I have read a lot on this subject, and one of the most informative and entertaining (entertaining in the way the story was told, not the subject which was terrible battle) was the book “Neptune’s Inferno”.
Their description of Admiral “Ching” Lee was fascinating. He was an early adopter and guru of radar directed gunfire. He knew the systems better than the men who worked on them and often better than the people who designed them.
He understood the strengths and weaknesses of the technology at that current date and was the first in history to use it effectively in a ship to ship engagement.
But what I enjoyed most was their description of Admiral Lee, the man. He apparently had a mild disposition and a spectacled face that made him approachable, but was a steely competitor and fighter.
He won 7 medals (5 gold, 1 silver, and 1 bronze), all in team shooting events.
He once designed a electronic guillotine with a meat cleaver for rats that they put in the overhead of the wardroom on a path rats were known to take. They had contests to see who could trigger the solenoid on the meat cleaver to get the rat as it ran under it during its journey on the pipes!
However, what was sobering was the butchery of naval gunfire battles at night in those waters. I once read someone’s characterization of one of those battles (I do think it was the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal) as a barroom fight where all was pitch black until a light was continually switched on and off.
Also makes you pause when you realize that Marine and Army deaths on Guadalcanal were around a thousand, but in the naval battles around Guadalcanal, around 4,000 men died. And when you realize a lot of those deaths were compressed into combined time frames that could be measured in hours, whereas the land battle went on for months.
I remember reading an account of one of the US ships caught in a searchlight of a Japanese ship, and everyone had a feeling that, if they could simply hide behind a turret or bulkhead to get out of the glare, they would somehow be safe. Being individually visible in the beam of light was apparently unnerving and gave rise to that irrational desire to get back in the shadows.
Great subject, thanks for posting it.
I have read a lot of Navy history about WW II but have never heard a description of what should have resulted in a significant number of casualties. The shock of a shell exploding or just impacting armor would be largely undiminished for quite a distance. If you were standing against the wrong bulkhead, on the wrong deck, or in the wrong passageway, you could be ripped open or parts of you turned into jelly.