Searchlights snap on at 3,000 yards, and a night battle breaks out off Guadalcanal
Shortly after 01:25 on November 13, 1942, Vice Admiral Hiroaki Abe's force of two battleships, a light cruiser and eleven destroyers slipped into the sound from the west side of Savo Island, to bombard Henderson Field. Rear Admiral Daniel Callaghan's thirteen American ships were already in the sound when, at 01:48, the destroyer Akatsuki and the battleship Hiei switched on searchlights that lit the cruiser Atlanta from 3,000 yards. Within minutes the two fleets were firing at almost point-blank range in a moonless, weather-darkened melee.
Guadalcanal was the first sustained American offensive against Japan, and the night of November 13 decided whether Henderson Field, the base holding the island, would keep its aircraft. The U.S. Navy lost heavily in a confused fight, and the bombardment was stopped. Sailors called the water Ironbottom Sound, and the name stuck.
QWhat did Callaghan order as his formation fell apart, and why did it confuse his captains?
As the American column lost its shape, Callaghan issued a line that has been quoted ever since: "Odd ships fire to starboard, even ships fire to port." The order assumed ships still sat in a neat sequence with enemies on both sides. By then the formation was disintegrating and vessels from both navies were intermingling in the dark, so the numbers told a captain little about where his target was. The American ships did carry radar, but communication problems and the lack of a cohesive battle plan wasted that advantage. The order became the shorthand for how the night went.
QWho commanded the American battleships that fought after the night of the 13th?
Rear Admiral Willis A. Lee Jr. His force was built differently from Callaghan's: the battleships Washington and South Dakota, screened by four destroyers. It fought the engagements of November 14 and 15. That matters because on November 13 none of Callaghan's thirteen ships was a battleship, while the Japanese brought two. The whole sequence, from November 12 to 15, is now treated as a single Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, the decisive engagement among the campaign's naval battles. The cruisers and destroyers of the first night fought one phase of it, and the battleships of Lee's force fought another.
QHow long did the Pacific go without another major naval battle afterward?
About eighteen months. Guadalcanal was the last major naval battle in the Pacific until the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Japan's reaction to the outcome was not another push at Henderson Field. The following month it decided to evacuate Guadalcanal, and the evacuation was completed by early February 1943. The Japanese infantry meant to retake the airfield never arrived in the numbers planned, since most of the transports carrying them had been sunk. A battle that opened in the dark between Savo Island and Guadalcanal ended with an island abandoned, and the surface fleets spent the next year and a half elsewhere.
