Best case in point is in the Guadalcanal Campaign, the Naval Battles of Guadalcanal Nov 13-15. The first action, still known and taught at the various service academies as ''The Bar Room Brawl'' was about as inelegant an action as anyone could have concieved. Nelson might have been right at home, but Nelson didn't have to fight 14'' guns, advanced wakeless torpedoes, and automatic 5'' guns combined with radar and night optics. 'Course at point-blank range visibility is less an issue, and illumination from starshell and searchlight aided by burning wrecks make for nice lighting. There are few if any pictures of the action, magnifying how intense things were; no one had time, even the dedicated combat camera guys. You've probably seen shots of ships I've taken in rivers; now picture them as warships, meeting like that but in the dark, travelling at 2-3 times the velocity, and shooting at each other. With everything. From 14'' down to Tommy Guns and Colt 1911s
IJN Hiei was literally cut to shreds, with her pagoda tower mast collapsing in on itself from passthroughs and internal explosions. That the admiral aboard was not only wounded but a near-gibbering wreck for a while is understandable. She took a bit more killing, staggering off to the North of Savo Island, but Naval and Marine Air finally finished her late in the day. This is the action that also lost all the Sullivan brothers, on board USS Juneau, which had been crippled by a Type 93 torpedo that broke her keel, and was torpedoed and literally blown to pieces by a Japanese submarine while limping away. That is a separate book and a very sad story
The 2nd battle was slightly more orderly, mostly because you had a gunnery expert in the form of Willis Lee in command. Who also was familiar with and understood how radar worked. And believed training, training, training, was the way to prepare for battle. That there was no reason you shouldn't be able to fire 16''/45cal rifles less accurately than a .30-06
Like most night actions, there was always some confusion; CIC was a new concept and not really executed well yet; data sharing not even close, and the TBS tended to devolve into shouting matches on the channel. And like most of the actions, the light forces were roughly handled again. Worst part was USS South Dakota, while exchanging fire with the enemy suffered several hits which should have been trivial at best; however, due to her ChEng violating procedures and locking down one circuit breaker, resulted in a total electrical failure. No radar. No TBS. No w/t. No internal lighting. No remote firing for the guns. This, a notta good. A further series of mistakes resulted in her turning the wrong way, becoming backlit by the burning US destroyers and a perfect target for every Japanese ship in the area. She suffered roughly 25 medium-calibre and 1 major-calibre hits, most of which did not explode, but did enough further damage to cause her to break off the action. Meanwhile...Washington was unaware SD had broken contact. She continued to close within 9,000 yards, tracking a large contact but holding fire since they were unsure of its identity. Then the target illuminated South Dakota and fired on her, ending any doubts as to who was who. She immediately opened fire with both main and secondary batteries.Note the elevation, or lack of , on her mains; wiki being wiki....they never get the memo, but to say that Kirishima was brutalized would be putting it mildly. Shell flight time would have been under 10 seconds, and Washington's gunnery officer was using both radar and optics to track the hits. For all this, Washington was still unspotted by the Japanese. She steered NW to lead the Japanese away from the presumably damaged SD, and was finally spotted. They launched several torpedo attacks but all were evaded. This was the only surface engagement between battleships outside of the one-sided massacre at Suriago in 1944
Kirishima Damage Analysis
Either would be good as movie subjects, for both historical fans and those liking lots of 'splosions
It is sad that subjects like this, and plenty others left untouched to the point that almost none of the actual participants are left around.Wiki Naval Battles of Guadalcanal
