The first USS Lexington (CV-2) was sunk during the Battle of Coral Sea in 1942.

The second USS Lexington (CV-16), survived the war and is now a museum ship in Corpus Christi TX.

The 1st Marine Division made the initial landings on Guadalcanal, Tarawa and Iwo Jima.
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Dave, history is everything, because those that do not read history ... are deemed to repeat it.

For example, Hitler committed the same blunder in Russia that Napolean did.

And, btw: The Marines waded ashore on Guadalcanal facing no opposition, as the Japanese fled into the hills as soon as the naval bombardment began.

However, it didn't take the Japanese too long to recover.

Every night for months, a 2 engine bomber nicknamed "washing machine charlie" (because of its un-syncronized engines), flew over Guadalcanal dropping small bombs as a harassment to keep the USMC from getting any sleep.

 

SG radar was a recent update of the older radar aboard some ships. The problem was that Callaghan either was ignorant of what ships had it, didn't understand it or trust it, or knew but didn't understand how to utilize it. As a result he placed his flag on San Francisco, which had no radar, versus Helena which had SG. Then he compounded his mistakes by putting the Helena, Juneau and two new Flecther class destroyers, all with SG, in the middle to back of the van. When Helena radioed that they had made contact he wanted more information so he went to TBS. Here a problem arose with the TBS just like with pilots coordinating their attacks... too much useless jabber. Minutes before the Cushing had asked permission to fire torpedos, as she visually sighted the Japanese crossing ahead, but Callaghan said to stand by. It was during this delay that the Cushing had to swing west to avoid collision with the Japanese. The Laffey, Sterett and O'Bannon followed right behind her move. Atlanta, with Scott, had to heel sharply to port to avoid running down her destroyers. It was at this point were everything went into disarray and never corrected. With Callaghan passing between the Japanese now he ordered odd ships fire to starboard and even ships fire to port. Of course, this was a bad order as it didn't take into account which ships already had their guns trained on targets on the wrong side. Through Callaghan's mismanagement he had brought on a close-range melee which had never happened before or after during the war. This was a battle much like Constitution against HMS Guerrier.

In this battle no American ships used searchlights. In fact, in all the actions around Guadalcanal searchlights were rarely used by the Amercans who preferred star shells. The Japanese liked to use searchlights and early on got away with it because they caught us flat footed so many times.

As for Juneau that is not my take on her being there. She was present along with every other light cruiser we had. In fact the consensus is that the restricted waters here were not friendly to heavy cruisers, on both sides, and instead more to the liking of destroyers. Should also note that Juneau survived the battle, The following day, when the US Fleet, was retiring from the area while zigzaging, a Japanese sub was in the area. She shot for the San Francisco and missed hitting the Juneau at 11:03 am in broad daylight. Japanese subs, early on, had good luck in being around our ships at the right time with our destroyers caught unawares. Therefore the Juneau could have been torpedoed at any time just as she was that morning. Classic example the Saratoga, Wasp and Indy which all were out of a battle scene at the time.

One final note it has pretty much been determined that shells from the USS San Francisco were the ones that killed Adm. Scott aboard Atlanta. Atlanta was struck by 19 8-inch shells and the Japanese had no 8-inch guns only 5", 6" and 14". The fragment scarred bridge, where Adm. Callaghan was and died, is actually displayed near Land's End in the City of San Francisco. I have been on it and it does look like swiss cheese. It is, in a way, a disturbing sight much like the Arizona as you know what happened there if you know history.

 

For those interested in definitive history as compared to what we were told years ago then these two books are a must in any library. Had the first since 1995 and have read 5 times and the second had since 2007 and have read 3 times...

Amazon.com: Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle (9780140165616): Richard B. Frank: Books

Amazon.com: Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (9781574889246): Jonathan Parshall, Anthony Tully: Books

Tully is great. Has another book "The Battle of Surigao Strait"

 

My great-uncle Bob served aboard the second Lexington. Great-uncle Jack participated as a rifleman/engineer throughout the Pacific's island hopping campaign. He considered the fighting at Peleliu to be some of the worst he experienced during the war.

Mike

 

CS65,
The engine in the picture wasn't mine; 59INA40 was showing me his to help me out. Please let me know what "minor" discrepancies you see. I am interested I doing mine as correctly as possible. Thanks.

 

Where did you read that no USN ships used seachlights, Wiki Wiki? I woudn't trust anything Wiki Wiki says.

My source is: Battle Report, Volume III-Pacific War-Middle Phase / Rinehart Publishing / Author: Captain Walter Karig (who was also the technical advisor on Victory at Sea) has artists renditions of the battle which clearly shows searchlights eminating from darn near every USN ship.

 

I listed the book on Guadalcanal. You need to have both that book and Shattered Sword to truly understand what went on at both times. Guadalcanal covers everything that happened on land and sea by an exact time line. Covers divisions, regiments, task forces, ships, weapons, commanders, casualties and on and on. Apparently Capt King is mistaken at the very least. As for Victory at Sea it was aired in 1952 and is a puff piece. Basically propaganda that had very little fact in it. I personally hate the show since it uses stock footage over and over again. The wrong planes and wrong ships time and again. I know my ships and planes on sight and Victory at Sea is incorrect. As for artist renditions that is exactly what they are, what an artist thinks, however the artist wasn't there. As I said get the book because if you like history this book will change all that you had known before. Seriously...

 

I'd be the first to admit I don't know that much about airplanes...ships are another matter. There isn't a WWII capital ship that I cannot ID, and this includes the British, German, Italian, Japanese and US Navies.

I don't agree with your assessment of Victory at Sea, which used official combat footage....excepting the Pearl Harbor attack.

Less than 3 minutes of actual footage exists. Most of what ones sees was re-enacted by John Ford's Field Photography Studio (Ford had nothing to do with it!) on the back lot of 20th Century-Fox.

Ford's cameraman came up with the idea of producing a 90 minute film on the attack, starring Walter Huston as Uncle Sam. When Ford saw the film, he cut it to pieces, it was never shown in theaters.

Every documentary on the attack has some/all of this surviving footage. Most people think it's the real McCoy. It ain't!

Only the footage taken of the USS Arizona exploding is real. It was shot by a USN doctor (aboard the hospital ship USS Solace) in color, using a Super 8 movie camera.

 

Like I said, Bill, read the book. It has over 100 pages of footnotes documenting where all the information comes from. As to real footage it depends on what footage you are talking about. While plenty of standard footage exists there is not that much true actual combat footage in the series and some of it is repeated several times to depict different ships. I'll take back the puff piece comment, but have seen the show many times when young over and over until I went wait a minute now...

 

The Victory at Sea series is available on video (8 tapes), so you can watch it over and over again.