Vice Admiral Bernard L. Austin (1902–79) had a distinguished naval career that included service in World War II, the Korean War, and the Cold War. He saw a good deal of action during World War II, including off Bougainville (see related story, p. 32). There, as commander of Destroyer Division 46, then-Captain Austin experienced the perils of the fog of war—in this case, the fog of night fighting at the Battle of Empress Augusta Bay, as he recounts in his U.S. Naval Institute oral history:
We were sent as a task force to interpose ourselves between Japanese task forces, which were coming down to intercept our landings on Bougainville. We had to send the destroyers in for refueling on the day before this night battle.
Arleigh Burke took his division in first. We had a little fuel stashed away down there near Kolombangara. I was due to go in after he got back, and give my boys a drink. But unfortunately, by the time Arleigh got back we had Japanese task forces showing up on our screen.
The combatant ships of this task force were in a column with Arleigh’s division of destroyers in the lead, then the cruisers, and then my division [Destroyer Division 46] in the rear. So when we made contact that night, the ships were coming in from our port bow formation from the north and west. Due to the displacement, Burke could get them on his radar before I could get them on mine, because they were coming from his direction.
So [Rear] Admiral [A. S.] Merrill released Burke’s division to go in for a torpedo attack on this task force, but he wouldn’t release me.
So finally, when I reported to him that I had the task force on my screen, and could I be released, he said, “All right, if you have them on your screen, go ahead.”
So I gave a signal to break away from the column by simultaneous movements. One of the ships of my division executed it wrong, so he got kind of left behind for the time being. He finally caught up.
This is an interesting point about this engagement—this is the first time that I had ever had all four ships of my division together under my command. And it was in a night battle.
That’s the kind of situation we were up against in World War II, not just as an exception, but many times. People were short on opportunites to train together for the real thing that they were going to have to face, because of the lack of ships in certain categories. The destroyers, of course, were always in short supply, always at a premium. So instead of giving us a chance to train as a division, they had to nip them off as soon as they were ready and send them to some job.
That was the first time that we had been able to operate together, and it was a night battle. I can tell you, even when you’re well trained, a night battle can be very confusing.
We were proceeding toward a part of the enemy formation, a group of cruisers. I was up on the bridge. We began to get gunfire which was uncomfortably close to us from a ship up to the north of this group that we were attacking. They were proceeding in our direction silently and saying nothing to nobody.
So between the time that I went down from the bridge and the time that I got in the CIC [combat information center], where I was going to conduct the torpedo attack, the CIC officer had confused the situation a little but. Because when I asked him for the course and speed of this group of ships that I was making my approach on from the bridge, he thought I was making an approach on something else. He said, “Oh, Commodore, those are our ships.”
I said, “I think you’re wrong.”
He said, “No sir. I’ve been tracking those ever since we’ve been in this formation. Those are our cruisers.”
I couldn’t believe it, but you don’t shoot torpedoes at your own cruisers—it was the same number and all—and I had to take in to account that he had been down there without anything to bother him except to do his tracking and had been tracking them all the time. He was so emphatic in his opinion that I said: “All right. Give me then the course and speed of this fellow to the north. I know he’s not one of ours because he’s been shooting at us.”
So we missed one of our most golden opportunities to fire a salvo of torpedoes into a cruiser division of the Japanese Navy, on that occasion, because of the confusion of the battle and the unwillingness of the division commander to shoot at three cuirsers that his CIC officer assured him emphatically were his own.
But it could have been otherwise. He could have been right. And I could have been wrong.