6 July in military history: Battle of Kula Gulf, 1943

6 July 1943 · 83 years ago

Reinforcements for Kolombangara

In early July 1943, during the American campaign for New Georgia in the Solomon Islands, the Japanese commanders at Rabaul decided to reinforce General Sasaki's troops defending the area, shipping the men from the Shortland Islands to Kolombangara aboard destroyers. Miller and Rentz put the reinforcement at 4,000 men; Shaw and Kane write that on 3 July General Imamura ordered about 3,000 troops from the Shortlands-Faisi area to the New Georgia Group, and that more reinforcements were to follow.¹

In the early hours of 5 July US Marines and Army troops landed at Rice Anchorage on the shore of Kula Gulf, escorted by Rear Admiral Walden L. Ainsworth's cruisers and destroyers, which bombarded Vila and Bairoko Harbor. The first Japanese echelon ran into Ainsworth's ships and turned back. A torpedo fired by the Japanese destroyers sank the US destroyer Strong, although Shaw and Kane note that one official postwar Navy chronology credited a submarine.²

Back into Kula Gulf

The Japanese tried again the next night. According to Miller and to Shaw and Kane, ten destroyers were to carry the second echelon to Vila, seven of them, in Shaw and Kane's account, transporting troops. Rentz writes that Rear Admiral Akiyama Teruo left the Shortlands after dark with ten destroyers, three of them as a screen and seven in two transport groups of three and four. Cressman's Navy chronology counts seven Japanese destroyers in the action, four of them (Amagiri, Hatsuyuki, Nagatsuki and Satsuki) carrying troops and supplies.³

Informed that Japanese warships were getting ready to sail, Admiral Halsey ordered Ainsworth to intercept them. According to Miller, Ainsworth was retiring and had reached Indispensable Strait when the order came; he reversed course and entered Kula Gulf about midnight, a few minutes behind the Japanese destroyers. He had three light cruisers and four destroyers; Rentz names them as Honolulu, Helena and St. Louis, and Nicholas, O'Bannon, Radford and Jenkins.⁴

Rentz writes that shortly after midnight the first Japanese transport group reached Vila and began landing its troops, and that Ainsworth made contact when the second, covered by the screen, rounded the northeast tip of Kolombangara. Helena opened fire to port at 0157 "Love", according to her commanding officer's report, which dates the damage to 6 July 1943 in that zone time. Rentz and the Bureau of Ships place the action in the night of 5-6 July, and the Navy's history of the ship has her open fire at 0157 after midnight on 5 July. Ashore, the Marines and soldiers who had landed at Rice Anchorage were in a wet bivouac by the Giza Giza River, and in Shaw and Kane's account they listened to the distant sounds of the battle.⁵

Three torpedoes in three minutes

Helena had fired on three targets when, at 0203, a torpedo struck her port bow; a second hit at about 0205 put her whole main propelling plant out of action, and a third followed at about 0206, according to the Navy's Bureau of Ships, whose report reproduces her commanding officer's account. The ship broke in the middle, jackknifed and went down at about 0225. Her severed bow, wrote her commanding officer, C. P. Cecil, "was still floating late the next afternoon".⁶

Cecil believed that all three torpedoes came from the nearest destroyer in the Japanese force; Cressman's chronology credits the destroyers Suzukaze and Tanikaze. The Bureau of Ships noted in September 1944 that Helena was the first US cruiser, and so far the only one, to be lost by breaking up after a torpedo attack.⁷

The Japanese lost two destroyers, Niizuki and Nagatsuki. According to Cressman, Niizuki was sunk by gunfire most likely from Honolulu, while Nagatsuki, damaged by gunfire, ran aground on the southeastern coast of Kolombangara and was abandoned, and US aircraft later bombed the wreck. Rentz writes that by 0330 Helena, Niizuki and Nagatsuki were out of the battle, either sunk or beached.⁸

Lanterns and lifeboats

"Of the 1188 people aboard, less than 200 were lost," the Bureau of Ships reported. Cecil gave much of the credit to the relay-operated battle lanterns, the only source of light after the ship's lighting failed: "The confidence that these beams of light along the exit routes maintained in the men contributed largely to the lack of panic and contributed to the saving of many lives".⁹

The destroyers Nicholas and Radford stayed behind to pick survivors out of the water and, while doing so, fought the Japanese destroyers Amagiri and Hatsuyuki and damaged both, according to Cressman's chronology. The Navy's history of Helena says the two destroyers carried away all but about 275 of the survivors when they withdrew at daylight. Others, the Navy's history says, drifted for two days before they reached the Japanese-held island of Vella Lavella.¹⁰

On 16 July the fast transports Waters and Dent brought the last two groups of Helena's survivors out of Vella Lavella, according to Cressman; the Navy's history of the ship counts 165 Helena men brought out, and Rentz puts the number rescued from the island at about 175.¹¹

850 men for Kolombangara

The Japanese still put 850 soldiers ashore at Vila, according to Miller and to Shaw and Kane, who elsewhere write of "about 850 troops". Rentz writes that they succeeded in landing "only 850 troops".¹²

In Miller's account the 850 men allowed Sasaki to send part of another battalion from Kolombangara to Munda that same day. Miller writes that Admiral Kusaka moved his headquarters from Rabaul to Buin, quoting a Japanese monograph, "to alter the grave situation and raise the morale of all the forces"; Rentz has him move his flag to Buka. On 7 July, Miller adds, Kusaka asked General Imamura for 11,000 more soldiers for New Georgia, and Imamura refused.¹³

Looking at the weeks that followed, Shaw and Kane judged that "the blockade of Kula Gulf by Allied destroyer forces, torpedo boats, and night and day air patrols was perhaps the telling factor" as the Japanese position on New Georgia worsened, and they quote a Japanese account: "the fate of the Munda sector became a matter of time".¹⁴