US and Japanese carriers clash

24th August 1942: USS Saratoga planes sink the Ryujo in the Battle of the Eastern Solomons

USS Saratoga (CV-3) arrived at Pearl Harbor from the U.S. west coast, 6 June 1942. She departed the following day to join USS Enterprise (CV-6) and USS Hornet (CV-8) near Midway bringing replacement aircraft for those two ships whose air groups had been depleted during the Battle of Midway.

On the 7th August 1942 the Americans had made their first landings in the Pacific war on Guadalcanal. In doing so they seized the airfield that the Japanese were building and denied them a key asset in the Solomons island group. But the land campaign had begun even as the seas around the Solomons were still fiercely contested. So a series of naval battles in the area were to parallel the struggle on land that had begun with the Battle of the Tenaru on the 21st.

Henderson Field, Guadalcanal, photographed from a USS Saratoga (CV-3) plane in the latter part of August 1942, after U.S. aircraft had begun to use the airfield. The view looks about northwest, with the Lunga River running across the upper portion of the image. Iron Bottom Sound is just out of view at the top. Several planes are parked to the left, and numerous bomb and shell craters are visible.