Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal

by James D. Hornfischer

Good commanders helped their men get past their limitations, be they mechanical or psychological. The lessons Scott’s fighters learned were duly circulated fleetwide in bulletins. The problem of “buck fever”—the initial overeagerness of gun crews, firing before solutions were ready—had only one cure: the sobriety that came with experience. Special effort had to be made to keep fire controlmen informed of radar readings whenever a ship began the game of musical chairs that was going to battle stations. As key people changed stations, the flow of critical information could freeze. On some ships, including Scott’s flagship, the San Francisco, the first salvo from the main battery reliably knocked the delicate instrumentation of the FC radar out of operation. The shock of the main battery could jolt the foremast hard enough to throw the man aiming the director off his target, sometimes carrying the aim of the searchlight operator with him. In a light rain, those searchlights were ineffective beyond five thousand yards, like automotive high beams in a fogbank. Cold guns were full of surprises with their quirky ballistic properties. And as always, a ship-to-ship shootout after dark was a harrowing affair that confounded the senses, like riding a galloping bronco through a foggy night while aiming a rifle at a target that lies beyond a burning building. Simply put, there were no panaceas to defeat the sailor’s age-old foe, Murphy’s Law, and the universal problem of entropy.