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By Root 1977 0

formation. The light cruiser Nagara led the two battleships, with destroyers arrayed like shields off each bow. By 4 p.m., cruising at eighteen knots, they were within two hundred miles of the island. Abe’s flagship, the Hiei, catapulted a floatplane to explore the sound ahead. As dusk fell, Abe’s force pressed ahead into a heavy bank of storm clouds. Then the rain began. Hara, commander of destroyer Amatsukaze, would write, “In all the years of my career, I never experienced such a rain. It was completely enervating.” One of Captain Hara’s ensigns said he would rather fight the Americans than the rain. For a time, the storm drifted south with the task force, concealing it from snooping eyes. Abe dismissed the concerns voiced by his staff that poor visibility would make stationkeeping difficult and risk the integrity of his formation. Abe had confidence in Rear Admiral Susumu Kimura, flying his flag in Destroyer Squadron 10’s lead ship, Nagara. He was reputed to be one of the Imperial Navy’s top navigators. Abe’s vindication came when the floatplane pilot reported more than a dozen enemy warships off Lunga Point—Callaghan’s force. If the rains cooperated, the Japanese force might avoid detection altogether. “This blessed squall is moving at the same speed and on the same course we are,” Abe said. “If heaven continues to side with us like this, we may not even have to do business with them.”

There were practical problems posed by the rain, however. Since Japanese gunnery was optically controlled, Abe would have to be clear of the storm before he opened fire on the airfield. His cloak would soon be a blindfold. The rain on the pilothouse windscreen was almost loud enough to drown out thought as Abe puzzled over what to do. Near midnight, he ordered his ships to stand by to reverse course to get clear of the storm. Normally the order to execute such an order followed within thirty seconds or so, after each ship had acknowledged it was standing by. But two destroyers that should have been on his starboard bow, the Yudachi and Harusame, did not reply. Had they veered from their stations to avoid running aground somewhere? Abe repeated the standby order on a medium frequency. At this Captain Hara shouted, “Has Hiei lost its mind?” He knew the medium-frequency radio band was vulnerable to enemy snooping.

Slowing to twelve knots as a precaution, Abe turned north and held that course for some thirty minutes, until the storm’s cover lifted. As he reversed course again and resumed the approach to Guadalcanal, free of the storm, he knew that he had paid for that freedom in two equally valuable and irreplaceable currencies: time and fuel. And after seven hours of blind steaming and a pair of 180-degree turns, Abe’s once-tight formation was in ragged threads. The battleships still occupied the center of the southbound formation behind the Nagara, but the destroyers to either flank had become scattered.

On the Amatsukaze, the middle ship in a column of three destroyers riding on the Hiei’s port beam, a lookout shouted, “Small island, 60 degrees to port!” Another called, “High mountains dead ahead!” The two islands, Savo and Guadalcanal respectively, were like sentinels standing astride Savo Sound. The Japanese Army observer on Guadalcanal reported that the rain had cleared and no enemy ships were visible off Lunga Point. Twelve miles out, Abe ordered the Hiei and the Kirishima to fill their main-battery hoists with Type 3 incendiary projectiles. They would close with the beach and give the Cactus Air Force another fireworks show.

Captain Hara was looking forward not to bombardment duty, but to a collision with the American fleet. A trembling took hold of him as he peered into the shroud of Guadalcanal’s black mass. The destroyer skipper called to his weaponeers: “Prepare for gun and torpedo attack to starboard! Gun range, 3,000 meters. Torpedo firing angle, 15 degrees.” He was ready for whatever might come.

A SAILOR IN THE JUNEAU, Joseph Hartney, would recall the darkness that night as “a blackness so thick, so heavy, so velvety,