The story of how a striking force of American destroyers “derailed” the “Tokyo Express” in one of the most nicely executed and decisive victories of the war.
Many bitterly contested waterways of this war in the South Pacific have been given nicknames by which they are known throughout the fleet, names which hold the color and the character of the place as we know it much better than the name you read on a map. Such names as “Sleepless Lagoon,” “Torpedo Junction,” and the “Canal” have stirred the lights in men’s eyes from Cape Esperance to “Hellangone”; and wherever men gathered, in the wardroom, in the warmth of the galley passageway, or standing in the rain waiting for boats, the sound these names has lighted off old memories and fired our hearts with the thoughts of what lay ahead. As far as surface actions go, this has been pretty much of a night game down here. The Japs started raiding our outfits in the Solomons, in the early days, with a fast traveling unit of cruisers and destroyers. We got to know this bunch as “The Tokyo Express.” It was a “hellova” nuisance. They used it well. They’d slip down through the darkness and the rain squalls, fash out at our beachheads, shoot at anything that floated, and then disappear into the north and the night. Well, we took Guadalcanal, and the Japs left us the Russells; but there was no let down, and little rest, for the light forces afloat, though. This destroyer navy doesn’t know what it is to stay in port. We had five days alongside our fender one afternoon! Of our forces in the whole area, you might say we were sharpening our knives and digging our starting holes. My destroyer was all over these waters from Tonga Tabu to far north in the Coral Sea, convoying, practicing, mothering the big ships. Our outfit knocked down an occasional Jap patrol plane, but the Japanese risked no surface ships. We waited for the big push, impatiently. It came. New Georgia! Rendova! Kula Gulf! And we headed north with the big boys. The dispatches rolled in telling of night battles in Kula Gulf between our light forces and the “Tokyo Express.” There was hell to pay up there. Kula Gulf and the surrounding waters took on a new name—“The Slot” they called it, and there was a strange bitterness in the sound. There was a new “no-man’s-sea,” slicing in there between Kolumbangara and New Georgia. To the man, we wanted in.
You’d have laughed to see our faces when word came through that they were returning our force to port. Ah, the money that changed hands on bets, for no guns were fired against the Japs, and no torpedoes were nudged out of their tubes. For a month we’d ranged up and down outside that battle area and now we were returning to base. Chief Torpedoman Hilt said he guessed he’d never get to fire those damned torpedoes, and the gunner’s mates were tired of banging away at towed sleeve targets. I was tired and I was disappointed to have missed the excitement, but there should be mail awaiting us in port and, what the hell, it was all in the ball game. But the war was bloody in Kula Gulf and stories got through from up the “Slot” about American destroyer survivors and Jap destroyer survivors who fought in the water with knives. They said the sharks were not particular.
We’d been in a port, Noumea, New Caledonia, just one full day when our Captain, Lieutenant Commander Clifton Iverson, U. S. Navy, called all heads of departments to his room. We went up together and stood before him as he sat tilted back in his desk chair with a few notes rustling in his hand. “I called you up here to tell you that we’ve been detached,” he said slowly, in that dry way of his, and his eyes laughed. “We’re going up the‘Slot.’” He paused. “We leave tomorrow,” and then he had a word for each of us. He gave “Little Jack” Kerlee, Chief Engineer, to understand that when we rang up turns we wanted to be able to move and move fast! As first lieutenant I was to check all fire-fighting equipment thoroughly, and everyone must have a good life jacket. “We’re ready,” said Carl Holmquist, our gunnery officer; “ammunition just came aboard.” Jim Wayne had all hands on provisions even then, and come to think of it I don’t know where Bob Gilbert, torpedoes and communications officer was—must have been hunting down “that letter!” It was what we all wanted. It was good. We all remarked that the Captain never looked happier.
Our departure went through as planned. Steaming with a mixed unit we arrived, a few days later, at our new base, just across from Guadalcanal, jungle-like in comparison to the base we had known, and we reported for duty. On the beach they informed us that ours was to be a striking force of destroyers. For the first time we were to be on our own.
Our first assignment was to get troops and supplies up the “Slot” to Munda, and, for me, it was quite an adventure that first night up through those restricted waters. We were at our battle stations almost the whole time, and I had the deck. The Admiral sent us up with an outfit of fast transports. They were the boys who turned the final trick at Munda. Going up through there for the first night, past Gatukai and Vangunu islands, shying at Montgomery and the small islands of the New Georgia group, we got our share of thrills as the guide ship led us up around the northern tip of Rendova. Each new clump of bushes jutting out from the land was a potential conning tower, each island, as we picked it up in the glasses, was under suspicion until plotted in on our charts. It was a black night, a warm murky night of squalls and low visibility. We sailed like phantoms, for there was no line between sea and sky, only the night about us and the glitter of water close aboard. No trouble with the lookouts tonight. Their eyes were hanging out of their heads. We were a most wary and suspicious crew. Suddenly a shout in the night. . . . “Torpedo on the starboard quarter!” roared McEnany. “Torpedo!” yelled the starboard lookout, and then everybody saw torpedoes. I could almost feel ’em! Well, I’d rehearsed this eventuality in my mind a thousand times and with a bellow at the wheel, a pass at the annunciators I had the old girl coming left like a frightened colt. The engine-room telegraph jingled like a one-horse shay and the ship shuddered terribly. Some claim the torpedo went under us, some say it passed ahead, anyhow it missed. I was turning to rejoin the stampeding formation when a lookout sighted three more coming in on the starboard bow and then, “many” enclosing us to port. I began to think that the jig was up. I could almost hear ’em. The rudder was full right now, and our screws were thrashing. It was a helluva situation—everybody saw torpedoes! I stuck my head out to port, having decided I guess that this ought to be a pretty spectacular sight. Well, here they come, just as pretty as you please, and turning as we are it looks like we’re going to comb them so that they miss us. “By God,” I thought, “what a stroke of luck!” and I had the rudder shifted to steady her as she went. The Captain was swell, he let me handle her because I seemed to be doing all right. Just about this time, though, the nearest torpedoes turned and broached in our bow wake, a couple more started cutting figure eights in the phosphorus-loaded water, and one of them snorted! Now I didn’t do commercial fishing off Key West, Florida, as Paul Demerrit’s mate for nothing, and when I called out above the thumping of my heart, “Hell, Captain, they’re porpoises!” the whole ship exhaled. We didn’t get another thrill to equal this until about dawn, when the Jap planes came over Rendova and bombed the Army despite a great rainbow of tracers which raked the low clouds with fire, and searchlights stabbing upward. It was still dark, and we were not attacked. When the first stray gleams of dawn were picking out the mountains of Kulambangara, we completed our hiission and got out. Half an hour later the Japs came over and attacked the boys who had to stay.
The short rests which we were given between trips up to Munda were much approbated. We attended to whatever business there was to be done. There were secret conferences on board—for our commodore was now the commander of the whole group— and there was the in-port routine; but for the most part we didn’t do unnecessary work. In the afternoon there was swimming call, and after a long night of manning battle stations it was good to feel the freedom of a swim. A few of us went onto the beach and walked through the jungles, stopping to talk with an occasional Marine. Lieutenant Olsen, our “exec,” and I were after coconuts with which to make cocktail cups for a “jungle room.” Olsen’s always kidding me about trading with the natives, telling me that my wife is going to crown me when I get home for collecting so much junk. Well, I wish you could have seen him standing under a coconut tree chucking empty beer bottles at the coconuts. Out at the ship the men fished and traded with the natives, who came out in their swift, feather-like canoes. Once I had an old warrior just about convinced that he was getting the best of me by taking two cans of tobacco for a wicked-looking war club; we gesticulated back and forth in sign language with expressive grunts. I climbed down on the propeller guard and he teetered in his canoe. Well, the crucial moment came and with a final grunt and a loud “good” I held out the tobacco and reached toward the club. I near fell overboard when the old rascal came out with a flat “no soap!” These natives are well educated—the Marines have taken care of that.
Our destroyer made two more trips up to Munda alone. We worked up there in the early twilight and in the night, in the darkness and in the dawn, and on each occasion all kinds of “hell” broke loose around us, but we were undetected. It was strange to look across at Munda and think that men struggled there. We patrolled Blanche Channel while our own artillery blasted away at the Japanese positions on the airfield, angry flashes in the shadows, white smoke curling up through the coconut trees scarcely distinguishable from the mist of evening. Over toward Rendova the thunder of gunfire echoed and grumbled. With my glasses I was watching one battery of our guns which was concealed in a thick clump of coconut trees, with mangrove bushes all around, when I noticed a native canoe moving swiftly along the edge of the channel, almost invisible in the shadows. Coming abreast the spot from which our battery was firing, the canoe stopped. I focused my glasses on him and made out a native man accompanied by two young children, probably his sons. They had come down to see the show, like an evening movie. Twigs and green leaves from over the guns tumbled through the air and fell in the water about the old man’s canoe. When the firing ceased the natives paddled away into the shadows. I saw only one Jap shell burst, and it landed in the trees across the lagoon, just short of this particular battery. One morning we were there when our Liberators came droning in to bomb Munda. They were high, and they caught the sun’s rays while we knew only the dawn, and above them the fighters, like wild ducks, roved and twisted, patrolling station. No Jap planes appeared. In their own way the conquering Japs were taking rather a murderous pounding. We got out again undetected. “What I can’t figure out,” said Walter Otti, our Chief Signalman, “is how things have been so peaceful for us, lately, in such a warlike theater!” But there was deep satisfaction for all of us in getting the goods through right under the noses of the Jap. “Look at those torpedoes in mount one,” said Chief Hilt; “they’ve been sticking out of there so damn long they’ve got tired and I’m afraid they’ve begun to droop!”
Back again in the quiet lagoon where we hid during the days, it was evident to all hands that there was something brewing. Other destroyer gigs began making our gangway and up in the commodore’s room the Skippers of our outfit were in conference, the big green table white with charts, and coffee cups tinkling. Around topsides on this particular afternoon the men were swimming from the ship, diving and splashing, some in trunks, some in skivvies and many in just plain birthday suits, while our whaleboat patrolled in a semicircle to discourage sharks. I put on my old green trunks with the Hawaiian prints and took a good swim. Up on group two machine guns, Frank Brom in a dashing pair of white skivvies teetered his great frame on the rail and preened his handle-bar mustache daintily, preparing to clown his way through a difficult dive. He held the center of the stage. Everyone cheered and yelled encouragement. Then, with a hitch at his skivvies and a toss of his bright yellow hair he took off and landed in the water like a near miss. At this point swimming call was broken up by the word, “Station all special sea details . . . the ship will get under way as soon as possible!” This proved to be a short run over to Guadalcanal. The commodore went ashore in his gig while we waited, patrolling uneasily off the beach. Overhead the exhausts of an occasional returning bomber twinkled in the night, swooping in toward Lunga Point. It was long after dark when the gig came bobbing out to us again, and when the commodore got out he had not only the fighter director officers with him, but two press representatives. They hadn’t been aboard ten minutes before the word had spread through the ship that newspaper reporters were aboard, that there certainly was something big coming off. The “exec” told me to take them in tow and get them squared away. Pat Robinson eventually went on another destroyer, but not until he’d confused the under-way routine with the in-port routine and gone to sleep in the Captain’s quarters instead of in the emergency cabin. Pat said all he knew about the Navy was that there was a “captain-of-the-head!” He showed us under with stories about New Guinea and the Army. Art Burges, the other press representative, later that night bunked on a cot in the room with “Doc” Binder and myself. Later that night after getting back to anchorage we all got together in the wardroom to have some coffee and give the press the once over. They said the admiral had given them half an hour to get down to the landing, telling them that they might see a good show. This was interesting, because so far even we did not know what was in the wind.
Next day, after lunch, the captain got all officers together in the wardroom and “cut us in on the dope.” We were going to seek and destroy enemy surface units operating in Vella Gulf! The “Tokyo Express” and a bunch of armed barges had been operating on night patrols. We would arrive there under cover of darkness and substitute for the P.T.’s. Chief Signalman Otti and I had a standing joke. “This,” he said, ‘is it! “Yes,” I answered, “this looks like it!”
For me, there has always been a thrill in starting out to sea on any sort of a mission. I like the sea and I like new lands, and the best job I ever had was commercial fishing in the Gulf Stream off Key West with Paul Demerrit. This trip now had unlimited possibilities. Arriving off the New Georgia group at dusk, we were to skirt the coast up as far as Gizo Strait and then turn north up into the Gulf. Surrounding us on all points of the compass would be islands held by Japs. Kulambangra, which we had seen from the Munda side, mountainous and ominous looking, Vella Lavella, Ganongga, Gizo, and farther on to the north Choiseul and Bougainville. To look at Vella Gulf on the map, it made a fellow feel as though he’d be sailing into the Japs’ back yard.
On this particular day, I had the 16-20 O.O.D. watch, and when I relieved Dave Freeman Guadalcanal was sinking low on the horizon and the Russells were getting hazy. Around us steamed the six destroyers of our striking group, arranged comfortably, white water boiling at their bows. We were stepping! The Commodore, Commander F. Moosbrugger, U. S. Navy, sat quietly in his chair on the port side of the pilothouse. Occasionally he would get up to check our position on the chart. Ensign Donald Ross, who stands Junior-Officer-of-the-Deck watches with me, was keeping us “cut in” on the chart, checking our track. The Commodore had a lot to think about, for this was one of the first times that a task group composed entirely of destroyers had been given such a mission. It was good to feel the old ship get up and go. At dusk we picked up the New Georgia group. It was getting dark early, for the sky was overcast and the sun was low. I had the quartermaster make all preparations to darken ship. In the air there was a mist and to the northwest dark squalls marched along the horizon. The moon, just a sliver of a thing, would be down early. It looked like a stormy wet night ahead, a beautiful night for what we had to do. The mountains of New Georgia loomed big and black broad on the starboard bow, with a little to the left Tetipari and Rendova. At 1835 when Lieutenant (j.g.) Bob Gilbert relieved me for supper it was spitting rain, and the squalls were close around us. No Jap coast watcher would see us tonight. Gilbert would keep the deck until 2200, at which time we would enter Gizo Channel, and then I would take over again while he controlled the torpedo battery. In about two hours we should sight Simbo Island sharp on the port bow. The wind almost picked me off that ladder when I went below to eat and take a rest. There was a wild quality to this night.
I had just enough time to eat supper before we manned all battle stations. This wasn’t the home grounds any more—we were a visiting team. I checked my life jacket and my helmet, and I put the little tin of emergency rations which my Aunt Marguerite had sent me, together with an extra clip of 45-caliber cartridges, into my pocket. And with an oilskin raincoat thrown over my shoulders like a cloak, I went out on deck to check the repair parties with Ensign Paul Stevens, who was to be in charge of damage control if we got hit. We went around to the different parties and found them already “hooked up,” ready to go; they stood together on their stations, looking out into the night. Steve and I climbed to the forecastle deck and sat on a locker under the starboard ladder. We talked for a while and watched the night swirl past. Steve is a rancher from Texas, and there’s an easygoing, down-to- earth quality to his drawl. “Wal,” he said, slowly, drawing his slicker close about him, “I wrote and told my wife that she could put a star in the window again. I reckon I’ve earned my pay these last few nights.” Then we got to talking about farming, and cattle, and what things would be like after the war. The minutes flew. I had just time for a bowl of soup before going on the bridge.
We got our bowls of soup in the galley and took them into the wardroom where “Doc” Binder was “snowing the press under” with sea stories. As usual, someone had tipped the pepper pot into the soup and it made your toes curl just to sip it. Almost three years now we’ve been trying to find the bloke what puts the pepper in the soup, but neither pleading nor threatening has brought success. So I didn’t tarry long over the soup. “Well, Doc,” I said, “over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go.” “Yes, Sherm,” said the “Doc,” laughing, “take care of yourself now.”
The bridge was a howling corner of the night through which we swept. With all windows wide open to protect them from gunfire, and the doors dogged back, the very squalls themselves walked through our pilothouse. No one spoke. There was only the roar of the wind and the hissing of the bow wake with an occasional burst of static audible on the bridge radio. I found Gilbert in front of the annunciators, looking out, forward. He gave me all the necessary information, course, speed, disposition, and all. “I relieve you, sir,” I said, and she was mine.
Slowly I worked my way around the bridge, checking each station, keeping a lookout with my own glasses as I made the rounds. Chief Quartermaster Ralph “Commando” Sink was on the wheel. The chief and I had talked a little in the afternoon about what island we would try to reach if we should be unfortunate enough to get sunk in Vella Gulf. We’d decided that the two of us would strike off together toward Kulam- bangra in hopes of getting a native canoe and reaching New Georgia. At the last minute we’d decided to let Walter Otti, the Chief Signalman, come along also because he was a “smooth operator,” and we were toying with the idea of letting Robert Boyle, Signalman Third Class, come along as gun bearer. “Commando,” I muttered, standing close behind him, “are you ready?” “You’re damn right I’m ready, Mr. Sherman,” he chuckled; “Otti says this is it!” Sink is a sailor of the old Asiatic Station, and a veteran of the attack made by our old four-stackers on the big Jap convoy in Macassar Strait —no qualms about the “Commando.”
We steamed into the mouth of Gizo Strait and swept up through it like hounds. The night was blacker than ever, like one great wild squall, with sheets of rain that clouded our glasses and beat into our eyes, with lightning, cracking like a brush fire, picking out the ships astern and dropping them again. The Jap islands on either side of us now loomed menacing and unfamiliar. Along about here my right kneecap began to jump most as bad as the time I sang a solo in the Plympton Congregational Church. At the narrowest point of the Strait we slowed to reduce the wake and pass, if possible, undetected. I stood beside the Captain and searched ahead with my binoculars, slowly, systematically, rotating them in one spot to be sure. As each bit of land fell into my search I’d report it to the Captain and, down W plot, Lieutenant Olsen would check it on a chart to see if there should be an island on that bearing. We were a good team. Of Captain Clifton Iverson I want to say this— “there wasn’t a man aboard but what was glad to go into action with him.” It’s like Dean Rathbun, Signalman First Class, once remarked: “Hell,” he said, speaking of the Captain, “if the whole bow got blown off it Wouldn’t bother him any. He’d just suck his breath in real slow-like and say ‘Wal, Rathbun, looks like we’ll have to go to the navy yard’.” An old shipmate of ours, Hoke Sisk, used to say, “Some men are just naturally destroyer skippers, and some aren’t.” Well, “Swifty Clifty,” as he’s known to the men, is a destroyer skipper.
Once through the channel, we turned down into Blackett Strait on a southeasterly course. My kneecap slowed up a little now. We expected to contact some armed barges in this area. Fortunately, however, we made no contacts, and on signal from Lieutenant Olsen, in plotting center, that it was “time to turn,” we came to a northwesterly course and headed out of the Strait up into Vella Gulf on course 330° true.
At this stage of the game, had we known the force that was steaming south around the northern coast of Vella Lavella, we might have been a little tense, or, as Ensign Charlie “Snuffy” Smith, who handled our bridge radio transmissions, says, it would have “given us a buzz.” The Commodore’s plans were going to “work out.” Commander Moosbrugger had a blind date with the “Tokyo Express.” And “tin cans” for chaperones!
Shortly before turning into the north, one of our lookouts sighted an “object on the starboard beam! . . . close in toward the Kulambangra beach, it looks about 4,000 yards!” Immediately we suspected that there were the Jap barges or a sub, lurking on the surface, close in. Faintly visible to our binoculars, but damn indistinct. I searched the area with great determination but I could not verify the report, and brother I am glad we didn’t investigate. At 2334 we turned into the north. And at 2335 Dean Savage, the boy looking out from our masthead, reported “looks like a white wake,” then, “bearing 359 degrees true!” Robert Reynolds, the phone talker, had a note of concern in his voice as he passed the word against the wind, “Lookout reports a surface contact bearing 359, way up ahead—almost dead ahead!” He hesitated. “Says it’s faint but he sees it clearly!” We all knew that this contact could not be land. It was out in the middle of the Gulf! On the strength of this report our division changed course to the left. The weather had broken momentarily. There were rifts in the clouds and the driving rain had swept past, though dark squalls growled all around us. I searched from the forward bridge windows but the night swirled in and made my glasses murky and unreal. It was black as “hell.” The next word from young Savage was surprising. “Two contacts now!” Reynolds passed the word loud and clear. . . “Target angle about three five zero! . . . making high speed! . . . closing fast!” A pause, and then, “four contacts in column ... I see ’em! I see ’em! . . . awful good!” From here on in Savage together with Lieutenant Olsen and the men in plot kept a stream of information coming to the bridge. Savage, especially, didn’t want us to doubt this contact. Still from the bridge we could not see. But we played it for a kill. Above the noise on the bridge I could hear the orders to the torpedo battery. The order “Stand by to fire torpedoes to port,” went out. I don’t remember seeing Commander Moosbrugger at any time in the darkness of the bridge although he said afterward that I almost knocked him down once, but I could hear his shrill voice as he called the turns from the picture in his mind. Looking out ahead between course changes I could find nothing, though I had the bearing. The squalls were closing us again, still nothing. . . About “One Oh Oh” I heard Reynolds above the wind passing the word from Savage . . . “Closing fast, target angle three two zero!” I had the picture. I knew what was happening, but not until broad on our port bow did I catch anything in my glasses. On a forward sweep with my glasses I caught one white bow wake, a second bow wake, then a third, and out there was a fourth! “Execute Fire Torpedoes!” yelled Commander Moosbrugger and we began to nudge them out of their tubes! Wild horses couldn’t have made me discontinue my search ahead, for I had suspicions, but I could hear those torpedoes, hear the “Ssshwoonk!” of them as they left the tubes, and the smoke from the impulse charges was a strange delight in my nostrils; and in the engineering spaces they smelled it on the breath of the great blower, and they knew. The kneecap of my right leg was jumping something wicked again. Out on the bridge everyone was silent. There was only the whine of the wind and the noises of a live ship which were a second nature to us. Once, I heard a torpedo smack the water, hissing like a hot iron in the blacksmith’s trough. Our lives rode on those “fish.” They ran “hot and true,” said Chief Hilt, afterwards, and in the words of Ensign Stevens, “By God, Sherm, they looked big and black and mean going out there!” We waited silently. With all of our torpedoes in the water, we turned away. I saw the gyrocompass repeater begin to spin, slowly, then faster, dancing in the blackness of the night. All conception of true time failed me. One of the men began moaning, “We missed, we missed!” whining-like, and I “damned his guts” though my own were cold within me. We heeled radically, turning fast. And then the first one hit... a faint flash ... a licking white flame ... a ship as though silhouetted against the moon! Suddenly another spurt of flame sprouted in the dark ness-—a second hit! I cried out, involuntarily, and all about me men cheered. The flaming ships disappeared past our stern and popped up again to starboard. Coming on around we headed back to close for the in-fighting and to attack with gunfire. There were three distinct burning ships now, and a fourth silhouetted against the dancing flames of a cruiser. Four Jap ships out there together! Three of them dead in the water! The other destroyers opened up with their 5-inch batteries, searing the darkness with a rainbow of tracers, lobbing them over into those Jap ships graceful like, beautiful! We were closing fast. You could see the explosion of the hits, fiery puffs with streamers that lingered in the air. Our unit commenced firing, rapid fire to starboard, and the ship lurched with each blasting salvo; gun two roared in our ears and shook the bridge, sending smoke and flame and unburned particles of the charge swirling back into our faces, blinding us for a moment, allowing us quick glances between salvos and blinding us again. But it was good music, that gunfire, sweet and good to hear and there was the muskiness of wild ducks in the smell of our gunpowder. I did not watch the fall of shot. It was a job to keep the ship under control while we worked our way back, firing as we closed; but I could hear the exclamations of men on the bridge when our projectiles landed on those poor, befuddled Japs, starting new fires and spreading the burning oil like molten lava out over the water. I doubt if those “birds” ever knew what hit them. We saw the Jap ships lighted again and again by their own explosions. As we came close the air was heavy with smoke, and the stench of burning oil gave a rotten tang to the wind. Then we ceased firing. The Japs’ ships were not fighting back. Still we closed and the fire reached out at us, hot and fierce. I felt suddenly wary in the glare of those burning ships.
Return fire from the enemy had been of a most desperate character. Tracers from their automatic weapons stabbed high into the clouds, and their heavy guns could do no good, though there were two explosions, one off the starboard bow and one just off the fantail, which might have done us in. Twice I swung hard to escape the wake of a reported torpedo; I could not see them. We continued to prowl up and down outside the great glare of the fires, waiting for other Jap units which might be coming. Hundreds of men bobbed in the water and floated black in the wreckage in the burning oil. Great Patches of the ocean burned terrible colors, and the low dark night clouds were gay with flickering lights. The small figures in that burning oil fascinated me. They were dying.
Then, flaring up into the night from the “guts” of the Jap cruiser like a great fiery asterisk, came an explosion, the granddaddy them all, which seemed to reach right up and grab the sky itself, and it clung there belching from minor explosions, within the big one which flared off into the night from this swirling, bellowing mass of fire. The force of that explosion shook us as though we’d been hit. All about the bridge men swore in wonder and Captain Iverson had Patrick the quartermaster log “the big explosion.” After this terrific blast there was little which remained of the four Jap ships, save wreckage which floated, black, in the long red patches of flickering oil, and the heads bobbing. Forty miles away to the eastward the American soldiers on New Georgia and Rendova noted the flash of a probable explosion so mighty that in their battle reports they mentioned a great flash which silhouetted the 5,000-foot mountains of Kulambangra. On the bridge we were as stunned as we were exalted. In a few short minutes four Japanese men-of-war had been totally destroyed in a manner so violent and final that when I first awakened the following morning the events of that night seemed to linger in my weary head like a dream.
Before clearing the area, we tried to get a survivor. A few large groups of men were swimming together, but when those Jap sailors saw American numerals on the bows of our destroyers they swam frantically away shaking their fists, and screaming “sonna beech! sonna beech” in high childish voices.
It was a little after 0200 in the morning when we turned into the north and headed out. As senior radioman on a flagship, Johnny Melhorn, Radioman First Class, had sent out the initial message telling of the contact. And now he was banging out a message announcing total destruction of the enemy.
At about 0300 I went below for a short rest and a cup of coffee before taking the four to eight. Everyone was sitting around the wardroom comparing stories. We were tired but our spirits bounced off the overhead. I moved with the sure mechanical deliberation of near exhaustion, but my heart felt wild and full. While sipping the hot coffee I listened, and thought, and made a little sketch of the cruiser as she looked exploding.