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By Root 1880 0

used for search. Moran’s FD operators probed for targets through a quarter-circle arc pointed east. Not fully trusting radar, Scott had ordered his commanders to refrain from using their older SC sets during the run-in, lest their transmissions be detected by the enemy much as the beam of a lighthouse could be seen from beyond its effective range. A man’s eyes could reach only from the churning wake of the ship ahead to the flaring bow wave of the one behind. Everyone in the force, from the admiral down to the loaders on the powder hoists, had his senses heightened by his ignorance.

In the Boise, some turret crewmen breathed a soft chant over the battle telephones: Pass the word from gun to gun: This won’t be a dummy run. Captain Moran’s ship had compiled a far-flung war record. Fresh from an audacious solo raid on Japanese shipping in their home waters, conceived as a diversion to assist the Guadalcanal landings, “Iron Mike’s” men redeemed what had been a frustrating deployment with the Asiatic Fleet in January. Off Timor, they had met the same fate the South Dakota did off Tongatabu—grounding on an unfortunately situated coral head. The Boise’s withdrawal from the Asiatic theater for stateside repair had earned her the nickname “the Reluctant Dragon.” Having missed battle, Moran’s gang were just like the others in Task Force 64: eager for a scrap but awaiting the measure of their worth that only the actual thing can provide. No officer could have burned with anticipation more than Norman Scott himself.

Shortly after 6 p.m., the Japanese ships spotted by the patrol planes that morning were reported again, 110 miles north of Guadalcanal, heading down the Slot at twenty knots. Exactly what their mission was—bombardment or reinforcement—continued to be anybody’s guess. The evening call to general quarters was pre-climactic. Hours would pass with Scott’s crews in that ready state, and the heavily fraught tedium mounted. “There was little to do,” Chick Morris said. “Our search planes had returned to their bases and had nothing more for us.” Despite Scott’s order to muzzle the search radars, the Salt Lake City began radiating with its SC unit as the projectilemen loaded star shells into the fuze pots.

Order of Battle—Battle of Cape Esperance (October 11, 1942)

U.S.

TASK FORCE 64

Rear Adm. Norman Scott

San Francisco (CA) (flagship)

Salt Lake City (CA)

Boise (CL)

Helena (CL)

Farenholt (DD)

Duncan (DD)

Laffey (DD)

Buchanan (DD)

McCalla (DD)

Japan

BOMBARDMENT GROUP

Rear Adm. Aritomo Goto

Aoba (CA) (flagship)

Furutaka (CA)

Kinugasa (CA)

Fubuki (DD)

Hatsuyuki (DD)

REINFORCEMENT GROUP

Nisshin (CVS)

Chitose (CVS)

Asagumo (DD)

Natsugumo (DD)

Yamagumo (DD)

Murakumo (DD)

Shirayuki (DD)

Akizuki (DD)

The moon was new behind the abundant cirrocumulus, the seven-knot wind scarcely rippling the moderate swells as they blew from the east-northeast, when Task Force 64 rounded the northwestern coast of Guadalcanal and turned north to intercept.

But there was a watcher in the sound: a Japanese submarine riding on the surface in Kamimbo Bay, a landing area near Cape Esperance that was favored by the Tokyo Express. Scott had no inkling the I-26 was there. The same boat that had torpedoed the Saratoga on August 31, she may have been too close to the coastline for radars to discern. The American presence so startled Minoru Yokota that he ordered an emergency dive before he could send a sighting report. By the time he surfaced again two hours later and transmitted it, the events of the evening were too far along for it to matter.

Rear Admiral Goto’s three heavy cruisers and two destroyers churned south toward Henderson Field. On came the heavy cruisers Aoba, Furutaka, and Kinugasa, all veterans of the Battle of Savo Island, with the destroyers Fubuki and Hatsuyuki riding off their bows.

On the San Francisco, a marine assigned as a loader on a five-inch gun, Clenroe W. Davis, overheard a radarman in the radar room report to the bridge unidentified blips on his scope. The radarman listened to what the officer