The controversial Battle of Tassafaronga, fought off Guadalcanal on the night of 30 November 1942, invites study like few others. In it, a radar-equipped American task force of six destroyers and five cruisers perceived it succeeded in surprising eight Japanese destroyers,
What had happened was a mystery at the time. While destroyer Fletcher had led four van destroyers into an ideal position for a radar-informed torpedo attack, RAdm. Carleton H. Wright, the task force commander, had delayed permission to open fire; then, when the battle thereafter went badly wrong, he took Fletcher’s Comdr. William M. Cole as scapegoat! The detailed causes of failure remained obscure, however, and four more cruisers were sacrificed at the Battles of Kula Gulf and Kolombangara in July 1943 before another task force commander* at last acknowledged the basic “fallacy of chasing Jap torpedo boats with cruisers.” Destroyermen, meanwhile, responded on their own initiative: • In December, Fletcher’s officers took to their motor whaleboats and disseminated their techniques for using radar in battle among other destroyers present. This knowledge quickly found its way into the evolving design of the new Combat Information Centers (CIC) soon fitted in warships throughout the fleet. • In February 1943, Comdr. Arleigh Burke arrived in the South Pacific and studied Cole’s action. His conclusions—that destroyers could be most effective if trusted to attack independently (as the excellent Japanese destroyer force under RAdm. Raizo Tanaka demonstrated at Tassafaronga)—became a tenet of US Navy destroyer doctrine. « « « In fact, the American force detected the Japanese only six minutes before it was detected in return. Concurrent with the opening of American gunfire, a lone Japanese picket destroyer, Takanami, fired a torpedo spread that hit and disabled the two leading American cruisers, Minneapolis and New Orleans. Subsequent torpedo salvoes hit the other two American heavy cruisers, Pensacola and Northampton, sinking the latter. « « « In hindsight, Tassafaronga was a turning point of the Pacific war in two respects: *RAdm. Walden L. Ainsworth in a letter to Adm. Nimitz, 16 July 1943. | |||||||||||||||||||
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