By October 1942 the naval campaign around Guadalcanal had become a grinding contest of attrition in the waters the Americans called “Ironbottom Sound.” The Japanese victory at the Battle of Savo Island in August — the Navy’s worst surface defeat of the war — had given Japan uncontested night control of those waters. This “Round Two” cover story announced a decisive reversal: the Battle of Cape Esperance on the night of October 11–12, 1942, in which Rear Admiral Norman Scott’s task force ambushed a Japanese reinforcement convoy, sinking the cruiser Furutaka and the destroyer Fubuki and turning back the rest. Combined with air and submarine successes, the October 1942 Bureau of Naval Personnel Information Bulletin tallied the damage done to Japanese shipping and asserted that the Navy was taking the fight to the enemy and winning. The article follows the earlier account of the Solomon Islands battles published the previous month.
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