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By Root 1969 0

to report its radar readings over the jammed TBS radio frequency, Callaghan kept his eyes forward and ears closed. He asked Parker, “What do you make of it now?” Gil Hoover was trying to tell him. “We have a total of about ten targets. Appear to be in cruising disposition.” Behind the Cushing and the other three van destroyers followed the Atlanta, the San Francisco, the Portland, the Helena, the Juneau, and the rear destroyers. They plunged toward enemy contact in silence, their reservoirs of potential energy stored deep within, their steel enclosures tense with superheated steam, churning and roaring but held in, like a hidden passion.

When the range had closed to two thousand yards, Captain Parker turned the Cushing to port, to bring his torpedo batteries to bear. The commander of Destroyer Division 10, Commander Thomas M. Stokes, who also rode in the Cushing, requested permission to make a torpedo attack on what were very plainly hostile ships. “Shall I let them have a couple of fish?” he radioed Callaghan. Callaghan denied his request, instructing the destroyers to remain in column, on course 000 true—straight north. The torpedo officer in the destroyer Laffey, Lieutenant (j.g.) Thomas A. Evins, was denied his request, too.

Captain Parker was instructed to maintain a course heading north, but abruptly had to veer to port to avoid hitting the Japanese ships in front of him. So did the Laffey, following five hundred yards astern, and the Sterett, and then the O’Bannon, rushing fast into this mess, turning even more sharply left to prevent a telescopic buckling of the entire front of the line. It was now, at about 1:45 a.m., that some fifteen minutes of electric and uncertain silence ended with the blast of guns from the leading units of the opposing task forces.

The fire-control officers in the Atlanta were the first of the cruisers to glimpse the chaos at the intersection of the vans. Lloyd Mustin said, “There in the starlight, that dim light in which you can see a great deal when you are fully dark-adapted, I saw the target.” Through his binoculars, he made out the silhouette of a light cruiser crossing ahead of the Atlanta at six thousand yards. Close ahead, and startlingly so, the four van destroyers were broadside to his ship’s course, making emergency turns to avoid running into their enemy. Captain Samuel Jenkins swung the helm sharply left. When Callaghan saw the ship heeled over and veering away to the west, he radioed, “What are you doing, Sam?”

“Avoiding our own destroyers,” was the reply.

At 1:46 a.m., Callaghan said, “Come back to your course as soon as you can. You are throwing whole column into disorder.” But the disorder was not Jenkins’s doing. The disorganization of Task Force 67 was irreversible now. It was forced upon it by geometry, by Callaghan’s belated perception of his tactical situation, and by the imperatives felt by individual commanders toward survival of their ships.

Coordinated task force navigation was growing difficult when the American task force commander issued his last meaningful command to his column as it moved north. It was an order to change course ninety degrees to the left—directly into the midst of Abe’s widely dispersed force. The Portland’s quartermaster logged the order with some uncertainty. Other ships did not log it at all. It is possible the order reflected Callaghan’s recognition that, confronted with battleships, cruisers could prevail only at point-blank ranges, where a battleship’s heavier armor was no proof against eight-inch fire.

REAR ADMIRAL ABE’S first indication of an enemy presence came from the destroyer Yudachi. Unsure of his own location, her captain, Commander Kiyoshi Kikkawa, reported an enemy force in the direction of Lunga Point. A minute later, the Hiei’s lookouts reported four enemy cruisers at nine thousand meters (ninety-eight hundred yards). Abe sent a blinker message to his Bombardment Unit: “PROBABLE ENEMY SHIPS IN SIGHT, BEARING 136 DEGREES.”

Order of Battle—The Cruiser Night Action

U.S.

TASK GROUP 67.4

RADM DANIEL J. CALLAGHAN