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By Root 1939 0

alone it is not enough, alone it cannot prevent the Japanese from constant nightly infiltration by sea into Guadalcanal.” There was no other way to deflect an enemy surface force at night than to go all-in with the surface forces, whose “smashing offensive spirit,” Baldwin wrote, was key to everything. If they prevailed, and if the destruction of the airfield was thereby prevented, the Cactus Air Force would be free to strike the stragglers at will during that morning sanctuary when even the earliest-rising Japanese planes would still be hours away.

U.S. Navy Combat Task Forces in the South Pacific

(as of November 12, 1942)

TASK GROUP 67.4

(Cruiser Support Group)

Rear Adm. Daniel J. Callaghan

San Francisco (CA)

Portland (CA)

Helena (CL)

Atlanta (CLAA)

Juneau (CLAA)

Cushing (DD)

Laffey (DD)

Sterett (DD)

O’Bannon (DD)

Aaron Ward (DD)

Barton (DD)

Monssen (DD)

Fletcher (DD)

TASK FORCE 16

(Carrier Task Force)

Vice Adm. Thomas E. Kinkaid

Enterprise (CV) (damaged)

Northampton (CA)

Pensacola (CA)

San Diego (CLAA)

Morris (DD)

Hughes (DD)

Russell (DD)

Clark (DD)

Anderson (DD)

TASK FORCE 64

(Battleship Support Group)

Rear Adm. Willis A. Lee

Washington (BB)

South Dakota (BB) (damaged)

Preston (DD)

Gwin (DD)

Benham (DD)

Walke (DD)

Now it would be Kelly Turner’s turn to be a riverboat gambler. On Dan Callaghan’s untested shoulders he would gamble his entire command.

26

Suicide

ON THE SAN FRANCISCO, IT WAS LIKE OLD TIMES AGAIN. DAN callaghan, the ship’s former skipper, was aboard wearing the two stars of a rear admiral. Just as in old times, a San Francisco sailor named Eugene Tarrant found that he occupied the ideal place from which to observe Callaghan at work and in repose: right in his shadow.

No men on a ship were wiser to the way things worked than the sailors who stood invisibly in the wardroom’s midst. The white-jacketed mess attendants and cooks—a lowly caste within S Division, which saw to the supply and sustenance of the crew—mostly were black enlistees. Like all enlisted men, they cultivated what scraps of control and power were left to them. The ladder of ranks and ratings had its peculiarities, with voids on middle rungs and true power residing at the bottom and the top.

Battleships and carriers had separate dining facilities for junior and senior officers. On cruisers, all the officers dined together except for the captain, who had his own cabin. When he was in command of the San Francisco, Callaghan made a practice of eating with his men. He used the wardroom to break down barriers and accelerate the growth of his young officers. The mess attendants and cooks had as good a view of the goings-on as anyone.

On duty in the officers’ galley, Tarrant found that he could raise the pantry door, which was designed like a dumbwaiter, and hear Callaghan talking with his staff in the next compartment. With access to high-level scuttlebutt, he sometimes found himself as well informed as the intelligence analysts at headquarters. “I heard about all the plans,” Tarrant said. “They’d talk about what forces they were going up against, when they expected contact with the enemy, how they planned to deploy the fleet.”

In the after-midnight morning of November 12, Admiral Turner informed Callaghan that patrol planes had reported two battleships or heavy cruisers, one cruiser, and six destroyers southbound at twenty-five knots, and within a day’s run of Savo Sound. Tarrant was on duty when Callaghan received Turner’s order to gather the disparate cruisers and destroyers from three task forces and take them into action against this threat.

At the news that a fight with battleships was brewing, Callaghan began pacing his flag bridge. He was heard mumbling that it was a fool’s errand to take on ships three times the San Francisco’s size, and that it was a shame there was no time to confer again with Admiral Halsey. When the moment presented itself, Eugene Tarrant exercised the cook’s prerogative and asked Callaghan if he really thought the mission was hopeless. As Tarrant recalled,