page_title: Guadalcanal Campaign
section_title: Battleship bombing of Henderson Field
hierarchical_section_title: Guadalcanal Campaign / Battleship bombing of Henderson Field
caption_attribution_description: English: Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Haruna undergoes trials after reconfiguration from a battlecruiser to a battleship.
context_page_description: The Guadalcanal Campaign was fought between August 7, 1942, and February 9, 1943, in the Pacific theatre of World War II. This campaign, which was a decisive and strategically important campaign of World War II, was fought on the ground, at sea, and in the air between Allied forces against Imperial Japanese forces. The fighting took place on and around the island of Guadalcanal in the southern Solomon Islands, and was the first major offensive launched by Allied forces against the Empire of Japan.
  On August 7, 1942, Allied forces, mainly from the United States, started landings on the islands of Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Florida in the southern Solomons with the aim to make supply routes between the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand safer.
  The Battle of Guadalcanal was one of the first long campaigns in the Pacific.
context_section_description: Even after the U.S. victory off Cape Esperance, the Japanese continued with plans for a large attack later in October. The Japanese decided to risk not using fast warships to deliver their men and supplies to the island.
  On 13 October, a convoy of six cargo ships with eight destroyers left the Shortland Islands for Guadalcanal. The convoy carried 4,500 troops from the 16th and 230th Infantry Regiments, some naval marines, two batteries of heavy artillery, and one company of tanks.
  To protect the approaching convoy from attack by CAF aircraft, Yamamoto sent two battleships from Truk to bombard Henderson Field. At 01:33 on 14 October, Kongō and Haruna, protected by one light cruiser and nine destroyers, reached Guadalcanal and fired at Henderson Field from a distance of 16,000 metres (17,500 yd). Over the next one hour and 23 minutes, the two battleships fired 973 14-inch (356 mm) shells into the Lunga perimeter, most of them falling in the area of the airfield. Many of the shells were fragmentation shells, designed to destroy land targets. The bombing heavily damaged both runways, burned almost all of the available airplane fuel, destroyed 48 of the CAF's 90 aircraft, and killed 41 men, including six CAF pilots. The battleship force then returned to Truk.
  In spite of the heavy damage, Henderson soldiers were able to fix one of the runways within a few hours. Seventeen SBDs and 20 Wildcats at Espiritu Santo were flown to Henderson and U.S. Army and Marine transport aircraft began to transport airplane gasoline to Guadalcanal.
  Now that the US was aware of the approach of the large Japanese convoy, the US tried to think of a way to attack the convoy before it could reach Guadalcanal. Using fuel drained from destroyed aircraft and from a hidden fuel tank in the jungle, the CAF attacked the convoy twice on the 14th, but caused no damage.
  The Japanese convoy reached Guadalcanal at midnight on 14 October and began unloading. Throughout the day of 15 October, CAF aircraft from Henderson bombed and machine-gunned the unloading convoy, destroying three of the cargo ships. The remainder of the convoy departed that night, having unloaded all of the troops and about two-thirds of the supplies and equipment.
  Several Japanese heavy cruisers also bombed Henderson on the nights of 14 and 15 October, destroying a few additional CAF aircraft, but not damaging the airfield.
caption: Japanese battleship Haruna
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