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Farther ahead, the Atlanta turned to port to avoid the traffic jam in the van. The San Francisco was riding on the Atlanta’s port quarter. Bruce McCandless at the flagship’s conn called to Captain Jenkins, “The Atlanta’s turning left. Shall I follow her?” Back came the reply, “No. Hold your course.” Then, a few seconds later, “Follow the Atlanta.”

McCandless recalled: “First I had to swing the San Francisco slightly right to clear her, then use full left rudder; this resulted in our paralleling the Atlanta on a northwesterly course with her slightly on our port bow. As we started to swing in astern of her, enemy searchlights came on, one illuminating her from port. The Atlanta then swung back across our bow from left to right, firing rapidly to port as she went.”

The heavier San Francisco took wider turns than the Atlanta and swung outboard of her both times. As a result, Callaghan’s flagship, instead of following the antiaircraft cruiser, ended up steaming on her port hand. The Atlanta “swept out of line, her five-inch guns spitting a giddy pattern of fireworks,” wrote Chick Morris on the Helena. “The rest of us stayed in line, led now by the San Francisco, and as we continued at high speed through the tunnel, Jap ships were afire on both sides of us. We were silhouetted like witches speeding across a Halloween moon.”

Suddenly the Atlanta’s 541-foot length was gripped from below and shaken violently. Robert Graff felt “a tremendous piiing. The ship lurched, like when you hit a heavy pothole.” The word went around immediately: A torpedo had struck on the port side. Two of them, actually. One Long Lance hit the ship between the forward fire room and forward engine room and exploded powerfully. Though magnified by the ocean’s pressure, the blast of the thousand-pound warhead, which seemed to have been delivered by the destroyer Ikazuchi, did not rip the ship apart completely. It was contained within the airtight enclosure formed by the 3.75-inch armored belts on the sides of the hull below the waterline, and by the 1.25-inch armored deck above. But the violent discharge had to go somewhere. According to Lloyd Mustin, it rushed fore and aft, rupturing the after bulkhead of the forward engine room and letting seawater into the machinery spaces. “A monstrous column of water and oil rose on our port side and cascaded down all over the ship, drenching all of the topside. People were thrown to their knees, including me, by the shock of the explosion.” A second torpedo penetrated the hull and stuck fast without detonating.

Raymond E. Leslie felt the Atlanta move “like a pendulum” and feared he would be flung overboard from the searchlight platform by the elastic swinging motion. “The torpedo created a heavy downpour of seawater on top of us and filled our searchlight platform like a bath tub.” The plotting officer, Lieutenant James C. Shaw, stationed five decks below, was thrown into the bulkhead by the blast, smashing his right hand. As water swirled over the deck, he called Commander Nickelson, the gunnery officer, told him of the flooding, and asked for orders. Nickelson replied, “Stick a pillow in it,” and then the phones went dead.

When the boilers were secured and a safety valve opened, pressurized steam gusted upward through an exhaust vent in the number two stack, right near the after air defense station, where Mustin and the exec were stationed. “It was absolutely deafening,” Mustin said. “It was impossible to communicate by voice, even by putting your mouth to someone’s ear and shouting. You couldn’t communicate above the sound of that escaping steam.”

In the dark, groping for a way topside with the help of a battery-powered lantern, electrician’s mate Bill McKinney heard a rending and tearing of metal, as if the ammo hoists that were routed through his compartment had suddenly gone off their tracks. The radio was out. The ship’s lights and engines and gun turrets were dead. The chief engineer was, too.

When the power died, the final range