Neptune's Inferno_ The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal - James D. Hornfischer [199]
But one more collision of giants remained to decide who would control Savo Sound. The next costly lesson would follow the very next night with another collision of the exhausted fleets.
At Pearl Harbor, monitoring the reports of more major Japanese naval units approaching Guadalcanal, Admiral Nimitz sent a broadcast to all task force commanders, bracingly stating the obvious: “LOOKS LIKE ALL OUT ATTEMPT NOW UNDERWAY TO RECAPTURE GUADALCANAL REGARDLESS LOSSES.”
(Photo Credit: P.4)
“The turret whips around but it is the guns themselves that seem to live. They balance and quiver almost as though they were sniffing the air.… Suddenly they set and instantly there is a belch of sound and the shells float away. The tracers seem to float interminably before they hit. And before the shells have struck the guns are trembling and reaching again. They are like rattlesnakes poising to strike, and they really do seem to be alive. It is a frightening thing to see.”
—John Steinbeck, “A Destroyer,” November 24, 1943
36
The Giants Ride
THE BATTLESHIPS WASHINGTON AND SOUTH DAKOTA PUSHED THROUGH the sea with an implacable ease. Halsey well understood the risks of sending Willis Lee’s two big ships to set an ambush in Savo Sound. “The plan flouted one of the firmest doctrines of the Naval War College,” Halsey would write. “The narrow treacherous waters north of Guadalcanal are utterly unsuited to the maneuvering of capital ships, especially in darkness.” But the big ships were all he had left.
The Washington (the second and last ship of the North Carolina class), and the South Dakota (the first of a newer breed) were not sisters but close cousins, part of the surge in new major ship construction that followed the expiration of the 1930 London Naval Treaty’s five-year-long “building holiday.” The construction of the big new ships was politically risky for President Roosevelt during the pinchpenny, isolationist-minded years after the Great Depression. He waited until after the 1936 elections to authorize the Washington’s construction.
The Navy’s General Board never seemed sure what it was willing to sacrifice in order to meet the limits imposed by treaty limitations on battleship displacement. Its preferred designs changed as frequently as its membership did. In the end, Lee’s two battleships were the product of a decision to emphasize superior firepower. The two ships each carried a sixteen-inch main battery that fired a twenty-seven-hundred-pound projectile. More than ten times the weight of the eight-inch round fired by a heavy cruiser, these heavier weapons changed the calculus of warship architecture and, in turn, tactical doctrine as well. Though it was customary to design battleships to withstand hits from their own projectiles, the Washington did not have armor stout enough to defeat the heavy new sixteen-inch ordnance. The South Dakota’s side armor could take such a hit from beyond twenty thousand yards (or 11.4 miles), but only because her designers had compromised her ability to survive torpedoes. Rushed to the South Pacific soon after their commissionings, neither ship was put through the usual round of sea trials prior to deployment. But there was widespread confidence in them nonetheless, and the ships were more than a match for Japanese battleship such as the Kirishima, with a fourteen-inch main battery.
Aside from the short time they had operated together with the Enterprise task force, the Washington and the South Dakota had never been in each other’s company. While Admiral Lee repeatedly drilled his gunnery and director crews in aiming their guns and finding targets, neither ship had much