It’s the evening of August 6th, 1943.
Four Japanese destroyers are racing into the Vella Gulf in the Solomon islands,
on a supply mission to an isolated island garrison.
Suddenly, from the darkness ahead of them come the silhouettes of American destroyers,
then the sightings of torpedoes surging towards them.
A few devastating minutes later, the Japanese ships would lie in ruins, as a devastating
ambush played out.
This is how it happened.
- The story of the battle of vella gulf began
in the middle of 1943.
After the Japanese withdrawal from Guadalcanal at the end of 1942, the battle between the
United States and Japan in the south western pacific moved northwards to the group of islands
around New Georgia.
At the end of June 1943, American troops landed on Vangunu, New Georgia itself, and Rendova.
From this position, pressure was brought onto Japanese positions at Munda, with artillery
set up and torpedo boats based there to harass Japanese supply lines.
On July 2nd, US troops landed at Zanana, and began a push westwards toward the airbase
at Munda.
Japan moved quickly to bring in reinforcements to in response.
Since it was now too dangerous to reinforce by sea directly, the Japanese planned to strengthen
a base at Vila on the island of Kolombangara to act as a staging area for troops to be
moved across to the northern side of New Georgia and then marched across land to Munda.
It was also hoped that Vila could be a strong garrison in its own right, to act as the next
obstacle to American progress.
Trying to forestall this, the US landed troops at rice anchorage on the north side of new
Georgia on July 4th with a view to pushing south and cutting the route to munda off.
They were supported by a naval task force under Rear Admiral Walden Ainsworth, which
on July 5th conducted shore bombardment in the area.
Over the next week the Japanese began running troops and supplies into vila, clashing twice
with Ainsworth’s ships in the process, at the battles of Kula Gulf and Kolombangara.
In chaotic night battles fought at close range, the Americans succeeded in sinking the light
cruiser Jintsu and two destroyers, but lost the cruiser Helena sunk, had three other light
cruisers damaged by torpedoes, and failed to prevent the Japanese from landing significant
quantities of men and materiel at Vila.
These battles exposed a long standing weakness of American cruisers to Japanese destroyer
attack, and prompted a shift in approach.
After a change of leadership and the appointment of Rear Admiral Theodore Wilkinson, the light
cruisers were withdrawn from operations in this area, freeing up the destroyers to be
more aggressive instead of having to screen and support the larger ships.
On the Japanese side, despite successes in running supplies through to Vila, the mood
was relatively downcast at the main Japanese base of Rabaul, about 400 miles to the north.
The losses sustained in the two battles off Kolombangara could ill be afforded, as a punishing
rate of attrition on japan’s destroyer force continued.
Up to the retreat from Guadalcanal, Japan had lost 11 destroyers to the United States’
15, but japans lower industrial base made this an unsustainable exchange.
This had only gotten worse since, as months of fighting took its toll.
Japanese naval forces in the Solomons were organised under the eighth fleet, which in
march 1943 possessed a single heavy cruiser as a flagship, and Destroyer Squadron 3, with
the light cruiser Sendai and three destroyer divisions.
In theory, these divisions each contained four ships, but by mid 1943 this was basically
never the case, as losses and the need for maintenance depleted the number of ships available.
In response, reinforcements were deployed, but even this struggled to raise force strengths.
In late July, Captain Tameichi Hara arrived at Rabaul to take command of his Destroyer
Division 27, only to find that two of his ships had already been sunk, and another had
been deployed elsewhere to cover a gap, leaving Hara only with his flagship Shigure available.
With no time to waste, Shigure was attached to Destroyer Division 4, which was made up
of three destroyers under Captain Kaju Sugiura, who regular viewers of this channel might
remember as the Rear Admiral who would command the cruiser Haguro on its last operation in
May 1945.
For now, Sugiura’s destroyers were tasked with continuing to bring supplies and troops
to Kolombangara.
On August 1st, Hara and Shigure joined another supply mission.
Since the battles in the first half of July the route through to Vila had changed: rather
than passing east of Kolombangara through the Kula gulf, the Japanese ships were now
travelling to the west of the island, through the Vella gulf.
In so doing they had eluded the patrolling Americans, and the August 1st journey- the
second on this route- passed without incident, save for one US torpedo
boat with a mildly famous captain being rammed and destroyed by Amagiri.
All four destroyers returned to Rabaul unscathed.
This was a relief, but it concerned Captain Hara when, on August 4th, Sugiura informed
him that they had been ordered to run exactly the same route again, with the same force
strength and timings.
To Hara, this seemed to risk disaster – it would surely be foolish to expect the Americans
to fail to guard the vella gulf for a third time.
He questioned the wisdom of the orders, but ultimately acceded to the more senior captain’s
instructions.
The four destroyers left Rabaul at 3am on August 6th and started their journey to the
south east.
Hara remained uneasy, telling the captain of Shigure: “This operation, at best, is
unreasonable.
Now I simply pray that luck will be with us.”
At 2pm they spotted a hostile plane circling them, and intercepted a transmission sent
from it that began with the word ‘urgent’.
They had been detected- but Sugiura kept the same course for the next five hours regardless,
before swinging around to the south east at 7pm.
The Japanese commander ordered a speed of 30 knots for their run into the vella gulf,
but Shigure- being an older destroyer- struggled to keep this speed, and began to slip back
from the three in front of it.
- In response to the Japanese movements that
day, six US destroyers were deployed into the vella gulf to intercept them.
They were under the direction of Commander Frederick Moosbrugger, who led his own Destroyer
Division 12, as well as Destroyer Division 15 under Commander Rodger Simpson.
Moosbrugger led his ships into the gulf as night set in.
At 9.33pm, radar on the leading US destroyer picked up contacts ahead, at a range of 19,000
yards.
The American commander continued northwards, determined to press home a different sort
of attack to previous engagements.
Rather than opening up at longer range with radar assisted gunnery as had been done before
with the light cruisers, Moosbrugger planned to get much closer, into the effective range
of his own ships torpedoes, banking that the Japanese- lacking radar - would be unable
to see his ships until it was too late.
To the north, at 9.40pm Captain Hara onboard Shigure was about lagging 1500 metres behind
the third ship in the Japanese line, Kawakaze.
Arashi, and Sugiura’s flagship Hagikaze were further to the south east.
Hara ordered his ships torpedo tubes and guns trained to the port side, fearful of US torpedo
boats suddenly appearing from the open ocean.
By this stage, the American destroyers were almost alongside the lead Japanese ship, and
at 9.41 Commander Moosbrugger decided that they were close enough and gave the order
for his division to make its attack.
22 torpedoes surged out of their tubes and streaked towards the Japanese line, which
was still oblivious to the presence of their enemy.
At the same time, Moosbrugger ordered Simpson to swing his division to the west, to cut
across the front of the Japanese line and open fire with guns after the torpedoes had
impacted.
As the American ships manuevered, the seconds ticked down, until at 9.45 lookouts on the
Japanese ships suddenly spotted torpedoes in the water, but far, far too late for their
captains to do anything about it.
The flagship Hagikaze was the first to be hit, by two torpedoes, one of which disabled
the ships engine room.
Behind her, Arashi was struck by two more, and Kawakaze by a single torpedo which penetrated
the destroyers magazine and caused a huge fire to break out on board.
Shigure had more time to react because she had been trailing further behind, and Captain
Hara quickly swung his destroyer into a hard starboard turn and ordered eight torpedoes
fired in the direction of the American destroyers, which could now be discerned as black shapes
a few thousand yards away.
Even with more warning, Shigure only very narrowly escaped the fate of its three companions.
Three torpedoes missed narrowly to the south of the ship, four to the north, and one actually
passed straight through Shigure’s rudder without exploding.
Once shigure had settled on a northerly course, Hara was able to assess the situation.
To his south, the sea was lit by two Japanese destroyers ablaze, while a third was taking
on water, and all of them were now under fire by US destroyers from both the east and south.
The Japanese crew were cheered by the sight of an explosion in the direction they had
fired their own torpedoes, and believed they had scored a hit.
In reality though, this was probably a torpedo exploding as it travelled across the wake
from one of the US destroyers.
At 10.10pm, Arashi’s magazine ignited completely, causing a huge explosion and the immediate
loss of the ship.
Soon afterwards, the gunfire ceased, and Shigure was unable to raise any of the other ships
on the radio.
Reluctantly, Hara decided to head back to Rabaul, mindful of his ships damaged rudder
and the 250 troops that were onboard his ship as passengers.
He signalled Rabaul to announce his intentions, and asked the Japanese base at Vila to attempt
to rescue survivors from the other ships.
It had been a costly defeat for the Japanese navy.
Of 700 crew and 820 troops onboard these ships, only 310 survived.
US casualties were nil.
Captain Hara of Shigure called it: “..one of the most astounding torpedo successes in
history.”
Vella Gulf was the first night battle between destroyers won decisively by the US of the
entire pacific war.
Though Japan had begun with superior torpedoes, tactics, optics and doctrine, these advantages
has been eroded away by the Americans fixing their defective torpedoes and expanding the
use of Radar on its ships.
Now Moosbrugger had demonstrated how effective US destroyers could be when let loose against
their Japanese counterparts- something that would prove very useful in future engagements.