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By Root 1891 0

Sea, and had received the Navy Cross for the manner in which his destroyers pressed in close, braving repeated heavy explosions and flames, to recover the carrier’s survivors. Hoover’s award citation stated, “The intrepid and seamanlike way that these officers handled their vessels about the listing and burning Lexington without regard for the flames and explosions emanating from her, was in accord with every fine tradition of our Navy and of the sea, and undoubtedly contributed to the rescue of many survivors who might otherwise have been lost.” Circumstances now were vastly different. Still, he would write that the decision to continue south “was not made without much effort.”

At eleven twenty-one, a B-17 Flying Fortress arrived from Espiritu Santo, as Hoover had requested, to provide air cover. To preserve radio silence, Hoover refrained from radioing Turner or Halsey about the incident. Instead, he had one of his signalmen blinker to the bomber overhead: “JUNEAU TORPEDOED DISAPPEARED LAT 10–32 LONG 161–02 AT 1109 X SURVIVORS IN WATER REPORT COMSOPAC.” The plane acknowledged receipt of the message with a visual signal, and Hoover repeated it. He could only hope the pilot would appreciate the tremulous state of the survivors in the water, many of whom had to be severely wounded. The plane acknowledged receipt of the second transmission and zoomed off toward Henderson Field. Joseph Wylie, the exec of the Fletcher, would call Hoover’s decision to press on to Espiritu Santo “probably the most courageous single decision I’ve ever seen a man make, because everybody’s instinct is to go after survivors.” Wylie felt that instinct strongly, but when Hoover signaled the Fletcher that he had reports of three more Japanese submarines lurking along their route, he felt mollified.

Shortly after noon, the destroyer Buchanan joined Hoover’s group; the O’Bannon rejoined them at three thirty. As Hoover continued on, bringing his wounded ships home, the Juneau’s brown pall receded over the horizon behind them.

THE ATLANTA LAY AT ANCHOR a few miles from Lunga, seeping to death through her holes and broken seams. Jack Wulff, the assistant engineering officer, had hoped for a time that his crews would get the after fire room pumped down to where the burners could make steam. If the inboard screws got turning again, they could limp to Tulagi and make repairs in the shelter of a cove. Now, as the water levels rose, he saw the futility in it. With a fourth consecutive sleepless night approaching for the crew, the bucket brigades were up against their limits. When Dallas Emory, the exec, concurred that the ship couldn’t be saved, Captain Jenkins radioed the Portland that he could not check flooding and would have to scuttle his ship. DuBose, as the senior officer present, approved. As boats from Guadalcanal took off the crew, a demolition charge was placed in the diesel engine room. When it blew, the Atlanta went quickly with all hatches open, revealing as she rolled over to port the grievous extent of her torpedo wound; it stretched from its impact point below the port side waterline across the keel and into the starboard bottom of the hull. “If we had tried to steam that ship,” Lloyd Mustin said, “she might have opened in half.… If she had run into heavy weather, she would never have made it.”

As night fell over Ironbottom Sound again, the Portland was still struggling toward Tulagi. Near midnight, those troubles were supplemented by the arrival of other combatants eager to throw themselves into the fracas in the sound: American PT boats. The first sign of their presence was a radio transmission Captain DuBose picked up over the TBS. “Here comes a bear. Give him two fish.”

The small boats were stalking a “bear”—a target. DuBose came to understand that the ship in question was his own. A bizarre parley ensued between the cruiser captain and the PT boat officers, with DuBose declaring his identity in plain English and his stalkers discussing among themselves what to do with the large stranger. “This is the American cruiser Portland. This