Crutchley had not drawn up a detailed battle plan. Meanwhile, Captain Riefkohl aboard Vincennes was not aware that Australia and Crutchley had left station. Anyway, Captain Riefkohl was tired and going to bed. So were all the other cruiser commanders.
Finally, the conference called by Turner served no purpose other than to reduce and confuse the Western Defense Force. Turner merely notified Vandegrift and Crutchley, at about eleven o’clock, that he was leaving in the morning. He showed them Fletcher’s message. Vandegrift understood. It was a fait accompli foreshadowed by the conference in the Fijis. He could also agree with Turner’s description of Fletcher’s flight.
“He’s left us bare ass!”4
Mikawa’s staff was gathered in flag plot, when, at nine o’clock, the great news came in from Rabaul: Sunk, two enemy heavy cruisers, one large cruiser, two destroyers and nine transports; left burning, one heavy cruiser and two transports. Gunichi Mikawa forgot yesterday’s exaggerations to believe today’s.
A few hours later he launched three float planes. They were to drop course flares to guide the fleet in and they were to scout the enemy and illuminate his position upon order. They would also have very little hope of ever getting back to their ships. But Japanese fliers—there were three men in each plane—expected to die for the Emperor. The catapults flashed and the planes disappeared in the night.
Gunichi Mikawa went to Chokai’s bridge with Commander Ohmae. They were supremely confident. They peered into the night to see every bridge streaming with the banners that marked them out in the dark. Keen-eyed lookouts could make out and identify every ship by its silhouette or the red or white rings painted around its funnels. All ships were sailing in line of battle: Chokai, Aoba with Admiral Goto aboard, Kinugasa, Furutaka, Kako, the lights Tenryu and Yubari, destroyer Yunagi bringing up the rear. No other navy had so prepared itself for night battle, Mikawa thought, remembering one of the Japanese Navy’s favorite sayings:
“The Americans build things well, but their blue eyes are no match for our dark eyes in night actions.”
One of the things Americans had built well was the sound tracking device installed aboard the submarine S-38, then submerged and tracking Meiyo Maru fourteen miles west of Cape St. George. At about midnight Commander Munson closed to one thousand yards. He fired two torpedoes. Both hit, and Meiyo Maru sank with fourteen officers and 328 men. Her five sister ships were recalled to Rabaul. The first attempt to reinforce Guadalcanal had failed and in the morning sharks were splashing among bloated bodies bound with belts of a thousand stitches.
Another thing well built by the Americans was the radar installed aboard destroyers Blue and Ralph Talbot. But this far-ranging electronic eye must also be understood to be effective. Neither Admiral Crutchley nor the destroyer commanders were aware that their search-legs needed to be coordinated. When these picket ships outside Savo stood at the extreme end of their search-legs they left between them a hole in the radar screen twenty-five miles wide. As August 8 neared its end Blue and Ralph Talbot sailed toward each other and then away from each other.
Aboard Talbot lookouts could see past Savo Island to their rear toward Tulagi, where George F. Elliott still burned. Her fire silhouetted some of the ships of the northern force. Over Savo there was a storm making up. Lightning flashes glimmered. The warm moist air was becoming more oppressive. Just before midnight Talbot’s lookouts heard motors overhead.
An airplane with flashing lights flew over them.
Astonished, Talbot’s watch gave immediate warning over the Talk Between Ships. But this and similar alarms were discounted by commanders who considered Mikawa’s scouts to be “friendly.” Would the Japanese dare show lights?
Blue and Talbot sailed on, together and apart, together and apart.
Before midnight the Japanese ships picked up the first marker lamp thirty miles off Cape Esperance. They were on course! Speed was increased to twenty-six knots. Shortly afterward a light was sighted in the direction of Tulagi. Admiral Goto reported that the sky was red over the island.
The ships steamed on…
On Chokai’s bridge Gunichi Mikawa stood erect and tense. His fingers whitened as he gripped the splinter-screen and peered ahead. At 12:40 A.M., August 9, hulking Savo Island loomed out of the darkness. Three minutes later a lookout sighted a ship steaming ahead from right to left. He had seen it on a black night at a distance of five miles.
It was Blue.
“Left rudder,” Mikawa ordered. “Slow to twenty-two knots.”5
Every gun, every eye in the fleet was trained on Blue. The slightest indication that she had seen, and Blue would be blown to bits. Thirty seconds… a minute… and Blue turned about! She reversed course and sailed back to Guadalcanal.
“Ship sighted, twenty degrees to port.”
Heads and guns again swiveled. It was Ralph Talbot, and she was sailing away.
“Right rudder,” Mikawa ordered. “Course one hundred and fifty.”
They went through the gap and the wolves were now in the pasture.
At 1:25 A.M. Mikawa gave the order: “Prepare to fire torpedoes.”
Destroyer Yunagi lost speed and dropped behind to keep an eye on Blue.
“Cruiser, seven degrees port,” a lookout cried, sighting a ship nine miles distant, illuminated in the glow of the burning Elliott. But it was too far north. Mikawa bored on, hunting for the southern force.
“Three cruisers, nine degrees starboard, moving to the right.”
There they were, the ones he wanted, in reality Chicago and Canberra with destroyer Patterson, and Mikawa gave the order: “Commence firing.” Giant steel fish leaped from loaded torpedo tubes and went hissing through the black water. “All ships attack,” Mikawa ordered, and great spiky guns fingered the sky.
At last Patterson had seen the enemy and was broadcasting the tocsin: WARNING! WARNING! STRANGE SHIPS ENTERING HARBOR!
It was too late. The Long Lances were flashing on their way and parachute flares came swaying down from Mikawa’s scout planes. Marines lying on their ponchos in Guadalcanal’s whispering blind rain forests were made suddenly fearful to see all made grotesque and ghostly about them by this wavering pale green light.
Out on the Bay black water glittered evilly under the flares. Chokai in the lead, the Japanese cruisers came on with bellowing guns.
A few seconds later a pair of Mikawa’s deadly steel fish finished their run and rammed with titanic thrust into the hull of Canberra. Twenty-four shells whistled in and broke her body. Her captain and her gunnery officer were killed. Fires started and spread. Canberra was done for and would have to be scuttled.
Another torpedo blew off the bow of Chicago. Captain Bode tumbled topside out of a sound sleep. He had a column of cruisers to shoot at, and he sailed out of the battle in the wrong direction. He also neglected to inform the northern force that he was under attack.
It took the Japanese only a few fiery minutes to blast and rout the southern force, and now Mikawa divided his column and turned left to take on the northern force.
Archer Vandegrift limped painfully below on the mine layer Southard. He had
