1942-08-09
Battle of Savo Island
Ironbottom Sound, off Savo Island
On the night of 8-9 August 1942 Mikawa came down from Rabaul with Chokai, Aoba, Kako, Kinugasa, Furutaka, Tenryu, Yubari, and the destroyer Yunagi. He was after the transports off Guadalcanal. Crutchley had taken Australia to a conference, so the flagship was not in the fight. The column slipped past the picket Blue. Patterson saw the ships and warned the harbor. Japanese gunfire and torpedoes, not pinned to one ship, wrecked Canberra and blew in Chicago's bow, then sank Quincy, Vincennes, and Astoria. Helm and Wilson fired and were not hit. On the way out, Furutaka, Tenryu, and Yubari hit Ralph Talbot. Mikawa turned back before he reached the transports. Selfridge and Ellet, who had not been in the night fight, scuttled Canberra that morning. The next day the submarine S-44 sank Kako short of Kavieng. The eastern screen and the transports were not attacked. Jarvis, already crippled by aircraft, passed through the column and was sunk by aircraft later that day.
Sunk in this fight
5 ships.
Japanese track, 8-9 August 1942. United States Strategic Bombing Survey, The Campaigns of the Pacific War, 1946, Appendix 39. Public domain. The sheet says the sketch was submitted by Captain Ohmae, Imperial Japanese Navy, chief of staff of Cruiser Division 18. The sheet does not print a north arrow. Santa Isabel is at the top and Guadalcanal is at the bottom. It draws three columns. Chokai is marked as flagship. Cruiser Division 6 is Aoba, marked as flagship, then Kinugasa, Kako, and Furutaka. Cruiser Division 18 is Tenryu, Tatsuta, and one destroyer. The sheet does not print Yubari or Yunagi. This page's account of that part of the column is Tenryu, Yubari, and the destroyer Yunagi. Near Savo the sheet marks U.S. destroyers and U.S. cruisers, and does not name them. It draws the columns turning in the strait and heading back out. The sheet does not mark a sinking.
