19421776 Club
Scott's cruisers catch Gotō's fleet in the dark off Guadalcanal
A mistaken order to fire turns into the U.S. Navy's first clean nighttime win of the Pacific war.
For two months the U.S. Navy had ceded control of the waters around Guadalcanal to Japan at night, after the disaster at Savo Island. On the night of October 11, 1942, Rear Admiral Norman Scott positioned four cruisers and five destroyers off Cape Esperance to catch a Japanese force under Rear Admiral Aritomo Gotō headed for Henderson Field. In the dark, with no moon and no horizon, American gunfire caught the Japanese ships by surprise, sinking the cruiser Furutaka and the destroyer Fubuki and mortally wounding Gotō himself. Even so, the Japanese resupply convoy got through, but the U.S. Navy had finally won a fight it started…
