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By Root 1790 0

SAVO ISLAND HEADED EAST.” The message was repeated on several radio frequencies. It shouldn’t have been news. Word had arrived hours before from the San Juan, leading three destroyers on patrol off Tulagi, that an unidentified plane had been sighted over Savo Island. The picket destroyer Blue saw it, too. That ship’s gunnery officer asked his captain for permission to open fire, but since the plane was displaying running lights, it was deemed a friendly. The Blue’s skipper feared that if he reported the plane by radio, he would only risk the Japanese detecting his ship’s location by radio direction finder. Fear of using sensors and communications was widespread in the screening force. When Captain Bode retired to his cabin behind the pilothouse for a nap, confident no attack could come that night, he ordered his radar officer to turn off the Chicago’s search radar for fear that Japanese ships might detect and trace the beams.

Rains were moving over the cloistered waters around Savo. Lightning flickered sporadically. It was 1:42 a.m. when the Chicago’s lookouts reported orange flashes of light against Savo’s shadow. To Bode and the men of the bridge watch, they looked like fires on the beach. A minute later, the plane that was lazing in circles overhead began dropping flares. Five blinding orbs burst well astern, near the transport anchorage off Tulagi.

From the destroyer Patterson ahead came a blinker signal, “WARNING—WARNING—STRANGE SHIPS ENTERING HARBOR.” Out in the storm-lit sound, the forms of unidentified ships were dimly visible, approaching nearly head-on. The Patterson’s battery barked, lofting star shells, aiming to backlight the bogeys. The Chicago followed suit, but her phosphorous candles failed to light. Critical minutes passed in the dark. The Bagley swung left, drew on the enemy, and fired four torpedoes from her starboard battery. Seeing targets against the glow of his star shells, Commander Frank R. Walker ordered the Patterson’s helm left and shouted an order to launch torpedoes, but the crashes of her gun battery swallowed it. Then Bode heard a report of torpedoes in the water, inbound on several bearings.

Ahead, the Canberra was seen turning sharply to starboard when a cry came of a torpedo wake headed for the port bow. Bode ordered his rudder hard to port as the Chicago’s engineers, deep in the ship, labored to answer the bell to make full speed. Noticing a quick, bright exchange of gunfire to the west, Bode steered the Chicago on what he thought was “a good course for engaging both turrets and broadside.” As his ship came to twenty-five knots, Bode was still seeking his enemy when, without fanfare or forewarning, the Canberra was savaged by a concentrated barrage. More than thirty Japanese shells struck the Australian heavy cruiser, killing her commander, Captain Frank E. Getting, and other senior officers. Almost at once both of her boiler rooms were destroyed, and with them died all power and light throughout ship. She was a floating nest of flame.

In this fleeting moment of contact, the Chicago never did fire her main battery. A shell struck the leg of her mainmast, killing two sailors, including the chief boatswain’s mate, and wounding thirteen, including the exec, Commander Adell, who was hit in the throat. A torpedo fired by the Kako struck the ship from starboard, clipping off part of the bow and vibrating the rest of the ship hard enough to disjoin the main battery director. Gunners on her five-inch secondary battery managed to train on and hit an enemy ship, the Tenryu, killing twenty-three men. But the darkness hid the larger targets. Of the forty-four star shells the Chicago lofted, all but six failed to light. As Bode struggled to decide what to do next, he neglected to report the encounter either to his absent superior, Crutchley, or to his colleague who would be up next in the shooting gallery, Captain Riefkohl in the Vincennes, flagship of the northern cruiser group.

As the Japanese column steamed by, rounding Savo Island in a counterclockwise course and approaching Riefkohl’s squadron,