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One must keep in mind Hoel, Roberts, and Johnston.

Indeed.

Destroyers were also big players with the sinking of the Hiei at Guadalcanal. Historical accounts tend to simply mention that the Hiei was sunk by aircraft the next day, but it wasn't. During the previous night, US Destroyers put perhaps hundreds of 5" rounds into the Battleship from point blank range and a torpedo. It was crippled to 5 knots, and a large number of the crew were killed or wounded. A few hits were scored by aircraft from Henderson field, but it was the Japanses who scuttled the ship due to the damage done by the US Destroyers.

I had not been aware of Hiei's fate. Indeed the story as I have seen it written is that the Cactus Air Force finished her.

The First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal scared the hell out of Navy men. O'Callaghan was destroyed as easily as if the US Navy was made up of cockroaches.

Serious fear flicks back and forth to and from blood anger in my experience. There develops a blood lust, a true lust but a lust incomparably more intense than the desire of a young man for a young woman. There develops an ice cold, liquid helium cold, self consuming fire. The self we believe is our self is immolated. It never comes back. The attention becomes focused for the first time.

The Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal where Hiei sank was fought by a Navy no longer merely professional. One recollects Mush Morton's central reality - "Kill the sons of bitches!" Or the more polished (can't recollect who said it) "Japanese will become a language spoken only in Hell." A war where no surrender was possible. A war where enemy combatants were captured only for their military intelligence value and quickly gone after their usefulness ended. The Japanese were worse.

LeMay's firebombing. Once when I was very young in Japan one of the maids pointed into the sky to show the height of the brilliant red light, brighter than fireworks, that was the core of Tokyo being incinerated. The angle she indicated was forty five degrees. The center of Tokyo, the burned over area, which when I saw it was more desolate than Death Valley, was twenty miles from where we stood. The firestorm glowed with fierce intensity high into the stratosphere.

Johnston's skipper, Commander Ernest Evans, announced to the crew after General Quarters was set that "There can be no expectation of survival." Then Johnston went in. She kept up the fight until she was destroyed.

I am sure that what I have said is not new for you. I went to see the portable Viet Nam wall last Sunday. Perhaps what I write will be an encouragement to our youngsters. I think it will be, at least for the good ones.

When I first saw photos of Scharnhorst I was struck by how small she was. The drawings of Bismark show an old fashioned ship more like the old Texas than like the Alaska.