Heavily armed with a vast array of anti-aircraft weapons, the battlewagons could throw up an impressive amount of lead to deter Japanese aerial attacks against their aircraft carriers. In 1942, the battleship was seen as a screening ship. The aircraft carrier, and to some lesser respects the submarine, became a navy’s striking power, especially the US Navy. The number of battleships put to sea by a navy was how their strength in world affairs was judged. With her massive main battery, she was the striking power of a nation’s navy. Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the battleship was the queen of the sea. Naval warfare went through a massive evolution during World War II. The only real effective power that Halsey had to fight in a surface action were two warships at sea, cruising as screening ships for the battered carrier Enterprise. His fleet of destroyers was shrinking, and sinking, rapidly. The majority of his cruisers were either already committed to battle or heavily damaged. Halsey surveyed what he had available for defense and was dismayed at what he saw. The Japanese sent another battleship, the Kirishima, accompanied by four cruisers and nine destroyers, to shell Henderson in preparation for another reinforcement landing that would occur later that night into early the next morning. This force, much like the one sent the previous night, outnumbered anything the US Navy could respond with. Halsey knew the Japanese had already sortied another force south. Thanks to US Naval cryptanalysts reading the Japanese force’s mail, Admiral William Halsey was fully aware that the enemy was not finished with its attempts to batter Henderson Field from the sea and reinforce Guadalcanal’s starving Japanese garrison. Aircraft launching from Henderson Field attacked the retreating Japanese and sunk the disabled battleship Hiei later on the 13th, completing the American strategic victory. Despite many errors, the Americans gave a good accounting of themselves, forcing the Japanese to abandon their mission of attacking Henderson Field. A superior Japanese force had run smack into a smaller, outnumbered American force. The previous night, American and Japanese ships had clashed in arguably the most unorganized and chaotic naval battle of World War II. Burning ships and bodies littered the field of battle off the shores of Guadalcanal at dawn on November 13, 1942.
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