Neptune's Inferno_ The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal - James D. Hornfischer [176]
The idea that fast battleships like the Hiei and the Kirishima would sweep the seas of heavy cruisers like the San Francisco and the Portland, one-third their size, turned out to be unfounded, at least in a battle fought at hull-scraping ranges where heavier armor was no significant advantage. It was probably the San Francisco that inflicted the Hiei’s most consequential wound, a two-meter-wide hole in her starboard quarter that quickly flooded the steering room and shorted the steering engine. With generators short-circuited, the Japanese battleship lost use of her turrets and her hydraulic steering. The secondary battery was disabled by the destruction of its control tower. Despite the battering the Hiei took from some fifty eight-inch and eighty-five five-inch hits, there was little underwater damage and not much flooding aside from the breach of the steering room.
Around this time, Admiral Abe, struck in the face by shrapnel and probably concussed, must have been operating on reflexes and adrenaline, for he would remember nothing of the battle after he was hit. Sometime around 2 a.m., distracted by his wounds and flinching at the ferocity of the American gunfire, and perhaps even believing he was facing a superior force, Abe decided to cancel the bombardment of Henderson Field. He ordered a general withdrawal.
In their flooding compartment, the Hiei’s steersmen labored by hand and muscle to keep the ship navigable. Because they could not turn as sharply as the Kirishima, which started her reversal of course from a position on the Hiei’s port quarter, the Kirishima turned inside the flagship’s arc, remaining concealed behind Abe’s burning ship while she came to a homeward course at high speed. As the action drew away from the Portland, Captain DuBose was disoriented. “In the confused picture of burning and milling ships it became impossible to distinguish friend from foe.” Gunners on the destroyer Samidare mistook the Hiei for a U.S. ship. Her commander was preparing a torpedo spread when a correct identification was made, but not before the battleship had fired her secondary battery at the Samidare in turn.
Callaghan’s ships never drew a good front-sight bead on the Kirishima. Her only damage by direct fire was a single eight-inch hit on the quarterdeck. In parting, the Japanese battleship’s after turret lofted a last salvo at the San Francisco, a pair of fourteen-inchers fired straight back over the fantail. The Kirishima would escape to fight another day. The Hiei would have a longer residence in Savo Sound.
AS THE HELENA PASSED the circling Portland and raced after the San Francisco, her main battery directors located a target to starboard, receding at about nine thousand yards. Less than half a minute later, the unidentified vessel opened fire on the San Francisco. It was a destroyer. Instantly, Hoover turned slightly to bring his five turrets to bear. The object of the light cruiser’s continuous-automatic fury was Captain Tameichi Hara’s Amatsukaze.
Hara had committed a cardinal sin of naval tactics. “Shell drunk,” as he described himself, he neglected to order his searchlight off after taking the San Francisco under fire. Suddenly under a terrible barrage, Hara’s ship reeled. He ordered his gunners to check fire, his searchlight operator to douse the light, and his deckhands to lay a smoke screen. “I hunched my back and clung to the railing. The blast was so strong, it almost threw me off the bridge. The detonations were deafening. I got sluggishly to my feet, but my mind was a complete blank for several seconds. Next, I felt over my body, but found no wounds.” Hara was a lucky one. His ship took some three dozen hits from the Helena, almost all of them blasting holes a meter or more wide in his ship. The Amatsukaze’s hydraulics failed, freezing the