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.