With Every Other Senior Officer Dead, the Battle Control Officer of the USS San Francisco Waded...

The sad part is that the stupid c**t crossed the Japanese "T" twice. USS Laffey then signalled "San Fran - what the f**k??!!" and was ignored as destroyers don't talk to heavy cruisers without a permission slip. cal and snot were both trained on radar and its value/uses (including FRESH-IN-EVERYONES-MIND-MIDWAY!!) but refused to actively participate. USS Atlanta's officer structure kinda figured out what was happening (having one or two officers that had been in training with the two tards) and were getting ready to disobey orders to hold fire when San Fran suddenly crossed her path (almost deliberately to break the "T"). Atlanta jinked accordingly and came back into position just in time to get friendly fire from San Fran.

The Japanese would then go on to give us the worst at-sea ass-beating in the US Navy's history. More sailors would die than at Pearl Harbor. Post war interviews with the Japanese had them preparing to abandon ship, thats how "good" the USN's position had been. Once the seconds ticked by and turned into minutes, they realized they were either dealing with newbies or dumbasses. And either one kills as easily as the other. Had he done what he was trained to do, he'd have ended Guadalcanal that night with an American victory. How the Navy pulled two Medals of Honor out of that, I'll never know...

This reminds me somewhat of the fight of the USS Houston though the Houston sank after engaging multiple enemy ships.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Houston_(CA-30)

LTC (Join to see) - The USS Houston and the ABDA force knowingly went into battle outnumbered and outgunned. Due to the declassification of a *LOT* of ULTRA traffic it was found that the ABDA force beat the Japanese a lot worse than the Japanese let on. In fact, Houston and her fellow cruisers did so much damage to the IJN that the loss of skilled night fighting crew would cost the Japanese the Guadalcanal campaign. At that early stage in the war, the ABDA force, Marines at Wake and submarines were the only thing "working."

At the time, ABDA as a tool (Australian/British/Dutch/American) was being disbanded on Admiral King's orders so the fact that none of the force survived played into that. Had they survived, it was Dutch intention (with American agreement [USS Houston's command]) to stay off Dutch East Indies and keep the Japanese from taking the oil. Numerically they couldn't have done that, but the Japanese didn't know that. The war could have been over that weekend! The canny Dutch knew of ABDA's creation and had ammo stored in DEI to accomodate every nations' ships! Plus DEI had the oil!