Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal

by James D. Hornfischer

  According to Admiral Kinkaid, a close friend and classmate, “He was not what you would describe as a ‘military figure.’ He was without the straight, taut carriage that that description would imply. Lee walked pigeon-toed and was hard of sight. At Annapolis he fretted the physical examination, memorizing the first two lines of the eye chart.”

  A native of Owen County, Kentucky, he was known back home as “Mose” but would acquire a more worldly nickname, “Ching,” for his fondness for the Asiatic theater. According to Ernest M. Eller, a subordinate of Lee’s at the Fleet Training Division, “He looked like an Arkansas farmer, a little like Will Rogers. He had a wrinkled, freckled face. You wouldn’t have known he was very astute until you talked to him a while and learned what he knew.… He had a very mathematical, ingenious mind, and at the same time he talked very simply and very easily.”

  Lee matched his fluency in the language of science with a generous dose of Appalachian common sense. Early in his career, a destroyer he commanded suffered from a rat infestation. Tired of seeing the rodents scurrying across the wardroom’s overhead beams, Lee fashioned a trap consisting of a solenoid mechanism and an armature attached to a meat cleaver. Delighted with the contraption, his officers diverted themselves with this minor blood sport, competing to see whose reflexes were quick enough to pull the lever and chop the stowaway rodents in two.

  Lee’s understanding of gunnery was world-class. In 1907, at age nineteen, he became the only American at the time to win both the U.S. National High Power Rifle and Pistol championships in the same year. In April 1914, during the U.S. intervention in Vera Cruz, Mexico, his landing force from the battleship New Hampshire came under fire. Wielding a borrowed rifle, Lee assumed a sitting position out in the open, drawing fire to locate enemy muzzle flashes, and killed three enemy snipers at long range. After such a performance in combat, the Olympics were hardly a test of nerves. At the age of thirty-two, he was a member of the U.S. rifle team that won seven medals, including five golds, at the 1920 Antwerp summer games.

  Lee understood the powerful weapons of a battleship not as specialized naval instruments, but as extensions of the universal laws of ballistics that he had wholly absorbed by the time he took command. Most surface officers were obsessive students of gunnery, but few adapted their expertise to an age of new technology. Lee did so by conducting fire-control drills under odd conditions, sometimes requiring turrets be manned by relief crews instead of the first team, and throwing unexpected twists at them, randomly cutting out electrical connections to the mounts and scrambling their links to the fire-control radars, forcing his men to rely on backup systems or local control. Afterward, he gathered with Captain Glenn B. Davis; his gunnery officer, Commander H. T. Walsh; and a coterie of young officers, where his principal theorist, Ed Hooper, would run through the mathematics late into the night. “His conversation was so loaded with calculi and abelian equations,” a historian wrote, “that sometimes Commander Walsh and Captain Davis would begin to look slightly helpless.” That said a lot, seeing as Davis had served as the “experimental officer” at the Dahlgren Naval Proving Grounds, testing guns, armor, powder, and projectiles, and later served as chief of the gun section at the Bureau of Ordnance.

  Lee knew that the key to victory lay not only in terms of engineering or mathematics, but in a crew’s ability to adjust psychologically to the unexpected. Said Lloyd Mustin, “It doesn’t take long to learn these things, a few hours. Learn the basics in a few hours and then start thinking in those terms day in and day out. Not everyone seemed able or willing to take the time.” Willis Lee, like Norman Scott, took the time. He worked endlessly, late into the night, before unwinding with a few pages from a detective novel and falling asleep in his clothes a few hours before breakfast.

  News of an inbound battleship force commanded Lee’s attention. Late in the afternoon on November 14, he received a report that the submarine Trout had sighted large enemy units, southbound about 150 miles north of Guadalcanal. The Tokyo Express, though operating with changing rosters of ships and commanders, was keeping to its well-established timetable of midnight arrivals. While the Cactus Air Force was preoccupied with hammering Tanaka’s transports that afternoon, Kondo’s heavy surface force—the Kirishima joined by the heavy cruisers Atago and Takao—had avoided daylight air attack. It would be up to Lee’s surface task force to stop them. Halsey had given him complete freedom of action after his arrival in the waters off Guadalcanal.

  Japanese search planes had sighted Lee when he was still a hundred miles south of Guadalcanal, but failed to recognize his principal vessels as battleships. They reported Task Force 64 as composed of two cruisers and four destroyers. Later Kondo dismissed a report of a carrier and possibly some battleships some fifty miles south of the island, on grounds that they were not in position to intercept him that night. Like the men in Tanaka’s transport force, Kondo was confident that the bombardment by the cruisers Suzuya and Maya the previous night had put down the Guadalcanal aviators. He had little idea what was in store for him.

  As Task Force 64 approached the island’s western shore, the captain of the Washington, Glenn Davis, walked into the chart house and pressed the button on the ship’s intercom. “This is the captain speaking. We are going into an action area. We have no great certainty what forces we will encounter. We might be ambushed. A disaster of some sort may come upon us. But whatever it is we are going into, I hope to bring all of you back alive. Good luck to all of us.” After the epic dustups of the previous two nights, the men on the islands around Savo Sound had learned to expect fireworks after dark. Willis Lee slugged north toward collision, aiming to oblige them.

  SAVO SOUND WAS QUIET. Off the port bows of Lee’s ships, the skies and calm waters were gently lit by flashes on the horizon—the gunfire from Tanaka’s transport group as it resisted the last wave of aircraft from Henderson Field. As night fell, a quarter moon reclined overhead and the orange glow of fires warmed the western horizon, the fires of burning ships—trophies for the busy pilots of the Cactus Air Force.

  None of this soothed the battleship sailors as they cruised at eighteen knots, prows easing through the sea. The sight of land nearby kept their nerves on edge. Appreciating the need for operating space, Lee had arranged his destroyers—the Walke leading the Benham, Preston, and Gwin—nearly three miles ahead of the battleships, which themselves were separated by nearly a mile. The men in the big ships craved sea room. “All we can do is trust in God and our surveys, and the surveys are not much good,” wrote a South Dakota chaplain, James V. Claypool. He tried to play chess with another officer but found he couldn’t concentrate. He read from a book titled How to Keep a Sound Mind but didn’t get very far.

  Lee checked in with Guadalcanal’s radio station, known as “Cactus Control,” for the latest dope. His own radio department had heard Japanese voices on the air, but couldn’t translate them for want of an interpreter on board. Indeed, the intelligence setup was one of the continuing weaknesses of the SOPAC command. No reliable coordination yet existed between the commanders on the island and the naval forces they relied on for defense. Neither Captain Greenman, the “Commander of Naval Activities,” nor General Vandegrift was regularly apprised of the movements of friendly ships. As Lee awaited a reply from Cactus Control, there came a mysterious dispatch from an unidentified sender—one that Captain DuBose of the Portland, still moored to a palm tree in the shadows of Tulagi, would have understood all too well.

  “There go two big ones, but I don’t know whose they are.” The intercepted words belonged to the skipper of a PT boat, lurking in shadow.

  Order of Battle—The Battleship Night Action

  (November 14–15, 1942)

  U.S.

  TASK FORCE 64

  Rear Adm. Willis Lee

  Washington (BB) (flagship)

  South Dakota (BB)

  Walke (DD)

  Benham (DD)

  Preston (DD)

  Gwin (DD)

 
Japan

  ADVANCED FORCE

  Vice Adm. Nobutake Kondo

  Bombardment Unit

  Vice Adm. Kondo

  Kirishima (BB)

  Atago (CA) (flagship)

  Takao (CA)

  Screening Unit

  Rear Adm. Susumu Kimura

  Nagara (CL)

  Shirayuki (DD)

  Hatsuyuki (DD)

  Teruzuki (DD)

  Samidare (DD)

  Inazuma (DD)

  Asagumo (DD)

  Sweeping Unit

  Rear Adm. Shintaro Hashimoto

  Sendai (CL)

  Uranami (DD)

  Shikinami (DD)

  Ayanami (DD)

  Reinforcement Unit

  Rear Adm. Raizo Tanaka

  Four transports, nine destroyers

  (Photo Credit: 36.1)

  Lee raised Guadalcanal again and warned them off. “Refer your big boss about Ching Lee; Chinese, catchee? Call off your boys!” The warning seemed to register. Another episode like the near torpedoing of the Portland would have had dire consequences for the mosquito boat drivers.

  By ten thirty, Lee was cutting a clockwise arc about twenty miles north of Savo Island. With his sweeping radar beams revealing no contacts, he passed near the grave site of the Hiei, over the wrecks of the Vincennes, the Quincy, and the Astoria, then reentered Savo Sound, to cruise over the seafloor where the Atlanta lay. As the task force came around to a westerly heading and steamed toward Cape Esperance, the navigators and helmsmen of the task force noticed that their magnetic compass needles were twitching and spinning. Magnetic interference was straightforward enough an explanation. Some thought the dead ships of Ironbottom Sound were reaching out with an inscrutable message.

  37

  The Gun Club

  FAITHFULLY MOTORING IN CIRCLES AS IT CAST ITS TEN-CENTIMETER microwaves, the Washington’s SG radar spied the enemy ships to the north of northwest, as they left the cover of Savo Island making twenty-one knots. The radars watched the enemy vessels for several minutes at a range of eighteen thousand yards, sharing their data on human wavelengths via the PPI scope, and to the mechanical fire-control computer that delivered calculus to the gun turrets, before losing track of the contacts because of interference from land.

  The radars were sketching a picture, definite in range and bearing if indistinct in composition, of two groups of enemy ships north of Savo Island. Admiral Lee and Captain Davis had designed the Washington’s fire-control procedures around the fact that this type of data was essential to everything. They made sure that their radar plot officer did not operate the traditional way, communicating through a sailor who served as his “talker.” Instead, he was wired up with his own headset to speak directly to the gunnery officer, the main battery plotting room officer, and the trainers in each of the gun director stations, all at the same time. In this way, he could describe the appearance of the scope and designate targets directly to all stations with a need to know, with less confusion.

  With a Philip Morris hanging from his lips, Willis Lee said to Davis, “Well, stand by, Glenn, here they come.” In every compartment of the Washington, an electronic bell gave two short rings, signaling a warning that a salvo was imminent. Hydraulic hoists trundled twenty-seven-hundred-pound projectiles up from the magazines to the turrets. The powder cars whisked up silk cylindrical bags filled with explosive propellant. The projectiles were eased mechanically onto the heavy bronze breech-loading trays and the powder bags laid in behind them, as many as eight per load depending on the range to the target. After the breech had been rammed and locked, the gun captain hit the ready light indicating the gun was ready to fire.

  Admiral Kondo had arrayed his force in three groups. Consisting of the Kirishima and the cruisers Atago and Takao, his Bombardment Unit was his centerpiece. Ahead of those large ships went his Screening Unit, the light cruiser Nagara leading six destroyers, commanded by Rear Admiral Susumu Kimura. Off to the east steamed a separate Sweeping Unit made up of the light cruiser Sendai and three destroyers under Rear Admiral Shintaro Hashimoto. It was this latter group that Lee’s radars detected first as the Washington and South Dakota plunged along on their westerly heading, tracing a course south of Savo Island. On the radar scope, the Washington’s radar plot officer watched the light echoes separate from the mass of Savo Island, “then separate into ‘drops’ similar to the effect of planes taking off from a carrier.”

  The Washington’s turrets trained to starboard and fixed on Hashimoto’s group as it approached on the east side of Savo Island, sliding aft relative to the battleships as they moved west. At 11:13 p.m., when Main Battery Control reported to Lee that the narrowcasting fire-control radars had found targets and were yielding ranges, Lee hailed Gatch over the TBS and gave the South Dakota permission to open fire. It was not until the enemy vessels were spotted visually, at 18,500 yards, that the Washington, followed closely by the South Dakota, let loose. For the second time in three nights, Savo Sound erupted in thunder and light.

  Ensign Robert B. Reed of the Preston watched the mighty flagship astern. As the corona of the Washington’s first broadside faded, he could follow the nine red tracers as they flew away, “grouped together for all the world like a flight of airplanes,” he said. Reed watched the salvo disappear up into the low-hanging clouds, then reemerge ten miles downrange. When the fire-control radar received echoes that showed the first salvo had landed “over,” beyond its target, the plotting officer checked his headphone chinstrap—the concussion of the big guns sent more than a few headsets clattering to the deck—then instructed the gunnery officer, Commander H. T. Walsh, to “spot down,” lowering the elevation of the gun. The second salvo, fired forty-five seconds later, registered a “straddle.” The officers watching the radars knew their fire was on target when they saw the radar image of the target flicker at the moment of impact.

  After the two battleships commenced fire, radio snoopers in the South Dakota heard a cacophony of Japanese voices, “excited and very numerous.” They counted at least thirteen stations on this frequency at one time. Though the South Dakota’s main battery was hamstrung, with just four guns working in her two forward triple turrets, she continued her cannonade until her forward turrets, swinging aft to remain on target, bumped up against the stops that kept her from firing into her own superstructure. The after turret, with no such restraints, kept firing, however, and as it trained straight aft the wash of fire from her barrels set fire to her two floatplanes, fantail-mounted on catapults. The small bonfires raged briefly before the next salvo blew them right off the ship.

  The light cruiser Sendai and the destroyers Shikinami and Uranami were the objects of this large-caliber fury. Though Hashimoto’s small squadron was engulfed in that maelstrom, not one of his ships was actually hit. The Sweeping Unit commander, the first naval officer to take fire from sixteen-inch guns, ordered his captains to lay a smoke screen—of little benefit against a radar-guided foe—and reverse course to seek other opportunities to “sweep.” Surrounded by towering splashes, the captains of the Japanese ships, making smoke, beat a high-speed retreat.

  The Washington’s secondary battery cracked ferociously away as well, with the two forward five-inch mounts shooting at the main battery’s targets, and the next two mounts aft firing on a cruiser that appeared to be illuminating the South Dakota. The after dual five-inch mount lofted star shells. The intense flash of the five-inch fusillades blinded his main battery director operators and turret captains as they looked out through their night scopes. But fighting by eyesight was the old way of war. Now the human senses were an auxiliary system. “Radar has forced the Captain or OTC to base a greater part of his actions in a night engagement on what he is told rather than what he can see,” Lee would write. Coolly deciding which directors would control which turrets, and switching them as the geometry of the engagement shifted, Willis Lee became the first naval commander to manage a gunfight mostly by radar remote control.

 
; Using the picture his radar provided him, Lee could see his four destroyers ahead and monitor the shifting geometry of the landmasses around him. He had a fine view of the naval landscape. What he did not have, owing to an oversight in ship design, was an electronic picture of the situation to his rear. With his radar transmitters bolted to the front side of the tower foremast, he could register no returns through a sixty-degree arc astern. The South Dakota was in that blind spot. Without visual contact with the other battleship, he was susceptible to the same uncertainty that clouded the view of Scott and Callaghan in the previous surface engagements in Savo Sound. Lee could no longer be completely sure that large targets on his radar were hostile.

  Lee’s battleships were the first ships that night to make their powerful presence felt, but in short order the destroyers in his van were grappling with the enemy—and suffering the consequences of the collision. At about 11:30 p.m., the lead vessel, the Walke, located a target on her starboard beam at fifteen thousand yards. It was a lone enemy ship, the destroyer Ayanami, which had strayed from Hashimoto’s formation and was winding a course west of Savo Island, alone. As the ship closed on their starboard hand, the Walke opened fire with her five-inch guns. Five minutes later, lookouts in Commander Max Stormes’s Preston, third in line, spotted the Nagara ahead, leading four destroyers of the Screening Unit, and opened fire on her at seventy-five hundred yards. The Walke and the Benham, Preston, and Gwin turned their fire on these ships ahead.

  The Walke’s captain, Thomas E. Fraser, had a hard time seeing his target, the Ayanami, given how closely the enemy destroyer was hugging Savo’s shore. His radar could see the target only when it was far enough from land to return a separate echo. The Ayanami’s captain had no plans to allow that to happen. From the cover of the dark shoreline, around eleven thirty, he fired torpedoes at the American van and reversed course away from the action. The torpedoes were on their way. Enemy gunfire was faster in arriving.