from a life raft. The other PTs fired twelve fish, but didn’t even claim any hits.
Either Lieut. Westholm or Lieut. Faulkner had scored, however, for the Hatsukaze had caught a torpedo under the wardroom. The Japanese skipper at first despaired of saving his ship, but damage-control parties plugged the hole well enough so that he was able to escape before daylight.
When the sun rose, the PTs still afloat picked up survivors of the two lost torpedo boats and then went through the morning routine of sinking the 250 floating drums of supplies the destroyers had jettisoned. The starving Japanese watching from the beach must have wished all torpedo boats in hell that morning.
The Japanese did come out to tow in the wreckage of the PT 43, but a New Zealand warship stepped in with a few well-placed broadsides and reduced the already splintered torpedo boat to a mess of matchwood before the Japanese could study it.
Nobody but the Japanese High Command knew it at this point, but the plane and PT blockade of the Tokyo Express had won; the island garrison had been starved out.
During the night between February 1st and 2nd, coast watchers reported 20 Japanese destroyers coming down The Slot. The American Navy had no way of knowing it, but the Tokyo Express was running in reverse. The decks of those destroyers were clear—they were being kept clear to make room for a deckload of the starved-out Japanese on Guadalcanal. Japan was finally calling it quits and pulling out of the island.
Whatever the mission of the Japanese ships, the mission of the American Navy was clear—to keep the Japanese from doing whatever it was they were doing and to sink some ships in the process.
Three American mine-layers sprinkled 300 mines north of Guadalcanal, near Savo Island, in the waters where the destroyers might be expected to pass. Eleven PTs waiting in ambush attacked the destroyers as they steamed by the minefield. The PTs rejoiced at a good, solid hit on a destroyer by somebody—nobody was sure whom—and the destroyer Makigumo admittedly acquired an enormous hole in the hull at that very moment, but the Japanese skipper said that he hit a mine. He said he never saw any PTs attacking him.
Postwar assessment officers say that he probably hit a mine while maneuvering to avoid a PT torpedo. Avoid a torpedo attack he never even saw? Someone is confused. Some of the PT sailors who were sure of hits on the Makigumo have a tendency to get sulky when this minefield business is mentioned, and nobody can blame them. The Makigumo, at any rate, had to be scuttled.
Regardless of what damage they did to the Japanese, the PTs themselves suffered terribly in this battle.