Callaghan's night action at Guadalcanal - A new analysis with Robert Lundgren 

I've seen a lot about carriers settling on starboard islands for reasons of turbulence, but I've never really understood why. What's the difference between an island on the port and an island on the starboard?

I don't know if this question has already been explored, but could you talk about the evolution of warship ornament? The stern decorations, the figureheads... and how did they end up disappearing? Thank you for your content, love it!

Would it be possible to aquire and restore a ww2 warship into a seaworthy, sailing museum ship for passengers?

Hey drach I've been playing a lot of ultimate admiral dreadnoughts and it has given me a interesting thought in your opinion do you believe it is possible for a large caliber semi armor piercing capped ballistic capped round to be an effective round against other battleships? I know this game is not exactly realistic but I've had some interesting results using the SAPCBC rounds in 15 and 16 inch calibers against various historical designs I've tried to remake and I'm curious in your engineering opinion is there merit to this type of round being useful given its large bursting charge? Or is a standard APC or APBC round the only real life type of shell that is fit for a battleship vs battleship engagement?

@@mitchm4992 In terms of turbulence I think nothing, but from reading about this in the past memory says pilots, generally right handed, in an emergency want to push the stick across the body, hence plane goes left, rather than pulling to go right. So put the island on the right and give them the space to recover the aircraft / embarrass themselves in front of everyone watching.

While she was likely hit lightly, the Juneau was still sunk completely by IJN action. But due to the amount of friendly fire it seems that the navy was never certain who was responsible and would not want anyone to know that they shot themselves, especially in a war of annihilation.

@@franksposato6072 HMAS Canberra was sunk by the USS Bagley

Are you possibly confusing Juneau with Atlanta? Juneau was sunk by a Japanese sub, after the battle.

Yeah, considering the loss of Juneau and the Sullivan brothers and the fact that there was several friendly fire incidents, I definitely believe that is why this battle was never reported correctly and that the incidents of friendly fire except for maybe Atlanta getting hit in the crossfire, but that the other friendly fire incidents were covered up leading to action reports being falsified, & so trying to make any sense about what really happened was almost futile. I haven't read the 120 page report YET but I'm sure it must have been very difficult to put it all together. Many thanks to you Drach for putting this together and a big thanks to Lundgren for studying this & working for 2 years to put it all together. I can't imagine how difficult this must have been. And P/S- Drach, the AI voices served their purpose and all in all it worked fairly well. Thank you for another great video.

Intersting USS the Sullivan had transited past Gibraltar on its way probably to the Red Sea, right back into the fray.

I hope he got a chance to watch this and then do another hangout video with Drach 😂

We still didn’t get a proper track. This is all conjecture.

Came here to post something about this. I'd be interested hear Seth, Bill, Jon, and Drach discuss Lundgren's analysis - especially his conclusions about an unprecedented amount of friendly fire.

​@jliller I'd love to hear the takes of Seth, Bill, and Jon also. The friendly fire was nothing new. The Canberra took a torpedo from a US destroyer at Savo. At least one US destroyer was on the receiving end of "friendly" fire at Cape Esperance. Night battles are chaotic and confusing.

@@sargeherren Friendly fire wasn't unprecedented, but the quantity of friendly fire described by Lundgren in this particular engagement seems more than all the other Solomons battles combined.

Quite right!

Absolutely!

Indeed!

Wasn't much fun for those in the battle....

I'd like to push back on point #2 with a few counterpoints. First is when they say radar was in its infancy, they meant it. We're talking about ships only mere weeks earlier having surface radars models that straight up didn't work. These early radar failures were partial contributors to the failures at Savo island. So it seems reasonable that the the lesson to the wider fleet was "the tech isn't there yet, don't quite trust it" and not have that hard first impression be corrected in mere weeks. That's a decision we are definitely evaluating in hindsight. I mean we're talking the same Navy that took literal years to admit a torpedo model didn't work. Second, Callaghan (and Scott earlier) probably chose the heavy cruiser for basic fundamental reasons: light cruisers didn't have as good a flag area for a commodore to control the battle. Which leads to this probably, again, being a no-brainer for Scott and Callaghan. You have cruisers with supposedly better radar you're not sure if you can trust. And their flag facilities have limitations? Yeah go with the standard larger cruiser right out of the manual. Third, there's no way Callaghan wasn't choosing to have his command on San Francisco. It was HIS command back as an O-6 on Dec 7 and through the first months of the war. He had personally trained his replacement CO and nearly all the officers and men still embarked. (Actually most surviving men on the SF after the battle had nothing but good things to say of his time as CO. He was considered an excellent captain by his men and they were incredibly happy to have him back as Admiral of the group because they trusted him).

@@acg1189 Yes, all of those are the reasons Admiral Callaghan chose it. Because of that, ships with better radars were trying to inform him of the Japanese ships they were picking up that the radar available to him on the Frisco wasn't. Because of the inevitable delay in getting messages transmitted to the flagship, then decoded and finally delivered to the captain or admiral, the enemy was closer and in a better position to use their superior night-fighting training to good effect. All of your reasons are why we lost so many ships and sailors in this battle. One of the harshest lessons of WW II was the fact that naval warfare had become as much a battle for the proper use of new technologies as it was a conflict of men and ships. Let's not forget that the Opana radar site picked up the first wave of the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor and were ignored because it was "new technology". It took too long for us to learn anything from that.

Lack of training was a major factor, for both radar usage and nighttime fighting.

​@@acg1189the Admiral made some major errors. Sadly, lives were lost because of his errors.

I'm not sure I agree. Being on the ship with the best radar would have allowed the US to open fire earlier. But that doesn't necessarily translate to losing fewer ships and men. Opening fire earlier would have meant accepting longer ranges. The US ships didn't have reliable torpedoes, and they still had to hit with their torpedoes, which would have been harder at longer ranges. Also, the US ships weren't well trained in night fighting, including night gunnery. This means that had they opened fire earlier, they might just have made easier targets of themselves - without accomplishing anything much - at a range where the Japanese (who DID have extensive training in night fighting, as well as bigger guns and better torpedoes) had all the advantages. I think the key to understanding this battle is Callaghan knew he was facing capital ships, and he knew that he had to get close for his smaller ships to be effective against capital ships. A long range duel would have been a disaster. It was relatively easy for ships to dodge torpedoes launched at long range, and his biggest guns had the best chance to do damage against enemy capital ships at closer range, so everything about the situation demanded a close range battle. Callaghan and his people had the courage to accept this and to make it happen even though they knew full well that some of them were not going to be coming home. Given the technology of the day, and the lack of time to do night training, once the decision was made to force a close fight, there was no real way to prevent the battle from turning into a furball sooner or later. In many ways a confusing short range fight was to the advantage of the US Navy in this situation - so the longer he waited to open fire, the better off he was. It's unfortunate but probably inevitable under the circumstances that there would have been 'friendly fire' incidents. Also, there is something to be said for the Admiral placing himself on the biggest - most recognizable - ship in a night action like this. It meant that between the starshells and searchlights and explosions his own ships had a better chance to occasionally see where the Admiral was throughout the battle - and thus adjust their own position and movement more effectively relative to his position. It's a leadership thing: sometimes the leader needs to be seen. Of course, this also made the Admiral more vulnerable as he was riding a priority target. But his second in command was also in the best position to 'pick up the pieces' if he was killed on that big target, because his second in command was on a smaller ship that had the best radar. It didn't work out that way, because both Admirals ended up being killed, but it wasn't a bad way to set up things. So I think rather than criticizing Callaghan, we should respect both a) the courage that Callaghan and his people showed, and b) that he won the battle (in a strategic sense - the Japanese were turned back) at the cost of his own life, despite being badly outgunned. It seems unlikely that having somebody else make other decisions would have made a significant net difference to the outcome given the circumstances.

Thats what i was thinking and chuckled

I don't think it was unintentional - I think it was deliberate. Admiral Callaghan knew perfectly well that he was up against capital ships (whether you call them battleships or battle-cruisers) and he didn't have any of this own, so he was badly outgunned. He and his people demonstrated enormous courage in going up against the Japanese forces knowing they were badly outgunned - and the only change they had to inflict real damage was to get close. The 'all or nothing' armor scheme means that in practice there are a lot of vulnerable points on a ship - not necessarily vulnerable in the sense of being able to blow up the ship if you hit them, but vulnerable in the sense of being able to possibly force a mission abort (such as the hit that destroyed the Japanese admiral's chartroom in the battle of Savo Island). Also, any ship was vulnerable to a torpedo - but accurate torpedo hits generally required very close firing (though not too close or the minimum range issue comes into play!). Naval guns could be accurate at ~10 miles or more, but accurate torpedo firing was only a few miles - probably only 1 mile if you wanted to maximize your effectiveness. Finally, armor schemes were generally set up to handle incoming fire at moderate ranges - ships inside those ranges could sometimes penetrate the armor. We can criticize his decisions - such as not being on the right ship to command the battle - but in the end I think he and his staff and his captains knew they had to get close - and they had the courage to do that. Also, once that decision was made, there was no long term possibility of keeping meaningful control over the battle - not in that day, not with the technology they had available and the very limited time they had to train together. It was going to turn into a chaotic mess, sooner or later, so even if he had been on the ship with the newer radar it would likely not have made all that much difference.

Agreeeed, I genuinely wish he didn't use this method... since it just steals work/fun collab opportunities for so many folks who'd have been happy to give him excellent narration (without the massive ethical breach of using "ai-generated" voice)

​@@sydney4814 huh, interesting. I didn't know people thought the use of AI-generated voices to be unethical-unless, of course, it's a clone of someone's real voice. AI-generated art, sure, that I know of. But otherwise I kinda view this as using a better version of Microsoft Sam or other kinds of Text-To-Speech software. I'll be very, very sad if Drach ever decide to remove/replace his good ol' Robodrach outro. :(

I personally prefer "The Bar Room Brawl with The Lights Off." One USN officer who was there coined the phrase and it certainly seems to fit.

I have the same issue. I might have a better experience whenever I’m able to watch this on the big screen.

Hmm, sakura-pink would probably show up better, while still being faction-appropriate.

Yes. Red on blue is an absolute no-no for any presentation. I can guess why red but white would have been more visually useful.

I had the same problem.

The article did prove fascinating, and the author's in-depth analysis of shots and types and sources without peer.

I read his others too. The South Dakota damage analysis is insane. In a good way. The flow of the battle contradicted a lot of the mental picture I had from "Neptune's Inferno" and other works. Especially the fact that the shots that hit San Francisco's bridge came late, after a period of her not engaging anything. Callahan almost survived, but Hiei had a few shots left in her.

I don't wish to see anyone blamed for the actions in this battle. I just wanted to finally give these men the due attention they deserve for the past 80 years instead of burying the past and forgetting what they still managed to accomplish even at great loss.

DuBose is a really interesting man in this war. He will also go on to be the only commander to sink an IJN carrier, Chiyoda, with gunfire. There is a memorial for the Portland in a park in Portland, Maine where her mast and bell and a piece of superstructure are placed.

Well how well he would do with that might depend on whether you want a inland highland "Deliverance" hillbilly accent or the fancy upper class coastal "Gone With the Wind" accent. Considering that Vivian Leigh, Leslie Howard, and Olivia de Havilland were all Brits I'm pretty sure a Brit could easily pull that one off.

Perhaps it is better to use the word Censure. It is still technically a cover up, but we wanted to make clear why we think it is and why we still agree that the USN did so during the war. These people were not fools, but they did make mistakes while trying to handle an emergency situation in order save Henderson Airfield. I hope you enjoy learning what we believe are critical discoveries to some long lost history.

That's incredible. Did he ever mention anything else his time in service?

My father was a 5inch antiaircraft officer on the Portland he talked about this battle a lot He kind of hinted that something was not right. He also mentioned about getting hit in the rudder

do you recall at all him mentioning being hit by 3 dud torpedoes? there is something of an urban legend that happened at Santa Cruz, but there has never been verification@@user-pg3gb5mr9e

@@user-pg3gb5mr9e is there anything else you can add to his story about the battle or his service?

Is there anything else you can add about the story of the battle or his service?

Historiograph would be an excellent channel for Drach to collaberate with.

@@scribejackhammar I think he has in the past, though that was some time ago.

Historgraph or Operations Room would be great. Maybe Montemayor to. But he rarely uploads

Thoroughly agree with that, if i heard correctly the "per minute" positions have already been decided so it just needs the animation. It may just bre my eyesight and screen but I found the red text to be mostly illegible.

​@@nomdefamille4807 What red text?

That's cool. Thanks for that. Yeah, a lot of people think Callahan was NOT a good Admiral but he was ordered to 🛑 stop the IJN from shooting up Henderson Field. So, he tried to do what he could with what he had. God Bless Him. It's sad that he died while just following orders.

Set the playback speed to 2x, turn on close caption, and mute the audio.

This has been a 10 year+ project for me that I never would have accomplished without Mr. Lundgren. The guy knows his ships.

@@franksposato6072 It seems like you know your ships pretty well yourself. As a guy who's spent hours trying to put together a track for this action, I'm astounded by what you both managed.

I don't how else to say how much figuring this out has been so important to accomplish. The missing piece for me was the guy who did the same thing for the battle just after this one!@@josepetersen7112

@@franksposato6072 Man, I sure am grateful.

Ha! @@franksposato6072

The navy learned a lot about keeping quiet on info after the events of Midway got out due to so many excited about the results. Nimitz hated that that happened and after Savo disaster everyone understood to keep quiet. Then eventually this battle happens and the amount of friendly fire scares all of them especially with 2 Admirals, the Sullivan's and the Rodger's (another family also same ship) all having been lost. We are more than certain though none of these men were actually killed by FF, but the navy would never had been certain during this time. And only after finding the wrecks and putting this all together did we feel confident enough to say so.

Or muzzle flashes by her guns were in the dark night claimed as torpedo hits by the optimistic US torpedo crews.

When we studied the damage to the hull and the locations using primary sources, it becomes a total of 6 torps over time. 2 at a time, not always detonating correctly.

@@franksposato6072 amazing that she kept afloat as long as she did. Does it come down to very good reconstruction of the hull, TDS,compartmentalisation and damage control or weaker torpedoes, or both?

@@MattVF a lot of both. She would not be able to receive many torpedo hits in same place and time. But the torpedos are not working well and the spreads are 2 at a time in different places at different times

sorry i have not responded earlier. USN torpedoes did not work correctly if they did at all. so when each pair of torps hit Hiei it will not be all at once or even on the same side all while not fully detonating properly. this gave the crew the time needed to make repairs until the next hits came in. the real danger came from the 8" shells of San Fran and Portland that destroy her steering which keep her stuck in the area only for Enterprise Torp bombers to finally put a few more hits that convince the crew to abandon. Death by 1,000 cuts. spearing a giant whale. the Fury road scene where they throw tons of charges at the war rig. We threw all kinds of shells bombs and torps at just one Battleship in an emergency situation that we were not well prepared for. this cost many men and ships, but it still worked.@@MattVF

Let's not forget the bureau of 'NavWeeps'

Nah, Juneau definitely sank afterwards, that much is not in dispute, its just a question of if she was damaged beforehand by US or IJN forces, but the IJN absolutely sank her later on.

Atlanta does keep her engines running in order to retire south. They will eventually die out. Yudachi and Juneau have very little info to work with. And Scott may have used a similar approach, and probably still use San Fran as flag. But we do not know what his execution of battle would be and how he respond to unforeseen changes. It may even be possible that he could try to engage in a different location. That alone changes everything about the potential outcome.

Regarding the question on Scott: I've been trying to think about possibilities for a better plan, or at least better organization. Unfortunately, the US ships were outgunned since they had no capital ships and the Japanese did - and they knew this was likely to be the case going in. That meant they had to get to close range - giving the Japanese the opportunity for a long range duel would have been a disaster unless the US side had absurdly good luck. Once the decision was made to accept a close range engagement at night, the confusion and chaos were probably inevitable under the circumstances - sooner or later things were going to get messy. Incidentally, while the confusion caused a lot of problems (including some known and some speculative friendly fire incidents), it also provided benefits and it's easy to miss that. For example, reading Lundgren's paper at the web site mentioned above, I noticed that a number of the Japanese destroyers held fire for quite some time in order to wait for torpedo firing opportunities and not reveal their position. Effectively, they took themselves out of the battle for a long time - then never did get to use those torpedoes on the US cruisers. The confusion of the battle probably helped quite a bit in not giving them the opportunity to use those torpedoes effectively. The battle of Tassafaronga shows just how important that could be ... Back to the main thread of my thought: In 9 cases out of 10, it's probably a huge advantage to 'get in the first blow'. But this seems like the 10th case, where getting to close range was actually the critical factor, so it's not clear how important the radar mistake actually was. After all - they achieved the close range that they needed, and that's why the battle ended up being a strategic victory for the US. Yes, there were heavy losses, but given what they were going up against that was probably inevitable (again, absent the possibility of just absurdly good luck). A weaker force can not expect to go up against a well equipped, well trained, stronger force without taking heavy hits in the process. As for plans, one possibility I've come up with would have been to set things up so as to let the Japanese start their bombardment, and come in behind them to attack at close range, using the fires on land from the initial shells to help silhouette the Japanese ships, both from the perspective of having better targets, and also from the perspective of helping ships differentiate friend from foe (all the Japanese are between us and the fires!). If timed correctly, the Japanese wouldn't have a lot of time to do damage with the bombardment and might even be caught by surprise with too many key people looking in the wrong direction. It sounds simple, probably very hard to achieve in practice in real life - but if they could pull it off, this would have let the US use it's radar much more effectively. A refinement might be to deliberately start a number of big fires on the island at an appropriate time. As for better planning/organization, one possibility would be to have an order that damaged ships were all to turn East - away from Henderson Field and towards Tulagi which was an US base and a fairly safe harbor - and all ships should double check your target id on any such ship sighted moving in that manner. This would help distinguish ships at night. I have the impression a lot of confusion happened because US ships were going in all directions at different points during the battle, which ended up causing some of them to be mistaken for enemy ships which were expected to be moving in certain directions. This idea is not perfect, since a ship could be damaged and not able to go East, but I think it could have helped. Yet another possibility would be to organize all ships in pairs, and emphasize that pairs need to stick together (like 'wingmen' in aerial combat). This way, when things get chaotic, no ship is alone - and ships that are alone are more likely to be the enemy. Maybe take this further - only the rear ship in each pair is allowed to use it's spotlights, so you don't end up revealing two ships at once, and also to help with recognition. Another idea that's easy to state, probably very hard in practice without a lot of training (which they didn't have time to do).

Yes. However, destroyers used the Mark 15. Not that there was a lot of difference in their flaws.

You will never get all rounds in the same hole at any realistic range - it's impossible to remove all the variables, the fire control problem is staggeringly complex even for just a single ship with a single set of guns. The fire control systems had to account for all kinds of things, and even then it was highly imperfect. Think of this as the difference between real world engineering and things done in a mathematical fantasy world. Firing at sea means firing from different points at different times on a long non-linear platform that has both linear and rotational movement in three dimensions - it's twisting and shaking in complex and hard to predict ways that differ from point to point and moment to moment along the length of the ship - so it's very different from one person shooting on land at the firing range with a gun rest. You may be familiar with the idea that skyscrapers move in the wind. Big ships do something similar but more complex/more chaotic in their interaction with the water and that means the guns are effectively moving in complex ways as you try to shoot - not a lot, but enough to impact long range fire. Worse, the guns themselves will stress the ship when they fire (think action-reaction), and that can further complicate things (or even do damage to your own ship!). Then there's the issue of atmospheric variation, chemical differences from shell to shell, and so on ... They do the best they can to account for all this, but it's a really hard problem if you're trying to get hits at long range. On the other hand, if you're firing at 1-2 miles that's 'point blank' range for naval gunnery (in moderate seas) and you can expect most shots to hit somewhere on the target. The most recent study on gunnery (for this period, that I am aware of) was published ~2005 after some things had finally been declassified. It's in two parts: look up Fast Battleship Gunnery during World War II: A Gunnery Revolution, in Warship International. You should be able to download a free copy. Note that the range shooting in these studies was not about 'chasing scores', it was about giving each group and sub-group in the ship's crew real world training. There's a huge difference between the accuracy possible with radar, versus optical, vs aircraft spotting, and other factors such as which radar was in use, local control or not, salvo size, etc ... - but they didn't just focus on using the radar with full salvoes (which gave maximum accuracy) because range time was limited and they needed to give everybody training. A key insight from this study is that the best accuracy was obtained when you could see splashes being reflected back to the radar on either side of the target - which means the splashes had to be far enough apart to differentiate them from the target reflection. Hence, you actually want a certain amount of spread from one shell to another in a single salvo ...

Thank you. I never imagined we would have discovered this development. I really thought we would have seen something similar to what was earlier believed.

She was said to steal the luck of other ships. For more info, Drach just did her profile.

I wonder if remains of the torpedo were found in the hit area.

In the article we point out that in the Fletcher's logs, they state that they track and target an "Augusta type" vessel and still shoot most likely because the Portland is heading a south direction that IJN forces should be moving, but also because the Fletcher saw a ship in her direction shoot at a known USN ship while some friendly fire took place. Hence a lot of confusion.