sailed away from the storm after the admiral had reformed his scattered formation. At half-past one, one of Amatsukaze’s lookouts cried, “Small island, 60 degrees to left.”
Commander Hara looked to his left and saw the black round silhouette of Savo Island.
“Prepare for gun and torpedo attack to starboard!” Hara shouted. “Gun range, three thousand meters. Torpedo firing angle, fifteen degrees.”7
Aboard Hiei, Admiral Abe was studying reports. General Hyakutake’s headquarters had radioed that the rain had cleared on Guadalcanal. Scout planes had taken off from Bougainville. There were still no reports of enemy ships. Confident and elated, Abe ordered Hiei and Kirishima to prepare for bombardment. Type-3 shells, thin-skinned 2000-pound projectiles each containing hundreds of incendiary bombs, were stacked on the decks around the 14-inch gun turrets.
A quarter hour later, from Hiei’s own masthead lookout came the frantic shout: “Four black objects ahead… look like warships. Five degrees to starboard. Eight thousand meters… unsure yet.”
From Hiei’s bridge came the cry, “Is eight thousand correct? Confirm.”
“It may be nine thousand, sir.”8
Hiroaki Abe was stunned. He had thought to bombard Guadalcanal unchallenged. He had piled the decks of his precious battleships with huge shells that needed but a single enemy hit to detonate them and turn Hiei and Kirishima into floating holocausts.
“Replace all those incendiaries with armor piercing,” he yelled. “Set turrets for firing forward.”9 Abe staggered to his chair and waited in agony. It would take at least ten minutes to change over.
And the range between forces was closing rapidly.
The Americans had sighted the Japanese and they had sighted them first.
Cushing at the head of the column had nearly collided with onrushing Yudachi and Harusame. Lieutenant Commander Edward Parker flashed the word and turned hard left to avoid collision. Behind him, his quick turn had piled up the American column.
“What are you doing?” Admiral Callaghan asked Atlanta, directly ahead of him.
“Avoiding our own destroyers,” came the reply.10
It was then that Hiei’s lookout sighted the Americans, then that the gunners and seamen aboard Hiei and Kirishima rushed from their battle stations to haul the vulnerable Type-3 shells below, stampeding the magazines, pushing and kicking each other to get at the armor-piercing shells lodged deep inside—and it was then that confusion in Admiral Callaghan’s column became compounded.
Excited voices began crackling over the Talk Between Ships. Reports of target bearings multiplied, but no one could tell if they were true bearings or merely relative to the reporting ships. No one knew which target to take under fire or when. From little Cushing still out in the lead came the voice of the destroyer leader, Commander Thomas Stokes, pleading, “Shall I let them have a couple of fish?”11
“Affirmative,” came the reply, but it was too late. Yudachi and Harusame had raced off into the darkness.
Four minutes had passed before Callaghan gave the order: “Stand by to open fire!” Another precious four minutes were to slip by before he bellowed, “Commence firing! Give ’em hell, boys!”
And then, with surprise squandered and opportunity lost, the Americans called upon their last resource— their valor—and went plunging full tilt toward the mastodonic foe.
One of the most furious sea fights in all history had begun.
Ashore on Guadalcanal, veterans of the campaign—Japanese as well as American—looked at each other in openmouthed, overawed incredulity. Never before had the iron tongues of midnight bayed with such a maniacal clanging. Out there giants clad in foot-thick steel were contending with one another, and never before had the thunder of their blows rolled so mightily over glistening black Bay water.
Scarlet star shells shot into the sky with the horrible beauty of hell. Searchlight beams licked out like great pale crisscrossing tongues. Ships in silhouette, big and small, plunged wildly toward each other, heeled away, dashed in and out of the smoke, blew up, blazed, vanished—or reappeared with spouts of white and orange gushing from their guns. The surface of Iron Bottom Bay was like polished black marble shot with the bubbles of torpedo wakes, swirled with the foaming trails of careening ships, splashed with the red or the yellow of burning vessels.
And above the roar and reverberation of the battle came the voice of Admiral Callaghan, crying, “We want the big ones, boys, we want the big ones!”
A trio of American destroyers was charging the big ones. They had broken through Abe’s screen and taken on great Hiei. Cushing in the van loosed a spread of torpedoes from a half-mile range, missing, but forcing Hiei to turn away. But then Cushing was illuminated in searchlight beams and enemy shells began to take her apart.
Laffey swept in so close that she narrowly avoided collision. Hiei’s pagoda-like masts swayed over the little American as she dashed past, pouring a torrent of automatic shellfire into Hiei’s decks. Fires broke out aboard the big Japanese. But then Hiei bellowed and little Laffey began to burn.
O’Bannon bored in last. She came in so close that Hiei could not depress her 14-inch guns to shoot at her. Great shells howled harmlessly over O’Bannon’s masts while her gunners raked the Japanese with guns aimed in the light of her flames. Then O’Bannon was gone, sheering sharply left to avoid burning Laffey, tossing life jackets to sailors struggling in the water as she passed.
Now San Francisco was battering Hiei. But the enemy battleship thundered back. Fourteen-inchers tore into San Francisco’s bridge to kill Admiral Callaghan and almost every American there.
Norman Scott was also dead. Atlanta had been the first to be caught in enemy searchlights. With her port bridge clearly illuminated, bracketing warships gave her her death blows and killed the hero of Cape Esperance.
Thereafter the fight became a melee. It was a free-for-all, ship-for-ship and shot for shot, with Japanese firing upon Japanese and American upon American. Every ship but Fletcher was hit. Barton blew up, Monssen sank, Cushing and Laffey were lost, and so were the cruisers Atlanta and Juneau—the latter finished off by a Japanese submarine as she tried to stagger home from battle.
But the Japanese were fleeing.
Mighty Kirishima, late to enter the battle, was already streaking north at the head of a general retirement.
Every one of Abe’s ships had been staggered. Yudachi was sinking and so was Akatsuki. Amatsukaze had been battered. A cascade of shells had fallen flashing around Commander Hara on his bridge, cutting down his men, blowing his executive officer over the side but leaving his legs behind, and so crippling the ship that Amatsukaze had to be steered manually.
Slowly, in the dawn lighting that glassy metallic sea, dragging herself past survivors lying burned, wounded, and dazed on their life rafts, or struggling to keep afloat in oily, debris-laden, shark-infested waters, little Amatsukaze made her way home.
Off his port bow Hara saw Hiei. The great ship was dying. She was almost dead in the water, crawling, with jammed rudder, in a wide aimless circle. Marine bombers from Henderson Field were already slashing at her. They shot down the eight Zeros flying cover above the battleship while Major Joe Sailer knocked out Hiei’s remaining antiaircraft turret with a well-planted bomb, after which
