Back in August when we left the story, the US Navy had just suffered its worst ever blue water defeat. More than a thousand Allied sailors were dead. Four Heavy Cruisers had been lost, with a fifth disabled. The Navy, along with the American public, had been stunned by the loss, less than a year after the disaster at Pearl Harbor.

Just three months later, on the night of November 13/14, 1942, the Navy once again was shocked when a Japanese submarine torpedoed one of the heavily damaged survivors of yet another pitched night battle off of Guadalcanal, the USS Juneau. Of her crew of six hundred and seventy-three men,. a mere ten survived after spending eight days afloat on life rafts and flotsam. Americans mourned as five of the dead turned out to be the five Sullivan Brothers of Waterloo, Iowa. They were serving together and remain one of the two cases that led the US Military to adopt a policy of not allowing siblings to serve together in war time.

On the evening of November 14, 1942, it would have been easy to be demoralized. The Marines on Guadalcanal were hanging on by a thread. The nightly bombardment by the Japanese Heavy Cruisers and now Battleships was taking a heavy toll. The Navy seemed powerless to stop it and now it had suffered yet another tragic defeat.

As the clock approached midnight on November 14, 1942, another Japanese navy force, led by the battleship Kirishima, headed into Iron Bottom Sound to pound the Marines on Guadalcanal into submission. This time, unknown to the Japanese, came to the fight the last desperate defense the Navy had to offer.

This time, USS Washington was coming…