Neptune's Inferno_ The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal - James D. Hornfischer [49]
The destroyer Patterson came alongside the burning Australian cruiser, only to be driven away by the detonations of ordnance. She tried again and stayed, passing over pump and fire hoses. The rains were driving then, extinguishing smoldering debris but doing little against deeper conflagrations.
Bad as it looked for the Canberra, the plan to abandon her was delayed when it became clear that she would not be left until all the wounded were removed. The destroyers turned to the task, with the Patterson taking four hundred survivors on board, including seventy wounded, and the Wilson rescuing more than two hundred more. A call came then to aid the Astoria.
But the tin cans could only accomplish so much. At four fifteen, with the Canberra suffering from internal explosions, her starboard list growing to almost thirty-five degrees, the Patterson’s deck force threw their hoses off, helped the wounded to settle in, and then passed the order for the stricken cruiser to abandon ship.
Kelly Turner had always intended to withdraw most of his amphibious and supply ships from Guadalcanal and Tulagi forty-eight hours after the landings. Fletcher’s removal of his carriers was pending—they would spend the night and predawn morning in a “night retirement station” southwest of San Cristobál. If the Canberra could not be righted and made seaworthy in time to join the fleet’s exit, planned for 6:30 a.m., she would have to be scuttled. The Patterson relayed Turner’s grim order to the Canberra.
It was about five fifteen when a strange ship, presumably a hostile one, appeared on the Canberra’s port quarter. Seeing the threat, the Patterson blinkered the Canberra: “OUT ALL LIGHTS.” It was not a moment too soon, for the approaching ship immediately took the Patterson under fire. The destroyer replied in kind. The good news was that none of the shells the strangers traded hit. The bad news was that the ship firing at them proved to be Howard Bode’s Chicago, returning from her solo foray into the west. The Patterson turned on her identification lights and Bode checked his fire.
THE PYRES OF THE Vincennes and Quincy were not long below the waves, and the Canberra’s and Astoria’s bouts with fire only beginning, when Rear Admiral Gunichi Mikawa took on his next challenge—deciding how to exploit his stunning rout. At issue was whether he would carry out his principal mission and attack the transport anchorages. Mikawa and his chief of staff, Toshikazu Ohmae, knew that the landing areas off Guadalcanal and Tulagi were vulnerable. They also understood their own exposure. The Aoba had already escaped catastrophe during the battle when an American shell struck her port side torpedo mount. Because thirteen of her sixteen fish had been fired already, the explosion did not produce the devastating secondary blast it might have. A shell from the Quincy that destroyed the Chokai’s chart room struck five yards aft of the bridge, just a hairbreadth from killing the admiral and most of his staff. As was always the case in a high-speed action at night, a few minutes’ notice either way could have changed the outcome. “I was greatly impressed by the courageous actions of the northern group of U.S. cruisers,” Mikawa would comment. “They fought back heroically despite heavy damage sustained before they were ready for battle. Had they had even a few minutes’ warning of our approach, the results of the action would have been quite different.”
Frayed by the confusion of battle, Mikawa’s formation re-formed northwest of Savo Island. The Chokai took the lead in column ahead of the Furutaka, Kako, Kinugasa, Aoba, Tenryu, Yubari, and Yunagi. The ships were all low on torpedoes—fully half of them had been launched in the preceding hour—along with as much as a third of their main-battery ammunition.