So much facepalming

You know the best(?) thing about this? Every man on Aoba, aside her oblivious captain, was quite sure that this "friend" was no friend of theirs.

Estavali said:

You know the best(?) thing about this? Every man on Aoba, aside her oblivious captain, was quite sure that this "friend" was no friend of theirs.

So, in the entire fleet, only one MAN who believed that? Man, there goes the dignity of a C.O.

Damn, I know this was real history, but this comic just makes it look way too hilarious LOL

Oh no, it's better than that. The US commander in that battle also believed that the enemy fleet was friendly. The difference is that the Japanese fleet obeyed their confused commander's orders. The American fleet reinterpreted their commander's orders.

Basically, the US commander said "Roger" and meant "Roger, I heard your report". The US ships heard "Roger" and interpreted as "Roger, attack those Japanese warships".

Estavali said:

You know the best(?) thing about this? Every man on Aoba, aside her oblivious captain, was quite sure that this "friend" was no friend of theirs.

If there was ever case that called for A mutiny ...........

Kuso TTK.

It's quite fun learning history this way.

Oh, well, while this is back up in the comments section...

Karma was pretty swift on this one. Aoba didn't get away scott free, herself. The kuso TTK that was responsible for sinking his subordinates was killed when Aoba was struck in the bridge.

Also, Furutaka didn't draw fire because of flashing her signal to save Aoba. Aoba actually put up smoke while trying to turn around to lose the ships shelling her, and the Americans misinterpreted that as Aoba already sinking, so they changed fire to a different target. (Which is if anything, is slightly less heroic for Furutaka, and more dickish for Aoba.)

Kinugasa and Hatsuyuki survived because they chose to circle around by turning to port, rather than starboard, and therefore, didn't turn towards the Americans while not firing back.

PraiseVectron said:

Basically, the US commander said "Roger" and meant "Roger, I heard your report". The US ships heard "Roger" and interpreted as "Roger, attack those Japanese warships".

In those ships' defense, this was because some genius had designated "roger" as the specific code word for "open fire" in the most recent rev of the radio code. Moral: don't pick words that already have a universally accepted meaning in radio traffic as code words for something else. There are two different ways it can go wrong!

zgryphon said:

In those ships' defense, this was because some genius had designated "roger" as the specific code word for "open fire" in the most recent rev of the radio code. Moral: don't pick words that already have a universally accepted meaning in radio traffic as code words for something else. There are two different ways it can go wrong!

Yeah, for example if it had turned out it really was another American fleet he'd have accidentally told his ships to fire on them.

GweAnakJakarta said in comment #1300238:

So, in the entire fleet, only one MAN who believed that? Man, there goes the dignity of a C.O.

I'm doing some serious necroposting here, but another case where many men correctly believed that the commanding admiral was completely wrong while the admiral himself failed to understand his mistake until it was far too late was the sinking in 1893 of the British battleship HMS Victoria off the coast of Lebanon by being accidentally rammed by her fellow battleship HMS Camperdown, while in the middle of a complex fleet manouver. The trouble here was that the admiral, Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon, who at the time was commander in chief of the British fleet in the Mediterranean, was a highly respected, talented, and visionary admiral who liked to devise complicated manoeuver exercises to challenge his crews' abilities, but was also a very dictatorial man who preferred to not explain his plans in advance, so that his crews would have experience in dealing with the unexpected. This meant that when he finally miscalculated, some assumed that he must have some hidden ace up his sleeve, and those who were doubtful were afraid to question him. Once it finally became obvious to everyone that there would be no last-minute miraculous evasion order and that disaster was imminent, it was too late to prevent. Tryon was utterly devastated by his failure, was heard to utter "It was all my fault", and went down with his flagship. 357 others also died. One of the survivors was Victoria's executive officer, Commander John Jellicoe, who more than two decades later would command the British Grand Fleet at Jutland in 1916.