One of the best books on this subject that I have read is “Neptune’s Inferno” by James D. Hornfischer about the Naval battles around the Solomon Islands between August and November 1942.
The American and Japanese Navies were fighting each other tooth and nail from a position of relative parity, and while it is easy to look at this time in retrospect and think the end result was a done deal, it was anything but that.
The savagery was astonishing.
Ships passing inadvertently between two other ships hurling shells at each other at point blank range, and crew seeing the shells pass between the stacks, masts, and rigging.
Destroyers passing 400 yards abeam of Japanese battleships at night going in opposite directions, the American destroyer pumping five inch rounds from every available gun into the superstructure of the Japanese battleship, and the crew could see the impacts immediately after firing, and the metal glowing cherry red from the fires they started inside.
American crews, in the silence before a battle before the rounds began firing, being suddenly illuminated by the searing searchlights of a Japanese warship, and the illogical, but common feeling of men being caught on deck in that searchlight beam, that somehow, hiding behind a locker to get out of the beam of light made them feel...safer.
One of the participants said that the fight was like “a barroom brawl after the lights had been shot out.”
At longer ranges during those night actions, seeing the glowing eight inch shells, a full volley of nine, ascending like a flock of birds, disappearing into the bottom of the clouds, then reappearing under the clouds near the horizon, and the flashes and glow of rounds that hit.
Of seeing the radar reflection of an enemy (or friendly) vessel being hit, and actually seeing the radar registration flicker and shudder under the blows.
I have read a lot of books on this particular campaign, as it really was the first coordinated air, land, and sea battle in history, and fought with such tenacity on both sides.
Remarkable book.
Wow that is incredible, talk about frayed nerves. My dad was in the Navy as well, he told me when those guns went off it was louder than anything you can imagine, just shook you to your core. My greatest fear though would have been thrown in the water from a sinking ship at night and having to deal with sharks in the dark. Oh maaaaaaan, I would go out of my mind.