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In the Helena, at the rear of the cruiser column, the men on the bridge were hard to recognize through the layers of their protective clothing. “Dumpy and fat in fireproof goggles, steel helmets, mae wests and gloves, they resembled visitors from Mars,” Chick Morris wrote. In the humid confines of the ships, sailors innocent of combat often resisted donning the protective garb. Those with a better idea of what battle could bring pulled on the heavy clothing, or unrolled their shirtsleeves at least.

At ten, Scott ordered each cruiser to send aloft a search plane. When the Salt Lake City’s crew flung their plane off the catapult, it caught fire almost immediately, courtesy of a flare on board the plane. The aircraft hit the sea in a mass of flame, searing the dilated irises of the lookouts and stiffening everyone’s nerves with the fear that they had declared their presence to an unseen enemy. The plane burned like a pyre for what seemed like hours.

Per the battle plan, Scott ordered his destroyers to re-form in a single column with the cruisers. The Buchanan and McCalla heeled out of formation, let the rest of the column overtake them, and took station at the rear. When the search plane from the San Francisco checked in, reporting “One large, two small vessels, one-six miles from Savo off northern beach, Guadalcanal. Will investigate closer,” Scott turned to the northeast, looking to pass Savo Island, darkly visible ahead, five miles off his starboard beam. “The only indication of impending battle was the speed at which the fleet was traveling,” remembered Ensign George B. Weems of the McCalla. “We would step up our speed a couple of knots at frequent intervals, till we were boiling along.”

(Photo Credit: 16.1)

It was almost eleven thirty when the Salt Lake City’s search radar painted three distinct clusters of steel on the water to the west and northwest. Captain Small ordered his fire-control radar operators to seek targets on that bearing. The returning echoes conveyed valuable particulars: bogeys at sixteen thousand yards, on course 120 degrees true, speed twenty knots.

As it happened, the Americans were tracing the same track of sea that the picket destroyer Blue had on the night Admiral Mikawa came calling. If the station was familiar, Scott’s use of it had an entirely different posture now. Running northeast, perpendicular to the axis of the enemy approach, his nine ships were buttoned up for battle. As the pilot relayed further details on the warning net, Scott radioed his commanders: “EXECUTE TO FOLLOW—COLUMN LEFT TO COURSE 230.” Task Force 64 had finally found its fight.

1 McCain returned to Washington to serve as chief of the navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics.

17

Pulling the Trigger

NORMAN SCOTT, DESPITE HIS PAINSTAKING ATTENTION TO DETAIL, nearly threw away the game board before the match had even begun. His orderly march toward battle ended as soon as the task force executed his latest order, “COLUMN LEFT TO 230 … EXECUTE.”

In a “column turn,” ships turn to the designated heading upon reaching a fixed point in space. The leader turns, and each successive ship follows as soon as she reaches the leader’s rudder kick—the visible swirl in the sea produced by rudder movement. In such a maneuver, each ship retains her place in the column, following in her predecessor’s wake. If visibility is good, it is a simple matter to verify one’s proper position in the formation: The wake of the ship ahead is a ready visual reference. The disadvantage is that the turn takes a while to execute, its total duration being the time it takes the last ship in column to reach the spot where the leader first turned.

A very different type of turn is known as a “simultaneous turn,” in which each ship within the column executes the turn immediately. A single column of ships ordered to turn ninety degrees ends up steaming in line abreast on the new heading. A 180-degree turn serves to reverse the column’s heading, with the former