Neptune's Inferno_ The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal - James D. Hornfischer [83]
Good commanders helped their men get past their limitations, be they mechanical or psychological. The lessons Scott’s fighters learned were duly circulated fleetwide in bulletins. The problem of “buck fever”—the initial overeagerness of gun crews, firing before solutions were ready—had only one cure: the sobriety that came with experience. Special effort had to be made to keep fire controlmen informed of radar readings whenever a ship began the game of musical chairs that was going to battle stations. As key people changed stations, the flow of critical information could freeze. On some ships, including Scott’s flagship, the San Francisco, the first salvo from the main battery reliably knocked the delicate instrumentation of the FC radar out of operation. The shock of the main battery could jolt the foremast hard enough to throw the man aiming the director off his target, sometimes carrying the aim of the searchlight operator with him. In a light rain, those searchlights were ineffective beyond five thousand yards, like automotive high beams in a fogbank. Cold guns were full of surprises with their quirky ballistic properties. And as always, a ship-to-ship shootout after dark was a harrowing affair that confounded the senses, like riding a galloping bronco through a foggy night while aiming a rifle at a target that lies beyond a burning building. Simply put, there were no panaceas to defeat the sailor’s age-old foe, Murphy’s Law, and the universal problem of entropy.
Their sheer terror was never greater in exercises than on the night of September 30. The San Francisco was shooting at a target towed by the minesweeper USS Breese when that small vessel sent word that the towline had parted. Targets drifting loose at night presented a danger to navigation. Sometimes the targets weren’t small sleds but derelict ships or large barges on which façades had been built to provide realistic silhouettes. To locate the wayward hardware, Scott’s ships began circling, searchlights reaching out into the darkness. No sooner did word come that the target had been found than gunners in one of the San Francisco’s starboard mounts were gripped by the sight of a ship bearing down on them fast, her bow to their starboard beam. When the crew alerted the bridge, the San Francisco went into a hard port turn and the Breese swung her rudder to the right. The minesweeper’s momentum carried her into the San Francisco starboard quarter, delivering a severe but glancing blow that collapsed the Breese’s bow and tore a thirty-foot gash in the cruiser’s side. As the ships turned, their sterns clapped together in a second collision. Physically, it was a mismatch. When the minesweeper’s stern struck the high wall of gray steel that was the San Francisco’s stern, it was forced underwater, subducted by the cruiser’s bulk. “With a sickening thump thump thump our outboard screw passed across Breese’s stern deck and quickly cleared her,” Clifford Spencer, the San Francisco marine, wrote. “Her stern popped up in the water like a cork. I never heard if the Breese had any fatalities, probably a few, but life was cheap in those days and soon it, the collision, was only a memory.”
The vigilance required to avoid such mishaps took a toll. Spencer wrote: “In trying to give you an idea of the strain put on everyone from the Admiral on down to the lowest ranks during this period, I am at a loss, but try this: Imagine your living room is made of steel, the windows are your lookout posts and you have been there for two weeks. With very little rest and less sleep, you stare out day and night for an attack from the air, from across the street, or up from your basement, that you know will destroy your home and probably take your or your family’s life. This might give you a small idea of what the mental and physical conditions