Savo & History

The worst blue-water defeat in the U.S. Navy's history was the battle of Savo Island off Guadalcanal, in the dark of the morning of Aug. 9, 1942. Last week, on the fourth anniversary of the battle, the Navy opened most, but not all, of its books on the case.

The reasons originally offered to explain how four cruisers were lost in a half hour in a night attack by the Japs still stood: human exhaustion, inexperience of command, failure of radar and of radio communications. In a foot-high stack of action reports, the Navy went no farther. The new detail that did come out was an explanation of how the command failed. Its mistake: given ample warning of the approach of a powerful Japanese force, it failed to read the warning aright.

Lukewarm Response. It was 36 hours after the Marines descended upon Guadalcanal and Tulagi when Admiral (then Rear Admiral) Richmond Kelly Turner, commander of the infant offensive, got word that a Japanese surface force had been sighted by airmen off Bougainville, 300 miles to the northwest. In the task force were cruisers, and two ships which might be seaplane tenders.

The word got to Vice (then Rear) Admiral V. A. C. Crutchley, a Briton assigned to the Australian Navy, who was commanding Turner's screening cruisers (both U.S. and Australian) north of Guadalcanal. Crutchley thought his defensive dispositions of the night before were adequate and issued no fresh instructions. Turner issued none, either, but he called Crutchley to a late night conference aboard his flagship. Nevertheless, some U.S. ship commanders in the cruiser screen heard of the Japs' approach with uneasiness. One of them was Captain Frederick L. Riefkohl of the heavy cruiser Vincennes, who saw the possibility of an attack. "The importance of being particularly on the alert was stressed" in his night orders, he says.

Aboard other ships there was no such response. More surprising yet, the information about the Japanese task force seems never to have reached the two ships most vitally concerned, the destroyers Blue and Ralph Talbot. With early and inefficient radar, they had been posted as pickets, one on each side of Savo Island (see map). On their patrol beats, says Crutchley, "it required a surface radar range of only six miles to ensure that nothing could get by undetected."

Hot Night. Transferred from his flagship Australia to Kelly Turner's McCawley that night, Britisher Crutchley asked Turner about the reconnaissance report. What did he think the Japs were up to? Turner "replied that it was his opinion that the enemy force was destined for Rekata Bay [125 miles up the Solomons chain, on Santa Isabel], possibly from there to operate torpedo-carrying planes against our forces." He had asked that the Jap seaplane tenders be bombed next day.

Rear Admiral Mikawa had no such conservative intention. Boring in south of Savo he passed the destroyer Blue at one-mile range and was not seen. Then he saw the unsuspecting heavy cruisers Chicago and Canberra, with two destroyers. In two minutes all the Jap ships fired their torpedoes. The Chicago was crippled and the Canberra mortally wounded.

Mikawa swung north, but as he led his five heavy cruisers to the east of the three U.S. heavies, his three light ships straggled away in the opposite direction. The Americans now had warning: "Strange ships entering the harbor." Still, not all were at general quarters. When Mikawa opened fire the result was murder: the heavies Vincennes and Quincy were promptly crippled and soon sank; the Astoria stayed afloat until daylight.

Mikawa had orders to attack the transports unloading off Tulagi and Lunga. They were now virtually unprotected. But late-starting U.S. gunners, finally mobilized into action, had got a lucky hit. They had blown up Mikawa's operations room and destroyed all his charts. The Jap got cold feet. With his force scattered, and with the danger (which he exaggerated) of U.S. air attack at dawn, Mikawa tossed away his chance to smash the transports and, with them, the first U.S. offensive in the Pacific.

The Judgment. The battle was over; when word of the losses trickled out, two months later, it made U.S. morale sag. The captains of the Quincy and Canberra had died with their ships. The captain of the Chicago died in Panama, apparently by his own hand. Riefkohl of the Vincennes and Captain William G. Greenman of the Astoria were never given more responsible combat commands. Riefkohl is still a captain, Greenman has made commodore--a temporary rank.

Crutchley was "most disappointed" at the failure of his plans to detect and defeat the enemy attack. But he criticized none of his subordinates. Neither did Turner criticize Crutchley. Said Admiral Ernest J. King: "In my judgment, those two officers were in no way inefficient, much less at fault. . . . Both found themselves in awkward positions and both did their best with the means at their disposal." A board of inquiry also cleared Crutchley and Kelly Turner, who went on to two promotions and brilliant operations at Tarawa, the Marshalls, Iwo and Okinawa.

But the stubborn fact remained: four great ships had been lost, with 952 U.S. officers & men and 84 Australians. The Japs (it later developed) had a slight edge in ships and guns, but not enough to foreclose the decision. The crux of the matter was the misjudgment of what the Japs were up to. If the enemy's actions had been properly appraised, all the physical factors of human fatigue, poor visibility, unreliable radar and stuttering communications might have been overcome.

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