Word: helena
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First Sight, First Shot. The decisive Battle of Guadalcanal began in earnest that night. The Helena was the first to sight the enemy ships. A Jap cruiser slashed the darkness with her searchlight, caught the Helena, opened fire. The Helena was already on the target. She fired from the hip: a full salvo. The Jap burned like a torch, lighting the way for the U.S. destroyers. As the Jap cruiser began to sink, the Helena's secondary battery pounded down a destroyer...
...Helena steamed on to her destiny. She pounded enemy airfields, troop areas, shore batteries. Down in her log went names now legendary: Munda, Vila, Kolombangara, Enogai Inlet, Bairoko Harbor. Finally came the Battle of Kula Gulf, a turning point which cost the Jap something between nine and eleven cruisers and destroyers. It cost the U.S. one ship: the Helena...
...Japs began a withdrawal. One of their cruisers was slamming shells at the San Francisco, which had tangled with a Jap battleship and taken the salvo which killed Rear Admiral Daniel J. Callaghan and her skipper, Medal-of-Honorman Cassin Young. The Helena sank the cruiser and a destroyer, shot up three other Jap ships. The U.S. beachhead in the Solomons was finally secure...
Torpedoes got the Helena. Her main battery had been trained on one of the big Jap ships. She opened up with a blinding burst of flame, sank it. Her secondary battery smashed one Jap destroyer then another. Other U.S. ships were firing salvos, but the Helena chose to use "continuous fire." Her gunflames flared from stem to stern. In the brief moment left of her life she loosed perhaps a thousand rounds from main batteries alone and her thunder could be heard for miles...
That was the Helena. She had gone down in 20 minutes, but her bow had floated a little while longer. Then it, too, was gone. She sank gently, without exploding, the thick oil bubbling black as the Pacific night from her shattered hull. The men went over the side, into the oil. There was no fire...