USS San Francisco Ceremony (2) - Chair of Honor

Thank you for mentioning and honoring Rear Admiral Daniel J. Callaghan who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal SGT John " Mac " McConnell. His death reminds me of the deaths of flag officers in the Civil War up to WWII when flag officers were visible targets during the war as they led their forces "Callaghan was killed by an enemy shell on the bridge of his flagship, the USS San Francisco (CA-38), during a surface action against a larger Japanese force off Savo Island."
Kudos to Daniel Judson Callaghan for his many decades of dedicated service to this nation.
COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Stephen C. Maj William W. "Bill" Price Capt Seid Waddell Capt Tom Brown SGM David W. Carr LOM, DMSM MP SGT 1stSgt Eugene Harless SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL SFC William Farrell SP5 Mark Kuzinski SGT Forrest Stewart SrA Christopher Wright PO1 John Miller PO2 Ed C. PO3 Steven Sherrill

Thank you for sharing SGT John " Mac " McConnell.

The Savo Island battles were three to four separate actions all involving Japanese attempts to bombard the Marines dug in around the strategic Henderson Field. And sadly (not to speak ill of the dead) Callaghan was one of the main reasons for the failure. He was a technophobe and refused to attend training on that new-fangled "radar" and mistrusted "what he couldn't see." As a result, he arrayed his ships in such a way that they were unable to capitalize on their strengths. He entered the battle evenly matched with the Japanese and actually surprised the Japanese. But his timidity and fear of technology rendered his force "blind" for several crucial moments. The Japanese seized the opportunity and maneuvered out of the "trap" that they were in (Callaghan had "crossed their T"). Once out of danger, they opened up on the slow Americans and handed the US Navy its largest seaborne defeat in its history.

His carelessness during the "Friday the 13th battle" cost many lives and had a more competent Admiral (Willis Lee) not been on hand during the following Savo Island battle, the entire USMC force on Guadalcanal would have been wiped out. His death (for him) was merciful as his treatment by Admiral King would have been as violent as Admiral Kimmel who was in charge of Pearl Harbor on December 7th... Lee - an old timer, nevertheless embraced radar and "anything new that enabled him to kill more japs more quickly" and he led his outnumbered force into the Japanese and soundly thrashed them in the first (and only) battleship-versus-battleship gun fight that the US Navy would ever fight. After that night, with two Japanese battleships on the bottom, the previous defeats off Savo Island were forgotten and the score card re-written to say "America - win."