US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

378 Amphibians Came To Conquer
should have been shifted to the Vincenne~ and placed in command of the
North Area Force was:
TF 62 during the night of August 8 was divided into three important and
valuable task groups: the XRAY (Guadalcanal) Group; the YOKE (Tulagi)
Group; and the Screening Group. These three major groups were tactically
separated by from 15 to 20 miles. All were prosecuting important operations
throughout the night. Three Flag officers were available; Turner, Scott, and
Crutchley. I considered then, and consider now, that the best command arrangement
was for one Flag officer to command each of these major groups.
(Until after the battle, I believed that Crutchley in Ati~truli~had rejoined his
cruiser unit instead of displacing the Hobart in the latter’s assigned position
near the XRAY Group.)
There was another important reason which would have made me reject the
idea, had it occurred to me, of transferring Scott to the Vizzcezwe~. Scott had
been a Flag officer a very short time, and on this expedition was exercising his
first semi-independent Flag command. He and Riefkohl of the Vit.rcemre.r
were Naval Academy classmates, and, until his promotion, Scott had been the
junior. Riefkohl was considered a good officer and apparently was performing
his tasks satisfactorily. To have superseded Riefkohl on his own ship by a
classmate recently promoted over him would have been a heavy blow to
general morale, and would have gone far toward destroying all prospects of
Riefkohl’s future usefulness and chances of promotion. Furthermore, a Flag
officer’s effectiveness is temporarily impaired when suddenly transferred to a
strange flagship.
To my mind, the reasoning that led to the formulation of this criticism is
entirely faulty.eo
As Admiral Hepburn wrote:
The one outstanding consideration was that an enemy approaching the transport
group through either of the passages around SAVO ISLAND should be
certainly intercepted and brought to action, and this object was in fact
achieved.el
But, one may add, at the price of a galling defeat.
The error in judgment in regard to the Screening Group would not appear
to have been in dividing it into three fighting groups; more realistically the
judgment error was in the split of the destroyer types between picket duty
and anti-submarine duty. This division of strength resulted in an inadequate
assignment of only two destroyer-types to picket duty to the west of Savo
Island.
‘0Admiral Turner to DCNO (Admin ), official letter, 20 Aug. 1950, sub: Comments on
Morison’s Vol. V, pp. 10-11. Note Admiral Turner’s statement that Hoburt was near XRAY
Group.
mHepburn Report, para. 95.