1942-10-11
Battle of Cape Esperance
Off Cape Esperance and Savo Island, Guadalcanal
On the night of 11-12 October 1942 Rear Admiral Norman Scott, flying his flag in San Francisco, met Rear Admiral Aritomo Goto off Cape Esperance. Japanese accounts call this the sea battle off Savo Island. It is a different night from the Battle of Savo Island on 9 August. Scott's column was Farenholt, Duncan, and Laffey, then San Francisco, Boise, Salt Lake City, and Helena, with Buchanan and McCalla astern. Goto was coming to shell Henderson Field: Aoba, Furutaka, and Kinugasa, with Fubuki to starboard and Hatsuyuki to port. A reinforcement group, Nisshin and Chitose with six destroyers, unloaded on Guadalcanal and was not in the night fight. Helena's radar had Goto's ships. She asked leave to fire, took Scott's answer for a yes, and opened fire. Boise, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco followed. That gunfire is not pinned to one ship. Aoba was wrecked and Goto was killed. She was not sunk. Furutaka sank the next morning under American cruiser gunfire, not pinned to one ship. Fubuki was sunk that night. San Francisco and Boise were among the ships that fired on her at about 1,400 yards, and the rest of the column joined. Not credited to one ship. Kinugasa and Hatsuyuki turned away. Kinugasa's shells set off a magazine in Boise and killed about 100 men. Boise was not sunk. Duncan had closed the Japanese column alone. Gunfire from both sides wrecked her, and she sank the next day about six miles north of Savo Island. McCalla took off 195 of her men. Farenholt was hit from both sides and was not sunk. The next day aircraft from Henderson Field sank Murakumo and Natsugumo, two destroyers of the reinforcement group that had turned back. Shirayuki finished Murakumo. That air attack is not credited to one plane.
Sunk in this fight
4 ships.
Track of Japanese forces, 11 October 1942. United States Strategic Bombing Survey, The Campaigns of the Pacific War, 1946, Appendix 43. Public domain. The sheet says it was submitted by Captain K. Kijima, Imperial Japanese Navy, chief of staff of Cruiser Division 6, and sketched from memory. The sheet does not print a north arrow. Santa Isabel is at the top and Guadalcanal is at the bottom. It names Kinugasa, Furutaka, Fubuki, and Aoba, marked as flagship, on the way in, and Murakumo on the way out. It prints Furutaka sinks and Fubuki sinks, and does not name the ships that fired. This page's account is that Furutaka sank the next morning, and that the gunfire is not pinned to one ship. It draws a U.S. force between Florida and Savo and does not name the ships. It marks a planned course for bombardment toward the Guadalcanal coast, and one transport with two destroyers, which it does not name. It does not name Hatsuyuki.
