About LUCK... PART THE THIRD, Or What Willis Lee, Daniel Callaghan and Norman Scott Lesson Learn...
Alas, poor Norman Scott in OTL.
Scott, Norman (navy.mil)
Excerpt, and it is pertinent...
Rear Admiral Scott had duty in connection with fitting out USS
Stoddert at the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation plant; San Francisco, California, in 1920, and went aboard that vessel as Executive Officer when she was commissioned 30 June 1920. He served as Assistant Fire Control Officer in USS
New York from August 1920 to May 1921. After a year's service in USS
Burns he reported to the Fourteenth Naval District for duty in July 1922. From August 1923 to July 1924, he served as Aide to the Commandant, Fourteenth Naval District. He joined USS
Idaho in July 1924, and in September of that year he was
appointed Aide on Staff of Commander, Battle Fleet, USS California, Flagship with additional duty as Fleet Personnel Officer.
Rear Admiral Scott had a tour of duty as
instructor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Physics at the Naval Academy from September 1927 until June 1930. His next duty was in the Asiatic Fleet where
he served in USS Jason and later had command of USS Mac Leish and of USS Paul Jones. He had a
tour of duty in the Bureau of Navigation, Navy Department, from August 1932 until June 1934, when
he reported to the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, for the senior course. He returned to sea in USS
Cincinnati in June 1934, with duty as Executive Officer.
A Less than Laudatory View of RADM Norman Scott
Conclusion from the analysis.
Conclusion
While Admiral Scott’s success at Cape Esperance was a much-needed boost to American morale, his victory had sinister consequences on the conduct of future operations. South Pacific Commanders strove to replicate his achievement by mirroring Scott’s tactics, but Scott’s feat was due to exigent circumstances, and this flawed their logic. The Americans caught Goto off guard because since the August battle they virtually abandoned control of Savo Sound to the Japanese every night. Consequently, the Navy’s sudden reappearance completely surprised the Japanese. TF 64.2 also benefited from the fact that Joshima’s exact position was unknown to Goto, causing him to withhold fire for six to seven crucial minutes, while he challenged the Americans with his desperate “I am Aoba” message. Neither circumstance would likely occur again. The Navy’s belief that Cape Esperance was a smashing success (rather than a marginal victory) reinforced the pre-war notion that gunfire alone would be the final arbiter in naval combat. Furthermore, it seemed to vindicate the Mahanian 85 cult of the Big Gun as Scott “demonstrated his allegiance to this school of thought.”75 Consequently, the Americans continued to “concentrate on tactics designed to maximize the effectiveness of gunfire”76 to the exclusion of a balanced surface warfare doctrine. The superiority of the “hammer and anvil” of gunnery and torpedo would be demonstrated at Vella Gulf (6-7 October 1943), improved at Cape St. George (24-25 November 1943) and perfected at Surigao Straight (25 October 1944). It would be a year before anyone recognized the flaws in Admiral Norman Scott’s victory, and because of this, the Navy lost indispensable ships and many hundreds of sailors. Had Scott survived the South Pacific Campaign there is every reason to believe that he would have been an agent of change, but the fact is he did not live to celebrate Thanksgiving 1942. As mentioned previously, friendly fire from the San Francisco killed Scott on 13 November and he posthumously received the Congressional Medal of Honor. Incidentally, in 1942, 13 November was a Friday.
Now my (SARCASTIC) rejoinder.
In 1942, America Needed a Victory. The Battle of Cape Esperance Was It. | The National Interest
From the citation...
Scott was killed during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on November 13, and, according to Morison, he “became the hero of the South Pacific during the short month that remained in his valiant life.” His subordinates reported that they had combined to sink three Japanese cruisers and four destroyers. Scott was inclined to regard this evaluation as wishful thinking.
Although the Americans had inflicted much greater losses on the Japanese, the Battle of Cape Esperance cost them one destroyer, Duncan, sunk; another, Farenholt, damaged; and two cruisers, Boise and Salt Lake City, damaged. Also, Admiral Joshima’s group had landed its men and equipment on Guadalcanal.
The headline of the October 13, 1942, edition of The New York Times announced, “30-MINUTE COMBAT; Our Ships sink Cruiser, Four Destroyers and Transport At Night. US DESTROYER IS LOST.” The story went on to report, “In a midnight battle with Japanese warships in the Solomon Islands, United States warships sank one Japanese heavy cruiser, four destroyers and a transport, and repulsed an enemy attempt to land more troops on Guadalcanal, the Navy Department announced tonight.”
The story was more accurate than the version given by Scott’s subordinates but was also largely wishful thinking.
The conclusion from this more nuanced treatment?
A Victory for Morale
After the Battle of Cape Esperance, the sailors of the U.S. Navy now knew that they were capable not only of fighting the enemy at night but also of giving the Japanese a good drubbing. The Tokyo Express, as the Japanese reinforcement runs were nicknamed, was no longer completely safe in the darkness. The U.S. confidence that had been so badly damaged at Savo Island had now been restored.The Americans also gained valuable experience in night tactics and in the use of radar. Still, Cape Esperance showed that a much more thorough knowledge of radar was needed, which led to new training courses in both radar and in night combat.
Luck, preparation, and technology had combined to give the Americans a much needed victory. Morison summed up the outcome of the fighting: “At the very depth of this winter of our discontent came the battle off Cape Esperance—which, if far short of glorious summer, gave the tired Americans a heartening victory and the proud Japanese a sound spanking.”
Now I leave it to you, the readers, to choose between the two viewpoints, but I must emphasize what RADM Norman Scott did, after Savo Island.
See here: A
dmiral Norman Scott | The Inglorius Padre Steve's World and
One Learns More From Adversity Than Success
The battles around Guadalcanal occurred in a time of technical transition for the United States Navy as its radar became better at detecting ships and fire direction systems advanced in their accuracy and targeting ability. While almost all U.S. warships had radar primarily the SC search radar and FC Fire Control radar, not many U.S. Navy warships had the advanced SG surface search radar. But it was not just a matter of technology, it was a matter of training and experience. Their opponents, the Imperial Japanese Navy had very few ships equipped with radar, but their training for surface actions, especially night fighting where their superior optics, gunnery skills, and torpedoes proved deadly during the first year of the war before U.S. Navy crews mastered their technology edge.
People forget that this was as true for admirals as it was for the enlisted sailors who come to grips with RADAR and with the change in how to fight that arrives with this weapon system.
The first major operations mounted by the Japanese was in early August when a Japanese cruiser destroyer force ravaged the U.S. cruiser forces off Savo Island. The Japanese inflicted the worst defeat of an American naval squadron, sinking 3 American and one Australian Heavy cruiser while damaging another. The battle was a disaster for the U.S. forces and led to the early withdraw of transport and supply ships of the invasion force before many could finish unloading the equipment and supplies that were critical to the operation. In that operation radar played no role for U.S. forces, and sets were either turned off or not relied upon by commanders. Admiral Richmond Turner noted:
“The Navy was still obsessed with a strong feeling of technical and mental superiority over the enemy. In spite of ample evidence as to enemy capabilities, most of our officers and men despised the enemy and felt themselves sure victors in all encounters under any circumstances. The net result of all this was a fatal lethargy of mind which induced a confidence without readiness, and a routine acceptance of outworn peacetime standards of conduct. I believe that this psychological factor, as a cause of our defeat, was even more important than the element of surprise”
Turner, for all that he is the chief culprit and person responsible for those very conditions and the confusion poor dispositions, command dislocations and command fuck-ups that lead to Savo Island in OTL, at least identifies properly what goes wrong.
But... he does nothing about it.
This World War II Battle Crushed the Myth That Japan's Navy Was Unbeatable | The National Interest
They were a well-trained group in comparison to the force that had been annihilated in August at Savo Island. Under Scott’s leadership, Task Force 64 had done intensive night gunnery exercises, with men enduring general quarters from dusk to dawn. Scott had also laid down a carefully drawn battle plan. His ships would steam in column with destroyers ahead and astern. The tin cans would illuminate the Japanese targets with their searchlights, fire torpedoes at the largest enemy vessels, guns at the smaller ones, and the cruisers would open fire whenever they spotted an enemy ship. Cruiser floatplanes were to illuminate the battle area.
This was taken right out of the British and Japanese playbooks as understood by the United States Naval War College.
Despite the intense training and tight plans, Scott’s force had weaknesses. San Francisco had done poorly in gunnery exercises and had been used for convoy escorting duties, complete with a depth charge rack hammered on her stern. That was not too useful, as San Francisco lacked sonar. The depth charges were a potential fire hazard in battle. Boise also had a questionable history. She had missed a major battle in the Dutch East Indies when she ran aground.
This will change by the First Battle of Guadalcanal; the gunnery will improve. But the radars remain a sore point.
More importantly, the two heavy cruisers operated the early SC (“Sugar Charlie”) radar, while the light cruisers sported the more effective and modern SG (“Sugar George”) radar among the first American ships to do so. Worse, Scott, like other admirals of the time, was not overly impressed with radar, preferring the tried and effective night optics of scopes and searchlights. As a result, Scott hoisted his flag on San Francisco, which offered flag quarters, as opposed to the smaller cruisers, which did not. He accepted reports that the Japanese had receivers that could detect SC radars in use. So he ordered them shut off during the approach to action and only used the SG radars and narrow beamed fire control radars to supplement his lookouts. Perhaps most critically, in night naval battles in the Pacific to date, the Japanese had sunk eight Allied cruisers and three destroyers without losing a single ship.
Scott is unfamiliar with radar, but he knows optical gunnery and he falls back on what he knows. He will learn.
Nonetheless, Scott was ready. On October 9-10, he made tentative advances to Cape Esperance but turned back when aerial reconnaissance and codebreakers reported no suitable Japanese targets.
The Japanese are in a state of confusion themselves as to what they want to do with Hyakutake and Yamamoto crisscrossing the radio frequency spectrum as to what each plans with Terauchi and Tokyo Imperial General headquarters and the Navy high command. The IJA side is trying to ascertain how many Americans are there on :"あの大変な島" ("ah-no-tai-jin-na-ji-mah" or "that goddamned island"). Yamamoto is at Chu'uk trying to scrounge up fuel, because
those "ineffectual" US submarines keep sinking the tankers enroute to Chu'uk that he requests to support and fuel his stranded battle fleet.
There was good reason for that. Japanese convoys down The Slot were being delayed by American bombers based on Guadalcanal’s Henderson Field, which irritated Mikawa. He complained to Vice Admiral Jinichi Kusaka, who headed the 11th Air Fleet at Rabaul. Kusaka said he would neutralize Henderson Field if Mikawa would run the Express.
Finally, somebody, Japanese, pulls his head out of his extruder and takes action.
On October 11, some 35 Japanese bombers and 30 fighters attacked Henderson Field but only managed to bomb the jungle. The Japanese lost four Mitsubishi Zero fighters and eight bombers. But they drew off the Americans, giving the Japanese ships a break to head south.
CACTUS lives up to its name as a plant with sharp thorns. It is a metaphor, folks.
However, the naval movements caught the eye of patrolling Boeing B-17 bombers of Colonel L.G. Saunders’ 11th Bombardment Group, and they reported two cruisers and six destroyers racing down The Slot. The bombers’ messages went to Scott and his command. On Helena, Ensign Chick Morris, the radio officer, wrote about “a steady, chattering stream that kept the typewriters hopping.”
Way to go, Army Air Farce. Took long enough. They still screw it up and this will lead to RADM Scott's errors in calculating a proper intercept merge later. The AAF miss Goto's bombardment force completely. Whoops.
The oncoming force was actually two groups. One was the “Reinforcement Group,” consisting of the fast seaplane tenders Nisshin and Chitose and five troop-carrying transports. The seaplane tenders’ aircraft had been removed in favor of four 150mm howitzers and their tractors, two field guns, and 280 men, which jammed the two ships’ hangar spaces. The other force was a veteran group of three heavy cruisers, Aoba, Kinugasa, and Furutaka, and two destroyers, Hatsuyuki and Fubuki. Except for Hatsuyuki, all ships were the victors of Savo Island. Called the “Bombardment Group,” their mission was to escort the reinforcements and then treat Henderson Field to a dose of heavy shellfire with their guns.
The idea as I have mentioned upthread was to bombard the runway and revetted planes at Henderson Field and put American airpower out of business. The Japanese had/have enough experience with RIKKO, themselves, to want to perform a "Little Caesar" on Henderson Field.
In command of this force was Rear Admiral Aritomo Goto, who graduated from the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in 1910, 30th in a class of 149. He had commanded destroyers, served on battleships, and headed the second and successful invasion of Wake Island in 1941. It was a powerful group of well-trained sailors with victorious experience in night battles. Their job was simple: get the reinforcements in so that the Japanese 17th Army could attack Henderson Field on October 22, backed by more powerful naval and air forces.
Do not get too excited. This is the same rat-bastard who abandoned Shōhō at Coral Sea and let her be sunk bereft of his cruisers' AAA protection.
Because of this, the Japanese cruisers and destroyers were loaded with high explosive ordnance useful for blasting ground troops and installations instead of armor-piercing ordnance needed to rip through ships’ steel hulls.
Actually, as with the Second Night Battle of Guadalcanal, it is half and half loads with the modified sanshiki shells first in the hoists and stored in the magazines. But this comment digresses.
For once, the Americans had the intelligence advantage—the Japanese knew nothing of Task Force 64, and Goto’s force steamed southeast in utter ignorance of its enemy, in antisubmarine formation with Aoba and Goto in the lead, Furutaka behind, and Kinugasa in the rear. Fubuki stood guard on the starboard side with Hatsuyuki to port.
I dispute this conclusion. It appears that Goto adopted the Trident as more of a meeting engagement formation as he intended to port column and van his destroyers once he went past Savo Island. He did not get the chance.
Task Force 64 steamed northeast in battle line with the destroyers Farenholt, Duncan, and Laffey in the lead. Behind them were San Francisco, Boise, Salt Lake City, Helena, Buchanan, and McCalla. Scott’s plan was to intercept the Tokyo Express west of Guadalcanal, cross the T of his advancing enemy, lay down a broadside of torpedoes and shells, and then countermarch—all the ships turning on one point and staying in formation—and double back to deliver a second dose of fire. Scott sent this plan by signal flag to the other ships, and Chick Morris and his fellow junior ensigns—they called themselves the Junior Board of Strategy—took a break from the tension to stand on Helena’s forecastle, study the plans, analyze their implications, and wonder how they would stand the fight.
It is a good plan... if the Japanese show up on time and in the place Scott expects. Remember that point. Scott's plan actually depends on his estimated time of arrival of the enemy force being accurate and correct. He even puts up some of his cruiser float planes to recon for the Japanese and to alert him if they arrive early or late to the Happy Birthday Party he prepares. His cruiser floatplanes FAIL him.
Amid sunset colors, Morris wrote, “It was good to stand there and watch the ships of our formation steaming through that placid sea. And I was not alone. Other men were thinking the same thoughts. Some were sitting around anchor windlasses. Others were parked on the bitts, quietly ‘batting the breeze.’ One man was asleep on the steel deck, and another, nearby, was deep in a magazine of Western stories.
Finally...
To reduce the possibility of their catching fire, Scott sent all but one of each cruiser’s seaplanes to the American seaplane base at Tulagi. He launched the remaining planes to locate the onrushing enemy, and San Francisco’s plane did so. So did the cruiser’s radar—one of the operators made the report, and his officer said it must be the islands the ship was passing. The radarman answered, “Well, sir, these islands are traveling at about 30 knots.”
At 2330 Salt Lake City’s search radar made the definitive call: three clusters of steel on the water to the west and northwest—Goto’s cruisers. Scott ordered his countermarch immediately, radioing his commanders, “Execute left to follow—Column left to course 230.”
Not on time and not where expected. Scott's first order throws his line into confusion because
And with that simple order, Scott’s plan disintegrated. The three lead destroyers turned on the appointed dime and stayed in column, heading south. But San Francisco’s skipper, Captain Charles H. “Soc” McMorris, one level up from Scott’s bridge, did not get the order. He turned immediately.
So who gets the Navy Goat award? (^^^)
Read the rest of the
Battle of Cape Esperance at the citation. But I will cite one more bit from the article to show what is going on inside the United States Navy Officer corps at the time and what it means for US performance in battle. At that moment, Goto’s ships emerged from two hours of rain squalls and into American radar range. All the American ships started lighting up their radars to lock on the Japanese targets and open fire immediately. But on San Francisco, Scott did not know what was going on. He had no idea where his lead destroyers were, and his ship lacked SG radar to find them. There was a danger he might fire on his own vessels.Scott immediately radioed Captain Robert Tobin, leading the destroyer squadron from Farenholt, asking “Are you taking station ahead?” Tobin replied, “Affirmative. Moving up on your starboard side.”
That meant that three American destroyers were steaming between his cruisers and the Japanese ships. Scott signaled back: “Do not rejoin, until permission is requested giving bearing in voice code of approach.”
Scott’s ships could not open fire, even though their lookouts could see the Japanese pagoda forecastles and bows cutting through the water. “What are we going to do, board them?” a chief petty officer growled on Helena. “Do we have to see the whites of the bastards’ eyes?”
That ship’s skipper, a Navy Cross holder named Gilbert Hoover, had the answer. He had served in the Bureau of Ordnance and led destroyers at Midway. He understood the value of both radar and time. Over Talk Between Ships (TBS) radio, he signaled “Interrogatory Roger” to Scott, the standard request for permission to open fire. Scott signaled back, “Roger,” the message to open fire. The problem was that Navy Signal Book regulations said that a voice signal of “Roger” merely meant “I have received your message.” Was Scott giving permission to open fire or merely acknowledging the message? Just to be sure, Hoover made the signal a second time and got the same response.
With that, Hoover opened fire with his 15 6-inch guns, a full broadside, hurling armor-piercing shells across the ocean and spent cases onto turret decks. Helena’s gunnery director called for automatic continuous mode to maintain the barrage. Chick Morris described the scene: “Now suddenly it was a blazing bedlam. Helena herself reared and lurched sideways, trembling from the tremendous shock of recoil. In the radio shack and coding room we were sent reeling and stumbling against bulkheads, smothered by a snowstorm of books and papers from the tables. The clock leaped from its pedestal. Electric fans hit the deck with a metallic clatter. Not a man in the room had a breath left in him.”
On Salt Lake City, Captain Ernest J. Small was reluctant to open fire, but he had a lookout chosen especially for his night vision, who yelled into his phone to the bridge, “Those are enemy cruisers, believe me! I’ve been studying the pictures. We got no ships like them.”
That did it. Salt Lake City joined the bombardment, firing at Aoba, 4,000 yards away, reporting “all hits.” Boise opened up next, with Captain Moran yelling at his gunnery officer, Lt. Cmdr. John J. Laffan, “Pick out the biggest and commence firing!” Boise’s directors were also trained on Aoba, and more shells whistled at her.
It was left to RADM Norman Scott to begin using "British methods" of night fighting to try to convince his TG64.2 at the time in our RTL, that they could work together and face off against the Japanese in a night battle. He had three weeks to teach his little squadron how to steam together, shoot together and fight together in a night environment amidst the rain squalls, sloppy soggy hot steamy clouds, amidst islands that throw back false return echoes to his assorted different type radars in his polyglot fleet as they exercised in the Sealark Channel.
By British methods I MEAN, he split his little squadron into two teams and they fired LIVE WARSHOTS at each other with a deliberate pre-calculated input offset so that the shots were adjusted as "overs" for a predicted miss margin in the fire control solution. That means if the USS Salt Lake City drops a straddle about a thousand yards over and the predicted "miss" is supposed to be a thousand yards and the extremely nervous spotters on the USS Salt Lake City range estimate the shells that fly directly over them and fall a thousand yards away as the "over" then the "umpires" call a hit on their own ship. How about them apples?
So that is how RADM Norman Scott uses his "LUCK". It runs out when he is assigned as Deputy OTC to the Hollywood Admiral who gets him killed.
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Next I will discuss the ITTL changes Norman Scott "could" and "would" have made; if he is alive and is allowed between Esperance and this Battle of Guadalcanal.
