Guadalcanal Campaign - Cape Esperance (IJN 1 : 2 USN)

[Music] [Music] it had been about a month and a half since the battle of the eastern solomons and the situation on guadalcanal had settled into an odd kind of routine thanks in large part to the retention of henderson field the u.s forces dominated the air during the day and with that dominance came control of the local seas however thanks to their base at rabal the imperial japanese navy could concentrate and supply their shipping far closer to the combat zone than the us navy could this in turn meant that japanese fast ships could if they time their runs correctly run down to guadalcanal at night with supplies equipment and reinforcements for the japanese troops on the island and then come back with wounded and items deemed worthy of salvage and repair the most direct route was the same one macaw had used in the events that led up to the first battle of savo island running between the various islands that made up the central and northern elements of the solomon islands chain this route was nicknamed the slot and the ships themselves dubbed the tokyo express by the allies there were a number of disadvantages to this setup though since only destroyers and cruisers really had the speed and heavy cruisers couldn't be spared the ships making the transport runs could only take relatively small loads and no single heavy items such as tanks or heavy artillery guns that might tip the balance on land the imperial japanese navy had plenty of cargo and amphibious assault ships that could move these items but they were slow and would be caught by henderson fields aircraft if they tried to make the run either on their way in during the late afternoon or if they left somewhat later then they'd be caught on their way out in the early morning the obvious thing to do was to take out henderson field although this was a catch-22 since a number of failed assaults proved that you needed more men and more heavy equipment to do so and it was that very airfield that was stopping you from having that particular heavy equipment delivered it was hoped that this would all change with the arrival of the nishin at just over 11 000 tons she'd been designed as a seaplane and [ __ ] submarine carrier but her light cruiser armament and relatively high speed of 28 knots combined with the relatively large hold space necessary to carry submarines and aircraft as well as the cranes to move them around meant that she could work alongside the other ships of the tokyo express but could also more critically move some of those larger pieces of equipment that would be needed in the next land offensive in an effort to both distract the americans from the reinforcement efforts and to try and degrade the effectiveness of their air cover earlier than the planned land offensive the japanese navy also decided to launch a series of airstrikes and shore bombardment missions against henderson field even if it wasn't put out of action completely damaging or destroying the aircraft on the base would badly degrade us airpower which combined with the upcoming focus on the land campaign might allow more transports to get in unmolested over on the american side of things the japanese buildup had been noticed and calls had gone out for their own reinforcements a cruiser task force under rear admiral norman scott headed into the area to secure the seas for safe passage of the transports scott had actually been at the first battle of saavo island albeit aboard the atlanta class cruiser san juan and so had been forced to watch the destruction of the rest of the force from a distance by early october the japanese had allocated another fast seaplane carrier the chitose to the effort and the two ships along with six destroyers were due to make a major supply run on the 11th of october 1942. since no american forces had tried to contest the japanese knight control of the waters around guadalcanal in any significant way since the first battle of savo island no opposition was expected and a separate japanese cruiser force was allocated the mission of attacking henderson field directly using a slightly modified version of the semi-infamous sanshiki anti-aircraft shell although it was intended as designed as an anti-aircraft weapon it was thought that this shell's unique combination of fragmentation and incendiary elements in a heavy package would be very useful at destroying the aircraft and buildings and setting them all on fire this force would consist of the old heavy cruisers alba kinugasa and furutaka with the destroyers fubuki and hatsuyuki with the us reinforcements due to arrive on the 13th scott ordered night battle practice along with other training scott saw the reintroduction of a type of training that he'd supervised in the late 1930s in a practice borrowed off the royal navy that required an awful lot of faith in the crew that you were practicing against one ship would maneuver like it was an enemy vessel whilst the other would train its guns on it as if it was in battle then you would deliberately offset the deflection and elevation of the guns by a few degrees and fire when the shells landed the known offsets could be removed from the spotted fall of shot and it was then determined that if the shells would have struck their target if not for those known offsets if so a hit was chalked up and if not the guns would have to adjust and fire again you just had to hope that the other ship's initial estimates of range course and speed weren't so wildly off that they ended up nailing you with an actual broadside by accident anyway for two weeks the ships ran such gunnery exercises by day and tactical maneuver and spotting exercises each night gun crews especially on the destroyers and light cruisers were encouraged to push their firing rates up to as fast as they could reliably maintain as the crew's confidence increased so too did the freedom granted in the exercises top speeds were increased and increasingly bold strategies were tried by various captains somewhat amusingly aboard the uss salt lake city the gunners found that someone had falterly wired their telephones which meant that the primary and secondary battery telephones were actually linked and they could hear each other as well as the orders coming from the bridge and the fire control crews they actually chose not to fix this fault but instead share information on what they could see and what they were shooting at with each other with this training complete and the crews of his cruisers and destroyers somewhat buoyed up by the experience he then headed into the seas around guadalcanal on the 9th with the heavy cruisers san francisco and salt lake city the light cruisers boise and helena and the destroyers laffy buchanan duncan mccalla and farrenholt despite the two brooklyn-class cruisers being fitted with a much more advanced sg surface radar scott took the san francisco which was the newer and more powerful of the two heavy cruisers and equipped with an older and less capable sc surface radar set as his flagship partially for tradition's sake that the admiral should always have the most powerful ship and partly because the heavy cruiser also had larger facilities which would be better able to handle his admiral staff the first action from either side turned out to be an air strike by land-based japanese navy fighters attacking henderson field followed up by a larger strike by escorted bombers whilst no major damage to either side's aircraft strength or indeed the air base itself occurred it did have a much more significant result since they were rather understandably occupied with their own defense henderson's aircraft would not be able to sortie to attack the japanese formations allied aerial reconnaissance had spotted the two seaplane carriers and their escorts just over an hour after the japanese strikes but the guns and the general profile of the nissin and chittose led to them being reported as cruisers rather than seaplane tenders the actual cruiser force wasn't spotted although this was an interesting inversion of the run-up to the battle of first savo island when actual cruisers had been mistaken for seaplane tenders with the spotted japanese forces appearing to be less high-speed transport run and more the slow approach of a battle squadron looking for trouble the us navy forces headed northeast into the slot looking for a fight the american plan was simple but effective at least on paper much like the royal navy at matapan destroyers would lead the heavy units and would also follow bringing up the rear radar equipped heavy ships in this case primarily the two light cruisers would spot the enemy and direct the formation to close on them the destroyers would then use their searchlights to highlight targets keeping the heavy ships hidden in the darkness until they opened fire and could then use their own equipment at their discretion fire discipline was fairly free the destroyers had permission to engage with guns and torpedoes at will and the cruisers could fire at their own discretion if they felt this was necessary and the aim being to close the range to enable high accuracy and progress onto continuous fire as opposed to distinct salvos which were doctrine at long range once everyone had established exactly how far away the enemy was however due to the choice of san francisco as flagship it would lead the cruisers with boise then salt lake city and then helena which meant that the sg surface rate search radars were of less help looking directly ahead than they otherwise might have been it also meant that anything that was spotted on these sg surface search radars would have to be first reported to the commanders of the cruisers in question who would then have to inform the san francisco and then someone on the san francisco would have to inform scott but taking a lesson from the japanese navy's accomplishments at first savo island the american cruisers scout planes would also be tasked with reconnaissance and if possible dropping flares over the enemy the japanese transport formation slipped past the us navy forces passing down the northeastern side of guadalcanal just as the american formation rounded the island from the southwestern side the scout aircraft initially missed them as well which was somewhat understandable given that it was a moonless night and thus there was little if any ambient light available farrenholt duncan and laffy led the cruisers with buchanan and nakala on rearguard duty their approach was almost given away by the submarine i-26 which spotted them as it rested on the surface near the coast where the landmass behind it obscured it from radar detection luckily the surprise of a powerful us navy formation's appearance in the dead of night scared the submarine into a crash dive before it could get off a sighting report by the time it popped back up again to radio in it would be far too late to the north west the japanese bombardment force was led by the heavy cruiser alba followed by the furutaka and then the kinugasa with the two destroyers on either side of the formation traveling through a series of rain squalls they emerged from the last one squarely on the radar scopes of the two rear most u.s cruisers the lack of any particular ambient light degraded the optical only japanese navy knight fighting equipment whilst the us radar at least the sg units was more advanced than that that had been present at first savo island and this time it was also unabstracted by land being in its line of sight and thus had no problem in registering the japanese navy's arrival the surface search radar would spot the contacts and then the fd fire control radar would be locked on for a more detailed picture including a more accurate estimation of range although admiral scott appears to have not been made aware of this early detection by 2300 the us scout aircraft had noticed the transport flotilla that was now to the south east but scott concluded rightly that more japanese ships were around and so they continued to the north east after about half an hour scott ordered his force to double back to keep patrolling the line but now things started to go wrong the first in a cascade of mistakes that would see the action descend into a massive chaos and conflicting orders on both sides everyone in the us navy formation understood the order to double back but assumed that the formation would be maintained as the order had read column left to 230 execute so everyone would turn in the current line about the same fixed point but for some reason san francisco scott's flagship thought that the turn was more like a high-seas fleet battle turn away which if scott had actually intended it would have been transmitted as simultaneous left to 230. thus the san francisco's bow began swinging to port at about the same time as the leading destroyer boise the next in line faced a rather difficult decision if it followed scott's orders as transmitted and kept going to turn with the destroyers the san francisco would be left alone and isolated conversely if it followed san francisco around in its turn then it would while technically be disobeying scots orders and more importantly perhaps leaving the destroyers hanging out further to the northeast but realizing that either choice was going to end up splitting the formation boise's captain considered that keeping the cruiser force together was perhaps the more important and thus dutifully followed the flagship and so on the other cruisers followed down the line leaving the three formerly leading destroyers now sitting on the starboard aft quarter of the formation and desperately racing to try and overhaul the other ships to get back back on station at this point other ships in the us formation began to spot the incoming japanese column duncan one of the racing trio of destroyers and boise independently spotted the contacts and both boise and helena now reported their sightings to scott a few minutes later but with san francisco still not seeing anything and scott confirming that the three dislocated destroyers were coming up fast past the column to starboard he convinced himself that the contacts that were being spotted were actually these three escort ships and thus he discarded the reports now things got even more confusing farrenholt and laffy hadn't spotted the incoming japanese navy vessels and were winding up to full speed to more quickly bypass the cruisers duncan of course could see the radar contacts to its starboard and so assume that this increase in speed by its compatriots was the start of a general assault on the enemy and so not wanting to be left behind it broke off and headed off into the darkness to start what turned out to be a one-ship torpedo assault assuming from the circumstances that everyone knew what was going on the duncan kept quiet to improve its own chances of approaching undetected and keep the radio net clear so that scott could issue orders to his battle line this of course meant that scott actually had no idea where the duncan had vanished off to by 2345 the japanese formation had closed to about 5 000 yards and was visually spotted by helena and salt lake city as well as by san francisco's older and less capable radar although in shades of first savo island no one aboard seems to have actually told scott about this whilst aboard helena who had tracked the ships in from almost 30 000 yards down to this point one officer speculated if boarding action was going to be the course of the day nonetheless perhaps with a healthy dose of luck over judgment the us navy formation was now at a perfect crossing the t position relative to the japanese and at near enough point blank range a minute later although all the cruisers did have the authority to open fire as and when they felt it proper helena's commander thought maybe he should just double check with scott perhaps he thought a combined opening salvo would have been a little bit more effective and so he radioed san francisco using a basic pre-coded query interrogatory roger ir which translated into normal speak meant effectively can we take action somewhat confused scott replied with roger thinking that he was confirming receipt of the transmission whilst he tried to work out what exactly helena was asking about of course aboard helena which was painfully aware of the approaching japanese navy and also aware that a response in that context to ir of roger actually meant yes go ahead they decided that permission to attack had been given and a moment later the 15 six-inch guns aboard blazed into life and began a rapid fire of explosive death with the range so close doctrine said they should move immediately to continuous fire as fast as the guns would load rather than deliberate salvos and so spent brass cartridges rained down all over the ship and the entire length of the ship flickered from end to end as one turret or another was firing at practically any given time with boise and salt lake city also already aware of the situation via their own radar and lookouts they took the prompt and soon boise was also pumping out a terrifying amount of six inch fire down range whilst the salt lake city took a slightly more leisurely pace with its eight inch salvos although of course each shell was far more destructive even aboard san francisco elements of her own crew apparently were somewhat more aware of the situation than poor old admiral scott and san francisco now also opened fire resulting in the admirals of both sides being equally startled by the commencement of fire the alba had seen the u.s formation a couple of minutes earlier but thought that they were seeing the transport convoy and as the range closed japanese spotters had recognized them as in fact american ships but admiral gotto like scott doubted his subordinates and ordered them to check by signal light which just about coincided with several american shells blowing chunks out of the japanese flagship superstructure as it helplessly signaled i am alba to them which probably didn't help its case the two overtaking u.s navy destroyers took one look at the sleeting fire sailing over their heads which they initially thought was so rapid that it must be 1.1 inch anti-aircraft fire until they saw the results down at the other end then they took a look to starboard saw exactly what was happening and enthusiastically joined in within minutes two of alba's three turrets were gone and the bridge was a complete wreck some heavy shells probably from salt lake city or san francisco's guns actually went straight through and out the other side but the shock wave of their passing still wiped out most of the men on the bridge anyway and would fatally injure admiral gotto scott somewhat stunned and now worried that everybody might have opened fire at the u.s destroyers he presumably missed laffy and farrenholt merrily blazing away with their own guns into the darkness ordered all firing to cease after a couple of minutes helena along with boise was already several hundred shells lighter and both boise and san francisco herself actually kept firing as their captains were utterly sure about their targets san francisco's captain was very apologetic as he overall admiral scott when at admiral scott's order fahrenholt flashed its location from startlingly nearby scott finally clocked what was happening and a few minutes after his first order to cease fire he gave the order to resume fire instead alba rapidly fell away making smoke which in the darkness made her damage look much worse than it actually was although her upper works had been utterly mauled and there were several fires her machinery was still mostly intact and there was relatively little damage overall to her watertight integrity but concluding that alba was sinking the combined wrath of the four american cruisers now shifted to the furotaka a large fire caused by a hit to or near her torpedo launchers made her an even more obvious target and buchanan launched a torpedo which in a rare event for the us navy in 1942 functioned perfectly blowing a hole in the ferrotarka's machinery spaces once it crossed the intervening distance whilst this underwater projectile was undertaking its short-lived one-way journey someone spotted the fabuki at less than a dozen ship's lengths away the destroyer for some reason had still not unleashed its long lances and was trying to bluff its way into katana range and the two leading u.s cruisers quickly made sure that that was never going to happen joined by fire from almost everybody else shortly thereafter unsurprisingly leaving the japanese ship a blazing and sinking wreck kinugasa and hatsuyuki decided that discretion was the better part of valor and turned to port instead of following their comrades to starboard and thus avoided the worst of the immediate firestorm it wasn't all going the americans way though farrenholt and duncan were spotted by the japanese ships and taken under fire somewhat unsurprisingly but they were also rather unhelpfully subjected to a number of barrages from their own side forcing both ships to disengage and head behind the american cruiser line one hit high on farrenholt snipped off the radar antenna rather neatly and sent splinters down into the torpedo launcher below one of which blew out the air flask of a torpedo which immediately launched itself straight out of the tube and rather unhelpfully since the torpedo launcher was currently positioned pointing forward wedged itself motor screaming in the four funnel luckily unlike buchanan's weapon this one was faulty the motor ran out but the automatic destruct function failed to work whilst farrenholt was hit by around half a dozen friendly shells duncan was to suffer much worse from its own side left almost out of control and ablaze by the unintended damage the fact that it retired behind friendly lines was more the fact that it was stuck in an uncontrollable turn to port than anything particularly intentional as the two japanese groups now attempted to retreat the american ships closed in to pursue this turned out to be a fairly lucky maneuver as kirugasa had taken the chance to launch a spread of torpedoes which barely missed boise feeling relatively confident boise and salt lake city activated their searchlights to help finish off the fleeing enemy and inadvertently gave the so far unengaged kinogasa an excellent set of aiming points within minutes a pair of eight inch shells blasted straight into boise the first careened into one of boise's forward shell handling rooms and exploded taking another shell handling room up with it a huge fireball erupted and a hundred lives was snuffed out in an instant and for a moment everyone feared the fire would spread to the adjacent powder magazines but luckily the shell's destruction became a victim of its own success as the hole blown in the ship's side immediately admitted vast amounts of water which in turn put a rather decisive end to any lingering fires deep in the ship although this didn't help the turrets which were well and truly ablaze now the fight was to shore up bulkheads try and put out the fires and ensure that the ship remained afloat proving itself to be tonight's japanese navy most valuable player kinugasa then took on salt lake city coming off somewhat the better with minor damage in exchange for smashing some of salt lake city's boiler machinery which led to the salt lake city dropping back with reduced speed part of this success was due to the brief lull as the pursuit geared up which allowed the remaining japanese ships to switch from their bombardment rounds to armor-piercing rounds between half the crews of battleline now being knocked out of action two of his destroyers having to fall back and the japanese navy bending every effort to get up to maximum speed and away from him scott ordered his ships to disengage shortly after 20 past midnight in the morning although salt lake city's actions standing in front of the stricken and wela light boise probably saved the light cruiser from being sent to the bottom by the kinugasa apart from fabuki the action ceased without anyone else actually having sunk and the transport squadron had kept themselves occupied by unloading the supplies that they carried and then sneaking back to the east of the other two formations but as morning drew on the casualties began to add up the first to go was the destroyer uss duncan abandoned due to uncontrollable fires about two o'clock in the morning next was furutaka after drifting without power for about an hour and a half she sank just before half past two in the morning with hatsuyuki picking up survivors boise now managed to put out the remaining fires and get back up to cruising speed by around three o'clock in the morning which was around the time that the macalla found the abandoned duncan starting an effort to save the ship whilst picking up the crew in the water with assistance of some boats launched from guadalcanal the rescue effort for the men was more successful than that for the ship as duncan would finally go down around lunchtime they also happened to come across some sailors from the fabuki who decided that they'd prefer to stay in the water and wait for presumed rescue by their own side the next night it wouldn't be until the following day that they realized no help was coming and they let themselves be picked up and of course taken prisoner at this point the loss of one cruiser and one destroyer plus heavy damage to another in exchange for a us destroyer sunk a heavy cruiser damaged and a light cruiser out of action for a good chunk of a year wasn't too bad an exchange rate given the ambush circumstances even if it overall favored the us navy however matters began to escalate as the sun rose rear admiral jojima whose formation had thus far remained intact would now send four of his six destroyers to help the cruiser force with henderson field not having been bombarded this meant that soon enough flights of dauntless dive bombers and the odd formation of avengers along with some escorting wildcats began to hunt and soon enough were piling in on anything flying the flag of the rising sun one wave damaged the destroyer murakumo another hit her with a torpedo and then as the other destroyers tried to help lestrick and compatriot still more aircraft hit and sank the natsugumo plus hit the murakumo a bit more for good measure ending up sinking both vessels both sides initially claimed somewhat unrealistic numbers of kills the japanese claim that they'd sunk two cruisers and a destroyer the americans claimed that they'd sunk three cruisers and four destroyers in reality it was one cruiser and three destroyers sunk with another cruiser heavily damaged on the japanese side whilst the americans had one destroyer sunk one light cruiser and one destroyer heavily damaged and one heavy cruiser lightly damaged overall therefore the tactical victory was firmly the us navy's although the value of henderson field and its aircraft was deeply underlined by the morning's actions to both sides involved strategically the picture was a little bit muddier on the one hand the allied supply convoy landed unchallenged by surface attack in the next few days the reinforcements that they brought allowing the successful defense of henderson field against land attack the following week but the japanese navy had succeeded in its supply run that night and the two seaplane carriers were undamaged which would be a critical issue in future resupply runs due to their ability to move the heavy equipment that the japanese army desperately needed additionally the fact that they'd won combined with the unrealistic kill claims meant that some in the us navy assumed that the issues that had led to the defeat at first savo island were now completely resolved something that would come back to bite them later on in the campaign finally the japanese navy did not give up its attempts to destroy henderson field in fact less than 48 hours after the smoke cleared on this battle dubbed the battle of cape esperance the battle cruisers congo and haruna showed up and shot up henderson field quite badly temporarily crippling both runways damaging or destroying more than half the available aircraft and setting fire to almost all the aviation fuel present badly affecting aerial operations from the field for some time to come overall the situation on guadalcanal was devolving into a stalemate numbers on land were roughly equal and neither side could claim control of the seas long enough to significantly assist in the land battle with something like say a prolonged shore bombardment operation at sea the us navy's options seemed somewhat limited in the past couple of months enterprise had been damaged and was under repair due to the action at the battle of the eastern solomons her companion in that battle saratoga had been torpedoed by a submarine and so was also under repair the third member of that particular fleet wasp had missed the battle only to also be torpedoed and this time sunk by a japanese submarine an action that had also sent the new battleship uss north carolina into dry dock with a hole in her side that left uss hornet but admiral nimitz had a couple of tricks up his sleeve much like yorktown at midway he expedited the repairs needed to get enterprise back to sea if not necessarily in tip-top shape and with the two fleet carriers working together he sent out admiral halsey to relieve admiral gormley halsey was somewhat recovered from the medical issue that had seen him miss midway and he now took command if there was ever a us admiral who could be guaranteed to stick his boot in and change the flow of operations it was halsey thus the stage was set for the next big battle in the ongoing campaign the battle of the santa cruz islands 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: 314,754

Rating: 4.9478612 out of 5

Keywords: wows, world of warships, Guadalcanal Campaign, WW2, Pacific Campaign, Battle of Cape Esperance, USS Boise, Admiral Scott, Admiral Goto, USS San Francisco, USS Laffey, USS Helena, USS Salt Lake City, Aoba, Furutaka, Kinugasa, Henderson Field

Id: xeZ3AEd-Ccw

Length: 32min 6sec (1926 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 09 2020