Status - John Skinner - USS O'Brien:
O'Brien remained at Noumea (code name WHITE POPPY) alongside repair ship Argonne for further and more permanent repairs. Repairs would be finished October 10th.
Here are some more details on the repairs, from the Navy report:
Details of hull repairs to the bottom structure, frames 103-109, in the forward engine room are shown on plate II. Attention is invited to the following features:
(a) Only partial longitudinals were installed. That is, fore-and-aft extent was only three frame spaces for all temporary members. Installation was made by welding longitudinals to the shell. Somewhat less than half of the replacement sections had the ends welded to adjacent web frames.
(b) Scantlings used were either about the same or larger than those of the longitudinals which each temporary member was to reinforce. There was no allowance, however, in the scantlings to replace the strength of the ship girder lost by the wrinkled bottom shell plating, including the flat keel.
(c) The partial longitudinals installed
were offset transversely from the longitudinals they were obviously
intended to reinforce.
Plate II
----------------------------
Admiral Nimitz visited the area during this time, starting on September 28th landing at Noumea. A meeting was held on Argonne to discuss current activities and future strategy. Admiral Ghormley, who was in charge of the theater, was showing deeply the stresses of command. Noumea itself was choked with cargo ships unable to unload at the relatively small port. Nimitz went to Guadalcanal after the meeting, and then back to Hawaii.
Hornet and escorts had moved northwest for a raid on Japanese forces in the Shortland Islands, near Bougainville Island. These forces were a constant danger to Henderson Field and the Marines on Guadalcanal.
U. S. Navy Task Forces:
- Task Force
16 (Enterprise) was at Pearl Harbor, for repairs to Enterprise (sailed October 16th).
- Saratoga was at Pearl Harbor for repairs (sailed November 10th).
- Combined
Task Force 61 remained on patrol in the Coral Sea near Guadalcanal.
- Task Force 17 (Hornet) -> TF 61
More Information:
- Official Navy Chronology, pp. 257-258.
- The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign, John B. Lundstrom, pp 233-278.
- The Struggle for Guadalcanal, Samuel Eliot Morison, pp. 138-143.
- Neptune's Inferno, The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal, James D. Hornfischer, pp. 132-158.
- U.S.S. O'Brien (DD415) Torpedo Damage and Loss South Pacific 15 Sept. - 19 Oct. 1942, pp. 1-5
NEXT POST: OCTOBER 8TH
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