They cruised in circular formation, with three or four carriers at the center and the screening ships arrayed in concentric rings by descending order of size. In a typical setup, two heavy and two light carriers would cruise in a staggered formation at the center. Battleships were close aboard to starboard and port, with cruisers at the cardinal points. On the outer rings were the destroyers, the versatile little “tin cans” that performed variously as radar pickets, message-runners, antiaircraft platforms, pilot-rescue guards, and submarine hunters. As a tactic to confuse and thwart enemy submarines, the fleet followed a zigzagging course, making sudden radical turns at precisely scheduled intervals. All ships turned together, their white wakes carving synchronous arcs through the sea. In a minute and a half, they could execute a 90-degree turn and steady on a new course. The finely choreographed maneuver required deft seamanship on every ship, down to the humblest destroyer or auxiliary vessel. Conning officers kept their ships on station with slight corrections to course and speed, always with a wary eye on the vessels ahead, to either side, and astern.
In daylight, these turns could be executed by “seaman’s eye”—but on a dark night, or in thick weather, when visibility was cut to zero, the only way of discerning the position of neighboring ships was by watching the circular scopes in the radar shacks. A radius line swept around the scope, like the long hand of an analog clock, leaving a trail of fading light green “snow” and darker green “blips.” While the ship was turning, it was a matter of watching those adjacent blips and sending constant steering and speed corrections to the bridge, in order to prevent them creeping toward the center of the screen. In such conditions, the radar shack was a pressure cooker. At night, with portholes and hatches sealed to prevent light from leaking out, it was a sweltering, airless cavity. Cigarette smoke hung heavily in the air and men sweated through their uniforms. On the night before a strike, when the task force sprinted through darkness at 30 knots, radar scope operators could not afford to pull their eyes away from the scopes, even for a moment. Many struggled to keep their wits together. A sailor on the destroyer Dale recalled a barely averted calamity on such a night. When another destroyer executed an unexpected turn, a high-speed collision seemed inevitable, and the Dale’s conning officer ordered both engines astern one-third to take the way off the ship. Her propellers bit deep into the water; her hull quaked and shuddered as if coming apart at the rivets; her stern dug into her wake; and she reared up out of the sea like a bucking bronco. The other ship crossed her bow with 300 feet to spare.7
BECAUSE TASK FORCE 58 WAS SO BIG, and because it grew steadily as newly commissioned ships arrived in the Pacific, it was too unwieldy to operate in a single circular formation. The force was cleaved into component “task groups,” each a small circular fleet in itself. Each task group sailed as a unit and operated semi-independently under the local command of a rear admiral. It could break away to refuel or conduct air operations; or it might be dispatched by Admiral Mitscher to raid a target several hundred miles away. It was also possible to form a conventional surface warship force consisting of battleships and cruisers of the several task groups, which could then be sent ahead to engage Japanese warships in a conventional naval gunnery battle, or to bombard enemy shore fortifications. Usually, however, the task groups (varying from three to five in number) remained at full strength in adjacent positions, spaced at a distance of fifteen to twenty miles, so that they could provide mutual support.
When this great “fleet of fleets” operated as a unit, it could not be seen all at once by any one pair of eyes, even from an airplane high above it. From the bridge of a carrier in one of the circular formations, a witness could look in every direction and see gray steel ships of various sizes and classes stretching to the horizon and beyond. The rectangular silhouettes of the carriers at the center of a neighboring task group might be visible in the far distance, or perhaps only their superstructures would be peeking over the horizon. Search planes flew wedge-shaped patterns to a radius of 200 or 250 miles, allowing the fleet to “see” over the horizons to either side; on a clear day it would miss nothing in a 500-mile-wide swath of blue ocean. At night, the mighty turbines stirred up microbes for miles in every direction, and the sea was lit by a greenish phosphorescent glow—bright enough to read a newspaper by, as some claimed. The antiaircraft gunners were always at their weapons, eyes peeled for hostile planes, steel helmets pushed back on their heads, and life vests cinched up around their necks. Now and again a blinker light flashed silently as one ship messaged another.
The fleet’s unprecedented mobility was multiplied by its capacity to remain at sea for weeks or even months at a time. Supporting and resupplying Task Force 58 was the job of the Pacific Fleet logistics command, which operated on a previously undreamed-of scale. Like war correspondents before them, historians have never had much success in making logistics interesting for readers. But logistics was the drivetrain that propelled overwhelming military force into the far precincts of the western Pacific, a basic prerequisite for Allied victory. Logistics (as naval professionals constantly reminded war correspondents during the war, and historians afterward) was the bedrock foundation of the entire Pacific campaign.
By the spring of 1944, the war had moved a long way west of Hawaii, and Pearl Harbor was too distant to serve as the Pacific Fleet’s main operating base. The fleet was obliged to shelter in secluded mid-Pacific atolls, thousands of miles from any proper naval shore establishment. Eniwetok, Kwajalein, and Majuro in the Marshall Islands were huge oblong rings of low-lying coral sand, the remnants of prehistoric volcanoes. They enclosed shallow lagoons large enough to accommodate hundreds of ships at anchor. Rising 10 or 15 feet above sea level, the long, narrow islets functioned as natural breakwaters, shielding the fleet against the Pacific’s long swells. But they lacked enough landmass to block gale-force winds, so the lagoons were rough in a storm, and vessels often tore loose of their moorings and ran aground on a lee beach.
The islands supplied little in the way of food, freshwater, or raw materials except coral rock, which could be crushed and made into high-grade concrete for airfields, roads, and piers. But little new construction was needed ashore, because “floating logistics” supplied the basic needs of an advanced fleet base. An ungainly flotilla of oil-streaked transports, tankers, and auxiliary ships swung on rusty anchors in the roadsteads, ready to provide all essential repair and supply services to the fighting fleet. All but the most critical battle damage could be repaired in floating mobile dry docks. An umbilical cord of shipping linked these outposts to Pearl Harbor and the west coast of North America. The peripatetic “fleet train” included cargo ships, commercial tankers, troopships, fleet oilers, ammunition ships, hospital ships, minelayers, minesweepers, refrigeration ships, submarine tenders, floatplane tenders, and escort or “jeep” carriers (CVEs). They came heavily laden with fuel, ammunition, provisions, spare parts, replacement aircraft, and newly trained relief personnel.
Task Force 58’s awesome range and mobility owed much to the strategic proximity of these Micronesian anchorages, but perhaps even more to the practice known as underway replenishment. The fleet refueled at sea, reprovisioned at sea, and eventually even loaded ammunition at sea. In April 1944, the “At Sea Logistics Service Group” set up shop in Eniwetok, the westernmost atoll in American hands, comprising thirty-four 25,000-ton fleet oilers, eleven escort carriers, nineteen destroyers, and twenty-six destroyer-escorts. A column of a dozen or more oilers departed Eniwetok regularly, escorted by destroyers, to rendezvous with Task Force 58. A destroyerman recalled coming over the horizon to find a row of oilers ready to service the fleet, arrayed in a line abreast like “tollgates on a bridge.”8 A fetid stench of brown bunker oil could be picked up a mile downwind. In 1942, refueling in rough seas had been the bane of carrier operations, often causing costly delays—but now, after more than two years of wartime experience and training, the crews had become considerably more adept. The vessel to be fueled crept
up alongside the oiler from astern and steadied on a parallel course at 9 or 10 knots, with a 30-foot gap between the ships. Hawsers and phone lines were thrown across, hoses were hauled back and fastened to intake valves, the pumps were switched on, and oil began to flow. In a rolling swell, both ships pitched heavily, and the hoses were jerked here and there, always threatening to tear free. “Hauling a hose from one ship to another is like hauling a boa constrictor out of a tree,” a witness wrote. “It writhes and clings and jerks with live resistance, and even after it has been made fast to the intake pipe, it struggles to break away.”9 Helmsmen in both vessels made constant corrections to remain on precisely parallel courses. The two bows acted as a funnel, sending wild seas surging down the gap between them. When the refueling ship’s tanks were full, she cast free the hoses and gradually increased her speed to pull away, and another ship crept up from astern. The procedure was repeated until the entire fleet had drunk its fill.
Between fall 1943 and spring 1944, Task Force 58 grew steadily as newly commissioned fast carriers and screening ships arrived from the United States. The burgeoning force demonstrated the possibilities of unprecedented tactical mobility, roaming far and wide throughout the central and southern Pacific and attacking Japanese targets across a 5,000-mile front. Carrier fighters and bombers provided air cover for every major amphibious invasion of the period, including those in both Nimitz’s and MacArthur’s theaters, sometimes striking targets north and south of the equator in the same week. In November 1943, a single task group detoured south to hit Rabaul, on New Britain, while the rest of the force covered the invasions of Tarawa and Makin in the Gilbert Islands. Then the reunited carrier force stormed into the heart of the Marshall Islands and launched a series of punishing airstrikes, culminating in the FLINTLOCK landings of February 1944. Later that month saw Task Force 58’s boldest gambit to date—Operation hailstone, a surprise attack on Truk Atoll, the largest Japanese naval base outside the home islands. In a two-day raid the American carrier planes destroyed 249 Japanese aircraft (most on the ground) and sank about 200,000 tons of shipping. While returning north, the force struck opportunistically at Guam and Rota in the Marianas, then veered south again to hit targets in the Palau Islands, which lay a full 1,200 miles west of Truk and only 575 miles east of the Philippines. In April, elements of Task Force 58 again dipped below the equator to support General MacArthur’s move into Hollandia on the north New Guinea coast, striking and neutralizing Japanese airfields throughout the region. While returning north, almost as if on a whim, the force made a westward detour and poured another two days’ worth of abuse down on Truk and the Palaus.
Admiral Spruance, the big boss afloat, was a reticent figure, phlegmatic and somewhat shy. He was of average height, always fit and trim, dressed in pressed khakis and well-shined shoes. His close-cropped blond hair was flecked with gray; his eyes were pale blue. He had the bronzed skin of a man who spent long hours under the sun. He was fifty-seven years old but could have passed for forty-seven. Some thought him a dead ringer for the late humorist Will Rogers.10
At the beginning of the war, Spruance had been an anonymous rear admiral commanding a cruiser division in Admiral Halsey’s carrier task force. In June 1942, two momentous developments sent his career up a steep upward trajectory. First, he was lifted to temporary command of Task Force 16, centered around the Enterprise and the Hornet, when Halsey was laid low by a skin disorder. In that role, Spruance fought the Battle of Midway (June 4–6, 1942) and was credited for the immortal victory. Immediately afterward, he was recalled to shore duty as Nimitz’s chief of staff, a powerful job that he would hold for more than a year. During this period, from June 1942 to July 1943, he lived in a small, austere bedroom on the second floor of Nimitz’s house on Makalapa Hill in Pearl Harbor. The two admirals grew close, professionally and personally, and when Spruance’s tenure at Pacific Fleet headquarters drew to a close, Nimitz selected him as commander of the Fifth Fleet, the biggest and most important seagoing command in the U.S. Navy. (By a wide margin, it was the largest fleet command in the history of any navy.) Nimitz trusted Spruance to act as his surrogate—to render the same decisions that he, Nimitz, would make if he had been commanding the fleet at sea. As a CINCPAC staff officer remarked, “The admiral thinks it’s all right to send Raymond out now. He’s got him to the point where they think and talk just alike.”11
Though he stood above Admiral Mitscher in the chain of command, Spruance was usually content to let his Task Force 58 chief exercise tactical command of the fleet. His humble flagship Indianapolis sailed as part of the circular defensive screening formation in Mitscher’s Task Group 58.3, centered on the Essex-class heavy carrier Lexington (CV-16). For days at a time, when Task Force 58 was steaming at high speed across the Pacific expanses, Spruance did little or no work, rendered no important decisions, and did not communicate at all with Mitscher, though their two flagships were only a quarter of a mile apart.
The Fifth Fleet chief of staff, Charles “Carl” Moore, later gave a frank account of the boss’s eccentric personality and working habits. Spruance did not fit the conventional mold of a wartime fleet commander. He was aloof, introverted, and monkish. He often described the Pacific War as “interesting.” A physical fitness zealot, Spruance said that he could not think clearly or get a decent night’s sleep unless he walked at least 5 miles a day. On an average day at sea, Spruance paced for three to four hours around the forecastle of the Indianapolis while dressed in a garish Hawaiian floral-print bathing suit, no shirt, white socks, and his regulation black leather shoes.
Spruance paid little attention to administrative details, preferring to let his subordinates worry about them. When Moore tried to engage Spruance about some pending matter, and the admiral did not think it merited his attention, he brusquely refused to reply. He walked off the flag bridge and returned to his customary deck circuit, or barricaded himself in his cabin with a paperback book. “He never gets ruffled or excited, never gets exasperated with me when I get disagreeable,” Moore told his wife in a letter of early 1944. “When he doesn’t want to do business, he just pretends not to hear and goes to bed or walks off and doesn’t answer.”12
Spruance was deadly serious about his sleep. He aimed for eight or nine hours a night, and was often in bed by eight o’clock. Even when the Indianapolis was roaring into enemy waters at 30 knots, and his shipmates were tense and restless, the admiral slept soundly. One night, Moore shook him awake to give him the news that a strange plane had been picked up on radar.
“Well,” Spruance asked, without rising from his bunk, “is there anything I can do about it?”
“No,” Moore replied.
“Then why wake me up? You know I don’t like to be awakened in the middle of the night.” He turned over and fell back asleep.13
The Fifth Fleet staff enjoyed telling stories about their chief’s compulsive daily rituals, which he practiced with devout attention to detail. Spruance began each day with a cold shower. He did not speak a word until he had drunk his morning cup of coffee, but he turned up his nose at the navy “joe” that sat in Pyrex carafes in the mess. He insisted on fresh coffee brewed with premium Hawaiian Kona beans. Not trusting the mess stewards to do the job properly, the admiral made his own coffee, grinding the beans with his personal hand-crank grinder, and then brewing it in a percolator at the table. He drank three small cups at breakfast, but no more for the rest of the day. He was a disciplined and abstemious eater. “He had a few pieces of toast, grapefruit if we had it,” said his flag lieutenant, Charles F. Barber. “Lunch was a bowl of soup and an ample salad. I often warned guests before lunch that that was all they would get.”14 Dinner was hearty, as Spruance had normally worked up an appetite by trekking around the ship. He ate beef and raw sliced onions, which he believed were good for his health.
Spruance insisted upon neatness and cleanliness, especially in his personal space. Once he rebuked Moore for putting his feet up on a chair in the flag cabin.
“The deck is perfectly clean,” Moore replied. “It’s just as clean as the chairs are.”
Spruance made a show of brushing off the seat before sitting down, remarking, “I don’t want my trousers to get all dirty sitting where you had your feet.”15
In private conversations, the admiral faulted his old friend Bill Halsey for talking too freely to newspaper reporters. Believing that Halsey had allowed himself to be “exploited” by the press, Spruance was determined not to repeat the same mistake. Upon first taking command of the Fifth Fleet in the fall of 1943, he had refused to allow war correspondents on board the Indianapolis. But his tenure as fleet commander coincided with a renewed push in Washington to upgrade the navy’s public relations. Undersecretary Jim Forrestal, in particular, was pressuring all major naval commands to improve the quality, quantity, and timeliness of press coverage. The Pearl Harbor–based press corps took an increasing interest in the enigmatic four-star admiral. Interview requests poured in. “He refused to see any war correspondents at all,” said Moore, “until I succeeded in making him believe it was his duty.”16
Twilight of the Gods Page 14
