US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

Suvo—Tbe Galling Defeat 367
noted that the Japanese Flagship Chohu’ sighted this aircraft, immediately
after four of the five Japanese heavy cruisers had finished recovering their
seaplanes at 1050, and while the seven large ships were forming up into a
single column. The Chokai opened fire on the plane at 1100. The plane
retreated and disappeared from sight of the Chokai at 1113. Vice Admiral
Mikawa reported that his ships were on the northwesterly course of 300°
and that the plane was in sight for 13 minutes.z’
How the Japanese ships all in sight of each other sighted the plane, and
the plane did not correctly count the number of ships below it, lacks a ready
explanation, except for the “fog of war.”
This second sighting report added perplexity to the mystification already
existing on the McCawley’s Flag Bridge. The position reported indicated
the Japanese force, if it was the same force as reported some 35 minutes
previously, had moved northward and westward 7.5 miles. Since the
Australian aviator, in this second sighting report, had not included a course
and speed of the ships below him and since a plot of the two positions
checked out the previous report by the pilot of A16/218 of a leisurely speed
of 15 knots, Admiral Turner guessed that the seaplane part of the force as
first reported was proceeding on to Rekata Bay and that part of the covering
force was returning to RabauL28
It is an amazing fact, but one showing the vagaries of radio communications,
that Vice Admiral Ghormley apparently was not cognizant of the
1025 sighting of the Japanese Cruiser Force until after Rear Admiral Turner
arrived back in Noumea and told him of it.
A “Memorandum for Admiral Ghormley” prepared jointly on 14 August
1942 by his Staff Aviation Officer and his War Plotting Room Officer, while
listing the 1101 sighting report, does not list the 1025 sighting despatch
among the dispatches received by COMSOPACFOR from COMSOWES-
PACFOR relating to enemy surface units on 7 August and 8 August 1942.2’
No record of the time of receipt of the second Australian plane’s report
survived the flagship McCawley’.r torpedoing and sinking 10 months later.
COMSOPAC radio watch finished copying the second sighting message at
2136, and it still had to be decoded. On 21 February 1943, six months after
Savo Island, Rear Admiral Crutchley in an otlicial report on Savo Island
= (a) Cbokui War Diary; (b) Japanese Eighth Fleet War Diary, CIG 74633, USSBS
Interrogation.
2S(a) Turner; (b) Staff Interviews.
wCopy of Memorandum supplied by Captain Charles W, Weaver USNR and original then
located in Comsopac files.