Then-Commander George H. Miller, damage control officer in the USS Houston (CL-81), recalls the Japanese attack—the first of two on 14 and 16 October 1944—in these edited excerpts from his Naval Institute oral history.
The ship was helpless; everything was dead. We had no power; most of our guns could not be operated. We were lying-to, listing, deep in the water, starboard deck awash, off Formosa, less than 70 miles. The Japanese were still attacking with aerial torpedoes. Bettys were everywhere.
I was down in damage control when the Houston was hit. My people down there soon realized that the after boiler room and forward engine room flooded immediately. The forward fireroom was flooding rapidly and had to be abandoned.
I ordered the damage-control efforts to be confined to the flooding within the boundaries of the main engineering spaces, fore and aft, and above these compartments. When I had given these instructions, my crew and I moved up to the second deck compartments. It was very dangerous. As the ship settled, rivets were flying from the longitudinals at the speed of bullets. While there I learned that the order had been given to abandon ship.
I went to the after part of the bridge and told the executive officer, Commander Clarence Brossard, that I thought we could control the flooding at least for the night and that I wanted to stay. He listened. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go talk to the captain.” He told Captain William Behrens he agreed with me. The captain asked if I was sure the ship could survive the night. “No, I’m not sure,” I said, “but I think we should try. If the main longitudinals hold, we’ll probably last through the night.” Meanwhile, destroyers were lying-to close alongside; the ship was rolling heavily; and the crew was abandoning ship and being picked up by the destroyers.
When we got to the fo’c’sle, I could see people abandoning ship. They left, including the members of the crew familiar with the fo’c’sle gear. In the course of time, we did get enough crew together to prepare for the towing. It was very dark. The ship was rolling heavily. We had the problem of keeping the watertight doors of the main deck secured because main-deck flooding was still occurring.
The heavy cruiser USS Boston [CA-69] was assigned to tow us. The seagoing tug USS Pawnee [ATF-74] took over on the 16th, and we were under way again for Ulithi at about four knots. Meanwhile, we had 500 people still on board ship. Most were topside, lying on the decks, standing on the decks. After the second hit, the night of the 16th, we began to figure out how to strengthen the weakened and distorted longitudinal strength members. By this time, we were able to call on all of the damage-control equipment available in our task force. The tow to Ulithi took about two weeks.
Miller, who later would rise to the rank of rear admiral, was awarded the Navy Cross. His citation read, in part:
When his ship sustained major damage from a torpedo hit on the night of October 14, after three prolonged night aerial attacks in which seven hostile planes were destroyed, Commander Miller made several hazardous inspections of flooded compartments on the lower decks while the ship was without lights or power and in danger of capsizing and quickly instituted measures to retain what stability and buoyancy were left. When the stricken ship was again torpedoed while in tow on October 16, he led the damage control parties in localizing additional damage and supervised the fighting of a gasoline fire which endangered the after part of the ship.
After initial floating drydock repairs, the Houston would steam first to Pearl Harbor and then on to major work in the New York Navy Yard. She sailed again in October 1945, participating in training exercises and Atlantic goodwill tours to Europe and the Mediterranean, before being decommissioned in December 1947, then scrapped.