Neptune's Inferno_ The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal - James D. Hornfischer [53]
AT HIS HEADQUARTERS in Nouméa, Vice Admiral Robert Ghormley was awaiting news of the landings, about which he knew nothing, nor about the explosive events that followed. “These were endless hours and days for us,” the commander of SOPAC wrote. Evidently, however, he felt no urgency to end them. He did not ask his commanders for updates. “I did not want to interfere with the operations by demanding reports when I did not know the local conditions as to ability to send dispatches,” he would write. Ghormley was wise to assume the worst of his patchwork radio setup. But it would strike some as curious that he, a theater commander, equated inquiry with interference and used his unfamiliarity with the forward area to justify his continuing detachment from it.
When news of the disastrous fate of the cruisers filtered down to the landing area that morning, unloading accelerated to a frantic pace. Turner’s plan was to withdraw his troop transports and cargo ships on August 9, getting them under way at first light. That decision looked more urgently necessary than ever. Already they were unguarded by carrier planes. Now their cruiser screening force had been wiped away, too.
Supplies were needed ashore, and shipboard deck space was in demand for the wounded. As stores and arms flowed to the beach, the vacated stowage was used to accommodate casualties of battle. A transport officer recalled, “Most of them were young kids sitting numbly, their semi-naked bodies black from burns and the oil of sunken ships. I doubt I will ever forget that sweet smell of burned flesh.”
Before sunrise on Sunday morning, August 9, the remnants of Task Force 62 gathered for their march of shame. The antiaircraft cruiser San Juan, Rear Admiral Norman Scott’s flagship, used her new surface radar to form up in the dark. If the new equipment was useful in retreat, there was no telling how it might have performed in battle. As the battle raged the San Juan stood idle, several miles to the southeast, patrolling outside the Tulagi transport anchorage. “If the San Juan had been up there,” said Lieutenant Commander Horacio Rivero, her assistant gunnery officer, “we would have picked up [Mikawa’s] ships coming down.… We had the only radar that could do that. And we weren’t in the area where it could be used. They didn’t realize what it could do.” Turner was indeed unaware that the equipment in the destroyers on picket duty, the Blue and Ralph Talbot, was inadequate to cover the breadth of their patrol line. Though Admiral Ghormley had questioned the idea of using just two destroyers as pickets, he was assured that they would detect the approach of any enemy ships within twelve to fourteen miles with their SC search radar. Its range was just five thousand yards, or about half of what Crutchley believed it was, and half of the “conservative estimate” given to Admiral King by the commander of the Pacific Fleet’s destroyer force, Rear Admiral Walden L. “Pug” Ainsworth.
As the sun rose, Task Force 62 steamed eastward through Lengo Channel, older, smaller, and, soon enough, wiser for the disaster of the preceding six hours. The broken-bowed Chicago led the Patterson, Mugford, Ralph Talbot, Dewey, and five destroyer-minesweepers along with several transports. In the second group went the rest of the transports, with the Australia, San Juan, and Hobart escorted by the destroyers Selfridge, Henley, Helm, Bagley, Blue, Ellet, Wilson, Hull, Monssen, and Buchanan. Shortly after the first dog watch (i.e. 1600–1800), the amphibious force, unloaded to the degree possible, got under way for Nouméa, too.
Officers on all ships struggled to comprehend what had transpired the previous