At 6:13 a.m., as veins of gray light spread from east to west through the overcast, the heavy cruiser Quincy trained her main battery on Lunga Point and opened fire. The blast force of her 8-inch guns punched craters into the sea alongside the ship. Heavy concussions reverberated across Savo Sound and echoed back from the hills on the surrounding islands. To Colonel Twining it was “an unforgettable moment of history”—the first Allied counterinvasion of the war, the first step on the long bloody road to Tokyo.
