USS Juneau

1942

The five Sullivan brothers, forty-two seconds Location: Solomon Sea, off San Cristóbal Island · Coordinates: 10.50°S 161.00°E · Casualties: 687 · Survivors: 10 (6 rescued) · Depth: 4,200 m · Cause: submarine torpedo — Damaged by a Japanese torpedo on the night of 13 November 1942 during the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. Steaming away for repairs when I-26 put a second torpedo into her forward magazine at 11:01 on 14 November. She exploded and sank in forty-two seconds. · Fate: abyssal · located 2018 · Type: light cruiser · Atlanta class · Tonnage: 6,718 tons · Crew: 697 · Flag: United States · Launched: 1941 American Atlanta-class light cruiser, at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. Damaged by a Japanese torpedo on the night of 13 November 1942 and steaming away for repairs when I-26 put a second torpedo into her magazine the next morning; she exploded and sank in forty-two seconds. 687 dead, among them the five Sullivan brothers of Waterloo, Iowa, whose loss drove the U.S. Navy's Sole Survivor Policy. Only six of the initial ten survivors lived through eight days in shark-infested water before rescue. The Vessel USS Juneau (CL-52) was a light cruiser of the Atlanta-class, commissioned at the Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company at Kearny, New Jersey, on 14 February 1942. She was 165 metres long, 6,718 tons standard displacement, and carried sixteen 5-inch dual-purpose guns in eight twin turrets; she was designed specifically as an anti-aircraft light cruiser to screen the fast carrier task forces. Her design speed was 32.5 knots. The Atlanta-class was one of the most distinctive American warship classes of the Second World War. The class displaced the traditional light cruiser role onto a specialised anti-aircraft escort platform; the eight twin 5-inch turrets (four fore, four aft) produced a main battery weight of 128 rounds per minute against aircraft, approximately five times the contemporary American heavy cruiser rate and ten times the battleship rate. The class was intended to provide, at each point in a task force formation, an equivalent of 24 additional 5-inch guns on aircraft defence duty. Her commanding officer in November 1942 was Captain Lyman K. Swenson, 49, a career naval officer. She carried among her crew the five Sullivan brothers from Waterloo, Iowa: George (27), Francis (25), Joseph (23), Madison (22), and Albert (19). The five brothers had enlisted together on 3 January 1942 under a specific agreement with the U.S. Navy that they would serve aboard the same ship; the Navy, which had previously discouraged same-family assignments to the same unit under the ass The Disaster At 11:01 on 13 November 1942, the task force was approximately 45 nautical miles southeast of San Cristóbal Island when the Japanese submarine I-26 (commanded by Commander Minoru Yokota) fired a two-torpedo spread at the American ships. One torpedo missed; the second struck USS Juneau on her port side amidships at exactly the location of her forward main magazine. The magazine detonated. Juneau disintegrated in a single catastrophic explosion. Her bow and stern sections, separated by the magazine blast, sank within 42 seconds of the torpedo strike. The explosion was observed by the nearby destroyers and by the cruiser USS Helena, which was approximately 800 metres away at the moment of the blast. Observers on Helena reported that the cloud of smoke from the explosion rose to approximately 300 metres and that no part of Juneau was visible above the water surface once the smoke cleared. The task force commander, Captain Gilbert Hoover of Helena, decided not to stop to search for survivors. Hoover's reasoning, later documented in his post-action report, was that the presence of a Japanese submarine in the area made stopping the task force unacceptably dangerous; the remaining damaged American ships, including San Francisco and Portland, were at risk of being struck by further submarine attack if they halted. Hoover ordered the task force to continue on course. He signalled the American Pacific Fleet headquarters with a report of Juneau's destruction and a note that no survivors