Battle of Cape Esperance Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
The Battle of Cape Esperance, originally known as the Second Battle of Savo Island, was a naval battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II, fought on the night of October 11 1942 at the entrance to the strait between Savo Island and Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.The battle arose out of the epic struggle over the American airfield at Henderson Field. On October 11 1942 the Japanese sent a force under Rear Admiral Aritomo Goto to bombard the airfield and reinforce the Japanese attackers. At about 23:30, off Cape Esperance, they encountered Rear Admiral Norman Scott's patrolling Task Force 64.
Knowing that the Japanese had the advantage in night fighting, Scott intended to use his destroyers to illuminate the targets with their searchlights and destroy them with shellfire. He ordered his force to turn into line ahead, and managed to "cross the T" of the approaching Japanese; but an error in the execution of the turn placed his destroyers between the two forces, and the Duncan was hit by shells from both sides and crippled, sinking the next day.
The Japanese were taken by surprise and Goto was mortally wounded when his flagship Aoba was hit in the opening moments. The Furutaka ran in to draw the American fire, but she was hit by massed fire of the San Francisco, Boise and Helena, and sunk. Boise received two 8-inch hits from Furutaka, detonating her forward ready ammunition and killing the crews of turrets 1 and 2. Furutaka's sacrifice saved the flagship and enabled the surviving Japanese ships to escape back up the strait.
By 00:20 on the 12th the shooting was over, and sailors set about saving their ships. Fubuki had already sunk at 23:45, while Furutaka lasted until 00:40. Boise was saved by flooding, which put out the most dangerous fires. Duncan was abandoned at 02:00, but at 03:00 a party from McCalla boarded and attempted damage control until noon of the next day, by which time the main deck was awash and the salvage party had to leave Duncan to her fate.
The American victory led the wrong lessons to be learned. The line-ahead tactic had worked well at Cape Esperance, but the later battles of the Santa Cruz Islands and Guadalcanal showed that at night linear gunfire tactics — the gun flashes lighting up ships and revealing their positions — were highly vulnerable to torpedoes.
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