Neptune's Inferno_ The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal - James D. Hornfischer [117]
20
The Weight of a War
AFTER THE GREAT CARRIER DUELS IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE YEAR, the obituary of the surface fleet had been prematurely written. Even if Scott’s victory did nothing to stop the earth-shattering bombardment that swallowed Henderson Field the next night—he parried the jab, but never saw the roundhouse coming—he had put a dent in the notion of Japanese invincibility and given some swagger to the American light forces.
Admiral Ghormley’s conservatism would continue to keep the battleship Washington chained to a carrier task force. But the Atlanta, which was designed for a defensive role in a carrier task force, was now thrown into Scott’s fighting line with her eight destroyer-sized turrets.
The Atlanta’s men understood the practical tradecraft of combat. The ship’s newsletter contained exhortations on various matters of fighting efficiency. During gunnery operations: cotton in the ears. At night on deck: all cigarettes out. At battle stations: watertight doors shut. When a sailor had nothing else to do, he could make a mental map of the locations of fire extinguishers. If your six hundred shipmates all improved the way they performed a single small task, the collective benefit could be large.
Lloyd Mustin, the deputy boss of the guns, knew what the score was against the Japanese fleet. He vented to his diary, “Call it what you will, their navy is exercising every function of control of the sea and every single resultant advantage is accruing to them.… The usual indecision, fear of a surface fight, trying once more to do it all by plane in the teeth of steadily repeated proofs that it couldn’t be done that way, has now brought us to this. We are forced into a surface fight.” The officers of Samuel Jenkins’s ship took every opportunity to learn from what their counterparts in the San Francisco and the Salt Lake City had experienced against the Japanese. What does it look like when everybody opens fire? What range do you pick them up with the radar? What speeds are they using? What are their reactions? Mustin said, “There were lots of lessons to be learned, and we sought them out eagerly and got the information.”
The Atlanta had spent the first half of October steaming with Willis Lee’s flagship, the Washington, in defense of the Hornet task force, the only carrier in the theater. When Lee was around, Mustin noticed, the air vibrated differently. “He was the perfect example of an officer who made sure everyone knew what he wanted done.” This knowledge clarified people’s purpose and gave shape to their plans.
Mustin had the kind of garrulous personality that recommended him for liaison work. The Atlanta’s exec, Commander Dallas Emory, sent him over to the Washington to share stories with her unbloodied gunnery department about the carrier battle in the eastern Solomons and the surface battle off Savo. Mustin found the Washington’s crew “magnificently trained with just a gorgeous morale,” in part because of the intensity of their recent deployment to the Atlantic. There the possibility of an encounter with the German battleship Tirpitz had concentrated their minds. In offset gunnery exercises with the Atlanta, the Washington put on a show.
With the battleship firing from thirty-five thousand yards, far over the horizon and out of sight except for the top of her mast, Mustin stationed himself on the Atlanta’s fantail with an apparatus to measure and report where the battleship’s projectiles landed. When the Washington let loose, a gout of yellow-brown muzzle smoke would blot the horizon. Then, after a certain lapse of time, came a crash of heavy shells in the sea, followed by a supersonic crack and the rippling roll of the guns from below the horizon. The shells landed smack in the