Future Vice Admiral William P. Mack graduated from the Naval Academy in 1937 and would rise in his destroyer-sailor career to be naval aide to Secretaries of the Navy Thomas Gates, William Franke, and John Connolly; Commander, Seventh Fleet; Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower and Reserve Affairs; and Superintendent of the Naval Academy before retiring in 1975. He then went on to author 12 novels. South to Java, written with his son William P. Mack Jr., was his first, drawing on his experiences as a lieutenant gunnery officer on board the four-stack destroyer USS John D. Ford (DD-228). His many Proceedings articles began with two on the naval actions at Java in the May and August 1943 issues. The following excerpts from his Naval Institute oral history recall the action from on board the John D. Ford:
We’d heard rumors about Pearl Harbor, but we didn’t know. We knew there were so-called battle plans, which were plans to send ships out to reinforce us, and so we were looking for cruisers and destroyers, perhaps a few carriers, to show up and help us out. But nothing appeared, and we had these reports of Japanese ships coming down the China Sea, so we went down to Java from the Philippines.
We had to hide our ship as best we could and transit in the nighttime. During the day, we’d get close to shore and disguise the ship with palm fronds, etc., so they would not see us from the air. It was really a harried time—all we ever saw were Japanese.
We stayed in Surabaya until two days before the Battle of Makassar Strait, when we suddenly received orders to fuel and leave at dawn. We would accompany the USS Marblehead (CL-12) and USS Boise (CL-47) to the Makassar Strait, with orders to attack the Japanese until all the ammunition was gone. We started up the strait with the Marblehead in front and the Boise bringing up the rear. Then, we heard the Boise had run aground, and the Marblehead suffered an engineering casualty. That left four destroyers to do the job, with the John D. Ford, being the division flagship, in the lead.
Along about midnight, we sighted our first Japanese ships and started in among them and fired all 12 of our torpedoes. We fired at direct fire—in other words, the range was 200 yards, just barely enough to arm these things.
On the first pass through, we lost the last ship in our column. It didn’t get sunk; it got disoriented and went off by itself. About the third pass, there was only the John D. Ford because the other ships had gone—they’d fired all their torpedoes and left. So we began firing our four-inch guns and hit and sank four ships. We were so close that we threw hand grenades over as we passed.
We were undamaged, but we were in the middle of all these ships, but they couldn’t shoot us without shooting each other, so we thought we’d done pretty well. There were pretty heavy explosions on all sides, some as close as 200 yards. One ammunition ship went up. It wasn’t until after the war that we found out we’d claimed, I think, two ships, but the war assessment system gave us four and a half. That’s the only time that I know of during the whole World War II period that claims didn’t exceed fact.
We finally got out of the straits at dawn and got back to Java.
We’d expended all our torpedoes, a goodly number of four-inch rounds, and a number of hand grenades. That was the first time anybody had every used hand grenades against another ship. The director-operator was my baseball pitcher. He was a right-hand pitcher and I was a left-handed pitcher, and between the two of us, we were able to throw these grenades pretty far. We actually got some hits. We’d see them bounce on the deck. I just can’t believe how close we were.
