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By Root 1871 0

’s force, as well as the two highest-rated cruisers in the fleet in terms of the efficiency of their overall engineering performance, they were not necessarily the most technologically capable or most powerful in combat. That honor belonged to his light cruisers, the Helena and the Boise, which were equipped with fast-firing six-inch main batteries and the new microwave-frequency SG surface-search radar, far superior to the SC sets carried by most heavy cruisers. But radar was a newfangled complexity. Almost all admirals of the World War II era were more comfortable with mechanical-optical fire control, based on direct observation and visual adjustment. This and other factors, including considerations of onboard living space for an admiral’s staff, recommended the heavy cruisers as flagships.

As October settled in, quickening radio traffic continued to suggest a surge in enemy naval activity in the northern Solomons. Admiral Ghormley queried MacArthur and Rear Admiral Aubrey W. Fitch, who on September 21 had replaced Rear Admiral John S. McCain as commander of SOPAC’s land-based air forces,1 whether their search pilots had seen any of the “new-type heavy units” that he believed the Japanese were operating in the area. He mentioned sightings of an “extra large cruiser, Mutsu type,” as well as some kind of a “mystery ship.” Perhaps scorning his South Pacific commander’s foggy notions of the Japanese Navy’s generally familiar ship classes, Nimitz replied dismissively: “No mystery ship known here.” But as ever in war, the faster information flowed, the more the questions proliferated.

On the morning of October 11, the sense of pending action was well apparent to anyone with access to a radio. In the Helena, encoded blocks of text dashed through the foremast antenna into Chick Morris’s radio room, “a steady, chattering stream that kept the typewriters hopping,” he wrote. There were reports of sightings, requests for information and clarification, questions from pilots on patrol. The latest was that a pair of Japanese cruisers and six destroyers were southbound from Rabaul. This report was rather innocuous on its face, and not entirely accurate. The Japanese force that was sighted, commanded by Rear Admiral Aritomo Goto, consisted of two separate groups. The cruiser force, which Goto personally commanded from his flagship, the Aoba, actually included three heavy cruisers, the Aoba, Furutaka, and Kinugasa, and two destroyers. The Reinforcement Group, steaming separately, contained the fast seaplane tenders Nisshin and Chitose and five troop-carrying destroyers.

Goto’s cruisers were dispatched to bombard Henderson Field on the night of October 11–12. The two tenders, meanwhile, were scheduled to anchor off Tassafaronga and send ashore heavy artillery, ammunition, and equipment as well as a battalion of troops. Powerful as Goto’s combined group was, it was but the vanguard of a much larger force that Admiral Yamamoto was gathering at Truk, soon to flatten Henderson Field and destroy the U.S. Navy forces protecting them once and for all. Under the overall command of Vice Admiral Nobutake Kondo, this force included all five of Yamamoto’s carriers. A force that included the carriers Junyo and Hiyo, with the battleships Kongo and Haruna and four heavy cruisers and the ten ships of Raizo Tanaka’s Destroyer Squadron 2, sailed under Kondo’s direct command. Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo’s fast carrier striking force, with the Shokaku, Zuikaku, and Zuiho, steamed separately. Rear Admiral Hiroaki Abe would command the rest of the combined task force’s heavy surface forces: the battleships Hiei and Kirishima and three heavy cruisers, escorted by fifteen destroyers. Sixteen submarines advanced in a skirmish line ahead of the surface task forces.

This tremendous gathering of naval power would unleash itself on Guadalcanal and its neighboring seas in coordination with an assault on Henderson Field by the 17th Army, tentatively set to step off on October 22. Yamamoto would await the Army’s signal. Meanwhile, Goto’s force would serve as the spearhead