So, who really pounded the Hiei and with what?

various personal accounts are never clear, and reading official action reports could yield nothing useful, or are complete drags. so, which US ship really crippled the japanese battleship and with what the hiei seemed to catch fire during the action, and it caused it to lose both speed and steering, making it vulnerable to bombing. from various accounts the americans attacked hiei with torpedoes, 5-incher, 3-inc, AA, even .50 caliber.

 

Hiei was crippled by 2 8" rounds that struck the starboard quarter and punched a 2-meter hole, allowing water to flood the steering gear room, so it had to have been CA's San Francisco or Portland.

 

According to "Imperial Japanese Navy Battleship 1941–1945" by Osprey Publishing the USS Laffey hit the bridge with her 5" guns and inuring Admiral Abe and killing his chief of staff. The San Francisco, like USS Washington said, put a few rounds into the Hiei and disabling her steering. Avenger torpedo-bombers put two torpedoes into the disabled Hiei the next morning. Then the order came to abandon ship and she was scuttled.

 

From what I read the bridge hits wer from 40mm rather than 5". Laffey was close enough that Hiei couldn't depress her guns enough to engage her. San Francisco usually gets the credit for putting the 8" rounds into Hiei. I think Neptune's Inferno covered this battle pretty well.

 

1st Battle of Guadalcanal ....DDs too close..........was that just the main guns that couldn't engage??

 

I think it was the secondaries as well. From what I recall she was close enough that they were deliberately targeting the bridge with 20mm or 40mm guns and that's what wounded the Admiral (and possibly the captain if my memory isn't playing games on me). The vision slots in the bridge armor weren't small enough to keep out AA weapon fire.