munitions to get by. we always seems to be short with munitions and airpower, and the aircraft themselves. waslly having enough pilots a bigger problem for the japanese and us. also an issue. there were methods of making water safe to drink that was there, but the marines did not like to do that. , i amophylaxis question not sure. by vietnam, they developed belair prophylaxis. in not sure if they had it world war ii -- does anyone have any wisdom on that? get the doctor appeared -- we need to stick him in a car and drag him up to hattiesburg with us. >> andy, we will get to the break here. thank you very much. bob, the podium is yours. [applause]

next on american history tv, james ward fisher looks at the battle of water canal from the perspective of the u.s. navy. he highlights key events of the pacific campaign that led to a u.s. victory in february 1943. mr. horne fisher is the author of neptune's inferno, the u.s. navy and guadalcanal. museumional world war ii in new orleans hosted this 50 minute talk. >> all right, everyone. we are ready to we convene our guadalcanal symposium this morning. we are in the land, sea, and air portion, and thank you to andy wiest for talking us through the land portion, and now we will sail off to see under the able guidance of captain -- using that metaphorically -- jim moran

fisher. jim is one of the best military writers in the world today. i know he is modest and does not like people to say that out loud, or maybe he does like people to say that out loud. [laughter] by all means. and i will just say this, that is not only my opinion. the u.s. public very much agrees with that assessment. books, andtten four all four have been new york times best sellers. the last band of a tin can sailor, net tunes canal, and finally, the fleet at flipside. i once said boy, my job is going to be to greet all of these books -- oh my gosh. came on my desk was the last stand of the tin can sailors. if you have never read it, you

should come and you should read everything jim has to say on world war ii. here to speak on the neighbor battles inaval guadalcanal, jim moran fisher -- fischer. here, eachppearing time i have done it, intellectually and emotionally energizing, and i should not be surprised to be in the company of all of these guys and the audience, their incredibly acute reliably the best day of the year. thank you for the opportunity, to rob and jeremy and stephen and alton for this opportunity to be with you. we were given an incredible metaphor in the opening session of the two giants lying on the ground, tangling with their fingertips. i will not forget that one, i will use that one for a while.

incredibly vivid and dramatize how difficult it was for the japanese and the americas to come to grips in this our southern ocean, and then andrew gave us an incredibly visceral sense of the ground fighting, which is the traditional marriage of water canal. what i will try to -- traditional story of guadalcanal. but there is more than fighting with this, and it happens at sea . the sea campaign is essential to understand the traditional marine, itf the seas has to include the story of guadalcanal for reasons i hope i will make clear, but also emotionally felt in this talk right now. begins on august 7, 1942, when 82 u.s. navy ships with 40,000 sailors bring their 16,000 marines to that remote island and immersed in that cruel curriculum of timeless lessons.

our navy task force is learned that technology was important, but guts and guile mattered more. that swiftness was as useful as strength, but the well packaged surprise beats them both. , forxperience of battle ever devised by those who speak nothing from its prospects, speak of everything else but it's memory. sailors in a combat zone learned to tell the red orange blossoms of shells hitting targets from the faster flashes of models firing back at them. some of these are the lessons of any war, victory did tend to fly with the first effective salvo, but others with a product of new technologies, processes, and tactics, that you could win a campaign on the backs of men who were expert in the lethal craft of combat loading cargo ships. the image of an enemy ship under radar scope will flinch visibly when struck, and that rapid partial salvo fire from a director controlled main battery

reduces the salvo but, case the direction of ranges and spots. do i have that right? pacific, you learn that warships smashed in the night could resurrect themselves by the rise of mourning, that the fog of war could make your enemies see much smarter than they ever really could be, and as bad as things might seem for you in the moment, things might actually be far worse for him. you learned that you could learn from your opponent's successes if your ego and pride allowed it, and sometimes the best course of action ran straight into the razor wire of your own biases and fears. the family elliott morrison said name,uadalcanal is not a but an emotion. morrison knew soon after the war, probably during the war, as we know today, that the bitter struggle for guadalcanal is especially in emotion for men who belong to the united states marine corps. hung out toy were

dry when the navy took their aircraft carriers and ran away in the days after the landings. i spent a few years digging into the archives and talking with people who were there. twice now, i have had the opportunity to go to quantico and talk to marines about their forbearing experience in this campaign. it turns out that even the hardest partisans of uncle sam's misguided children can have their hearts turned by a story told that they had not heard before. so this is my purpose in writing neptune's inferno, to tell the navy's side of the story, to turn the story of guadalcanal from a feeling of grievance to the navy to one of gratitude. the tools that are available to a writer have their limitations. , i thinkonce wrote somewhat famously, of the difficulty of using words to capture reality on a page. i wrote "if i could do it, would do no writing here at all. it would be photographs. the rest would be fragments of

cloth, bits of cotton, lumps of earth, records of speech, and files of voters, plates of food and excrement." morris was safe of the similar when he called wattle canal and -- called wattle canal -- guadalcanal more of an emotion. i will submit to you the isbol of guadalcanal numbers. one that crystallizes the story to me -- the number of sailors that died at guadalcanal, about 5000. the 5000 number is three times the number of men who died in ground fighting on the island. so the three to one ratio suggests that it may be time to take a closer look at that navy's performance of guadalcanal, the surface actions that were fought there, and the carrier battle fought in support of the beachhead are an important story to know how the

u.s. navy saved the marines at guadalcanal rather than abandon them. that will be the focus of my short time at this podium. ashore, amen go triphibious-- a campaign is developed. it is like a stool. the three sides are part of its effectiveness. dependsu.s., everything on keeping that airfield in business, the cactus air force. when those guys are flying, it is impossible for the japanese to approach the island, and what this means is because the air force flies during the daylight hours, the japanese are forced to operate at night. their route to victory depends on destroying those aircraft, but because they are always fighting air battles more or less directly over their own air dome, they have 20 of fuel for air combat maneuvering.

the japanese want to fly all the way down from her ball -- from ribal in a straitjacket. what that means is the japanese will never kill the cactus air force by dogfighting. they have to destroy it by nighttime battleship apartment in order to get -- battleship bombardment in order to get supplies and quantity to the island through the proper means, cargo ships, not the small destroyers they are finally forced to use. the japanese are masters of night fighting, and the rising and setting of the sun as a result determines who is going to prevail, who can do what and when. the needs to operate during the window of their in vantage, means they have to get in and out quick the -- quickly during the rise of day. they have very little hauling capacity, so they face a very serious problem trying to unseat the marines from wattle canal -- from guadalcanal.

stopping the japanese will require them to get up to speed as a battle force. they have to win at night. they have to stop the tokyo express from coming down during the nighttime hours when the japanese make their attempts. the six-month campaign features seven major champs --seven major attempts to the japanese to establish superiority over wattle canal. -- over guadalcanal. let's just say, kelly turner's fleet discovered its limitations when the japanese come calling two days after the troops go ashore. 9, thenight of august battle of szabo island, they surprise and destroy two cruiser formations that are screening the anchorage of guadalcanal. it is one of the most one-sided japanese victories over the entire war.

more than 1000 allied sailors die with the sinking of four and the shameful this of the navy's performance can be seen in a number of ways. a senior u.s. commander, captain of the cruiser chicago, fails to sound the alarm after he makes contact with the japanese, inexplicably steaming away. two picket destroyers, the patterson and the blue, failed to detect the japanese forces passing right through their midst. turn reports to what he calls a fatal lethargy of mind to point out what he calls -- to point out the factors that enabled michalek to route the american force. even though this is left unmolested, the japanese failed to explore their victory -- exploit their victory and withdraw. it seems what mcconnell actually feared was that it was a counterattacked by american aircraft carriers, which ironically at that moment were in the process of withdrawing from the area, in accordance to

the conference that went so disastrously, where this withdrawal is discussed in advance. the point they're being, the marines should not have been surprised that air support was going to be limited. gormley istable, going to allow frank jack fletcher to remain only two days before the carriers had to withdraw in accordance to the cautious understanding of their use and exposure in this expeditionary operation. there were very few carriers in the whole pacific at the time established, frank jack fletcher knew he was going to have to fight at least one two carrier to be fights. the month of september leaves the fighting of marines ashore. and illustrated really well, i think, the intensity of the fighting that surrounded henderson fields during september. for the navy, it was a month of

waiting, an uneasy standoff as both sides marshal their supply trains and prepare for the next collision of fleets. shows is veryavy poor capacity to cooperate with the army. and one comes down small carrier tries to establish air superiority over henderson field. they will fail utterly, and we suffer some damage to the enterprise as a result, but that serve the purpose of blunting the second japanese naval attack on the guadalcanal area and the first carrier action in sort of a standoff, but time is on the american's side. during september, commander steps forward on the surface side of things, admiral norman scott, and demonstrates the battle minded qualities that will be necessary for the surface navy to prevail. , one veteranter characterized him to be a junior halsey. he implements a training regimen

that one sailor referred to as night fighting 101. this works on convoy runs up , scott would base take crews and destroyers and run them through high-speed gunnerys, contact exercises, get them using their ,irectors and coordinating drilling the fire control crews to communicate with each other under dynamic conditions. flag on the cruiser uss san francisco, he puts this tradecraft into use when he intercepts a large japanese cruiser force coming down to henderson field. this is the navy's first notable service action victory of the war. the japanese lose one cruiser and a destroyer, a second .ruiser is heavily damaged the japanese withdraw without ever firing a shot at henderson field. , ahave a great naval hero hero in the person of admiral scott, who has figured this

thing out, and the score of the service battles stand at one to one. it is a modest and fleeting victory, however. it does not stop the japanese from coming down three nights later with the battleships, and those monsters and fixed -- those monsters inflict one of the most concentrated and deadly bombardments that man on earth have ever suffered in the age of mechanized warfare. when those main batteries are through, the battleship leaves with five planes intact on henderson field. it is truly a moment of crisis. the disaster of october moderates a bit -- the disaster of august moderates a bit by the middle of october. now it is merely a continuing crisis. the crisis manifests itself in the caliber of leadership that is being demonstrated at the very top in south pacific forces command, robert gormley is really -- he is in over his

head. as richhe war, indicated, he was well regarded as a strategist, unable diplomat. he is a liaison extraordinaire and is in london when king determines he should lead the guadalcanal campaign. imagine being bob gormley, shipped from the parlors of london on this role observing the blitz and maintaining contact with the british, spying on their plans and reporting to washington, and all of a sudden you will be at the top of this gritty expeditionary campaign, planned honest you should ring -- planned on a shoestring, and what skills do you fall back upon? prepares you for combat theater of this complex and vicious nature. well, there is not much. gormley is of the type that does not visit the front area, tends to be a micromanager who loves to immerse himself of the details that of reports and paperwork. as the campaign reaches its crescendo, they realize they

have made a mistake. he is not the fighter they need at guadalcanal. andtz is very candid written correspondence after the war that he thought gormley was having a nervous breakdown in command. he decides to replace him with halsey. four days after scott's victory, nimitz decides the changes necessary -- the changes are necessary, and gormley is relieved. the effect is electric up and down the entire chain of command. even marine ncos at guadalcanal feel a sense of calm now that halsey is in command. he is forceful, outgoing, boisterous, energizing, he talks about the japanese more in the pacific. he says, we would be happy to share the pacific ocean with japan. we will take the top half, give them the bottom. it is this attitude that puts our forces on a certain

advantageous psychological footing for the first time. theattitude fires imagination of men up and down the chain of command and produces the expectation of expect forces them to what's to come in their high attrition campaign in the solomons. this indicates the japanese are setting their entire aircraft carrier force in an effort to capture henderson field, and he laid out what is happening ashore. the navy is supposed to coordinate those frustrating delays in coordinating, but the navy comes down, the japanese navy, and what ensues is known as the battle of santa cruz. it is admiral yamamoto's intention to eventually defeat at midway, and halsey eagerly meets him. he missed the battle of midway as well, so this is his opportunity as well.

this does not produce the vindication yamamoto seeks. blows with their counterparts, and it ends up in a draw in terms of ships lost, the hornet is sunk and the japanese ships are severely damaged. the worst are there losses in pilots, their veterans are irreplaceable and they lose hundreds of them in this battle, and more significantly, halsey is able to afford yet another concentrated japanese attempts to dislodge the marine beachhead at guadalcanal. as we move forward, the effective gormley's relief is going to have second-order effects. gormley returns to pearl harbor and has a meeting with nimitz, his ability to really one of his closest friends from the navy, bob gormley -- both his departure as chief of staff is left hanging. this would be newly promoted rear admiral dan callahan.

callahan lobbies halsey to be given at the command, and he gets it. halsey assigns him to the and he recovery force, has 15 days seniority over norman scott. callahan takes command of the force. scott will ride second fiddle into what follows. that hees a cruiser wants to captain, the uss san francisco, as his flagship. he had a practice of eating with , asmen and resumes it now the admiral uses him in the war room to break down the barriers between ranks and race and accelerates the growth of his men in a hands-on, managerial way as good leaders do. in the course of my work on neptune's inferno, i met a sailor who was an african-american man that served in san francisco as the captains cook.

on-duty, eugene found he could listen in on the talks in the next compartment and he told me, they talk about what forces they are going up against, when they inspected -- expected contracts with the enemy how to deploy the fleet. this is some valuable intelligence. but he was taking it in and keeping his own counsel. on the night of october 12, eugene was able to hear that a japanese fleet was coming down again from the north, and he heard callahan referred to the fact that battleships were in it. southbound at 25 knots, just a day away. at this point, kelly turner orders callahan to assemble a group to meet it. it's cruisers and destroyers, assembled from the various task forces in the area, and take them into action. the presence of japanese battleships presents a problem. these are capital ships of the 14 inch main battery.

callahan has cruisers with an eight inch main battery. versus 260shells pound shells. it is really a mismatch. eugene terre and overhears the admirals say it is a will there and to take on ships that are three times san francisco's eyes. it is a shame there is no time to confer with healthy -- with halsey. and here's the commander weigh-in, saying this is suicide. , yes, i know, but we have to do it. he is calm, resolute, and perhaps already resigned to his fate. from two witnesses, this conversation, that i think is telling. the melee that ensues has a couple of different names, confusingly referred to as the first naval battle of of theanal, the battle 13th, or the cruiser night action. it was arguably the most violent, confusing, and

surprising surface action. telling the story is hard, writing it up is hard and you have to present a linear sequence of fact and impressions , and the reports are all jumbled because of -- you know, a lot of the ships were lost, clocks art synchronized -- art synchronized, radar had yet to be integrated. old-schools anyway. he is repeatedly clearing his destroyers ahead, led by bush parker -- what he is seeing directly behind callahan is a ship, the helena with the sg search radar, and the helena knows the exact ranges and bearings of the three japanese groups merging with them in the dark ahead. her captain, gilbert hoover, chased the callahan's evident lack of interest in this valuable data, but the tbs radio can only handle a single exchange between two parties, and if someone is talking, no

one else can cut in or communicate. hoover's data remains on the helena. callahan does not have it. a.m., a strange ship sliding past, 2500 yards ahead. the cushing turns to unmask her torpedo batteries, and butch permission tor terminatio fire torpedoes. amongan wants to get in the japanese. he knows he has to get within a certain amount of yards to handle ap battleship armor. parker finds himself having to veer hard to port to avoid a collision with the japanese ships come and the other destroyers create this disruption in this line -- in their line. at 1:45 a.m., 15 odd minutes of silence in with a blast of guns, the lead units of these opposing squadrons.

the cast at this point is irreversible. callahan issues his last two meaningful demands -- a first to change course 90 degrees left, into the midst of this complicated japanese formation. he recognized the simple ballistics of the affairs, the eight inch has to penetrate battleship armor that will happen at point-blank range. it is suicide, but we have to do it. his second order is his final one. all odd ships fire to starboard, even ships commence firing to port. the destroyers find themselves tangling with the battleship 20 times their size from 1200 yards. it will fire torpedoes at this japanese behemoth, but it is too close to miss and to close also to arm on the warheads on route. ae engagement devolves into ship against chip affair at unforgettably close range. if you closely read the records, the more confusing the sequence

becomes. the light cruiser atlanta is making a port turned to stay with the destroyers. she takes a torpedo. foundering, taking on water, and is taken under fire from the port beam. it is a friendly ship shooting at her, the san francisco has her in the sites. the atlanta absorbs a sixgun salvo, killing 16 of the 20 men on watch and among the fidelity's is admiral norman scott. commander bruce mccandless would write, probably she drifted into our line of fire, but almost vertically flat trajectory at that range -- perhaps something was inevitable with those two formations merged. at this point, the radar on the helena displays 26 ships within a 5000 mile radius. trying toagine document this. i can't imagine experiencing it, much less writing it up after

work, who did what to whom and when. god knows. the firework show is commanding a large audience of marines that can be seen in the dark, floating high above the seascape and now and then illuminated by airburst seven cindy rounds that were originally meant for them. cowherdestroyer, jesse orders his crews to fire at a japanese destroyer, 800 miles away to start work, but the torpedoes could not be armed at close range. the ship rises from the water shortly after the fire. are the targetable withering crossfire. he tears through the gun director station, killing most of the fire control team. slams into the galley locker, staggering -- scattering potatoes around the decks. -- bitsurning bettered

of burning betting scattered around the bunks, the stench of burning flesh and powder made breathing difficult. just before 2:00 a.m., callahan's heaviest ship, the san francisco and portland, come to grips with the japanese battleships. captain kevin a young of the san left, unmaskss the eight inch to read, and a full salvo of nine ap rounds hit along her links, throwing fragments of steel plate high into the air. the slimming any -- this looming enemy behemoth rising above the deck of the san francisco looks like the new york city skyline, and the 14 inch battery returns fire, hitting the water short of the san francisco, bursting on impact, they impact vivid green pyrotechnics all over the ship, and the next salvo hits the bar but of current two.

this shatters the flood control panel, triggering the flood system in the magazine, and the lower handling room. the crew in the lower tour it is evacuated to the open air and walk into the storm of shrapnel. airburst sent incendiary projectiles meant for the room are bursting all around, and the san francisco ends up taking on 45 hits, at least 12 of the major caliber. four of these crash into the superstructure, killing admiral callahan and his entire staff. at this point, the san francisco is at risk of foundering. she is taking on water, has least 25ning in at places, and the effort to fight the fires is almost the most dangerous thing of all, because the seawater settles into the ship's open below deck spaces and sloshes around with every turn of the ship, creating a stability problem. we call this the free surface effect. this ship is at risk of capsizing.

to get rid of the water, this first lieutenant working below decks devises a system, commanding his crew to use spare mattresses to set up passageways to direct the water as it sloshes around. these various improvisational methods create a system that serves to drain the water into the lower decks of the ship, where it can serve as ballast and keep the ship from capsizing. those pumps remove the excess, and this way, the heavily damaged san francisco is saved. more than 100 of her crew are killed in this engagement. many other ships are getting bashed up at this point. we don't have time to chronicle it, that is why i wrote the book. but the senior surviving officer is commander mccandless. he is feeling around in the dark, the radios are all destroyed, the radar is out so he is operating visually, and detect the helena nearby. he makes contact with captain,

who is the senior officer at this point, gil hoover. he leads the battered group south, out of the battle area. nobody has reckoned yet with what has happened. mccandless is concussed, people are just trying to get out of harms way at this point. so this battered group starts heading south. the sun rises on november 13, it was the cactus air force rising themselves on guadalcanal to go out and search for target. they rail one last blow against the squadron. a japanese submarine has been stocking the group and it attacks. only one torpedo strikes, but it is a doozy. it hits the cruiser juneau. she had already taken damage during the night battle. this detonates her powder magazine. the 600 foot long goes off like a firecracker. at this point, captain uber has confirmed the wrenching and --

has an hoover wrenching and impossible decision -- should he search for survivors? several of the ships are badly beaten up. it is his responsibility to get his battered squadron back to base. he leads the juneau in his wake. it is captained by a good friend of his. 10the end, it has just survivors. here are five other casualties of the juneau. brothers from waterloo, iowa. they would make a pretty good patriotic war movie about their fate, but the shocking losses i am describing our offset the following day when the flyers from the cactus air force find their targets. thet they finish off battleship, then they find the japanese transports later in the evening and the following day, sinking seven of them and

destroying most of a japanese army division at sea. you can begin to understand what callahan -- callahan's sacrifice yielded. they would never have gotten airborne if callahan and his crew had not sacrificed themselves to stop the japanese. a gave their lives to make that saving outcome possible. don't quit easily. they are kind of incredible. their situation is desperate. the destroyers of this battered task force fish out the surviving soldiers from that army division and two nights later, regroup and a company with another battleship, the japanese battleship corey shema, they make yet another attempt to come down to guadalcanal. y is in -- halse desperate straits, tries to figure out what scratch team he is going to put together to meet this threat. all of the cruisers are heading south, beaten up and battered,

but what he finally decides upon is to use the two battleships that are protecting the enterprise, the only carrier in the south pacific, by the way. he takes the washington and the south dakota and the four destroyers that have enough fuel to stay with them, and send them to meet the new japanese force. this is a considerable risk for halsey. is the lastse carrier in the south pacific and he is leaving it naked. this is another great story. i hope that biography is finished someday. of theching lee, one finest soldiers in our nations history. he makes expert use of the washington post the radar and is running his cruise through the fire control drills, the same type of things that scott had been doing two months before, ma toe blasts the korishin kingdom come, but forces the

japanese once and for all to withdraw and abandon their largest effort yet to retake guadalcanal. the existential threat to henderson field is now over at this point. cue the music, we have our victory. there is one more naval battle fought. the japanese come down with destroyers, some of them serving as transports, others for torpedoes riding shotgun. they inflict a humiliating defeat on a u.s. cruiser force. the battle has the factor of surprise in their favor. the japanese fire these interlocking spreads and think the cruiser -- sink a cruiser and badly damaged four others. singlein exchange for a japanese destroyer sunk. what have we learned here? nothing. we learned certain momentum to a

campaign, there is a certain dis-equilibrium between both sides to accept losses in a campaign of attrition, and the japanese have had enough. despite the meaningless victory, they have had enough. as of savo island, they are unable to capitalize on this victory, now for a lack of resources more than a lack of will. yamamoto cannot accept the reality that his fleet is going to suffer heavy losses, sustaining a counter attack each side has lost 24 warships since august. the japanese cannot continue this type of exchange. they have seen the surface forces of the u.s. navy both have the will and the and thehal to fight, shipyards in the states are full of ships that will arrive in the theater in 1943, utterly swapping them if they do not withdraw now -- utterly swa

mping them if they do not withdraw now. they fulfilled the order given by admiral nimitz at the start -- you will be governed by the order of calculated risk. commander is given the order to make our -- make out how the calculation is made. his greate of characteristics as a war leader on display, in full at the pivot point of the pacific campaign, one of the reason nimitz deserves to be one of the best remembered combat commanders in this nation. in the seven sea battles of the japanese finally ceased the reinforcement effort. is ary at guadalcanal short. in february, in a during operation, -- in a daring

offation, the japanese got the island. but they would not be saved by their own feet of evacuation. severe time pressure, is a complex naval campaign and hopefully delivered with a sense of appetite for more. the story is not as many have come to know it, but i hope you will appreciate it a bit differently and carry carry itd with as -- forward as active evangelists of the navy's cause. thank you. [applause] we will start on the ground floor. we have a few of them, but i think there are one or two upstairs as well. >> what do you think about hall these decision -- halsey's decision to go north at isabella at santa cruz. was that a correct application of the principle of calculated risk?

if the enterprise sinks, it is not a correct application. if the damage control crews save is ahip as they do, halsey genius. that is it. he is a genius. the enterprise was saved. the enterprise hangs on, despite in spite of its damage, so i guess you could say hall the rolled the -- say halsey rolled the dice there. he tended to issue commands that were brought and highly strike, repeat strike, and that was the last the carrier forces heard from halsey until the smoke cleared. he knew his job was to fight, he had two carriers with which to do it and put them both into action. could we have saved the hornet? probably. there is a lot of second-guessing. on balance, guadalcanal is the

good bill halsey. he turned around the energy of the campaign when it really made a difference, and it is this role that will get him his fifth star, in spite of what happens later with the typhoons. all the, as theater commander, having such a personal effect -- halsey as a theater commander, having such a personal effect on , historyf the campaign judges him favorably here. such as you outlined, there is a good bit of dice rolling going on. thank goodness for the teams on the enterprise. >> good morning, i am appear. i am hiding appear. -- i am up here. i am hiding up here. >> immediately to your left. >> you mentioned in your book the in consequence of the american submarines through the entire campaign. the japanese submarines were quite prolific in their work.

why were our submarines so invisible, ineffective, not present -- whatever? >> one, the submarine forces are still in the midst of the transition the service navy is making from prewar and peace time the aggression factor is still -- i think after we have an s boat sink a japanese cruiser, nothing really else happens. you look at the track the sea.ese are wearing in the the properly oriented summary commanders are licking their chops, but they just want on station yet. you have this problem geography. it's a long way from base. i think both sides were in a logistical straitjacket. i'm no expert on the summary and

campaign. -- submarine campaign. you have to give the japanese credit for their performance in sinking the wasp and damaging the saratoga, they were never more effective than the first half of the campaign. both sides had a hard time sustaining that tempo when it came to a weapon whose potential is still being realized. >> across the floor. your booke a point in about how reliable u.s. torpedoes were. when they finally found out what was wrong with that -- with them, who took the blame? operatorere blaming error every time a report came back about how torpedoes didn't work, a blame the summary commander for not closing close enough. they blamed the fleet. detonate -- contact

detonators in the heads were not working. certainly embarrassing at guadalcanal. you are trying to scuttle your own damaged ships. fired atorpedoes being point-blank range by our own destroyers were not exploding. the first scandal of order, if you imagine what our journalists today are very much focused on -- government inefficiencies and malfeasance -- it was a scandal of the first order. really it was a huge scandal. >> next question is upstairs in the mezzanine. to your right. >> my question is if scott had been left in command what difference do you think that

would have made. what mistakes would have callahan made in this suicidal battle had been prevented if scott had been left in charge? >> i'm not sure there are any. many say callahan made a mistake he couldg the radar have stood off and destroyed this magic technology. i presume it was a remote control being involved. i don't see that. i don't think cruisers meet battleships at 15,000 yards. i don't think the radar would have made a bit of difference. i think scott would have made a that made the same decision -- made the same decision. i have a feeling he would have appreciated the states as callahan did about the need to stop this massive japanese heavy

squadron from getting his teeth into the island. you can't prove me wrong on that. that's my instinct. >> jim, on the floor, towards the back on the left here. >> can you comment on admiral fletcher, and what your opinion on each of the two positions that are in the history? >> turner versus fletcher. some commanders have the ability to survive terrible performance and scandal. turner was one of them. turner should have been held accountable, he was in charge of dispositions that night. he was the top naval commander in the guadalcanal area. there was a spectacular failure. he was the senior officer present, and yet somehow blame is fixed at the 06 level and its

captains who take it on the chin. so turner is very good at this kind of very nasty bureaucratic infighting you need to be good at to survive a disaster like that. fletcher was not. himself,never defended fletcher never explained his rationales. i that's why his records were midway he lost most of his records when yorktown went down. fletcher. it out for part of the problem was nobody knew how to do this yet in terms of amphibious warfare, operations, no one knew how long it would take to unload the cargo ships. we got really good at this. jobwhen the carriers with -- there iswithdraw clearly some lack of clarity

about what the timetable is, even though it's been discussed. to have the plan understood by all the major component commanders, the controversy to endure not only into but throughout the battle. there's a lack of clarity about what the plan is. jack franketic for fletcher. --hink speakings never shy on up and was extremely aggressive and even vindictive. this is a practice he took act in his time at the war plans office. we had intel the japanese were plotting the morn ships of all of our locations in pearl harbor in the weeks leading up to the attack. turner was a master of bureaucratic survival. i think never more so than acquittal canal.

>> we are going to get one quick question in. >> i appreciate the presentation. were we not aware of in the late 80's, early 40's, of the japanese buildup of material, our intelligence, was it not there, did they ignore it? what if the star was such a deficit in the beginning and have to play catch up later on? >> i think we were fully aware of their buildup. where measuring each other's capital fleets with a yardstick about how big they were and how many -- what kind of armor they have and so forth. theidn't understand was value of their focus on training and discipline and conducting realistic exercises to prepare for warfare. may be prior to that prior to world -- maybe prior to pearl harbor --

the strengths of their very concrete preparation for war. i think that something we were slow to catch up with, and we had to do it by on-the-job training. >> thank you. [applause] announcer: interested in american history tv? visit our website, sees plan -- c-span.org/history. american history tv, at c-span.org/history. >> the own the thing we have to fear is fear itself.

>> ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. who knockedeople these buildings down will hear all of us soon. c-span's newest book, the presidents, noted historians rank america's best and worst chief executives. true stories gathered by interviews with noted presidential historians. explore the life events that shaped our leaders, challenges they faced, and the legacies they left behind. c-span's the presidents will be on shelves april 23. you can preorder your copy as a hardcover or e-book today at c-span.org/presidents, or wherever books are sold. next, claire potter, history professor at the new school.

she talks about the 1969 ofnewall riot and the rights the gay right movement. we recorded this 18 minute therview in chicago at american historical association meeting. steve: claire potter is someone who studies and teaches history at the new school and writes about it. let's talk about the stonewall riots. the 50th anniversary is coming up this june. what happened? claire: one night, when the patrons of stonewall inn, who were on the margins of the gay community, not the people we think of now as being at the center of gay, lesbian and transgender politics, but rather prostitutes, transgender people, drag queens, they were hanging