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

by James D. Hornfischer

It was a mystery to participants then and to analysts in decades to come why Callaghan never issued a written battle plan to his commanders. As Bruce McCandless, the San Francisco’s officer-of-the-deck, saw it, a slight turn to the right at the outset, away from the oncoming Japanese swarm, would have “crossed the T” of Abe’s force, bringing the American formation on a course perpendicular to that of the Japanese. This textbook naval maneuver, performed by Norman Scott at Cape Esperance, would have enabled all the U.S. ships to fire full broadsides and the destroyers at either end of Callaghan’s line to attack with torpedoes on the bows. It “should have sufficed to derail this Tokyo Express,” McCandless would write. This was the clarity of hindsight. In the present, there had been no tactical planning. There is no evidence Callaghan ever communicated his expectations to his subordinates.