Oct. 5, 2022
            
                 Variation on a Theme: Groping Blindly in the Dark at Savo Island and Cape Esperance 
            
            
                
                Low-hanging clouds drifted listlessly across a moonless sky on a tropical midsummer night. The occasional thunderclap stirred the silence and temporarily illuminated the otherwise calm seas that enveloped the Solomon Islands. In the months following the initial July 1942 occupation of Guadalcanal by Japanese forces, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN)