October 4, 1942 - Sunday - 80 years ago today

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

 

 

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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

 

 

October 4, 1862 - Saturday - 160 years ago today

Status - John Baer - 40th Indiana Regiment - Crittenden's Corps - Wood's Division - Wagner's Brigade

General Buell, having gathered, reorganized, and resupplied his army at Louisville, commenced on the first to ride out into Kentucky to find the rebels.  He sent two divisions directly east toward Shelbyville, and Frankfort.  His intention was for this to be a diversion, as he marched the rest of his army toward Bardstown, KY along three mostly parallel roads that all met at Bardstown.  Crittenden's Corps, with the 40th Indiana, took the center route directly toward Bardstown.

General Bragg, meanwhile, had left General Polk in charge at Bardstown, and proceeded first toward Danville, KY, and then on to the capital at Frankfort.  Several things happened on this trip.  Bragg met General Kirby Smith, and assumed command of his army as well, ending their divided commands and putting Bragg in charge of all the Confederate forces in Kentucky.  

Since the start of the war, Kentucky had had both a Union and a Confederate government, and as the Union had possessed Frankfort, the Union Kentucky government was installed,  Kirby Smith, however, had now taken the capital, and Bragg decided to install the Confederate Kentucky government; the intent being to recruit soldiers for the Confederacy, but also, as a last resort, to conscript Kentuckians into the Confederate army.

The diversionary force sent by Buell toward Frankfort drove back Confederate cavalry and neared the town.  Bragg decided not to hold Frankfort, but to instead consolidate all the Confederate forces in the area of Danville and Harrodsburg, KY, which is about 25 miles southwest of Lexington, and due south of Frankfort.  Polk, having detected the lead elements of Buell's main force, was already moving the army from Bardstown toward the Harrodsburg area.  It was Wood's division, after some intense fighting with Confederate cavalry, that was able to take Bardstown on the 4th.

Here is a map of the area:  Louisville upper left, Lexington upper right, Bardstown lower left center, Harrodsburg/Danville lower right center.

More Information:

• Link: War Operations, see Volume XVI, Chapter XXVIII, Part II, Correspondence,  pp. 560-574.
• The Civil War Day by Day, John S. Bowman, Ed. p. 85.
  
• Shelby Foote: The Civil War, A Narrative, Vol 1, Fort Sumter to Perryville, pp. 726-729. 
• Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol 3. The Tide Shifts, pp,4-14.
• Kenneth Noe, Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle, pp. 73-95.

 

NEXT POST: OCTOBER 8TH