We sighted the masts on the horizon, then the ships—cargo ships, transports, destroyers, cruisers, and the aircraft carrier Enterprise (CV-6)—more than I had ever seen. The Anzac (Australia-New Zealand Army Corps) Squadron took its place in the screen. It was good to be part of a U.S. Navy task force and operate with U.S. flag hoists again.
Four days later, we went to battle stations about midnight. This was good, because it gave us something to do. All through the ship you could feel the tension and excitement. We couldn't have slept anyway, and the waiting alone in our bunks might have made us afraid.
That afternoon, our radar had picked up a Japanese patrol plane 25 miles east of the task force. Rear Admiral Norman Scott, the screen commander, made the decision not to shoot it down. No fighters were launched from the Enterprise. The sky was three-quarters overcast, and the ceiling was about 1,500 feet. Chances were good the patrol plane had not sighted us. In the morning, we would know.
By 0400 we could make out Savo Island off the starboard bow. We were up to 27 knots with the bow wave curling back from the clipper bow of the Chicago (CA-29). Every so often, the bow would dip into the swell and send salt spray flying aft as far as Turret Two. You got the feeling that a Japanese lookout stationed on Savo couldn't help but see it, and that when we rounded the island, half of the Imperial Fleet would be there with guns trained and ready. Shortly after 0500 we rounded Savo and headed for Iron Bottom Bay.
Behind us stretched the task force, and in the van, loaded on troop ships and attack transports (APAs) were the Marines, some 20,000 of them, bound for Guadalcanal. Ahead of us was the new light cruiser San Juan (CL-54), flying the flag of Admiral Scott. And ahead of the flagship, the first rays of the morning sun were lighting the shores of Florida Island, Tulagi, and Guadalcanal. The bay was empty. Not a Japanese ship was in sight.
The vast armada astern split into two groups, with the larger heading for Guadalcanal and the smaller heading for Tulagi with the San Juan still leading the way. Astern of us were the Australian cruisers Canberra and Australia. The New Zealand cruiser Leander brought up the rear.
Suddenly, the order came to stand by. The San Juan had sighted eight Mavis flying boats anchored in the bay south of Tulagi. I heard the gunnery officer's voice in the earphones of my headset. "All turrets match in train!" The trainer, Benny Benson, had seen the "bug" move on his dial and Turret Two, my turret, lurched like a freight train as he automatically matched in train. I reached out and pulled the door shut to the officer's booth, closing out the light from the early morning sun. Through the port to the gun room, I could see the three gun captains, naked to the waist and gleaming with sweat even though the morning air was chilly. Each of them was glued to the breech of his 8-inch gun, motionless, waiting for the order to load. The order came over the phones and I relayed it through the voice tube: "Load!"
Three right arms moved in unison, swinging open the three breech plugs and cutting in the ejection air that whistled through the long gun barrels. It came on automatically, and the noise was deafening. There was a rumbling as the rammermen sent the pointed black projectiles home into the open mouths of the guns. A whistle blew, a real one this time, and powder bags shot into the gun room from powder boxes on either side. The powdermen tossed in two bags to a gun. The gun captains kneeled and primed. The breech plugs flew closed, and three men snapped back like rubber bands to the ready lights mounted beneath the powder trays. The lights flashed on simultaneously. Turret Two was ready. The men became very tense.
Suddenly, the engine of an F4F Grumman Wildcat roared overhead. Then came another roar, as his section mate joined him. I glanced at my wristwatch. The time was 0550. That was when it started, the first major offensive action of the war in the Pacific, on 7 August 1942.
I watched through the periscope in the officer's booth of my turret as those two fighters closed the anchored flying boats. It was utterly peaceful in the lagoon where the seaplanes were moored. Tulagi rose in the background like a dark green apple dumpling. There wasn't a light on the shore or movement of any kind.
We had taken the Japanese completely by surprise. When the leading fighter was within 500 yards of the first flying boat, he opened up. Fire flew from his guns and seemed to curve slightly downward and hit the water and bounce lazily upward again. The two planes made pass after pass and soon all eight seaplanes were aflame. We commenced the bombardment shortly afterward at 0600, according to our plan.
All morning we steamed back and forth about 2,000 yards from the beach—point-blank range for 8-inch guns—and fired salvo after salvo into the two islands. All morning we remained at battle stations. Rumors were rife that the Marines on Guadalcanal hadn't found any opposition; that all the Japanese had withdrawn inland; that the fighting was almost over on Tulagi.
But the fighting wasn't over on Tanambogo. I could see it plainly, because we were giving the Marines the close supporting fire they needed so badly. Two Marine tanks had landed. One stalled at the water's edge, and the other went up the hill alone. Halfway up the hill, 50 Japanese Special Naval Infantry came out of nowhere and swarmed over the tank. Looking through my turret's periscope was like looking into a bad dream. They poured gasoline over the tank, and black greasy smoke belched skyward. The hatch flopped open, and one man jumped out. A rifle butt knocked him down. One of the enemy infantrymen tossed in a grenade, and a brilliant shaft of light flashed from the opening. No one jumped out. The Japanese then squatted around the fallen Marine and beat him to death with their rifle butts. I turned away from the turret periscope. The gun boss was saying something over the sound powered phones again.
"All turrets load and report when ready. Salvo fire. Single salvo."
The turrets reported ready in order.
"Stand by."
"Fire!"
The ship shook, as nine 8-inch guns recoiled in unison. I looked through the eyepiece of the periscope again. There was no charred tank. No Japanese infantry were grouped around the fallen Marine. There was just a pall of white smoke and a very large hole in the ground.
At 1130, chow was piped down. Men in the handling rooms sent runners to bring sandwiches from the ship's galley for the gun crews in the turrets. We remained at General Quarters.
On the dot of 1200, we received the first air attack. It was senseless, without meaning, like so many attacks the Japanese made throughout the war. Tactically, it was well planned. At the higher levels, the Japanese had moved fast. They had assembled a strike force of about 40 Mitsubishi twin-engine torpedo planes. A coast watcher on Bougainville had seen some of them taking off and sent a warning. They came in over the western tip of Florida Island. The squadron leader used his head. Florida Island lies north of Tulagi and Tanambogo and encircles them like a flattened crescent. The squadron leader kept his planes low and close to the water on the flight down from Bougainville so the hills of Florida Island would screen his planes from Allied radar. When the attack started, the planes came over the hill at the western edge of the island and followed the gentle slope of the periphery down to the water again. I counted 43 of them. There was no mistaking the Mitsubishis; we had met them before in the Coral Sea. They were big, with two engines, painted green and looking something like a dragonfly the way the tail was rounded instead of coming to a point. They also had a nasty stinger in each of their tails—a machine gunner in a little green house all his own.
On they came, 50 feet above the water in three unbroken lines, and we waited. Iron Bottom Bay provided little room to maneuver, and there must have been more than 100 ships milling around as the Japanese planes closed to drop their torpedoes. Two ships collided before the first wave arrived.
The amazing thing about that attack was that the Japanese never dropped a torpedo. They just fled through the whole armada with every ship in the outfit blazing away at them. But they did do damage. One crashed into a destroyer, and the other hit a freighter, the George F. Elliot, setting her on fire. And they got hit, too. Some fell on one wing and did cartwheels as their wing tips dug into the water. Others burst into orange flame and made perfect landings in the water. All in all, the Japanese lost 12 planes. We were lucky we hadn't lost more ships.
Dive-bombing and horizontal-bombing attacks continued the rest of the day. We remained at general quarters and continued to wear out our guns, shooting at targets on the beach whenever the Marines needed supporting fire. Toward the middle of the afternoon, so many of the men were asking permission to go to the head that the efficiency of the gun crews was impaired. Paper containers were passed throughout the turrets. There was no ventilation. It was hot and it stunk. Men passed out and were brought topside to be revived, then went below, only to pass out again. That was 7 August.
With sunset came relief from air attacks. We secured from general quarters, and Condition Two was set with only half the guns manned. Men hurried topside to breathe the cool night air. Vomit and debris were cleaned from the turrets. But nobody slept, and nobody got very far from his general quarters station. Through the night, gunfire continued on the beach. There would be a flash and a series of flashes like lightning, or a dull, red glow followed by a distant rumbling. It was impossible to sleep. An hour before dawn, we went to general quarters again. And at dawn, the air attacks resumed.
Until 1200 on the 8th, we had air support from our carriers, which were lying off Guadalcanal about 70 miles to the southwest. But by then the carriers were down to their minimum of fighters and had to withdraw. Before they left, one of the most macabre incidents of the whole affair occurred.
The Chicago had dropped out of the bombardment group to launch one of our Curtiss-built scout observation seaplanes for inner air patrol against the threat of submarine attack. It was launched from the cruiser by catapult. Naval Reserve Lieutenant Anthony Kolonie was the pilot. When Kolonie came back, he brought another passenger besides his radioman. The passenger was a fighter pilot off the Enterprise. Kolonie told it something like this:
I was flying about 100 feet above the water between Florida Island and Guadalcanal. Out of the corner of my eye, I kept watching the bomber flights going overhead—Japanese flights from the north and our own coming from the south. Sometimes those bomber squadrons passed so close they almost got in each other's formation. But they always kept on going. It was the fighters that worried me. I knew I would be duck soup for a Zero fighter. All of a sudden, I saw a column of smoke directly overhead and an F4F following a Japanese bomber down in his last dive. Right behind the Grumman was a Zero. You know how you try to yell when you see something like that. You know all the time the guy can't hear you but you yell anyway. Well, I kept yelling and halfway down black smoke began to come out of the F4F. Then I saw the F4F level off and roll over. The pilot dropped clear, and his parachute blossomed out. He never knew the Zero was behind him until he got hit and his plane started to burn. The Zero beat it as soon as the F4F was on fire. I watched the parachute coming down and landed alongside where the pilot went in. My radioman went out on the float and pulled the pilot aboard. He was horribly burned. We got him into the rear seat and I took off again and started to fly back to the ship. Halfway back, my radioman said, 'Sir, the pilot wants to talk to you on the intercom.'
'Put him on,' I said. About a second later, I heard the pilot mumble, 'Are those Zeros up there?' You could tell he was badly hurt from the way he talked. I looked up. A flight of Japanese dive bombers was going over at about 12,000 feet escorted by Zeros. I turned around and nodded. He held up a forefinger and motioned towards the earth and tried to laugh but his lips were charred and they split. 'Put me back in the water,' I heard him say over the intercom but there was no laughter in his voice.
That afternoon Lieutenant Kolonie flew the fighter pilot back to the Enterprise, because the "Big E" was withdrawing to the south. We got ready to face the afternoon air attacks without fighter support. Again, sunset brought relief, but this time it didn't matter much. Nobody wanted to leave the guns, and we slept where we were. The stench had subsided somewhat, and nobody was sick any more. We went to Condition Two again. The explosions on the beach kept up.
The general alarm shook us out about 0200 on the 9th. The gun boss put out the dope over the phones that the coast watcher up at Bougainville had sighted a Japanese cruiser and destroyer force coming down through the straits just before sunset. He said they should be here shortly.
Someone asked what the battle plan was.
The Australian cruiser Canberra and ourselves were going to guard the south pass between Guadalcanal and Savo Island, the gun boss said, and the Astoria (CA-34), Vincennes (CA-44), and Quincy (CA-39) would guard the north pass between Florida Island and Savo. The Blue (DD-387) and the Ralph Talbot (DD-390) were to act as radar pickets to the southwest and northwest, respectively.
What about the Australia?
Royal Navy Rear Admiral V. A. C. Crutchley had gone back in the Australia to confer with Admiral Scott in the transport area. Two destroyer flotillas would be back there to guard the transports in case the Japanese broke through us.
We didn't have long to wait. For a while, we steamed on in the wake of the Canberra, making a seemingly endless oval in the waters of the south pass. A rumor raced through the ship that the Blue had been hit and was barely keeping afloat. The rumor put everyone on edge. We were alert, and it didn't matter that we had had no sleep for two nights. It also didn't matter that we had had no hot food for two days. A surge of excitement was in the air.
Contact! On the port quarter!
We were in for it now. We were heading northwest and coming up from the south. Our forward turrets couldn't bear. The Japanese force must have gone around the underside of Guadalcanal. Were they faster than we thought?
Crack!
The 5-inch guns were firing star shells. Pretty soon we would be able to see what the score was. But they weren't going off. I could hear the gun boss over the phones, asking the secondary battery officer if his guns were firing antiaircraft shells instead of star shells; if his loaders were putting the star shells in the fusepots correctly; if. . . . No matter. Up ahead, the Canberra was coming about and heading toward the enemy. We soon followed her, and our forward turrets would bear, and our brand-new fire control radar would take the place of our eyes. What if the star shells didn't go off? Director One on top of the foremast would be able to bear, and Director One had the fire control radar on top of it. Radar could see in the dark. The Chicago began to heel as the rudder went over. I shouted to Benny Benson: "Match in train, goddamn it. Bear a hand!"
The turret lurched as Benson slewed it, all the faster because the ship was turning. I looked in the gun room. The turret captain's eyes met mine, and he grinned. Nervously, I grinned back.
The Japanese had opened fire. I heard the gun boss's voice in my earphones sounding cool and calm as he told us to stand by. Then there was a shudder, and the pointer in Director One was saying the mast had been hit. The first salvo was over, but one of the shells glanced off a leg of the mast and exploded. The director was jammed in train.
There were a few muffled oaths from the gun boss, and suddenly he exclaimed in awe: "My God, the Canberra's on fire. She's blazing from stem to stern."
The Chicago was heeling again. We were turning sharply this time. Torpedoes? I knew George Holly had the conn. George would miss them if anybody could.
Then the deck beneath me came up under my feet, and the turret door to the officer's booth flew open. Salt spray soaked me, and the pungent smell of mudflats, which denotes exploded TNT, met my nostrils. For a minute I didn't know whether the Chicago was sinking or whether the turret had been hit on the faceplate and knocked off its roller path. Through the open turret door I could see two broad pencil streaks of phosphorescence in the water, parallel to the hull of the ship. They were the wakes of two torpedoes that had missed. Suddenly, the 20-mm guns opened up. I grabbed at the handle of the turret door. It wasn't jammed. It swung shut, and I dogged it. The 5-inch guns were firing again—not star shells but rapid fire. The 40-caliber machine guns joined in with their steady, rapid fire. Something was awfully close. I yelled to the pointer and trainer, "Open your ports! Local control. Fire at anything you can see!"
They acknowledged, and I breathed a sigh of relief as the turret started to move, and I knew it wasn't jammed in train. I looked through my periscope, thankful I was encased in armor and not exposed to the uproar outside. To the right of where the turret was pointed, a Japanese tin can was silhouetted between the burning Canberra and ourselves and moving fast. The trainer saw it, too, for the turret was slewing as he tried to catch up. But the range was very close, and we went into the stops before we could bear. The 5-inch did get some hits. You could see the red spots glow in the destroyer's hull whenever the shells hit; then they would go out. There were splashes on the other side of the destroyer, as the 5-inch shells tore through her hull without arming and exploding. The range was too short for the shells to arm.
I was blinded momentarily, as the first of the Japanese cruisers turned on searchlights and bathed the Chicago in artificial light. But I had a glimpse of a four-turret Chokai-class heavy cruiser, with three turrets trained on the Canberra and one on us. The Canberra had made the fatal mistake of not draining the gas tanks of its airplane prior to the action. Early in the engagement, the plane was torn to shreds, and the gasoline ran down on deck, lighting up the ship like a Christmas tree. That fact alone was the reason the Japanese ships concentrated on the Canberra and not on us. They swept by us and headed for the north pass, where the Quincy, Vincennes, and Astoria were waiting.
Then, a curious thing happened. Even before the Japanese ships were in range of the northern group, flares started dropping from the sky, illuminating the U.S. warships. It was an almost flawless example of air-sea coordination. The Japanese had a perfect setup, as they closed and used their searchlights indiscriminately. Our ships fought valiantly, but they fought in vain. The previous two days had caught up with them.
The Quincy went first and rolled over in 11 minutes with few survivors. The forward high turret on both the Astoria and Vincennes blew up, sending a column of flames 1,000 feet into the air. The Vincennes sank next. The Astoria lasted until morning and finally turned over and sank shortly before noon. The Canberra also lasted until morning with about a 20° list and deck ready boxes of ammunition exploding from the heat of the fires that were still burning. Two destroyers were alongside, trying to take off what remained of her crew. The survivors had formed two lines on deck, holding onto the lifelines to stand, waiting their turn to be rescued. There was no panic. Each man waited his turn in line before jumping over to the deck of the destroyer.
The Chicago was lying to less than 100 yards from the starboard side of the Canberra. This was the high side, and the list was to port. I counted 119 small-caliber hits in her hull and 23 large-caliber hits that I judged to be from 6-inch or greater guns. When all the survivors of the crew of the Canberra had been removed, the destroyer Patterson (DD-392) was ordered to sink her with torpedoes. We backed clear, and the Patterson moved into a position about 800 yards on the Canberra's beam and fired one torpedo. It was a cold shot. The Patterson fired another, which was worse than the first one. It was a circular run and almost hit the Chicago. We had to back emergency to avoid it. We couldn't go ahead, because 40 feet of our bow was missing where the Japanese torpedo had hit us. And to go ahead emergency would have put additional strain on the forward bulkhead that was keeping us from sinking. But there was no saving the Canberra, and the order came to sink her with gunfire.
Now was the time to lick our wounds and assess our losses. Four heavy cruisers were lost the night of 9 August, three of them U.S. ships. In addition, a fourth U.S. cruiser, our Chicago, had suffered major damage, and a destroyer had been damaged as well. The Japanese force had not lost a ship. How could it have happened? First and foremost was the one factor that historians never seem to talk about—the luck factor.
It Could Have Been WorseGeorge William Kittredge Sure, our star shells didn't work. Sure, the Japanese were great at night action and had practiced it for years. But think what might have happened if one shell from their first 6-inch salvo had not hit one of the legs of the tripod mast on the Chicago and jammed the ship's fire control director and radar in train. The probability of such a thing happening was incredible, and if it hadn't happened, the results might have been much different. If the Chicago had been able to open fire at that range, with her fire control radar giving accurate ranges, her 8-inch-gun salvo, coming from nine guns, would not have been over but right on. The second cause for the defeat was lack of command and control in the northern group composed of the Quincy, Vincennes, and Astoria, all 8-inch-gun cruisers and more modern ships than either the Canberra or Chicago. No flag officer was in overall command. All of the ship's captains in the northern group were four-stripers of relatively the same signal number. This meant that there really was no one to take command. Why, then, didn't the Japanese task force commander, Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa, after destroying four Allied heavy cruisers and badly damaging a fifth, carry out his original orders to attack and destroy enemy transports in the Tulagi-Guadalcanal area? The reinforced U.S. First Marine Division, comprising 20,000 men, had been landed in the Tulagi-Guadalcanal area. The most certain way of bringing about their defeat and surrender would have been to destroy the ships that were carrying the Marines' food, ammunition, and supplies. Nothing much in the Allied arsenal—only one heavy cruiser, one antiaircraft cruiser, and some destroyers—could stand in Mikawa's way if he chose to stay and fight. Against this force, Admiral Mikawa had five heavy cruisers, a light cruiser, and a destroyer. In addition, the Allies could expect no air cover the next day, because the U.S. carriers had been forced to withdraw, although Mikawa would not have known this. He did know, however, that he could call on his own air power, which at that time was almost unlimited. And his own force had come through the Battle of Savo Island virtually unscathed. Some 30 men had been killed on the heavy cruiser Chokai by one of the few salvos the northern group of heavy U.S. cruisers had fired. The salvo had hit the Chokai just aft of the Japanese cruiser's navigating bridge and destroyed her chart room. But other than that, his ships were in full fighting trim. Why, then, didn't Admiral Mikawa carry out his orders? One theory seems plausible. When the Chicago was bathed in light from the Japanese searchlights, Admiral Mikawa would have seen the tripod mast of the foremast of the Chicago. He also would have seen the three stacks of the burning Canberra, which he would have recognized at once as a Royal Navy heavy cruiser. But to him, a tripod mast would have meant a battleship. And the fact that she had taken one or two torpedoes (the Chicago also was hit in the engine room by a second torpedo that didn't go off), and still was turning to fight, may have convinced him he was about to be engaged by a battleship. And that would have been too much for his force. So, fearing a trap, Admiral Mikawa turned his force northwest, where his scout planes already were illuminating the three Allied heavy cruisers with flares, instead of heading east and destroying the freighters and transports. Interestingly enough, the only loss suffered by Admiral Mikawa's force was on the return to his base at Rabaul, when the heavy cruiser Kako was sunk by a U.S. submarine, the S-44 (SS-155). Had he cleaned up the Marines' supply ships, he might not have lost the Kako. What happened to the Chicago, with 40 feet of her bow blown off and 26 men killed or wounded? We left Iron Bottom Bay in the company of a destroyer and a damaged freighter and eventually arrived in Cockatoo drydock at Sydney Harbor, where the Australians built a temporary bow, which would take the Chicago back to Mare Island on the West Coast. I volunteered for submarines, because if I had to serve at sea for the duration of the war, I wanted to be on a ship that could return to the surface after she sank, and submarines were the only answer. An old submarine, an ""S boat"" based at Brisbane, put out the word that she needed an officer for a patrol off Rabaul. The only qualification was a warm body and the ability to swim. I was ready to go, but the Chicago's skipper, Captain Howard D. Bode, said no. If I were going to submarines, I had to do it the right way and go back to sub school at New London. Captain Bode was right. The S boat never made it back from patrol. She was declared overdue and presumed missing about the same time my orders came through, sending me to submarine school. And what became of Captain Bode? He found himself facing a general court-martial—why, I never knew—but committed suicide rather than stand trial. |
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