The Hardest Choice

In July 1942, the light cruiser Boise (CL-47) steamed toward Hawaii after completion of repairs at Mare Island Navy Yard in California. Upon arrival at Pearl Harbor, her skipper, Captain Edward J. “Mike” Moran, found that his ship would not be in port for very long, because Commander in Chief Pacific (CinCPac) had special mission in mind for her. The cruiser was to steam west, to within 800 miles of Tokyo, and attempt to divert Japanese attention from the upcoming Allied thrust into the South Pacific.

The Boise was directed to attack the early warning picket line of small Japanese patrol vessels off the east coast of Honshu with her SOC Seagull floatplanes on 5 August, two days before the scheduled assault on Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the Solomon Islands. She was to create as much havoc as possible and to try to convince Japanese naval intelligence that an American carrier task force was preparing for another Doolittle-style bombing raid on Tokyo. Ideally, she would worry Japanese naval authorities enough to divert attention and warships away from the Solomons. It was an assignment that could turn sour quickly. If spotted too soon, the mission would have to be cancelled. If the cruiser dallied too long after being spot- the Japanese reacted more quickly than anticipated, be in big trouble—all alone—far from home.

Armed with 15 6-inch guns and capable of 32.5 knots, the Boise would probably be able to hold her own in a running gun battle with even a superior enemy. However, she would be in a bad way if pinned down and forced to take a real drubbing. CinCPac reasoned that surprise, her high rate of fire, her good speed, and the skill of her captain and crew would carry the Boise successfully through.

Sometime during the early morning hours of Wednesday, 29 July, the Boise eased into the anchorage at Midway Island, scene of the decisive U. S. naval victory less than two months earlier. Within the next few days, she was plying the waters of the North Pacific toward Japan. The four SOC (scout/observation) float biplanes were rotated on antisubmarine warfare (ASW) patrols as the cruiser slid along in light seas. The attached floatplanes flew wide circles around the ship, eyeing the surrounding waters from above for a white feather of spume, caused by a periscope breaking the surface, or the darker shadow of a large object underneath the dark blue water. The planes’ attention was focused on the job at hand, for to allow a submarine to slip by and sink the cruiser would leave no hope of survival. On board ship, lookouts were scanning the sea for that tell-tale periscope “feather” or the terrifying sight of a torpedo wake already tearing towards them.

Early in the morning of 5 August, the Boise was making 16 knots while zigzagging along a base course that was taking her due west. Half the crew was on watch in Condition II alert. At 0633, Captain Moran received a dispatch from CinCPac alerting him that intelligence sources indicated two Japanese light cruisers—the Tama and Kiso— might be in the area. A plan was formulated for the Boise's aircraft to search for these cruisers and report their positions if they were found.

As the Boise closed to within position for launching her aircraft for the feint to Japan, visibility was down to 15 miles because of local cloud formations. There was a beehive of activity on the quarterdeck as the aviation unit began making preparations to launch two of the Seagulls, and the pilots received final navigational instructions. To aid the two young naval aviators. Lieutenant John K. Boal and Lieutenant (junior grade) Frederick R. Wollenberg, in safely returning to the ship at the conclusion of their flight, pilot navigational chores were kept to a bare minimum. They were to fly due west, the same heading as the Boise's projected base course, while keeping station about 8-10 miles apart to widen their observation area. With visibility at 15 miles, this range was enough to enable the planes to retain visual contact with each other. They were to fly west until making contact with the enemy or, failing that, until they reached the end of their search legs, about 120 miles out. Shipboard plot, figuring a launching at 1540, calculated that the aircraft search legs would end at a point 565 miles east of Tokyo almost two hours later. Plot estimated that the two planes would be back over the ship at 1844. This plan gave an adequate margin of time before the scheduled 1900 recovery of the flight, since sunset would be at 1915. With varying instructions for different scenarios, the basic assignment for the aircraft seemed rather simple.

The tall, dog-legged, open-framed aircraft crane positioned at the ship’s high transom stern had already placed the two sturdy biplanes upon their catapults. Another Seagull sat unattended in the belowdecks hangar. This one had been disabled earlier and would not be able to accompany the others on the mission as originally planned. Aviation Radiomen Adam A. Fletcher and John S. Petreycik, in the rear seats of the two Seagulls, sat in their aircraft and fussed over their radios, checking the frequencies they might be required to monitor during the flight. A few moments after the catapults were locked into position, the catapult officer gave a thumbs-up sign to Lieutenant Boal, the senior pilot and flight leader. Boal revved his engine and quickly surveyed his instruments. Finding nothing amiss, Boal gave a thumbs-up signal to indicate he was ready. As soon as Boal brought his hand down, the catapult officer pulled the lanyard which detonated a powder charge in the firing chamber of the catapult. The blue- painted, double-winged aircraft was flung out over the water at a speed of around 70 knots. As Lieutenant Boal started his banking climb, the catapult officer had already turned his attention to the second plane. Within minutes, it too was winging its way just above the surface of the tranquil sea. The pilots circled around the Boise to get their bearings, using the bow like a huge arrow pointing the way west.

The two searching Seagulls had been gone little more than an hour when the Japanese radio broadcast stations, which the Boise's communications people had been monitoring most of the day, suddenly went off the air. Nothing more was heard over the ship's communications net for more than half an hour, until communication between the Seagulls was overheard. Men on board the cruiser wondered why the aircraft had broken radio silence since, if this was to be a successful diversion, it had to appear that an American carrier task force was drawing near for an air raid on Japan. In that case there would surely be no breach of radio silence.

More than 100 miles to the west of the Boise, the two searching Seagulls had observed no enemy activity. One hour and 51 minutes after leaving the warship, pilots Boal and Wollenberg reached the end of their parallel search legs. They again broke radio silence at this time to discuss the fact that no enemy surface activity had been observed and that it was time to retire toward the ship. Boal and Wollenberg gently banked their aircraft 180 degrees and headed back due east, toward the Boise and safe haven.

While maneuvering to bring themselves onto the new heading, or in the process of flying through and around cloud formations. Lieutenants Boal and Wollenberg allowed their aircraft to drift farther apart. Within a half hour of turning back to the east, the two pilots had lost visual contact with each other. Lieutenant Wollenberg, first to notice this development, used his radio to relay this information to the other aircraft, and to inquire whether Boal could see him. Boal, flying to the south of Wollenberg, was not able to locate the other plane. For the next ten minutes or so, the two pilots flew around the cloudy sky, vainly searching for the briefest glimpse of one another. Boal, after a time, started flying in a wide circle, hoping that by staying in a general area and relaying his position, Wollenberg might fly to him. They maintained frequent radio communication with each other all during their frustrating ten-minute search. At 1815, more than two and a half hours after the launching, Boal informed Wollenberg that he should proceed back to the ship independently. Both aircraft crews were as yet unaware that all the fruitless maneuvering had moved the planes far off course.

Back on board the Boise the radio watch had overheard almost all of the messages from the two wandering Seagulls. Down in plot the estimated arrival time of the aircraft was pushed back some ten minutes to compensate for the delay of the planes searching for each other. About 15 minutes after the pilots decided to return individually to the ship, Captain Moran began directing ship maneuvers to recover the solitary Seagull that had been flying ASW patrol around the cruiser all afternoon.

The Boise changed position as she swung first into the wind and then after a few minutes, across it, in order to provide the floatplane with a smooth area of water on which to land, but in less than 15 minutes the recovery operation was completed and the big cruiser was once again headed due west.

Captain Moran, having reduced speed to 20 knots in order to recover the ASW aircraft, decided to remain at that speed in order to expedite recovery of the search aircraft, whose estimated return time was now only a little more than ten minutes away. Although Boal and Wollenberg had been advised before leaving that their return legs would be slightly longer because the ship would slow her speed, the cruiser was ten miles farther east and three miles south of her previously estimated position. Coupled with the pilots’ navigational errors, this was to prove most unfortunate.

Some miles to the west of the Boise, Lieutenant Wollenberg had reached a point where he figured the ship should be within sight. She wasn’t. He then relayed a request for a directional bearing from the ship through Lieutenant Boal’s plane. After a few minutes the communicators on board the Boise were receiving the request from Boal that they had already overheard and were expecting. Shortly thereafter, Wollenberg made the same request directly to the ship. The aircraft were directed to shift to the assigned “safety frequency” on their radio receivers. This would permit implementation of the Navy’s prescribed lost plane procedure.

Now the situation became really confusing. The Boise was not able to contact the planes. The aircraft may have missed the instructions to shift to the safety frequency, although Navy procedure directed them to switch automatically upon request for assistance. Possibly the aircraft made the transition on the air waves, but the ship’s transmissions did not reach them for some reason. The communications people aboard ship tried to cover as many angles as possible. The ship’s direction finder, as well as the unit in one of the planes left on board, was manned on the safety frequency. When it was discovered that the ship’s signals were not being received by the wayward aircraft, a chief radioman immediately started inspecting the cruiser’s powerful transmitters. The Seagull sitting on the stem was able to hear all of the ship’s transmissions quite normally. The cruiser’s radiomen were unable to find the cause of the failure. Since the ship spent half an hour transmitting on the safety frequency in a vain effort to establish contact with the aircraft, the problem was attributed to personnel failure in the aircraft.

At 1900, five minutes after first attempting to make contact with the lost planes, Captain Moran sent his ship to dusk general quarters. At the same time he gave the order to reverse course and the Boise once again started a wide, slow turn back to the east. By the time the ship completed the turn, she was—with the exception of being two nautical miles south—at the location of her original rendezvous prediction, but almost a half hour late.

At 1915, the ship’s officers came to the conclusion that the two aircraft had by now flown past the ship and were to the east of the cruiser. The aircraft had actually strayed a good ways off course because the ship’s air-search radar had not given the slightest indication that they were anywhere within its range. With the onset of twilight, the ship’s aviation unit had begun preparation for the more difficult and dangerous night aircraft recovery. If, however, the inexperienced young pilots had been unable to locate the ship in the waning daylight, how were they going to find her in the dark of an overcast evening?

After more than a half hour of silence, one of the aircraft transmitted on the primary frequency asking the ship to send a homing signal on the safety frequency. Captain Moran ordered the homing signal commenced and then had two of the ship’s powerful 36-inch lights switched on. The lights swept the horizon, one blazing a northern arc, the other to the south. Considering that his ship was cruising in potentially submarine-infested waters and that he had received a lookout’s report that five planes had been spotted, Captain Moran decided to take whatever measures necessary to help the lost aircraft locate the ship as quickly as possible. He had also shifted the ship’s heading ten degrees to the northeast to place her closer to the precise point of the designated rendezvous.

The two wandering Seagulls had been in the air almost four hours and now had less than an hour of flying time left. Fate momentarily smiled upon them when, after sunset down on the surface, they finally caught sight of each other and joined company. The direction finder in one of the aircraft must have enabled it to locate the other from radio transmissions or—since neither seemed to be receiving the homing signal from the ship—they finally blundered across one another.

A few minutes after the Boise began transmitting the vital homing signal. Lieutenant Boal came on the air once again on the primary frequency to inform the ship that he and Wollenberg had been able to locate one another and were at that moment flying in company. Boal again requested that the ship start sending a homing signal, which she had been doing for the last several minutes, even as the request came in. This made it poignantly clear to the shipboard radiomen that the aircraft had not yet heard any of their signals, nor did it seem likely that they would.

Within five minutes of his second request, Lieutenant Boal called the Boise again—this time to announce his intention to jettison the 100-pound bomb that his plane carried. The cruiser’s receipt of the message was not acknowledged by the aircraft, again confirming that the aviators were not receiving the ship’s signals. The aircraft continued to fly east in their now desperate search.

Captain Moran again made a ten-degree course adjustment and increased speed to 25 knots. A few minutes after the bomb message, momentary contact was established with Boal’s plane on the primary frequency. Nothing came of it, however, because the contact time was too brief. Southwest of the ship’s position a flash was spotted by one of the after lookouts on watch. Since it had been more than five minutes since Boal had transmitted his intention to jettison his bomb, it was presumed that the flash was caused by lightning. But, on the off-chance that it might have been the bursting bomb dropping from the wandering aircraft, the cruiser skipper again had the searchlights switched on. As the twin beams of light swept the otherwise dark horizon far out to the ship’s starboard quarter, there was not much hope left in the minds of most of the personnel on the ship’s bridge. This was further diminished a few minutes later when a message was received from Boal that flatly stated, “Have forty minutes of gas left. Am landing.”

Six minutes after this fateful signal, a final message was received reporting what Boal considered to be his plane’s position on the water’s surface. Apparently the pilot thought he was on the water some two miles west of the original estimated rendezvous position of more than an hour before, but the ship had closed to within three miles of this position during a 30-minute period while the aircraft were milling about looking for the ship as well as each other. The pilot’s navigational and final position fix were probably inaccurate. The two aircraft were never detected by the ship’s radar. Unfortunately, in those early days of the war with air-search radars still under development, even the most experienced operator was apt to misinterpret one of these fleeting images. The two lost biplanes may well have passed very close to the Boise at one point, but their images on the screen may have been judged mere “ghosts.” And what about the powerful 36- inch searchlights? Even with the partial cloud cover when they were last used, the lights had an estimated visibility of 25 miles. The pilots, in transmissions to the ship and in the many signals to each other, never made any mention of seeing the long beams of light, though their planes could have already passed the ship before the searchlights were used. Since the air-search radar aboard ship never indicated a thing and the desperate use of the searchlights was to no avail, the two aircraft apparently strayed much farther off course than had been imagined earlier. The personnel in plot estimated that the aircraft had missed a rendezvous with the ship by more than 20 miles.

A few minutes after the first watch came on. Captain Moran changed the ship’s heading back 080 degrees, ten degrees north of due east. He then had a quick conference with his senior officers. The problem of the stranded aircraft crews had to be quickly resolved. Since the consensus was that the two planes were on the water at least 20 miles from the ship in an undetermined direction, hours could be spent in a fruitless search of waters little more than 700 miles from Tokyo. With all the radio use by both ship and aircraft and a lookout’s report of unidentified aircraft, Moran and his men felt that the enemy must now be fully aware of the positions of both the Boise and the planes. Since the aircraft had not made contact with the offshore patrol line, the Boise's mission, in effect, had to be considered a failure. The only way to successfully complete the task, at this point, was to steam toward the picket line, but even heading west at 30 knots would get the ship no closer than 550 miles from Tokyo—the same distance attained by the aircraft with no sign of the enemy. Even 600 miles out was still within range of the intense air patrols that were sure to be thrown up the next morning by the Japanese, should contact be made.

At the same time the Boise's officers concluded that any search for the downed aircraft would be fruitless, since it was not even known what heading to take to begin the search. A tough decision had to be made. There was only one man present who could make that decision, and there was only one choice for him to make, since he was weighing the lives of the four airmen with the risk that would be imposed on his ship and crew. Captain Mike Moran ordered the Boise to retire toward Hawaii. The four men in the Seagulls were never heard from again.