The American and Japanese battle fleets closed. Combined they totalled seven battleships with all their ancillary escorts of cruisers and milling destroyers. A quarter of a million tons of major units, punching at each other with sixty guns whose barrels were as long as a cricket pitch. Every vociferous minute, sixty shells, each as high and thick as a man, ripped through the air and searched for their targets. And, like two unleashed terriers, the Australian destroyers, Wind Rode and Scimitar tore at a crippled Jap battleship . . .