page_title: USS Washington (BB-56)
section_title: Guadalcanal campaign
hierarchical_section_title: USS Washington (BB-56) / Service history / Pacific operations / Guadalcanal campaign
caption_attribution_description: USS Washington (BB-56) off New York City, New York, 21 August 1942. Note barge alongside amidships and OS2U floatplane afloat off her stern.
context_page_description: USS Washington (BB-56) was the second and final member of the North Carolina class of fast battleships, the first vessel of the type built for the United States Navy. Built under the Washington Treaty system, North Carolina's design was limited in displacement and armament, though the United States used a clause in the Second London Naval Treaty to increase the main battery from the original armament of nine 14 in guns to nine 16 in guns. The ship was laid down in 1938 and completed in May 1941, while the United States was still neutral during World War II. Her initial career was spent training along the East Coast of the United States until after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, bringing the United States into the war.
  Washington was initially deployed to Britain to reinforce the Home Fleet, which was tasked with protecting convoys carrying supplies to the Soviet Union. She saw no action during this period, as the German fleet remained in port, and Washington was recalled to the US in July 1942 to be refitted and transferred to the Pacific.
context_section_description: After completing the refit, Washington got underway on 23 August, bound for the Pacific with an escort of three destroyers. She passed through the Panama Canal on 28 August and arrived in Nukuʻalofa in Tonga on 14 September. There, she became the flagship of Rear Admiral Willis Lee, then the commander of BatDiv 6 and Task Group (TG) 12.2. On 15 September, Washington sailed to meet the ships of TF 17, centered on the carrier Hornet; the ships thereafter operated together and went to Nouméa in New Caledonia to begin operations in support of the campaign in the Solomon Islands. The ships, based out of Nouméa and Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides, covered convoys bringing supplies and reinforcements to the marines fighting on Guadalcanal into early November. 
  During one of these convoy operations in mid-October, Washington, a pair of cruisers, and five destroyers provided distant support but were too far away to take part in the Battle of Cape Esperance on the night of 11–12 October. Shortly thereafter, Washington was transferred to TF 64, the surface combatant force assigned to the Guadalcanal area, still under Lee's command. At this time, the unit also included one heavy and two light cruisers and six destroyers. Over the course of 21–24 October, Japanese land-based reconnaissance aircraft made repeated contacts with TF 64 as a Japanese fleet approached the area, but in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands that began on the 25th, the Japanese concentrated their air attacks on the American carriers of TF 17 and 61. On 27 October, the Japanese submarine I-15 attempted to torpedo Washington but missed.
  By early November, the US fleet had been reduced considerably in offensive power; the carriers Wasp and Hornet had been sunk, leaving just the carrier Enterprise, Washington, and the new battleship South Dakota as the only capital ships available to Allied forces fighting in the campaign. Washington joined the other two ships in TF 16, which also included the heavy cruiser Northampton, and nine destroyers. The ships sortied on 11 November to return to the fighting off Guadalcanal. The cruiser Pensacola and two more destroyers joined them the following day. On 13 November, after learning that a major Japanese attack was approaching, Halsey detached South Dakota, Washington, and four of the destroyers as Task Group 16.3, again under Lee's command. Enterprise, her forward elevator damaged from the action at Santa Cruz, was kept to the south as a reserve and to prevent the sole operational American carrier in the Pacific from being lost. The ships of TG 16.3 were to block an anticipated Japanese bombardment group in the waters off Guadalcanal.
caption: Washington off New York in August 1942, en route to the Pacific
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