Battle of Savo Island

8–9 August 1942, Off Savo Island, Solomon Islands

Japanese victory

Two days after American Marines landed on Guadalcanal and Tulagi, Admiral Gunichi Mikawa brought seven cruisers and a destroyer down the Slot from Rabaul. Allied aircraft sighted him but the reports were slow and wrong, and the cruisers guarding the transports were spread round Savo Island in three groups, their commander Rear Admiral Victor Crutchley away at a conference in his flagship Australia. The Japanese slipped past the two radar picket destroyers in the dark. Their seaplanes dropped flares, and at about 1:40 a.m. they wrecked the southern group with gunfire and long-range torpedoes: Canberra was crippled before she fired a shot and Chicago lost her bow. Mikawa then swung round Savo and caught the northern group, whose captains thought the firing to the south was at aircraft; Vincennes, Quincy and Astoria were all sunk. In about 40 minutes more than 1,000 Allied sailors were killed, for 58 Japanese, one of the worst defeats in the US Navy's history. But Mikawa, fearing American carriers at dawn, turned back without attacking the transports, and the landings went on. The next day the transports withdrew, leaving the Marines short of supplies, and the waters off Guadalcanal soon took the name Ironbottom Sound.