Stay tuned. It is a work in progress.
The popular history read on Scott.
At the Battle of Cape Esperance, on the night of October 11-12, Rear Admiral Norman Scott attempted to achieve better command and control by arraying his Task Force 64 in a close order, linear formation and turning off the radar on his flagship San Francisco (CA-38). Scott did not trust the relatively new technology after its apparent failure at Savo Island, nor did he fully understand the qualitative differences between the U.S. radars. Scott was able to intercept an approaching IJN force from an advantageous position, sinking cruiser Furutaka and setting flagship cruiser Aoba ablaze. The apparent lesson learned from his success was that linear, compressed formations aided command and control at night, and that radar was not reliable. This conclusion unfortunately ignored the fact that TF 64 had suffered a friendly fire incident and that the Helena (CL-50) had used the better U.S. radar to detect the IJN formation and deliver devastating gunfire salvoes to initiate the fighting. In fact, because Scott lacked situational awareness because of poor C3, he ordered a cease fire and failed to exploit his advantage.
What we thought happened.
What the Japanese thought happened.
A modern, dumbed down version of those two viewpoints.
The Battle of Cape Esperance: A Sorely Needed Naval Victory (warfarehistorynetwork.com)
Captain Hoover of the USS Helena is going to catch the HELLO after this fight.“One large, two small vessels, one six miles from Savo off northern beach, Guadalcanal. Will investigate closer.” This message, from Lieutenant John A. Thomas, pilot of the cruiser USS San Francisco’s Vought OS2U Kingfisher scout plane, could not have come at a better time. Aboard his flagship, Admiral Norman Scott received the news with relief—his Task Force 64.2 had been looking for the approaching Japanese force for the past several hours. Four Kingfishers were supposed to have been launched to find the enemy, but the cruiser Salt Lake City’s caught fire and crashed, and the cruiser Helena’s was not launched at all. Only the cruisers Boise and San Francisco managed to get their spotting planes into the air, and everyone aboard Admiral Scott’s task force waited for word from one of them. At 10:50 pm, on October 11, 1942, contact was finally made, and the Battle of Cape Esperance was about to begin.
[url=http://28655-cape-esperance-the-misunderstood-victory-of-admiral-norman-scott.pdf][/url]Cape Esperance: The Misunderstood Victory of Admiral Norman Scott
My own comments.The Battle of Cape Esperance was the second of five surface engagements between ships of the United States and the Imperial Japanese navies near the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands. The Japanese called the clash the Sea Battle of Savo Island, referencing the first surface action two months earlier. Although COMTF64.2 prevented Goto from accomplishing his mission, the conduct of the battle was far from flawless. The botched countermarch highlighted Rear Admiral Richmond K. Turner’s observation that “scratch teams performed poorly in stressful situations.”34 It was becoming apparent that ships in the combat zone had too little time for training, and the exercises Scott conducted while loitering near Rennell Island could not make up for years of neglect. The Americans overcame small errors such as the misuse of the term “bogie” and the usage of relative, rather than true (magnetic) readings but the battle showed the significance of these small errors. Captain Tobin, in his after-action report suggested that the code word “skunk” be used to describe an identified surface contact, and Nimitz ordered the change immediately.35 Norman Scott, a bona fide member of the Navy’s “Gun Club,” employed naval rifles to the exclusion of torpedoes in achieving his mission. Scott’s battle plan specified that the cruisers were to employ “continuous fire against small ships at short range, rather than full gun salvos with long intervals.”36 Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, who succeeded Ghormley as COMSOPAC six days after the battle, was extremely impressed with Helena and Boise’s machinegun-like fire of their 6- inch main batteries. The hyper-aggressive Halsey ordered “continuous fire,” as opposed to measured “salvo fire,” to become the fleet’s standard operating procedure.37 Halsey’s judgement, which equated volume of fire with accuracy, was well intentioned but flawed. Navy gunnery studies, conducted after the New 74 Georgia Campaign, showed that of 4,591 6-inch shells fired, only one-quarter of one-percent (12) scored a hit.38 The battle drew attention to fire distribution as an emerging issue with radar-controlled gunfire. Although Scott’s battle plan called for a normal distribution of fire (each ship fires on the vessel opposite it) all of Task Force Sugar’s radar-directed gunners tended to fire on the ship with the most prominent radar signature.39 Consequently, the two nearest ships with the most prominent signatures, Fubuki and Furutaka, received excessive fire. Both ships received devastating damage while the remaining enemy ships, except Aoba, escaped relatively unhurt. In all fairness to American gunners, the perpendicular orientation of the formations complicated target selection. Better fire discipline was required, to which CINCPAC subscribed “training, TRAINING and MORE T-R-A-I-N-I-NG.”40
a. Scott had little time to digest the lessons from Savo Island. All he could use, was the doctrine the USN had, and the tools built to use that doctrine.
b. In 40 days, Scott had to take never before worked together ships. He was expected to form them into a cohesive unit?
c. The vexing question of radar has been misunderstood. It must be taken in the context of the time. It was too new for anyone (Not even the British.), to substitute its detection and ranging function for a gunfire solution, or how to use it to create a track plot. The Plot Position Indicator and the data fusion concept invented by Robert Heinlein and Doc E.E< Smith, in science fiction, has yet to become the USN combat information center. This concept had not even been adopted yet.
d. Refer to a. for why Scott turned all of his radars, except Helena's off. Scott used what he knew/understood. He thought about mutual propagation-interference. He knew the problem in surface search was that USS San Francisco's radar was an air warning set.
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Captain Hoover of the USS Helena was not on the ball.
a. His radar man told him that there were contacts to port. He sat on that information for almost 17 minutes. He waited until Scott reversed his line to avoid running into the Savo Island shallows. Actually, he waited until Scott's line had snarled itself by failing to execute a Corvo (Simultaneous turn back 180 on track, which had Scott's intent, but which the cruisers executed as a column turn following the lead ship ahead.) The tail end charlie destroyers, blissfully unaware of the mistake, followed the cruisers around the knuckle, while the van destroyers headed along on base track straight for Savo Island. When Scott told the commander of the lead destroyers to get his JDAE self back on station: that nitwit turned, fouled Scott to starboard and raced to get where he belonged at the head of the line. This was when Captain Hoover had his signal man report bogeys, to starboard. Scott had ships to starboard, his own destroyers, racing to resume their posts forward. Hoover's report called the contacts, “bogeys” or unknown air contacts. By this time when USS Helena asked for permission to open fire, the confused and I believe furious Scott, had his signals answer, something to the effect; “Interrogatory, roger”… but never finished … “Hold”, or whatever the term was those days. Hoover ordered “open fire” on the “roger”. The rest is confused history.
statistics: Posted by Carbon1234 — 2:00 AM - Today — Replies 0 — Views 79