Early in the morning on Friday, November 13, “Black Friday,” Callaghan’s column was off Lunga Roads. Simultaneously, the Japanese striking force steamed into the passage south of Savo Island. Americans and Japs were driving through the night on what amounted to a head-on collision course.
At 0124, cruiser Helena made radar contact with the enemy at 27,000 yards. Three minutes later, Admiral Callaghan ordered his column to make a starboard turn, which headed it straight for the enemy. In the meantime, destroyer O’Bannon made contact, and her skipper reported over the TBS. As the range closed swiftly, the American TBS system became jammed with calls—a Babel of range and bearing data, tactical orders, and requests for information. Once again the American communications apparatus was haywire, and the ships were plunged into battle with voice radios, shouting in confusion.
Fortunately, the Jap radiomen did not tune into this TBS uproar. However, the Imperial crews were at battle stations, and the gunners were ready to shoot the works at any target which came along. Henderson Field was in mind, but the lookouts had a wary eye on the black seascape.
Division Commander Stokes in lead destroyer Cushing was also straining his eyes on the darkness ahead. When Helena’s contact report reached him, Callaghan had swung his column on a northward course, and the American ships were heading toward the center of “Ironbottom Bay.” At 0141 Stokes suddenly sighted two Jap destroyers silhouetted in the starshine. They were I.J.N. Yudachi and Harusame, screening ahead of Abe’s battleship group. They were cutting across Cushing’s bow at a scant range of 3,000 yards. Cushing immediately radioed the word, and her skipper ordered a left turn to avoid headlong collision with the foe and to bring torpedo tubes to bear. The abrupt turn threw the rest of the van out of line, and cruiser Atlanta had to sheer hard to left to avoid ramming the turning DDs. Callaghan’s voice crackled over the TBS, “What are you doing?” Atlanta’s captain answered, “Avoiding our own destroyers.”
Again the TBS circuit was jammed with inquiries from the other American ships—where were the targets? should they open fire? While this medley of voices clogged the airwaves, the two Jap destroyers snapped the word to Abe’s flagship, and the Jap admiral squared away for action. Commander Stokes finally broke into the TBS clamor with a request to open torpedo fire. Stokes was granted permission, but the word came too late. Destroyers Yudachi and Harusame had not waited for this delayed-action order, and they were now beyond Cushing’s range. In the meantime, Abe’s heavy ships had pushed forward, and the other American captains were awaiting the firing order from Callaghan. The answer finally came at 0145: “Stand by to open fire.” Five tense minutes ticked by, then at 0150 a Jap searchlight flung its ray across the water and focused squarely on cruiser Atlanta.
With the range at 1,600 yards, the American cruiser opened fire. The Japs answered with a rain of salvos that were murderously accurate. Landing on Atlanta’s bridge, a heavy shell exploded with a blast that killed Admiral Norman Scott and felled the sailors around him right and left. Only one member of his staff survived this homicidal blow.
At this crucial moment, Admiral Callaghan issued the order: “Odd ships commence fire to starboard, even ships to port.” Unfortunately, some of the ships could not find targets on the designated hand, and the order did not allow for selective firing on vessels which were within range.
The results were chaotic. The American column ploughed headlong into the Japanese formation going between their columns; both American and Japanese formations broke completely. All chances of battle maneuver went to the wind. What ensued was a ship-against-ship melee on the order of the Battle of Santiago—the kind of free-for-all described by Theodore Roosevelt as a “captain’s fight.”
It was a knockdown and drag-out battle in every sense of the term. Atlanta, the target for a sledgehammer fire from the Japs was the first American ship battered out of action. Shortly after Admiral Scott was killed, the ship was struck by one or more Japanese torpedoes. The blast almost heaved her out of the water. Listing and afire, she stumbled to a halt, ruinously damaged. But the first American ship to go down was the destroyer Barton.
Destroyers versus Battleships
Japanese Admiral Abe sent battleship Hiei booming southward toward the center of Savo Sound. Kirishima, some 800 yards on the port quarter, came on firing. With his formation gone helter skelter, Admiral Abe pushed forward. As his flagship advanced, he was astounded to discover that she was under destroyer fire. At first he could not believe it, but such was the case. U.S. destroyers Cushing, Laffey, Sterett, O’Bannon and Monssen were launching individual attacks on the bellowing battleship. The battleship struck back in berserk fury.
Hiei was an old-timer, vintage of 1916, but she had been designed by a British naval architect who knew how to build a dreadnought. Like her companion, Kirishima, she weighed 31,000 tons, carried thick armor, and packed 14-inch guns in her turrets. On the occasion in question, Hiei, like the other ships in Abe’s force, had been caught with bombardment ammunition in the guns and on the hoists. But the admiral made haste to shift to armor-piercing shells, and whatever the character of this battleship’s slugs, they were heavy enough to down a destroyer.
A destroyer’s chances against any battleship are somewhat comparable to those of a pistol man armed with a .22 against a foe armed with an elephant rifle. A quick pistol shot at close range might kill the larger adversary if it hits him in a vital spot, but almost any hit at all from an elephant gun would fell a pistol man. The destroyer men knew their chances. Their best chance lay in torpedo fire, and they maneuvered desperately to hit the battlewagon with “fish.”
Cushing and Laffey paid for valor with their lives.
Loss of U.S.S. Monssen
Destroyer Monssen (Lieutenant Commander C. E. McCombs) had been the next to last ship in the American column (13th). She was directly astern of the Barton when that destroyer, first to go down in the pell-mell battle, was fatally torpedoed.
Searchlights were blazing, shells were crashing, and Barton was going down before Monssen could grasp the situation. To make matters worse, if that were possible, Monssen’s fire-control radar had been damaged during the previous day’s air attack; she had to depend on vision and radio data for fire control.
Then Barton was torpedoed, and Monssen herself was under fire. A torpedo wake whisked through the water and passed under her keel. Maneuvering at high speed to evade, McCombs sent his ship racing ahead. Tragically enough, being dark, she plowed through a drift of floats from Barton, killing unseen swimmers. Everywhere the darkness was exploding, and the flashes of fire and livid shell bursts created a kaleidoscopic play of glare and showdown that flustered the lookouts.
But Hiei’s silhouette was now plainly in view on Monssen’s bow about 4,000 yards to starboard. McCombs swung the destroyer, and five torpedoes were fired at the looming battlewagon. Another spread of five was launched at the other big target on Monssen’s beam. Simultaneously, her gunners were hurling 5-inch salvos at enemy ships dimly seen to port, and her 20mm. Batteries were flailing at a destroyer no more than a quarter mile distant to starboard.
Suddenly a swarm of star shells burst over Monssen, bathing her with brilliant light. Believing that they had been fired by a friendly vessel which had fallen out of column, Commander McCombs flashed Monssen’s recognition signals. Instantly a pair of searchlights fastened upon the destroyer. Within a matter of seconds, she was reeling under a torrent of Japanese shells. A spread of torpedoes raced at her. The torpedoes missed, but the shells slammed home with deadly accuracy.
The destroyer’s deck was torn up and her bridge was torn down. Steering control was shifted to secondary conn, top side amidships. Within five minutes, secondary conn was blown away, and steering was shifted to aft steering gear, which was below deck. C. C. Thomason EM3/C then steered, with directions received through headphones. Shells crashed into Monssen’s forward fire room and engine room, stopping her starboard engine and screw. With one engine still going, she kept fighting. Then shells crashed into her after fire room and engine room. A loud explosion, a loud hiss of high pressure steam (600 pounds at 600 degrees) escaping, and all engines stopped, all lights went out, and she was dead in the water. They wrecked her power lines and demolished her pumps. In the hurricane of explosions, 5-inchers were blown from their mountings, machine guns were flung over the stacks, torpedo batteries were shattered, and depth charges were sent flying like bean cans. Altogether, 35 5-inch shells and at least three or maybe 6 14-inch shells struck the destroyer. When the firing subsided, she was a total wreck, enveloped in searing flames. The ship was abandoned at 0220. Trapped on the mangled bridge, the commanding officer and others of the conning party were compelled to leap over the side from the rail. All were seriously injured.
Fighting their way out of the wreckage topside and the hell below, other officers and blue jackets escaped. But too few survived this ship slaughter. At least 200 of her crew perished in the Monssen.
The history book says: Like Cushing to the west of her, Monssen, a burning hulk, remained afloat. Clinging to life rafts and debris, the survivors in the water watched the flames chew their way through the abandoned ship. Then someone heard a cry for help. There were living men in that fiery ruin.
The cry reached across the water like an appealing hand. And it was grasped by a bos’n’s mate and two seamen, who contrived to put their raft alongside the ship at daylight. By that time the vessel was a crematorium. Any moment it might burst like a detonated mine, or make a sudden plunge under the water which boiled and steamed around its blistered hull. But men were trapped in the interior of that furnace and C. C. Storey, boatswain’s mate second, L. F. Spurgeon, gunners mate second, and J. G. Hughes, fireman first, boarded the death ship to get them. Storey, Spurgeon, and Hughes. The Navy would remember their names, would remember how they scaled the side of that oven-hot ship, how they clawed into the wreckage and disappeared in a gulf of smoke. And how, after a wait that seemed beyond hope, they emerged from the gulf, bringing with them eight men-eight wounded shipmates who had been fastened in a compartment down below deck. No finer action was performed in the crucible of Savo Sound. The wounded men and their valiant rescuers got away with little time to spare. About noon of that day, the Monssen blew up and sank. (continued)
