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By Root 2032 0

PT boat force assigned to the area. The squadron now had fifteen boats, up from just four a few weeks earlier. But given the fluid and occasionally slipshod organization at Tulagi, Mustin found it hard to coordinate their sorties with the other naval forces in the area. Some destroyer commanders resisted involving their tin cans with the “hooligan Navy,” mainly out of fear that it would be difficult to keep from stepping on one another’s toes. “I thought we had better improve that,” Mustin said, “or somebody was going to get hurt.” Having seen the value of the intelligence that PT skippers acquired during their patrols in Savo Sound, Mustin chose, in the name of better cooperation, a PT boat man as his assistant operations officer. They figured out how many boats were available nightly, determined how frequently they could be used, set up patrol schedules, and began innovating new approaches to attacking the Japanese submarines and destroyers in the waters off Guadalcanal. Finding that Japanese destroyers could catch and run down PT boats on a clear night, he settled on a game of cat and mouse. The young PT boat officers learned to avoid being silhouetted in open water while avoiding flat water that would show their wakes, and to attack using diversions, with some boats working as decoys while boats closer to shore rushed in. As they changed their schemes, the Japanese did, too.

On the night of November 30, however, the PT boats were ordered to stay put at Tulagi. Something larger than they were cut out for was brewing that night. It was another run of the Tokyo Express, eight destroyers under Rear Admiral Tanaka. A large American force was gathering at Espiritu Santo to intercept him.

True to form, the Navy, on the eve of the mission, replaced Kinkaid with a new commander. Kinkaid balked at his reassignment from a carrier task force and wanted no further part of the South Pacific. And so, as Dan Callaghan had supplanted Norman Scott, as Cassin Young and Joe Hubbard had relieved Charles McMorris and Mark Crouter on the San Francisco, Rear Admiral Carleton Wright now became the officer in tactical command of Task Force 67. Long of service in the South Pacific but new to surface combat, Wright flew his flag in the newly arrived Minneapolis, leading a scratch team of four other cruisers—the New Orleans, Pensacola, Honolulu, and Northampton.

These newcomers to the Ironbottom Sound surface striking force, most of them reassigned from carrier escort duty, were a bit like replacement troops going forward to the front lines from rear-area antiaircraft battalions. They wore the same uniforms and wielded the same weapons, but they weren’t wise in the bitter discipline of close combat. None of the four cruisers had had any part in the four surface actions fought in Savo Sound to this point. It could not be said, either, that they were commanded by the officer best equipped to prepare them for that new type of fight. The only surface-force flag officer alive who had fought and beaten the Japanese Navy, Willis Lee, was back in port with his squadron, tending to the Washington at Nouméa. Though both were veteran cruiser commanders, neither Kinkaid nor Wright had fought a night action before, nor executed a tactical plan such as they were now designing.

They departed Espiritu Santo’s Segond Channel anchorage at 11:30 p.m. on November 29, following a van composed of the destroyers Fletcher, Drayton, Maury, and Perkins. When they reached the eastern entrance to Lengo Channel at nine forty the next night, Wright’s task force encountered some friendly transports. Augmenting his tag team, Halsey ordered two of their escorts, the Lamson and Lardner, to fall in astern the Northampton. And so another pickup squad with fresh leadership and big ideas headed north toward its destiny.

The Fletcher, with its modern SG radar, rode at the head of the line. If this was an improvement over Callaghan’s approach two weeks before, the urge to hesitate would once again rise as a plague. According to the Fletcher’s executive officer, Lieutenant Joseph