In the early hours of August 9, 1942, off a small volcanic island in the Solomons, the United States Navy suffered one of the worst defeats in its history. The name Savo Island became a bitter memory for sailors who fought in the first desperate months of the Guadalcanal campaign. It was the Navy’s first major surface engagement of that offensive, and it ended with four Allied heavy cruisers on the bottom, more than a thousand Americans and Australians dead, and a shaken command trying to explain how it had gone so wrong.
