Guadalcanal Campaign - 1st Savo Island (IJN 1 : 0 USN)

[Music] this is the start of a long-term series that will have the aim of covering all of the various naval elements of the guadalcanal campaign in sequence as such let's start with a bit of background as to why this campaign was launched in the first place after the attack on pearl harbor the japanese had gone on a rapid offensive that saw them seize numerous targets and make significant inroads on others the philippines the dutch east indies the supposed fortress of the east singapore and numerous others fell quickly to the flag of the rising sun whilst japanese efforts to extend this control had been thwarted by the battles of coral sea and midway significant targets like india and australia were still vulnerable and the japanese were moving to consolidate their military hold in a number of areas part of these efforts involved establishing bases on the far end relative to japan of the solomon islands with the considerable range available to japanese strike aircraft this threatened australia and the supply lines between there and the usa as well as potential recovery routes for allied shipping that might be damaged in the south pacific theater it would also be able to provide land-based air support for japanese carrier operations in the area which would make a rerun of something like the battle of coral sea much more risky for the us navy at the same time this area was one of the furthest japanese conquests from the home islands as well as relatively speaking being somewhat closer to remaining allied territories thus it made an excellent choice as a place to strike back offensively in a significant way at the japanese for pretty much the first time as opposed to simply blocking their ongoing assaults thus in august 1942 a large allied task force launched a counter invasion of the islands of guadalcanal tulagi and the confusingly named florida most of these landing forces were us marines and much of the naval element was provided by the us navy but some of the remaining other allied forces in the theater were also committed this would initiate about half a year of intense combat on land on sea and in the air which would end up proving to be in many ways the crucible in which the us navy would reforge itself from a navy that had taken a massive hit right at the start and was basically scrambling to try and counter a seemingly relentless and unending series of enemy assaults into a hardened veteran force which would conclude the campaign with a vastly more operational experience and would go on to launch a series of devastating offensive actions which are the most commonly talked about aspects of the pacific campaign outside of something like midway for the japanese navy paradoxically it would vindicate many of their pre-war strategies and doctrines at least in single engagements whilst also seeing those same strategies and doctrines gradually countered and then overcome with a devastating effect on japanese whole numbers the us navy was still suffering from significant issues with regards to the supply of fuel to its ships at sea and so despite the availability of a number of battleships the only vessel of this type present was uss north carolina the other capital ship elements of the fleet consisting of the carriers uss saratoga which had recently completed repairs after being hit by a japanese submarine uss enterprise which had just finished replenishing her air groups after the battle of midway and uss wasp which had been operating in the atlantic since similar to uss ranger its more vulnerable design was not seen as ideal for frontline combat operations however it was faster and somewhat better equipped than the uss ranger and so with the loss of lexington and yorktown she had been transferred over to make up the numbers the us navy's other operational fleet carrier at this point hornet was having minor damage patched up along with having new systems such as improved anti-aircraft guns and radar fitted and so was not available in the absence of battleships in general gunfire support and close protection for the assault would be provided by a group of cruisers destroyers and minesweepers under rear admiral victor crutchley royal navy with the force itself mainly made up of u.s navy ships by numbers although two australian heavy cruisers the australia and canberra and one light cruiser the hobart were also included which represented a major fleet commitment by the royal australian navy whilst the landings started well helped in no small part by a significant element of surprise just off the other end of the solomon islands was the relatively major japanese base of rabul from which aircraft were duly sent in response these counter-attacks resulted in losses and damage on both sides but failed to prevent the landings from proceeding it was at this point admiral fletcher elected to pull his carriers back ostensibly for refuelling this has been criticized by some but there were a number of valid reasons for this approach the us navy's fuel situation especially when it came to fast fleet oilers was far from ideal as has already been mentioned and despite having fuel in his bunkers the last thing fletcher wanted was to wind that fuel down and then with his bunkers almost empty face attack by japanese navy elements in addition his carriers were down by almost two dozen fighters either lost or too badly damaged to be made serviceable again this removed almost 25 of his fighter force from the equation which would leave his ships vulnerable to further air strikes from land or from a potential japanese carrier counter attack midway had shown on both sides the vital role of fighters not just in escorting strikes in but also critically in defending carriers whilst under attack even if it was only breaking up the attacks rather than shooting down incoming aircraft and whilst he had the same number of holes as the us navy had enjoyed at midway he knew that saratoga was nowhere near as good as dodging the incoming attacks as other carriers due to its battle cruiser origins as had been proven by her sister ship lexington at coral sea and wasp would be extremely vulnerable to almost any hit unlike yorktown at coral sea wasp would probably go up in flames at the first sign of major battle damage you also had to factor in that the if the imperial japanese navy did gather all of its carriers for a counter-attack at least on paper they had considerably more to play with even with the losses at midway the large and powerful shokaku and zuikaku were still operational along with the smaller regio and zuiho as well as a number of newly converted carriers some of fairly substantial size whose exact operational status and location was somewhat unclear but in any case the carriers were gone and in their absence re-admiral turner in charge of the landing forces and their escorts which included crutchley's screening force decided to unload as much of the remaining material that was aboard those ships as possible and then likewise withdraw this was complicated by a number of factors not the least of which was that the port facilities available amounted to precisely nothing and everything was having to be manually unloaded from the transports into small boats which were then launched made their way to the beach had to be unloaded by hand the boats then having to be returned hauled back up again and the process started all over again the sheer amount of supplies combined with some poor inter-service communication didn't really help matters crutchley's screening and support force would therefore have to secure the area against enemy intrusion until the transports could withdraw then screen the landings themselves until the carriers and other ships could return if they weren't pulled away with the transports as well despite being caught somewhat flat-footed within 24 hours of the landings commencing the local japanese commander abroad mekawa was putting together a service-based counter-attack he had a relatively small force available to him at rebel no carriers no battleships no battle cruisers indeed his only large modern unit was the heavy cruiser chakai with other available forces consisting of the older destroyer yunagi two small old light cruisers tan ryu and yubari and a force of nearby older heavy cruisers furutaka kakao alba and kinogasa representing the first four such vessels in a japanese navy service all armed with six eight-inch guns a piece he also knew that the ijn had only just started construction on the ibuki class of heavy cruisers which meant that for practical purposes any losses that he sustained would not be replaced for years to come and indeed as it turned out ibuki would never be completed he did however have one trump card to play the japanese navy had long anticipated fighting outnumbered and outgunned and so it trained almost to the point of obsession in night fighting adopting a number of advanced tactics and technologies to aid in this indeed a key element of the pre-war kantai kessin or decisive battle doctrine called for precisely this kind of operation penetration of an enemy cruiser screen to deliver a decisive blow to critical enemy targets these days it also had another advantage the us couldn't operate a strike aircraft at night by the evening of the seventh of august the day of the allied landings this force was on its way pausing briefly on the eighth to allow time and light levels to align in his favor makawa then began his run down through the solomon island chain whereupon a series of lucky breaks for the japanese navy began as they left the channel leading to and from rabul elements of the japanese navy formation were spotted by the uss s-38 a somewhat misfortune-plagued u.s submarine of near world war one vintage who made contact too close to actually fire its torpedoes albeit given this was mid-1942 what good those wood torpedoes would have done is somewhat questionable anyway instead she radioed in what she'd been able to see ostensibly two destroyers and three larger unknown ships of course macau only had one destroyer but it's entirely possible that s38 had mistaken the tenryuu which wasn't exactly that much larger than some destroyers and whose profile did resemble older japanese destroyers to a degree for a second such vessel however whilst received the report was not considered indicative of an attack since it didn't define the unknown larger ships that were seen and even if they were three cruisers it was considered that this was unlikely as a force to be sent to mess with the allied screening force which at this point consisted of six heavy and two light cruisers plus eight destroyers all of which were of relatively modern design with other destroyers from the force operating with the landing vessels for his part macau ordered his cruisers to launch float planes to establish what stood between him and the transport ships these scouts would return a few hours later reporting two major groups of allied ships the landing and screening forces in the interim as the japanese forces were preparing to head down the slot a channel that runs between the two linear chains of islands that make up most of the solomons and soon to become infamous over the next few months they were spotted twice by royal australian air force hudson recon aircraft although one report missed a few ships the other successfully identified that there were a total of eight ships in macau's force but despite the sightings occurring that morning and the hudsons both radioing in the reports and then submitting them in person once landed in the early afternoon the information didn't make its way to the allied fleet until early evening and by which point it read that two of the ships were seaplane tenders which would have further assured the allies that a direct assault was unlikely since seaplane tenders were far from frontline combatants and it was thought in some circles that perhaps they were aiming to set up a seaplane base on the northern end of guadalcanal to be fair macau's recon pilots were scarcely any better at recognizing enemy ships their reports claimed that at guadalcanal itself there were 15 transports a battleship four cruisers seven destroyers and an auxiliary carrier whatever that means whilst off to laggy they claimed to spot two heavy cruisers 12 destroyers and paradoxically three transports admiral turner had asked the land-based allied aircraft to keep the slot under observation just in case apparently forgetting that there were more than a dozen float planes aboard the allied cruisers but with few land-based patrol aircraft available this observation did not actually occur but neither was turner informed of this unavailability and so without any clear indication of major enemy surface forces heading his way and thus with the most likely possible assault being deemed to maybe be a lone cruiser or a couple of destroyers trying to sneak in at night and crutchly divided his forces into three groups with direct passage down the slot to the amphibious group needing to pass savo island on one side or the other the northern flank was guarded by the heavy cruisers uss bin senz astoria and uss quincy along with the destroyers uss helm and uss wilson the southern side was protected by the australian heavy cruisers hmis australia and hmas canberra the american heavy cruiser uss chicago plus the destroyers uss paterson and uss bagley both groups were positioned slightly back of salvo to ensure that any enemy force would be somewhat confined on their approach if the allied forces chose to receive the attackers whilst at the same time guarding allied flanks if they needed to advance to contact in the unlikely event that an enemy chose to hook around to the north loop past the florida island group and then flank the landing forces from that direction the light cruisers hmas hobart and uss san juan plus a couple of destroyers were assigned to guard that area finally two u.s navy destroyers equipped with early models surface search radar the uss ralph talbot and the uss blue patrolled the far side of the two most likely lines of approach to provide warning about incoming enemy vessels there were a few major flaws with this last deployment though the two ships didn't have a coordinated patrol pattern which could mean that at times they were headed directly away from each other and the radar itself was as mentioned a very early model that only worked over certain bearings and had a relatively short range in fact its true operational range was about half the very conservative estimate that had been given to the us navy and considerably shorter still than what crutchley thought it was capable of to be honest as he was probably more familiar with royal navy surface search radars which were slightly more advanced at this time more destroyers were available and could have been added to the patrol line but with potential submarine attacks seeming to be the most likely attack vector that night crutchley had put his remaining seven destroyers on escort duty for the transports after two days of supporting actions for the landings and fending off various air assaults the ships were stood down from full alert for the night allowing some of the exhausted crews a time to rest in a half on half off arrangement as darkness fell admiral turner summoned his two subordinates crutchley and general van der grift the u.s marine commander to a conference aboard uss macaulay the attack transport that was serving as turner's flagship crutchley took the australia south to the meeting based on the seniority of the remaining two cruiser captains in his group he signaled uss chicago take charge of patrol i am closing with commander of task 462 and may or may not rejoin you later this was not communicated to the other cruiser groups presumably for security reasons and the same reason that this signal was being made by light and not by radio unfortunately chicago was commanded by one captain howard d bode who was about as popular with his crew as the plague thanks to his two command styles distant sneering and aloof or in your face and insulting chicago was equipped with a more extensive radar suite than the destroyers but bode believed that it worked like a searchlight and thus any use of it would reveal his position and so he'd ordered the surface search radar to be switched off entirely with chicago permitted to make a single radar sweep with its shorter ranged fire control radar every so often but when crutchley's signal was relayed to him instead of moving chicago ahead of hmas canberra the position that a senior officer in a formation should normally take or switching on his radar he elected to go back to sleep at the conference aboard the macaulay the two exhausted commanders uh crutchley and van de grift were informed by turner of his decision to withdraw the transports the following morning whilst they also discussed the reports of the escorted seaplane tenders that had come through with those ships obviously being positioned further to the north with only a few hours between the end of the conference and sunrise crutchley couldn't see much point in taking australia back to her station only to have to almost immediately turn around and come back to where he was now anyway and so hms australia took up station with the southern destroyers guarding the transports little did they know that even as crutchley was heading back to his own ship there were already torpedoes in the water to the north back up north macau's force had formed into a single line and launched three float planes whose objectives were to confirm the presence and location of allied shipping and to take part in one of the main aspects of japanese night battle doctrine dropping flares to illuminate targets which meant that the japanese ships would not have to switch on their searchlights the flare's light would also help to conceal macaw's ships as the glare would ruin any enemy spotter's night vision jakai took the lead followed by kakou then kinugasa alba and furutaka in turn followed by the smaller ships tenryu yubari and unagi at the rear over the allied force the sound of floatplane engines could be heard but through a combination of sheer fatigue and a number of other factors including one japanese pilot daringly using his running lights which made him very easy to spot but equally convinced the allied ships that he must be friendly as surely no hostile aircraft would come buzzing over them at night with its lights running as well as ongoing concerns about the use of radio these circumstances were not reported up the chain of command nor aboard most of the ships thought to be much of a threat although one or two captains were suspicious one last order before the ships fully closed up for action would prove to be a stark contrast between the two forces in the forthcoming hours all flowerables aboard the japanese ships which were vulnerable to enemy fire were to be either taken below or thrown overboard massively reducing the risk of incidental fires starting if the ships were to take hits just after midnight the japanese column spotted uss blue one of the two radar pickets whilst the destroyer was utterly dead to rights with over 50 heavy guns pointing at her macaw elected to leave the ship alone taking out a single destroyer would not come anywhere close to achieving his objectives as it would alert everyone else further ahead of his presence instead the blue was allowed to sail on utterly unaware of what was passing by it in the darkness nearby as long as it showed no further sign of action the japanese column also altered course to avoid contact with blue and slowed down in order to reduce the chance of the ship's wakes being spotted this new course would have taken them north of sabo island but then two things happened uss blue completely unaware reversed course and headed back on the other leg of its patrol route and chicago's lookouts spotted another ship roughly ahead and slightly to port this was probably the other picket destroyer uss ralph tulbert and so mikawa changed course again to head between guadalcanal and savo island i.e the southern route accelerating up to full speed and signalling his ships to attack anything further they might find in their path at this point unagi broke away for exactly what reason is not entirely clear but in any case removing her from the upcoming action then the cruisers spotted another destroyer this time it was uss jarvis badly damaged by air attack the previous day and making its own way to australia still mindful of the need to hit the enemy main force by surprise the furutaka launched torpedoes only but missed and despite being within a mile of each other the two ships sailed past each other without any further action the wisdom of not engaging with guns became apparent a couple of minutes later when up ahead the japanese spotters discerned the shapes of canberra chicago bagley and paterson and soon thereafter the quiet hiss of compressed air signaled the launch of many long lance torpedoes the guns of the japanese ships trained on the unaware allied southern force even as they followed jakai in a swing to port this allowed them to bring their broadsides to bear whilst also heading for the other major allied cruiser force which chikai had just spotted at a range of less than four miles the captain suspicious due to the earlier aircraft noises the crew of uss paterson spotted some of the japanese ships and immediately started signaling a warning by both radio and signal lamp whilst accelerating to battle speed and lobbing star shells at the targets now everything seemed to happen at once seeing that the enemy was aware of the situation the float planes overhead began to drop flares canberra came alive almost instantly speeding up and swinging to starboard to position itself between the attackers and the most direct line to the transports and her four twin turrets began to swing to port taking aim at the japanese cruisers further back from the action the destroyer bagley swung about and lobbed four torpedoes downrange whilst astern the chicago began to come up to speed and turn to port ostensibly to get a better broadside going but it was all too little and too late canberra was just sighting its guns in when chikai and furutaka opened fire followed quickly by alba and kako under a barrage of pre-aimed gunfire the canberra shuddered as two dozen hits smashed into the ship knocking out every single boiler and with them all power smashing the bridge and killing many of the senior officers including her captain and starting multiple fires to add insult to injury it's quite likely that one or more of bagley's torpedoes blew holes in her starboard side as by the time the ship glided to a dead halt unlit except for the flickering lights of the flames she had a heavy list to starboard her unengaged side and pumping out the flooding and putting out the fires was made almost impossible with the loss of the ship's power supply and what was left of the crew was forced to rely on whatever manual self-powered pumps they could get their hands on chicago had been pumping its own star shells downrange but the phosphorus in most of them refused to ignite in return two torpedoes and a shell slammed into her one of the long lances failed to detonate but the other one blew away part of the ship's bow with an explosion that was violent enough to wreck the main fire control system whilst the shell hit took out a chunk of the main mast killing some and wounding more some of the 5-inch guns got fed up with the failing star shells and opened a brief fire using conventional rounds possibly hitting the tenryu but as the damaged ship sailed on the main battery never fired and bode despite being technically in command of both the southern force specifically and the rest of the force in general failed to either instruct bagley and paterson in what to do next or more critically to warn the northern group of what was heading their way nor was any report sent back to crutchley who may have been able to bring the australia and the remaining destroyers into the latter part of the action or at least canberra's aid or he might have been able to instruct san juan hobart and its two destroyers to join in instead chicago headed off to the west offering even less defense to the transports than the crippled and blazing canberra which was at least physically in their way bagley did a circle after firing its torpedoes and by the time it had come back around the japanese had moved on whilst patterson bravely tried to take on the entire japanese column at once receiving a shell hit for its troubles before the column vanished into the darkness as they outran it off to the north yanagi had caught up with with jarvis but the two destroyers traded a few shots without consequence before breaking off their fight acting as makawa had ordered independently the two lighter japanese cruisers took an inside track followed by furutaka cutting closer to savo island and thus allowing them to hit the northern allied force from the west while the rest of makawa's force was able to move across the south and then the eastern flanks of the same allied cruisers whilst chicago boldly rode off into the western darkness the northern force was beginning to realize something was wrong uss quincy heard patterson's warning and had gone to general quarters although vincennes had somehow missed the transmission but with no information coming from the southern force it wasn't entirely clear to quincy's crew just why they were running to their action stations aboard the third cruiser astoria the surface search radar was picking up something closing in from the west at high speed however the senior officers on duty believed it to be the rolf tolbert and they wouldn't listen to the radar officer eventually threatening to throw him in the brig if he didn't shut up and go away once his relief had arrived it was only when someone spotted the glare of fires and drifting flares to the south that astoria sounded general quarters and even then for a long time an argument had been raging over whether this was a night bombardment by the southern force against land targets or something else more sinister in the end quartermaster radhika had decided to ignore lieutenant on duty and had simply yanked the general quarters alarm despite the lieutenant's protestations but once again it was too late as macau elected to cut short any remaining time suddenly powerful searchlights blinded the night watchman on the u.s cruisers and the seas began to erupt with spray and shell fragments although this action by radica would probably save more than a few lives even if it wouldn't eventually save the ship one end of the japanese formation in the shape of kinugasa was still sending a few speculative rounds into canberra when chikai opened fire at astoria whilst alba took on quincy and kako engaged vincennes at practically the same time alerted by the general quarters alarm astoria's fire control team were panning around looking for targets spotted the japanese ships and opened fire themselves captain greenman rushed to the bridge to find his ship firing madly into the darkness minutes after general quarter's alarm had been sounded with poor quartermaster radica in the middle of a verbal dressing down from the officer of the deck for his insubordination worried that they were firing on a friendly greenman ordered firing stopped even as the port 5-inch gun deck exploded from a series of hits the gunnery officer high in the foremast then yelled down that one the ships did not have friendly profiles and more prosaically two they'd pointed searchlights at them and were firing this rather quickly resolved the issues and astoria was allowed to resume firing quite enthusiastically the delay had cost them badly though and shakai managed to find the range first leaving astoria to absorb blow after blow as three of the four other heavy cruisers gradually joined in the fight with the action passing behind the ship where the forward turrets couldn't actually be brought to bear the aircraft hangar was an early victim the aviation fuel stored there in the unused aircraft catching fire almost immediately as further shells tore up the engine room bringing the ship to a dead halt some measure of revenge was exacted when one of the triple eight inch turrets took a shot at kinogasa they missed but in so doing they managed to hit shakai's forward turret and knock it out of action along with doing other damage to the ship the situation aboard the u.s cruisers wasn't helped by the labyrinthine system then in place for general quarters which was effectively a game of musical chairs with almost a thousand participants in the sp in a space the size of a large office block almost every position had a different crewman assigned to it in battle as compared to when they were on normal watch meaning that the whole exercise was a mad scramble with men in the forest having to descend into the depths of the ship to carry out certain tasks before heading back up again to the hangar whilst other men deep in the ship would have passed them heading to take over their positions in the foremask fire control position and with fire and explosions destroying ladders setting fighter passageways and demolishing parts of the ship wholesale half the crew were stuck in entirely the wrong place as the ship began to come apart around them canberra had come into action so quickly because the royal australian navy followed a procedure shared with the royal navy where the duty and action stations of the crew were the same the only running about would be from the off-duty crew heading to reinforce those who were already primed for action it would be a lesson the us navy learned well enough in the aftermath but right now that knowledge was being bought at a terrible price even as the astoria's anti-aircraft gunners blazed away with their 1.1 inch cannon against various offending searchlights before more incoming fire silenced them as well at the forward end of the column things were even worse astoria had at least been in the process of coming to full readiness and was able to get some shots away vincennes was less prepared and was also being doubled by the japanese envelopment like astoria hesitating to fire in case the incoming ships were friendly kako instead opened the score with kinugasa and the light cruisers quickly joining in the ship attempted to accelerate from the 10 knots cruising speed it had been doing only to be hit by multiple torpedoes from chikai and yubari again wiping out all power to the ship and leaving it drifting it had taken only eight minutes for the japanese ships to shift their fire from the dying vincennes to the unlucky astoria by way of the quincy both of which were still gamely fighting on and in the middle of it all quite literally was the quincy which was subject to a crossfire like vincennes from alba furutaka and tenryu as the most prepared ship of the three quincy's captain ordered the ship to break formation and charge down macaw's ships rightly estimating that there would be torpedoes in the water unfortunately the japanese attack had been timed so that the torpedoes and shells would strike roughly at the same time and so even as smoke belched from quincy's funnels two torpedoes smashed into the ship's side sending it coasting to a stop as well the main guns fought back as best they could landing a hit on shakai's superstructure that almost literally decapitated the japanese admiral and demolished the chart house the two hits scored on shakai the other one being from astoria as mentioned before showed just how vulnerable even the largest japanese cruiser present was to allied fire if only the allied ships had been ready a few minutes before in exchange japanese shells quickly took apart quincy's bridge and followed up with a third torpedo for good measure across the formation six out of the nine triple eight-inch turrets on the u.s ships had been knocked out by direct hits and aboard the quincy the captain's last order to the only man left standing in the flaming wreckage of the bridge was to beach the ship but without power and taking on water fast there was little the surviving man could do the two u.s destroyers wilson and helm were caught on the wrong side of the cruiser line to help although wilson at least had the good sense not to fire its torpedoes through friendly ships with visual sighting ruined by the three pyres in front of them and the bulk of savo island obscuring the radar return ahead of them the two ships took what shots they could when they glimpsed targets and luckily they were about as hidden from the japanese as the japanese were from them and thus they took no damage in exchange the last victim of this rapid engagement would be the unlucky rolf talbert which would take several hits as the ijn ships headed north but would manage to duck into cover from a passing wall of rain before it was too late the japanese ships left scenes of utter carnage behind them but now faced a decision there was little to stop them going back around after the transports but mikawa believed the u.s carriers were still nearby he could regroup reload head south and finish off the transports but any any enemy forces that were there now would now surely be alerted and by the time he'd finished with them his ships would face a run back north under the anticipated gaze of many vengeful dauntless dive bombers and despite some officers being willing to take the risk macau decided discretion was the better part of valor and withdrew to the north half an hour after the firing died away uss quincy dove bow first for the bottom ten minutes later having capsized vincennes followed around this time noting the distant science of battle had faded without any report and seeing a number of burning ships in the distance admiral crutchley reached out to ascertain the situation the reply that came back was the first message uss chicago had actually sent during that night reporting its own damage and that canberra was on fire with paterson and wilson trying to assist much of the gunfire had been witnessed by the transports and their escorts who'd been illuminated by a speculative flare from a japanese float plane but without much result happening in that respect as the pre-dawn light began to illuminate the situation canberra and astoria were still afloat although the situation wasn't helped just after five in the morning when paterson spotted another ship coming in from the northwest which promptly opened fire ever unhelpful bode and the chicago were back the sole upside to the encounter was that the chicago's gunnery was so hopelessly inaccurate that patterson in between dodging and returning fire luckily not with torpedoes had time to realize exactly who it was and signaled them to stand down despite the casualties and several large explosions canberra seemed to be on the way to being saved when an order from turner came in if the ship wasn't able to get underway at 0-630 just over an hour away then it was to be scuttled whilst salvation may have been possible it wasn't possible that fast and two of the relief destroyers the selfridge and ellet were ordered to finish it off once the survivors were removed in the end it took hundreds of five inch shells and five torpedoes to send canberra to the depths perhaps indicating that she had in fact still got a lot of reserve buoyancy available and could have been salvaged almost as the smoke cleared the marines indicated that they needed more time to unload anyway and so the withdrawal deadline of o630 passed without a withdrawal making the loss of canberra probably entirely unnecessary further to the north the surviving crew and supporting destroyers were fighting grimly to save the astoria with one lieutenant jumping into the water to retrieve a life raft which had a portable pump aboard whereupon he found himself being followed by an opportunistic shark climbing into the raft he grabbed an oar beat the shark over the head until the awe broke and then got back into the water and kept paddling uss bagley showed up and managed to effectively dock bow to bow with astoria a remarkable display of cement ship where heroic bucket brigades the odd portable pump and a passing rainstorm managed to put out almost all the fires above the main deck level unfortunately a much nastier fire was spreading deeper in the ship and couldn't be approached easily the forward magazine soon had to be flooded to stop the fire reaching them and which in turn made the ship's list even worse and despite the crew's best efforts the fires did manage to reach the shell hoists and then the 5-inch magazine whose seacocks had been inaccessible and a series of internal explosions began to weaken the ship's internal structure and blow out further sections of the hull as smoke began to pour from every seam and rivet hole in the ship's hull astoria began to list further at first slowly but as this brought the shell holes in the side of the ship below the water level the role became faster and faster until she was lying on her side before she settled gently by the stern with most of the remaining crew being picked up by the surrounding destroyers just after noon elsewhere the unloading of the transports was temporarily halted by the report of an incoming air raid luckily for the stopped warships and stationary transports that raid never showed up unluckily this was because they'd spotted the damaged uss jarvis and had gone after her instead sinking the ship with all hands as the remnants of the escort group assembled it turned out that uss san juan hmas hobart and their destroyers had only been 15 000 yards away from macau's forces about halfway through the battle but like almost all the other u.s commanders that night they had also believed the whole thing to be a massive friendly fire incident and had stayed away what might have happened had the two fast-firing light cruisers both equipped with modern search radar and torpedoes blind-sided macaw in the middle of the northern group's firefight will remain one of those great unanswered questions of history a last note to the action came that evening when the heavy cruiser caco was torpedoed and sunk by uss s-44 when she was almost home in a rare instance of a 1942-era u.s torpedo actually working the outcomes of the battle were numerous calls for larger warships such as uss south dakota and uss washington to be deployed to the theater grew strong and admiral king promised to send them in macaw on the other hand received praise from his victory from admiral yamamoto but would then be criticized by his colleagues for not taking out the transports as hindsight kicked in and it was realised that the u.s carriers weren't actually there ultimately he would be replaced toward the end of the guadalcanal campaign but we will run into him a few more times before then captain bode being both alive and without his ship having gone down fighting or indeed having done much of anything would be heavily criticized somewhat rightfully in the forthcoming investigation albeit that even given his actions he probably got a bit more flack in that report than was strictly necessary he would take this badly shooting himself fatally in 1943 after learning the likely outcome of the review crutchley would remain with the royal australian navy in the pacific theater for several more years and go on to survive longer than almost any other world war ii admiral reaching the grand old age of 92 before passing away in 1986. the more immediate results were the allied forces on the ground had to be resupplied by convoy under air cover somewhat ironically running mainly in the day time when allied aircraft could be aloft as opposed to the japanese navy had to make their supply runs at night for exactly the same reason wide-ranging changes were also recommended in the us navy including to the system of general quarters as well as recommending the addition of backup diesel generators and more robust water mains to be installed in older ships and for the disposal of flammable materials in areas of danger to be made mandatory the attitude in the us navy would also need to be addressed to quote admiral turner the navy was still obsessed with a strong feeling of technical and mental superiority over the enemy in spite of ample evidence as to the enemy capabilities most of our officers and men despised the enemy and felt themselves sure victors in all encounters under any circumstances the net result of all this was a fatal lethargy of mind which induced a confidence without readiness and a routine acceptance of outworn peacetime standards of conduct i believe that this psychological factor as a cause of our defeat was even more important than the element of surprise and to be honest it's hard to disagree with him considering that at least for the northern group taking the japanese seriously as an opponent would likely have meant that they wouldn't have considered the flashes and fires from the south to be the result of a weird nighttime shore bombardment and probably brought themselves to readiness and even if they hadn't then at least they wouldn't have thought that the whole thing was a massive friendly fire incident because of course the japanese couldn't possibly be doing anything as daring as attacking at night this probably would have also brought san juan hobos and its destroyers into the mix with the potential consequences that could have tipped the battle if not necessarily entirely in the allies favor then at least pushing more towards a score draw some of these changes would take some time to implement but time marched on without respite and within a couple of weeks admiral fletcher would be facing the next major naval combat of the campaign exactly the one he'd actually been worried about for bearing down on guadalcanal came the shikaku zuikaku and ruggio at the head of an invasion force designed to drive the allies back into the sea but that's a story for another time that's it for this video thanks for watching if you have a comment or suggestion for a ship to review let us know in the comments below don't forget to comment on the pinned post for dry dock questions

Channel: Drachinifel

Views: 481,259

Keywords: wows, world of warships, USN, IJN, Guadalcanal, 1st Savo Island, Admiral Mikawa, USS Chicago, HMAS Canberra, Chokai, USS Astoria, USS Quincy, USS Vincennes, Kako, Kinugasa, Aoba, Tenryu, Yubari, Yunagi, Furutaka

Id: jET2M8yP4Jo

Length: 43min 19sec (2599 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 23 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Hrodulf19]

Such a good YouTube series