The Japanese command obviously expected no American naval resistance, because ammunition hoists of the Japanese fleet were loaded with a new kind of thin-skinned shell especially designed for blowing into jagged fragments that would slice planes and people to useless shreds. The bombardment shells would not be much use against armor. The Japanese ammunition load would have been a disaster for the task force if it had run into armored opposition—cruisers or battleships of the American Navy—but the Japanese knew as well as we did that there was little likelihood our badly mauled fleet, manned by exhausted sailors, would be anywhere near the scene. The Japanese sailed down The Slot with one hand voluntarily tied behind them, in a sense, supremely confident that they could pound Henderson Field Without interference. Shortly after midnight on October 14th, two Japanese battleships opened up on Henderson Field with gigantic 14-inch rifles shooting the special fragmentation and incendiary shells. The two battleships were accompanied by a cruiser and either eight or nine destroyers. A Japanese scouting plane dropped flares to make the shooting easier. An American searchlight at Lunga Point, on Guadalcanal, probed over the water, looking for the Japanese, but American 5-inch guns—the largest American guns ashore—were too short of range to reach the battleships and cruisers even if the searchlight had found them. The big ships hove to and poured in a merciless cascade of explosive. For almost an hour and a half, Marines, soldiers and Seabees lay in foxholes and suffered while the Cyclopean 14-inchers tore holes in the field, riddled planes with shell fragments, started fires and filled the air with shards from exploding shell casings—shards that could slice a man in two without even changing the pitch of his screams. At the PT base in Tulagi, Lieut. Commander Montgomery was awakened by the din across the way. He knew that no destroyer force could make that kind of uproar. The earth-shaking cannonading meant that the big boys were shooting up Guadalcanal, blithely assuming that the U. S. Navy was not present. But it was. Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron Three was on the scene and waiting for just such a target. Montgomery called in his four young skippers—Lieuts. (jg) Henry S. (Stilly) Taylor of PT 46, Robert C. Wark of PT 48, John M. Searles of PT 60, and his brother Robert Searles of PT 38. At two o’clock in the morning of October 14th, Commander Montgomery ordered: “Prepare for action. All boats under way immediately.” It was the first combat order given to PT boats since the debacle in the Philippines. The PTs left the harbor together but scattered quickly. They had all spotted the Japanese bombardment fleet by the orange flashes of its guns, and they lost each other in the darkness as they deployed to attack.