Battleship Night Action Naval Battle of Guadalcanal November 1942

Excerpt from Book: Operational Experience of Fast Battleships: World War II, Korea, Vietnam ^ | 1989, pp 61 - 67 | Second Edition, compiled and edited by John C. Reilly, Jr., Naval Historical Center, Dept of Navy

[major_gaff]

Agreed...and the Solomon campaign doesn't happen with out the Midway victory but the IJN was over-extended just to fight that battle...I wonder
how much further they could have actually advanced. A loss at Midway would have also increased resources to the Pacific theater thus hastening
our industrial might coming into play.

[QualityMan]

I live near Waterloo, IA.....home of the 5 Sullivan brothers.

I attended a show last evening at our local military museum...the paul allen funded guys that found the Juneau gave a presentation of their adventures.

It was really cool to talk with these guys. they also found the Wasp, Hornet, Indianapolis, Musashi, Hiei, Kaga, Akagi, and others. Their next target to find is Soryu.

thanks for posting this. Fascinating stuff.

[QualityMan]

this is quite true.

the japanese lost no territory at midway...only ships.

they were still quite able to mount a serious offensive afterwards...ie. solomons.

it was the solomons campaign, and guadalcanal specifically, that finally blunted Japanese imperial goals.

Similar to the germans at stalingrad...turning point was really Kursk.

[lapsus calami]

 

 

You would have loved duty aboard a battleship. After an engagement with all batteries the below decks would look like a cross between a burglary and the Sack of Rome. Lockers burst open, contents strewn everywhere, mattresses off bunks, bunk frames tore loose from the walls, your stuff thrown everywhere all over the floor, various conduits shook loose, bent and maybe leaking, supporting brackets cracked if not bent, asbestos dust floating in the air. There was re-engineering done on-the-fly while out to sea to figure out ways of keeping things secured that were not anticipated in the original design plans.

 

 

[lapsus calami]

 

 

The Japs were over extended, period. When we got rolling and commenced poking holes in their little Co-Prosperity Sphere there wasn't much they could do about defending it. It was a rear guard action to the end from there.

 

 

[Captain Rhino]

During my time in the Marine Corps you learned where to stand and not stand when big caliber guns were going boom. Stand in the side or backblast zone; very bad for your health. Interestingly, years later as a contractor, I learned that instructors supervising students firing the SMAW (Shoulder-fired Multipurpose Assault Weapon) (basically the modern version of the WW II bazooka) had to be given two days off to recover after a day on the range because they were present at the firing point for every round fired while the students only were exposed to the effects of one or two rounds.

I have to wonder what kind of recovery time sailors on battleships and cruisers required after a long gun fight like Savo Island. The physiological effect must be significant, not to mention prolonged adrenaline exposure effects. Unfortunately, they probably didn’t get much based on needing to repair all the damage that you say the firing caused to their own ship.

[major_gaff]

Glad I served on a carrier...lol

[topher]

Admiral Lee constantly drilled his sailors for gunfire action.

This is the fruit of that. He also used his gunfire radar effectively to find the biggest target -- the opposing battleship -- and target it...

[Captain Rhino]

All that practice really showed in both the 16” and 5” rates of fire. Especially true down in the magazines where getting a shell to the lift was mostly manual.

BZ USS Washington