August 5th, 1942...Coastwatcher Don McFarland has little luck providing his masters in Australia with information, radioing at 3:30 p.m., "Cannot obtain anything reliable. Native reports very conflicting." Five hours later, his Fijian scout Kelemende turns up having escaped a Japanese work detail. He spews out a pile of information, including the fact that the airfield runway is made of gravel and clay vice cement, and the Japanese have a working road roller.

The Indianapolis jury deciding William Pelley's case finds the 52-year-old head of the Silver Shirts guilty on 11 counts.

Winston Churchill dons his siren suit and pith helmet, and goes out to 8th Army's Tac HQ and visit forces in the desert. He breakfasts at 8th Army, and meets with 2 NZ Division CO Gen. Bernard Freyberg, who has recovered from his neck wound, and is now suffering from a frightful body rash. Freyberg was given the wrong medication.

Churchill has breakfast with some troops in the desert sun, amid a cloud of flies.

"Now for a short time I became 'the man on the spot,'" Churchill writes later. "Instead of sitting at home waiting for news from the front I could send it myself. This was exhilarating."

After breakfast, Churchill and Auchinleck resume their debate in a hot, cramped, caravan. Churchill wants an August or September offensive. Auchinleck insists he cannot do so. Churchill heads for lunch with the RAF, with Strafer Gott. The latter impresses Churchill with his energy, and Churchill decides to put Gott in charge.

Lunch with the RAF is better -- it's held by the Mediterranean with gleaming silver and goblets of brandy -- and Churchill's mood improves. He heads back to Cairo and tells Brooke that he wants Gott in charge.

Brooke does not share Churchill's faith in Gott. Brooke believes that Gott is tired, and has lost much of his drive (as Brig. Howard Kippenberger discovered earlier in this narrative) and would prefer Montgomery.

Senator Harry S. Truman, (D-Missouri), chairman of the Senate Committee Investigating War Programs, charges in a report that the Navy is "biased and prejudiced" against Higgins Industries in the construction of invasion barges. Truman's report says that BuShips insisted on "using models of their own design despite repeated failures of the design." Higgins, with help from Truman, will win the battle, and his landing craft will win the war.

German troops cross the Kuban river at Kropotkin and press on towards Armavir, racing for the Caucasus oilfields.

36 U-boats pounce on a British convoy bound for Canada, off Newfoundland. The Germans sink five merchant ships in three minutes. The battle rages on into extra innings, costing the Germans a U-boat, but the British lose six more merchant ships.

The U-boats are beneficiaries of German engineering genius and slave labor. At Brest, Lorient, St. Nazaire, and La Pallice, the Todt Organization has created immense U-boat pens of reinforced concrete, thickly armored, studded with anti-aircraft guns. Allied bombs cannot penetrate them.

That day, the U-boat pen at Lorient hosts an unusual visitor, a Japanese submarine, I-8, which has sailed all the way from Sasebo in Japan, to swap samples of technology and blueprints. The Japanese are interested in German jet aircraft designs (the Japanese will even make their own prototype knockoff of the Me 163 rocket fighter), and the Germans are interested in the Long Lance torpedo.

Both sides swap paperwork and souvenirs (sake for the Germans, schnapps for the Japanese) and I-8 heads back to Dai Nippon. Six weeks later, she is sunk off Malaya by the Royal Navy.

August 6th, 1942...VADM Frank Jack Fletcher's carriers peel off with their escorts to take station south of Guadalcanal. The rest of the invasion force plows on. On the mess deck of the American Legion, a young Leatherneck does some exaggerated jitterbugging. On the flagship USS McCawley (known as the "Wacky Mac"), Rear Adm. Richmond Kelly Turner reads the words of the well-known British military thinker Capt. Basil Liddell Hart (a prime inventor of blitzkrieg warfare), "A landing on a foreign shore in the face of hostile troops has always been one of the most difficult operations of war. It has now become almost impossible."

On Guadalcanal, Martin Clemens has spent a fruitless day. His scouts report that the airstrip is ready, but don't know if planes have landed there. Clemens is disgusted, depressed, and hungry. Besides, his feet hurt. He diaries, "Is nothing going to happen after all?"

Pat and Jack Campbell, teenage sons of the old gold miner F.M. Campbell, stand on gold ridge, watching the Japanese. For once, they're not working by night.

That's because Capt. Kanae Monzen of the Imperial Japanese Navy is pleased that his airfield is nearly finished. 2,571 construction troops, mostly Korean laborers, have created repair shops, bomb sheds, a medical clinic, and a pagoda-like administration building. All that needs to be done is to grade a middle portion of the runway. He has his men put out landing lights. Next morning, two staff officers from Rabaul, the first aircraft to fly in, are due to discuss deployment of the first Japanese combat squadrons.

After the lights are set up and lit, Monzen orders an extra ration of sake for his men, and he thanks them for their industry and patriotism.

At breakfast in Cairo, Churchill and Brooke resume sparring over the Mid-East command situation. Churchill has "lost confidence" in Auchinleck. The Mid-East is too big for one man to handle. Churchill wants to divide the command in two, with Gen. Sir Harold Alexander in charge of the new Near East, and Auchinlek in charge of the Middle East. Gott will take over 8th Army, and generals Corbett, Ramsden, and Dorman-Smith will all get the axe. The plan is sent to the War Cabinet in London for review.

Their answer is swift...they're not happy with what appears to be an insult to Auchinleck. Churchill sends another telegram to London hailing Auchinleck's abilities. "He has shown high- minded qualities of character and resolution. He restored the battle of Sidi Rezegh and only recently he stemmed the retreat from El Alamein. There is no officer here or in India who has better credentials...Nor can I advise that General Auchinleck should be ruined and cast aside as unfit to render any further service....the nation will admire the array of our distinguished commanders, Wavell, Auchinleck, and Alexander, facing their responsibilities on the vast front which extends from Cairo to Calcutta."

German troops claim the capture of Tikhoretsk in the Caucasus and Kotelnikov as well. Copy editors go berserk trying to find the towns on maps.

The Germans are now stretching their manpower further and further, as they occupy Europe from the Pyrenees to Lapland. To fill the holes, both the SS and the Wehrmacht are recruiting collaborators and Nazi sympathizers from conquered countries. Regiments from France, the Netherlands, and Belgium are serving in Russia. These quislings wear German uniforms with their nationality as a shoulder patch.

On this day, German General Kraus writes to Hermann Goering, "We have thousands of Dutchmen in transport regiments in the East. Last week one such regiment was attacked. The Dutch took more than a thousand prisoners and were awarded 25 Iron Crosses."

The New York Times reports that the Papal Nuncio in Vichy protested to Marshal Petain on behalf of Pope Pius XII against the "inhuman arrests and deportations" of Jews from France to Germany.

August 7th, 1942...USS Enterprise's 1MC blares reveille an hour and a half before daylight. Crewmen manning dawn action stations can smell the rotten odor of Guadalcanal's jungle on the wind from the north. As dawn breaks, the island becomes visible.

At 5:35 a.m, Enterprise launches the first of eight F4F Wildcat fighters beneath a quarter moon. Enterprise launches 16 fighters and nine SBD Dauntless dive bombers all told, who rendezvous amid pre-dawn darkness with aircraft from USS Saratoga and USS Wasp, to hammer Japanese installations on Tulagi and Guadalcanal.

Jack Campbell wakes up shortly before dawn, unable to rest, and decides to go out and watch the dawn.

At 6:13, USS Quincy opens fire with eight-inch guns on Guadalcanal's Red Beach, heralding America's first amphibious assault of the war. Quincy and her sister ships Astoria and Vincennes hurl ordnance from a deep sound that will eventually be officially renamed "Ironbottom Sound" for all the sunken hulls that will lie in it, including Quincy, Astoria, and Vincennes.

Jack Campbell sees the flashes of Quincy's guns at sea, then hears the boom of guns, and more flashes and explosions as shells rip into the shore. Joined by his brother and the scout Kelemende, the Campbells have a grandstand seat for the invasion of Guadalcanal.

The shellfire wakes up the men of the Japanese Army's 11th construction Unit and Navy's 13th Construction Unit. With good luck and planning, the Americans have achieved thunderclap surprise at Guadalcanal. Turner looks at the island's blue-green mountains, coconut plantations and coral ridges, and thinks Guadalcanal is beautiful.

Enterprise's Wildcats streak in just over the deck, ripping wooden buildings, tents, trucks, and boats with tracer and incendiary bullets. The bombers hammer Tulagi's southwest coast. There is very little opposition, beyond occasional flak.

Martin Clemens sees the planes come in and hears the gunfire. He turns on his teleradio and catches carrier jargon and American slang. "Calloo, callay, oh, what a day!" he scribbles in his diary at noon.

Wasp's SBDs attack around 7:00, and add to the destruction and smoke. Wasp's 16 F4Fs chew up anchored Mavis seaplane bombers and Rufe seaplane fighters. The torpedo bombers stay in reserve, in case the Japanese Navy turns up.

At 6:51, the transports arrive on spot and at 9:10 a.m., "Wacky Mac" hoists the traditional signal "Land the landing force!" Boats swing out, cargo nets cascade down, and Marines jostle into the landing craft. The landings proceed "with the smoothness and precision of a well-rehearsed peacetime drill."

Invasion site is a 1,600-yard strip, Beach Red. 5th Marines will seize the beachhead. 1st Marines will move through and strike for the "grassy knoll," which is actually Mount Austen, eight miles from the beach.

The Marines go ashore at Guadalcanal to no opposition, which baffles them. They also find out that the "grassy knoll" is too far away. 1st Marines move across the Tenaru River with prefabricated bridges and run smack into Guadalcanal's jungles.

These jungles are no joke. Trees stand 40 feet wide and 150 feet high, festooned with creeper, exotic plants, and more exotic birds. The Marines wear out their machetes cutting trails and are besieged by mosquitoes. Laden with heavy packs and seasick, the Marines advance about three hours per mile, and get lost with their antiquated maps. Command control breaks down and the advance is overly cautious.

Back on Red Beach, 300 men of the 1st Marine Pioneer Battalion struggle to unload their gear, while 5th Marine Regiment's men sit around cracking coconuts.

Meanwhile, on Tulagi, the 3rd Kure Special Naval Landing Force's 350 men face four tough battalions of Marines, 2nd/5th Marines, 1st/2nd Marines, 1st Marine Raiders, and 1st Marine Parachute Battalion. This force travels light, and are actually the first to invade the Solomons, coming ashore at 8 a.m. on Beach Blue. The Marines charge across small hills and a cricket field to find the enemy entrenched strongly on Hill 208 in cleverly constructed caves and tunnels. However, Japanese marksmanship is poor. The Marines cannot overwhelm the defenders by dusk, so they dig in for the night. Very wise, as the Japanese counterattack by night, in five separate attacks, all failures.

Japanese troops howl, "Babe Ruth is coward!"

The final land battle is the assault on Gavutu and Tanambogo Islands, connected by a causeway. 536 poorly-trained men from the 14th Construction Unit (including 50 from 3rd Special Naval Landing Force) defend these islands, which are attacked at noon and that afternoon, by soaked and seasick Marine paratroopers. They come ashore to machine gun fire, which riddles the battalion staff, wounding the battalion commander. Maj. Charles A. Miller takes over and has to huddle in the partly demolished Lever Brothers store. Even so, the Marines show ample initiative and determination, and raise Old Glory over Gavutu's Hill 148 by 6 p.m.

As the Americans invade, Tulagi fires off a stream of messages in angry Japanese to headquarters. The last one is at 8:05, "We pray for enduring fortunes of war," and pledge to fight "to the last man." Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the entire Imperial Navy, gives a simple order; counterattack.

The Japanese are preparing an attack on Milne Bay in New Guinea, so their 32 Betty bombers at Rabaul are already bombed- up. 11th Air Fleet orders them south. The strike is led by the two prides of Mitsubishi, the Betty bomber and the Zero fighter. Both have ruled the Pacific since Pearl Harbor. But both planes lack self-sealing fuel tanks and armor protection, unlike the American F4Fs. The Betty is quite vulnerable. It's official designation is "Type One Land Attack Plane," but its crews call it the "Type One Lighter." More importantly, the Zeros streaking south, being the land-based version, do not carry radios.

The American F4F, which looks like a knock-kneed bumblebee, has a quicker rate of roll and faster dive than the Zero, and can take more punishment.

Most importantly, the Imperial Navy has started the war with 3,500 well-trained elite pilots. They have taken increasingly serious losses, most notably at Coral Sea and Midway. They are the best pilots in the world. But they have no replacements behind them.

The 53-plane strike is seen heading south by a British Coastwatcher on Bougainville, Paul Mason, who teleradios from Malabaita Hill at 10:37, "From STO, 27 bombers headed southeast."

On HMAS Canberra, the 1MC blares, "This ship will be attacked at noon. Hands will pipe to lunch at 11 a.m."

Martin Clemens writes at noon, "On combat radio I hear Tulagi is taken, and at 1205 Marines land on Gavutu. Wizard!"

At 12:30 the enemy air force turns up. Radar picks up an enemy force headed for Tulagi. Intercepting fighters spot 30 twin-engine Betty bombers in a tight V of Vs, escorted by Zero fighters, coming in at 180 knots. Four F4Fs attack this massive force at once. Lt. Vince DePoix splashes one Zero, and then another. The Japanese counterattack, and the four Americans escape.

The Americans send in more F4Fs from all three carriers, and the Japanese discover that the F4F Wildcat can take considerable punishment. The Americans go for the bombers, and splash two before the Zeros can counterattack. The Japanese shoot down three Enterprise fighters.

Lt. James Southerland of Saratoga finds himself facing three Zeros. He damages two, but is forced to bail out, at the hands of famed ace Saburo Sakai. "Flaps and radio hade been put out of commission. The after part of my fuselage was like a sieve," Southerland says. He survives to fight again.

Sakai rejoins his buddies and shoots down an SBD, his 60th kill. The other SBDs in the group open up and riddle Sakai's Zero, grievously wounding the aviator. He loses blood, which generates a potentially lethal anesthetic. Sakai strikes himself on the wound to produce jolts of pain to stay awake, and he nurses the crippled plane back, despite losing one eye, over the 565 miles back to Rabaul. Incredibly, he will return to duty.

The bombers arrive at 1:15 p.m., and their aim is disrupted by cloud cover. No hits.

The Japanese try another airstrike that afternoon at 2:30 p.m., this time using dive bombers to hit the anchored transports, and Lt. A.O. Vorse splashes a bomber. The Americans claim more kills than Japanese planes present. The Japanese put a hit on destroyer Mugford's afterdeck house, knocking out two guns and killing 19 men.

The Americans lose half their Wildcats that fight in the battle, but the Japanese lose five Bettys, nine Val dive bombers, and two Zeros, for one nonfatal hit on a destroyer. The Japanese also lose the services of a 60-kill ace, Sakai.

While all this is going on, the Japanese Navy is also active. The soft-spoken intellectual Rear Adm. Gunichi Mikawa, 53, is fast asleep at his flag quarters in Rabaul when Tulagi is invaded, and his staff communicator, Capt. Teraoka Hadai, rushes in, trembling and shocked, to deliver the bad news. The groggy Mikawa reads the message, "Tulagi under severe bombardment from the air and sea. Enemy task force sighted. One battleship, two carriers, three cruisers, 15 destroyers, 30 to 40 transports." Mikawa bolts uprights, and snaps, "Wake the staff. Arrange for all charts and maps. Find out the disposition of our forces here and at Kavieng."

Mikawa, a veteran cruiser admiral, fires off a stream of orders. He hurls his aircraft (mentioned earlier) at Guadalcanal, diverts submarines to the area, and scrapes up 310 riflemen and machine gunners of the Sasebo Special Naval Landing Force, loads them on the transport Meiyo Maru, and sends them south. Finally, Mikawa summons his Cruiser Division 6, heavy cruisers Chokai, Aoba, Kinugasa, Furutaka, and Kako, back to Rabaul.

At 1 p.m. the big ships arrive in Rabaul, and Mikawa adds the light cruisers Tenryu and Yubari and the ancient destroyer Yunagito the mix. He boards his flagship Chokai at 2:30 and the force (which never gets a name until historians call it the Striking Force) heads to sea.

At 7:37, the still-anonymous force stumbles over the US submarine S-38 off Cape St. George. The antique submarine fires off a radio contact report of three cruisers and two destroyers on course 140. The message does not get to Turner until 7 a.m. the next day.

Meanwhile, in the Aleutians, 10 US ships, including the cruisers USS Indianapolis, Honolulu, St. Louis, and Nashville, find Kiska in the fog at 7:30 p.m., and look for targets. The cruisers shoot off their seaplanes, who run into Japanese Rufe seaplane fighters (the seaplane version of the Zero). One is shot down, one takes 167 bullet holes, the rest flee into the clouds. RADM Poco Smith, commanding the US force, exasperated, is ready to give up when the Japanese reveal their location by opening fire with coastal guns. Incensed, Smith forms his ships into line astern and cuts loose from five miles out with every gun he can muster. He runs out of HE ammunition in seven minutes. Irritated, he recovers two of his floatplanes (the rest flee to Umnak) and retires into the fog, having only suffered chipped paint for damage.

Smith's bombardment digs a spectacular great hole in Kiska's tundra half a mile from the nearest targets of importance. Total casualties are two Japanese soldiers, two landing barges, and three wrecked (already) seaplanes. The Air Force calls the shelling, "The Navy's Spring Plowing." LTGEN Simon Bolivar Buckner, the Army's top officer in Alaska, has even harsher language for the useless shelling.

The British commence forming the Palestine Regiment, to be made of Palestinian Jews. This force will be the nucleus of the Jewish Brigade in Italy.

Strafer Gott flies to Cairo in his Bombay transport to take over the 8th Army. Enroute his aircraft is jumped by German Me 109 fighters, and shot down. Gott escapes, but he runs back into the burning aircraft to save other passengers, and is killed by the strafing Messerschmidts. Only five of the 18 persons aboard the plane survive.

Churchill needs another man. His first thought is Henry Maitland Wilson, but Brooks suggests Montgomery. Churchill does so with reluctance.

The Nazis deport 987 Jews from the Netherlands to Auschwitz. More than half are gassed on arrival.

In Berlin, Hermann Goering, wearing his hat as head of the Reich Four-Year Plan and Economic Plenipotentiary, meets with his top staff. The topic is slave labor. There are plenty of sources in Europe, but the supply of Jewish slaves is running short. In Byelorussia, "only a few Jews are still alive. Tens of thousands were eliminated." Goering notes the point and moves on.

Two days before Yeremenko's deadline to set up his HQ, the 4th Panzer Army caves in 64th Army's left flank from the south of Stalingrad and comes within 19 miles of the city. Disaster looms.

Yeremenko can expect no help from Gordov's Stalingrad Front, which is fully committed against 6th Army.

Panic breaks out in the city. Military police and NKVD troops force civilian refugees off the roads, while an improvised force of tanks, AT guns, and Katyusha rocket launchers are rushed down the road to face Hoth's panzers at Abanerovo. Fierce tank clashes follow.

Even so, German morale is high. A German soldier diaries, "Our company is tearing ahead. Today I wrote to Elsa, 'We shall soon see each other. All of us feel that the end, Victory, is near.'"

Refugee German scientist Klaus Fuchs puts up his right hand in England and takes the oath of allegiance to King George VI, becoming a British subject. Fuchs is working on the "Tube Alloys" project, Britain's portion of the Anglo-American atomic bomb research. He is also secretly passing on the project's secrets to the Soviet Union, which, despite the Grand Alliance, remains an act of espionage.

August 8th, 1942...Six of the eight German saboteurs caught in the bungled "Operation Pastorius" are executed shortly after noon in the federal electric chair. Two of them, including George John Dasch, who had testified for the government in the trial, have their sentences commuted. Dasch gets 30 years, his partner, Ernest Burger, gets life.

In 1948, the two spies are deported to Germany, after five years and eight months in prison. Burger gives an interview blasting Dasch for causing the deaths of their six colleagues. Dasch, vilified in Germany as a traitor, tries to get a pardon from Washington and to return to the US. He fails in both. In 1959, he writes his version of events in a book that sells poorly.

German panzers drive into Piatigorsk, and fight it out with Soviet political police and a women's signal detachment. German troops short on fuel stumble into a convoy of Soviet American- made trucks loaded with gasoline, and keep on going.

The Vichy French make the possession of explosives a death- penalty offense. The Vichy French obviously had nothing better to do.

Churchill sends a letter to Auchinleck telling the general that he has been sacked and appointed command of the Middle East. One of Churchill's officers delivers the letter, feeling "as if I were just going to murder and unsuspecting friend." Auchinleck reads the letter with typical impassivity.

By dawn, the Japanese defenders of Tulagi have been defeated. Only three surrender. 347 perish. The Americans lose 45 dead and 76 wounded.

On Gavutu and Tanambogo, the Marines make a landing at 10:15, and run into snipers, machine gun fire, and misdropped bombs from American planes. Marine Capt. Harry L. Torgerson leads from the front, and a TNT explosion shreds his pants.

At 4;15, the Marines land two M-3 Stuart tanks on Tanambogo, to attack Hill 121. The Japanese counterattack with flaming rags and gasoline, stuffing them in one tank's hatches, killing two of the three-man crew. The sole survivor crawls out of the hatch, and the Japanese severely beat him. Marines surrounding this scene alertly open fire and kill 42 Japanese. By dusk, the islands are in American hands, for a loss of 70 dead and 87 wounded. Japanese fatalities are 516. The Americans take 20 PoWs, 15 of them Korean laborers.

On Rabaul at 8 a.m., the Japanese hurl 27 Bettys and 15 Zeros at Guadalcanal. The aircraft pass over Aravia, a small mountain village in northern Bougainville, where Coastwatcher Jack Read is huddled over his teleradio.

Read, 36, has been in New Guinea public service for 12 years, and Bougainville since November. He is glued to his set, fascinated with the American carrier jargon, when he hears the Japanese bombers fly over. He flashes "45 bombers now going southeast" to Turner, who gets the message at 10:40 a.m., and sounds general quarters.

The Japanese avoid American F4Fs by a wide sing to the north and then a diving turn to emerge at treetop level over Florida island. 23 Bettys roar in, but heavy flak splashes one Zero and three Bettys. The bombers, following Organization No. 5, swoop in at 20 to 40 feet off the deck, fine against inaccurate Dutch anti-aircraft guns of January, but dangerous against radar- controlled 20mm guns of August. (HMS Prince of Wales had only seven when she was sunk, each transport at Guadalcanal alone has 12). Japanese planes, lacking armor and self-sealing fuel tanks, do flaming pinwheels into the sea. One Betty torpedoes the destroyer Jarvis, killing 15, and another crashes into the transport George F. Elliot at 12:03. The transport erupts into flame, and the crew abandons ship. At least 17 die. The destroyer Ellet scuttles the transport later, but the burning hulk acts as a torch all day and all night. Only five of 23 Bettys stagger back to Rabaul. Two Zeros also fail to return. American air losses are nil.

Ashore, Vandegrift orders his Marines to reach the Lunga River. 1st Marines hacks through to the lower slopes of Mt. Austen. 5th Marines encounters enemy fire at 3 p.m. at Kukum, and the 1st Marines finally reach the airfield at 4.

The Marines are amazed to find intact three AA batteries, ammo dumps, radio stations, a refrigerating plant, an air compressor plant, vehicles, stacks of supplies - most of it intact. The Japanese have left behind their personal gear, cups and bowls of rice, meat stew and prunes at their mess tables. Marines find some beds neatly made, some dishevelled. Canteens, mosquito nets, hats, shirts, and Japanese two-toed boots lie everywhere. The most important discoveries are a copy of the current version of the Japanese naval code -- JN-25C -- and an early Japanese radar set. Turner has this loaded on a transport for further study.

So far the Marine have done their job, seizing their objectives, but have run into trouble with command, coordination, poor maps, worse radios, and a lack of manpower to unload supplies on Red Beach.

Dawn finds Mikawa's anonymous force of cruisers heading south. Mikawa eats rice and drinks tea, before launching his seaplanes for a recce mission. As his ships sail on, and no word comes from the seaplanes, he paces the bridge with nervous tension. Mikawa is eager to demonstrate the value of surface ships in night actions. At 10 a.m., Aoba's plane reports an enemy battleship and four cruisers north of Guadalcanal. 30 minutes later, the plane reports 15 transports.

At 10:26 an Australian Hudson recce plane turns up. Mikawa orders a 90-degree turn to spoof the plane, which waddles off at 10:36. At 11 a.m., another Hudson turns up. Mikawa thinks it's the same one. Chokai fires a few shells. The plane flees. Mikawa figures he's been spotted. But no enemy planes show up.

Mikawa heads on south. Aoba's plane returns and reports two split Allied groups, north and south of Savo Island. At 4:42, Mikawa signals his battle plan. His force will penetrate the passage south of Savo in single line, torpedo the enemy units off Guadalcanal, sweep toward Tulagi to attack with gunfire and torpedoes, and withdraw by the passage north of Savo. The force will sail in elementary line-astern formation with 1,300 yards between them, attacking at 1:30 a.m. Banzai.

At 6:30, all ships jettison topside flammables. 12 minutes later, Mikawa blinkers his ships, "In the finest tradition of the Imperial Navy we shall engage the enemy in night battle. Every man is expected to do his utmost."

At noon, Mikawa recalls the Meiyo Maru convoy, as it's too small to get through to Guadalcanal. Even so, just after midnight, Cdr. Henry G. Munson's submarine USS S-38, a leaky 1920s relic, stumbles on the Meiyo Maru and sends her and 373 men of the Sasebo SNLF to the bottom.

S-38, like the other aging American S-class boats, is fitted with older Mark X torpedoes, that work better than the new Mark XIVs. Mark Xs are equipped with simple contact exploders that work. Mark XIVs, armed with magnetic exploders, often run too deep, fail to arm, and either explode too soon or too late, driving American submariners to distraction and to write angry reports. By 1943, the Mark XIV torpedo is replaced with something more effective.

The American reconnaissance system to cover the approaches to Guadalcanal is a complex and overlapping net with numerous holes. Yet Mikaway is spotted anyway. The first Australian Hudson to do so neither makes a contact report nor shadows the force. He instead returns to Milne Bay in New Guinea, drinks his tea, and then reports two destroyers, three cruisers and two seaplane tenders heading south. The second Hudson doesn't report until his return, either, and reports two heavy and two light cruisers, and no course or speed. These two messages do not go out over the American "Fox" or "Bells" system, but plod slowly across numerous chains of communication, not reaching Turner until 7 p.m.

By then Turner is facing a greater problem. At 6:07 p.m., Vice Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher, commanding the carrier force, sends a message to Turner that will wreck the former's reputation. "Fighter plane strength reduced from 99 to 78. In view of large number of enemy torpedo planes and bombers in this area, I recommend the immediate withdrawal of my carriers. Request tankers be sent forward immediately as fuel running low."

30 minutes later, Fletcher's carriers turn to course 140 degrees, to take them away from Guadalcanal. The decision infuriates commanders and historians alike. Fletcher at the moment has one less fighter on hand than he did at Midway. His ships have plenty of fuel...Saratoga's gauges show 1,149,000 gallons aboard. Destroyers are between 42 and 75 percent full, cruisers 50 percent full, and carrier Enterprise, with the least fuel, can operate for three more days.

Critics later blast Fletcher for being overly cautious and failing to consult with his other admirals before withdrawing. "Always fuelling," sighs Samuel Eliot Morison, a fierce Fletcher critic.

Fletcher's answer, years later, is that he has three of America's only four carriers in the Pacific on hand, and regards their preservation as more important than any of his other duties.

But that evening, historians must wait. Fletcher's withdrawal puts Turner in dire straits, namely Ironbottom Sound. Without air cover, his transports are easy meat for Japanese aircraft and ships. His information on Mikawa's task force is sketchy at best, and says it is heading north. He decides the Japanese ships are seaplane tenders bound for Santa Isabel Island, going to set up a seaplane base. Either way, Turner will have to withdraw the transports before they fully unload Vandegrift's supplies.

Turner summons Vandegrift and Rear Adm. Victor A.C. Crutchley, commanding the cruiser force, to meet on McCawley.

Vandegrift comes by whaleboat. Crutchley is on his flagship HMAS Australia. He has divided his force into two groups. The southern group is his, with the Australian cruiser Canberra and the American cruiser Chicago. These three ships have operated together as a team for months. To the east, as a backstop, is Rear Adm. Norman Scott's two light cruisers, USS San Juan and HMAS Hobart. To the north are the cruisers USS Vincennes, USS Astoria, and USS Quincy. None have operated together before. Capt. Frederick Riefkohl of Vincennes, as senior officer present, heads this task force. Crutchley has not issued instructions on how his ships shall fight, he has not exercised his ships, and his only battle plan is to have these two groups of three cruisers patrol north and south of Savo Island in circles, to ambush any incoming Japanese ships.

When Crutchley gets the word to meet, he heads to McCawley in his flagship, Australia, and appoints Capt. Howard D. Bode of Chicago to take over his group. Bode, last in line, does not swap places with Canberra. Crutchley does not tell Riefkohl of these moves. Crutchley has not slept in 48 hours, which may explain the VC recipient's lackadaisical behavior. When he clambers aboard the "Wacky Mac," he is ready to pass out.

The five cruisers, with no flag officer leading them, continue to sail back and forth, doing a 90-degree turn to starboard every 30 minutes, their exhausted crews sleeping, Condition Yoke set.

On McCawley, the three flag officers engage in some woozy palaver, all haggard from the stress of two days of no sleep and combat action. Over hot coffee and late dinner, Turner explains his decision to withdraw the transports, and agree that the ships spotted by earlier air patrols are "seaplane tenders." But the officers are too tired to make a firm decision. They decide to postpone it until morning, and look hard at how much supplies have been unloaded. The problems caused at Aotea Quay are now multiplying.

On the other side of the figurative hill, Mikawa's "seaplane tenders" are racing in. Mikawa goes to his sea cabin for a cup of tea and to pray for victory, while his men write last letters home.

At 11:10 p.m. he shoots off his seaplanes, and sends his best lookouts to the crow's nests. Japanese lookouts, picked for their visual acuity, are actually superior in range to American radar.

At 11:30 p.m. the McCawley conference breaks up, and Crutchley stumbles onto Australia. Rather than order his equally exhausted crews to do night maneuvering to get back to the formation, he orders the ship to stay in the transport screen until 5 a.m. But he doesn't pass that on to Turner or anyone else. Then he goes to sleep. The only admiral awake at Guadalcanal is Mikawa.

At that moment, his ships hit the first of a series of sporadic squalls in the hot, oppressive air, and 30-knot winds. The radio blares a report from the seaplanes, "Three enemy cruisers patrolling off the eastern entrance to Savo Sound!" Mikawa orders his ships to go to 26 knots.

At 11:45, the screening destroyer Ralph Talbot, patrolling the entrance to the sound with the destroyer USS Blue, spots one of Mikawa's seaplanes. She broadcasts over Talk Between Ships radio, "Warning! Warning! Plane over Savo headed east." The news never gets to Turner. Blue, Vincennes, and Quincy get the message, but only on the destroyer Patterson is it brought to the bridge.

At midnight on the dot, Mikawa sends his crews to battle stations. Japanese Sailors, some of them only wearing g-strings, man their torpedoes and gun turrets. The Americans are completely asleep.