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I'm voting for the USS Patterson. 13 Battle Stars, at Pearl, 1st days of Guadalcanal, at Savo Island (strange ships entering harbor call was from Patterson), convoy duty, the Marianas, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Leyte Gulf, Saipan, Palua, Yap.

It might be interesting to see the war from the perspective of a small fry who did a heavy lifting job.

ORIGINAL: blueatoll

I'm voting for the USS Patterson. 13 Battle Stars, at Pearl, 1st days of Guadalcanal, at Savo Island (strange ships entering harbor call was from Patterson), convoy duty, the Marianas, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Leyte Gulf, Saipan, Palua, Yap.

It might be interesting to see the war from the perspective of a small fry who did a heavy lifting job.

Here is the list of USN Warships with 15 or more Battle Stars:

WWII Service Awards

USS Enterprise (CV-6)
20 Battle Stars
Presidential Unit Citation
Navy Unit Commendation

USS San Diego (CL-53)
18 Battle Stars

USS San Francisco (CA-38)
17 Battle Stars
Presidential Unit Citation

USS O'Bannon (DD-450)
17 Battle Stars
Presidential Unit Citation

USS New Orleans (CA-32)
17 Battle Stars

USS Minneapolis (CA-36)
17 Battle Stars

USS Maury (DD-401)
16 Battle Stars
Presidential Unit Citation

USS Nicholas (DD-449)
16 Battle Stars
Presidential Unit Citation

USS Buchanan (DD-484)
16 Battle Stars
Presidential Unit Citation

USS Portland (CA-33)
16 Battle Stars
Navy Unit Commendation

USS Russell (DD-414)
16 Battle Stars

USS Saufley (DD-465)
16 Battle Stars

USS Taylor (DD-468)
15 Battle Stars
Navy Unit Commendation

USS Thresher (SS-200)
15 Battle Stars
Navy Unit Commendation

USS North Carolina (BB-55)
15 Battle Stars

USS Morris (DD-417)
15 Battle Stars

USS Fletcher (DD-445)
15 Battle Stars

USS Narwhal (SS-167)
15 Battle Stars

ORIGINAL: Big B
Admiral Callaghan is well documented as regarding his orders (prior to engagement) as a suicide mission, and subsequently deliberately corrected course twice during the early stages of the engagement to ensure knifing through the known Japanese formation at point blank range.

His reasoning was that his two Heavy Cruisers stood no chance against two known Japanese Battleships - unless they closed to 0 range - to assure damage on the Japanese battleships.

Out of curiousity, do you have a source that confirms Callaghan's own reasoning for how he intended to fight the battle? I didn't think there were any.

And I'm not sure his only option to deal with any expected Japanese BB's lay with the guns of his two CAs used at point-blank range. Callaghan also had search radar and some 81 torpedoes on his lighter ships to try his hand at setting up a surprise strike that didn't require point-blank range. And if you threw in FC/FD directed supporting fire from Callaghan's 3 main cruisers, you'd have a light force night attack almost straight out of the USN doctrine playbook for the time.