aul tended to the small number of operational planes that would be launched in attempt to take out supply ships in order to cut off the Marines. The Japanese torpedo bombers came gliding in just 20 to 40 feet above the water keeping in sink with tactics that were successful earlier in the war, but instead this time they were met with much heavier weapons including 20mm antiaircraft machine guns. Plane after plane burst into flames and flailed into the sea. One bomber put a torpedo into the bow of the destroyer Jarvis causing severe damage, and one other managed to crash itself into the transport George S. Elliot. This caused a raging fire and the transport was soon scuttled in shallow water.Ashore, Vandegrift defined the line of the Lunga River as the Marine objective for August 8. Colonel Cates redirected one of his battalions towards the new objective, but it still found heavy going in the dense growth. Cates’s two remaining battalions retraced their path back to the shore and marched down the beach to the new line. The 5th Marines enjoyed much more favorable terrain, consisting of flat coconut plains along the shore, and after scattered resistance, had seized the airfield around 1600. The Marines Dor Brown 7were amazed to find that almost all of the Japanese supplies lay intact, and only a few bodies were left over from the naval bombardment. To this day it is still a mystery why the Japanese did not establish any form of organized resistance around the airfield. As the Marines settled in for their second night on Guadalcanal, the situation appeared well in hand, at least for the time being.When Vice Admiral Mikawa learned of Guadalcanal, he immediately pulled together every warship at his disposal and headed south from Rabaul. He arrived off of the southern shore of Savo Island in the small hours of the morning of August 9th. Ahead of him were several groups of allied warships, their crews exhausted from days of co...
