Neptune's Inferno_ The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal - James D. Hornfischer [93]
“I know one right now,” the marine said. “Leave out all reference that he who runs his ship aground will face a fate worse than death. Out here too many commanders have been far too leery about risking their ships.”
Nimitz said nothing but smiled, perhaps recalling his tenure in command of the Decatur and of the court-martial charges that he had so audaciously defeated. Somehow that spirit had to be made to prevail here and now. There was little doubt that he meant to send his friend Bob Ghormley a message: Know your theater, know your command, then find those aggressive captains, the fighters, who would win the day.
Off Tassafaronga and Cape Esperance, night after night, Imperial Navy cruisers and destroyers landed troops and supplies with scant interference. Between the end of September and the first week of October, Admiral Mikawa made eight runs after dark with fast destroyer-transports, delivering virtually without incident ten thousand troops of the Imperial Army 2nd Division, a veteran unit that had won infamy for its work during the murderous occupation of Nanking.
To Norman Scott and his cruiser captains—Gilbert Hoover in the Helena, Mike Moran in the Boise, Charles H. McMorris in the San Francisco, Ernest G. Small in the Salt Lake City, and soon enough many others—a terrible burden was about to be passed. They would confront the Japanese at night and try to reverse their momentum after dark.
Probably encouraged by Nimitz, Ghormley ordered Scott on October 5 to “HAVE STRIKING FORCE OPERATE IN POSITION OF READINESS TO ATTACK ENEMY VESSELS LANDING REINFORCEMENTS AT CACTUS.” Scott was the author of a new night battle plan that attempted to apply the lessons of the previous months. Flying his flag in the San Francisco, he accompanied the escort carrier Copahee within range of Guadalcanal and stood by on the sixth as air reinforcements flew off to Henderson Field. Then he joined the Salt Lake City, the Helena, the Boise, and five destroyers east of Rennell Island and prepared to seize his opportunity.
16
Night of a New Moon
WITH GHORMLEY’S BATTLE ORDER IN HAND, NORMAN SCOTT WASTED no time departing Espiritu Santo. Task Force 64 arrived south of Rennell Island on October 9. There he ran them through a series of intramural scrimmages, pitting his cruisers against one another in offset gunnery exercises. That same day, two transports, the Zeilin and McCawley, departed Nouméa carrying a regiment from the U.S. Army’s New Caledonia–based “Americal” Division—the 164th Infantry with 2,837 men under Colonel Bryant E. Moore—as well as 210 ground crewmen from the 1st Marine Air Wing, eighty-one jeeps and trucks, heavy guns, and forty-two hundred tons of supplies and cargo. Scott’s cruiser force joined them at sea for the journey to Guadalcanal.
Scott had chosen as his flagship the heavy cruiser San Francisco, commanded by Captain Charles H. McMorris. As one of two such ships in Task Force 64, she was a traditional if not an ideal choice from which to command this particular battle force. Even among the heavy cruisers, she was a black sheep. After she performed poorly in gunnery exercises off Hawaii early in the year, the San Francisco found herself assigned to escort convoys rather than sailing with a combat task force. To equip her for an escort role, the shipfitters at Pearl had fastened to her fantail a depth charge rack. This hardware, customarily found on a destroyer, was of dubious value in a heavy cruiser, insofar as those ships had no sonar equipment with which to locate submarines. Cruisers were meant to fight surface actions, in which depth charges were decidedly unhelpful things to have aboard. The unusual fitting was a shameful “scarlet letter” that brought derision from other cruiser sailors.
Though the twelve-thousand-ton heavy cruisers San Francisco and Salt Lake City were the largest and most heavily armed ships in Scott