Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal by James D. Hornfischer

Author:James D. Hornfischer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: World War II, Naval, Solomon Islands, Interviews, Battle of, 1939-1945, General, United States, Veterans - United States, American, 1942-1943, Biography & Autobiography, Military, Naval operations, World War, Veterans, 1939-1945 - Naval operations, Guadalcanal, History
ISBN: 9780553806700
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 2011-01-25T08:29:56+00:00

TASK GROUP 67.4 went to general quarters at 8 p.m. The sea rolled easily under a ten-knot southeasterly wind. The moon had set, leaving the squadron in the dark. The destroyer Cushing led the way, leading the van with the Laffey, Sterett, and O’Bannon. They were followed by the Atlanta (the flagship of the idle Norman Scott), the San Francisco (Callaghan’s flagship), the Portland, the Helena, the Juneau, and the rear quartet of destroyers. Hot soup and coffee were served to the crews at their stations as the six-mile-long column entered Sealark Channel.

As the column passed through the channel, sailors on the Atlanta noticed an unsettling omen, the appearance of the electrical phenomenon known as St. Elmo’s fire. The mysterious incandescence, manifesting itself in their rigging, was widely thought to be a sign of trouble, its reputation well established in literature a century before. In Moby-Dick, when the Pequod was touched by these coronal discharges, Ishmael called it “God’s burning finger laid on the ship.” As he described it, “All the yard-arms were tipped with a pallid fire; and touched at each tri-pointed lightning-rod-end with three tapering white flames, each of the three tall masts was silently burning in that sulphurous air, like three gigantic wax tapers before an altar.” Coleridge called it “death-fire.”

Naval tradition is ever rife with superstition, but sometimes the ill signs are so powerful that they operate in the other direction. In Callaghan’s force, the number thirteen was so prevalent—thirteen ships from Task Force 67 were headed to tangle with the Japanese on Friday the thirteenth—that the tide of superstition shifted. When the commander of the Portland, Captain Laurance T. DuBose, read the instructions Turner had given Callaghan, he showed them to his exec, Commander Turk Wirth, who made virtually the same remark Callaghan had on receiving them: “This is suicide, you know.” Talk of battleships inspired that kind of thinking. DuBose called Wirth’s attention to the date, November 12, and added, “If we can get across midnight into tomorrow, we may make it.” Wirth got what his captain was driving at. DuBose had been president of the Naval Academy class of 1913 and considered thirteen a lucky number.

The last ship in Callaghan’s column had additional cause for concern as Friday the thirteenth approached: the USS Fletcher was the thirteenth ship in line, named in honor of Frank Friday Fletcher, and had the hull number 445, whose sum was 13. But the destroyer’s Georgia boys weren’t spooked. The signs were so luridly ominous as to become a source of general amusement. The Fletcher’s exec, Commander Wylie, referred to the giddy hilarity that accompanied their anticipation as “triskaidekaphilia.” Let the night come, whatever it may bring. They were U.S. Navy sailors and the 91st Psalm was their shield: “You will not fear the terror of night.… A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.” More worrisome than numerical coincidence was the sense Wylie was getting that Callaghan didn’t seem to know fully what he was doing.

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