Then came a whistle and an enormous concussion. A projectile landed on the main deck between the stern turret, whose guns were then pointing to port, and the mainmast. Almost immediately there broke out the most terrible cry that can be heard aboard a warship, “Fire in turret number three.” A bomb had made virtually a direct hit and been detonated by hitting the mainmast in the fall. Old Glory, which had waved from the mainmast crosstrees, was torn away and the fourteen-inch searchlight on the high platform smashed. Perforated with 196 holes, the turret was a mass of flames with bodies inside. All the pointers, trainers and loaders were killed, only the hoist men beneath the turret having escaped. In the smoke-filled darkness flames could be seen beside the shells.
There were a few moments of shock while the arrival of the repair party, always delegated to such jobs in a battle, was awaited. Then it was discovered that the repair party too had been killed.
It was about 100 feet from the hangar on the main deck, where the fliers had been putting away the planes, to the smoking turret. The flying personnel came at a dead run. Winslow broke out the hoses below, while Lamade took command of the turret whose starboard door was open, venting power fumes. Ranger glanced up. He saw that the Stars and Stripes had been blown away. Running to a motor launch affixed at the stern he snatched up the flag, which flies upon the stern poop when liberty parties are going ashore. The former miner was determined that if an explosion should occur, the Houston should sink with her colors flying.
Ranger lashed the flag to the Houston's stern stanchion where Jap spotters, 15,000 feet overhead, could see that the Houston was still fighting. With an explosion expected any second, Warrant Officers Louis Emil Diechlem, a carpenter, and James Elmore Hogan, a gunner, joined the party below tugging up hoses. Chinese mess boys from the officers' quarters also lent a hand.
The boots of an officer beside the turret had been blown away. Ranger leaped into the turret door. Lamade began handing him bottles of carbon dioxide fire suffocatory Shells with gun grease on them were bubbling with heat. Ranger went inside without an asbestos suit or other protection, and broke the bottles upon the flames. Thereafter he reappeared only for more bottles or a single deep whiff of fresh air. Most times he stepped only half outside the turret, enough to extend an arm and get a lungful of air.
Lamade managed to get the hose up to Ranger, then ordered him: “Get out of there.”
“I'm all right,” was Ranger's answer. He went in alone, tugging the heavy nozzle. The smokeless powder was actually burning; the oil-smear upon the shells could be heard hissing. It was simply a question of how long the heat would take to penetrate the metal shell and detonate the cap connected inside to the powder. Then, suddenly, water gushed forth. The turret was saved.
The first thing Winslow, who led the removal of the bodies, handed out was a single white sneaker of a dead gunner so perforated with holes that it resembled lace. Ranger staggered forth into clear air, his work done.
The next day, her fantail piled with coffins, the Houston entered Tjilatjap. There were buried the Houston's dead with walnut-brown crosses overhead. The funeral was held in early morning when the people of the little southern Java town—destroyed by Jap bombers exactly a month later—were going to work.
Americans present there will never forget how two Dutch working women came alone to the service read by Chaplain Rentz of the Asiatic Fleet and a Dutch priest. In their tears was the grief of America's faraway womanhood. Uninvited and unknown to either the dead or living, they remained weeping in the cemetery alone, hours after the hard-eyed men went back to their ships.
In the front row was buried Boatswain Joseph Bienert, who had pleaded with the ship's surgeon to end his suffering. Paine, Winslow and Lamade bore to its grave the body of their fellow flier, Lieutenant Edward Blessman, who died aboard the other warship.
Thus were laid to rest the Houston's unrevenged heroes. Of all the above living, everyone is missing except Lamade, who about ten days later was ordered to fly his plane to the coast.
Perhaps they are all Jap prisoners, perhaps they are gone to join the great corps of unavenged of Pearl Harbor, Manila and Bataan. And nobody knows who were the two Dutch mothers who wept in the cemetery at Tjilatjap.
ATTACK ON AUSTRALIA NEAR
Japs Ignore Nazis
Somewhere in Australia—April 30, 1942
The prospect of an attempted invasion by Japan seems to have risen. Due partly to British losses in Burma, the pressure is increasing along the northern Australia coast. Naturally, nothing can be said regarding preparations for the onslaught. The Japanese trick of masquerading as natives will meet with obstacles because the aborigines are almost as few as the red Indians in North America relative to whites. Should invasion reach these shores, guerrilla fighting would be in an arid country different from jungle-shrouded Malaya, Sumatra and Java, for west Australia is divided from the east by desert.
What tempts the Japanese is their ambition to close tight the naval portcullis they have already dropped from Vladivostok to Australia. In Japan's military plans for expelling the United States from Asia, an invasion of Australia is probably inevitable, a natural denouement to victories in the Indian Ocean. Furthermore, Japan anticipates more attacks upon her home islands, possibly from Alaska, and will do her utmost to spread the American Asiatic naval forces.
Germany wants Japan either to strike across India or cut the lifeline of American supplies up the East African coast to the Suez Canal. But in recent military talks in Berlin, Germany apparently failed to convince Japan that her destiny lay in the Middle East.
Everything points once more to Japan's strategical domination over Germany in the worldwide Axis pattern. By attacking Australia instead of pushing toward India, Japan is playing the canny game of ensuring that Germany is saddled with both Russian and British antagonists for 1942. If Hitler strikes Russia, Egypt is left unliquidated. If Hitler strikes Egypt, Russia remains.
Heavy British defeats in India, with its unsettled politics, protect Japan against the Allies seriously exploiting her long communication lines across Burma.
Should Japan invade Australia—virtually a necessity with American supplies flowing here—this would provide an excellent excuse for not attacking Russia.
Thus, Germany's apparent uncertainty about where her spring drive should be directed may be due to Japan's having decided to attempt a diversion southward, rather than rescue Germany from either the British or Russians.
Distant observers should keep in mind that the Japanese, exactly like the Germans, are planning to conquer the world.
FLIERS FOOL SUB AND WHALE TO SURVIVE
48 DAYS AT SEA
Somewhere in Australia—May 5, 1942 (Delayed)
Inspected successively by a Japanese submarine and by a giant humpback whale but harmed by neither, twelve Australian and British aviators have reached a port in southwestern Australia after a 48-day voyage from Java in a 28-foot sailboat. They were the last known of that force which defended Kalidjati airdrome when the Japs, bent upon obtaining a fighter base near Bandoeng, overwhelmed them with 100 infantrymen and three small tanks the day after landing upon Java.
The fliers, arriving in the southern Java port of Tjilatjap on March 6, managed to find a sailboat which they filled with any provisions available. They sailed by night from the harbor, whose entire waterfront was a mass of flames from successive bombings by the same planes which, coming from Bali, flew over the little Dutch steamer in which this correspondent escaped from Java two days earlier.
The officer who steered the craft to safety told this correspondent today that he had been frightened for the first time two days south from Tjilatjap. “A Japanese sub arose almost without a sound twenty yards away. We could see his number and the lettering near his waterline. An officer appeared upon the conning tower and calmly looked us over. He wore glasses. He never said a word, or even raised his hand in signal. It was the longest silence I ever experienced, waiting for him to make up
his mind. Then, suddenly, he disappeared inside the tower and submerged.”
The fliers fought direct headwinds almost continuously. Once the wind blew contrariwise for almost a week and, being without sea anchor, they lost 200 miles. Attempting to compute their position by dead reckoning, using a tiny illustration as a map, they at first neglected to allow for the time error and were baffled to find themselves, theoretically, in the middle of the central Australian desert.
Their food was chiefly corned beef and rice but they marked Sundays by opening cans of spaghetti and beans. Thirst never became a problem because, while water was doled at a quarter of a pint daily, no less than 76 dozen cans of beer had been found before their departure from the ruined Javanese city.
“We thought another submarine was attacking us when, on the thirtieth day, a great black bulk appeared forward and began circling our boat. As it drew near we saw it was an enormous whale. We were afraid the whale would mistake us for a brother whale and attempt to get chummy … or aggressive. He came so close that we could see a single big eye looking us over. Then, fortunately, he lost interest and dived, just like the submarine.”
The aviators made a first landfall, after sailing 1300 miles, when they reached uninhabited Frazier Island in the Dampiers. They continued on and were eventually picked up by flying boats. The last flier practically hated to be hauled in. “I could've made the last ten miles to the Australian coast in another afternoon,” he declared.
One flying boat landed a bearded castaway only 200 yards from the modest cottage where he lives. Five minutes after setting foot upon Australia, the flier was in his own home in the arms of his wife, who had long given him up for lost.
SHELLS, BOMBS GOT ‘THE ROCK’ IN VISE OF FIRE:
Sledge Hammer Needed to Crack Fort, and Japs Rolled One Up
Somewhere in Australia—May 8, 1942
“The Rock” is gone. Only after the people got out did they commence calling it Corregidor. While you were there it was always “the Rock.” You need a sledgehammer to break rock. The Japs needed scores of sledgehammers before Corregidor's tortoise back was broken. Nothing like Corregidor has happened in American history since the Alamo.
Corregidor's pounding cannot fairly be compared with Singapore or Malta. The latter islands have far greater surface area and were equipped with airdromes and fighters for protection. The Rock succumbed to aerial bombardment—every known method for hurling explosives through the air was used. Corregidor was high-level bombed, low-level bombed and strafed. Its defenders were subjected to fire from every caliber missile, from machine-gun bullets to fourteen-inch shells.
Against this picture of Corregidor's end, the American people may well keep another sharply in their minds. The year is 1925. A small harbor vessel emerges from Manila Bay, comes to Corregidor's quay and discharges several passengers. They are bright-eyed, intelligent Japanese, full of breath-sucking politeness. Their errand is to check on America's honesty; it has been reported to Japan that America violated her Pacific treaty obligations by illegally fortifying Corregidor. (The Japanese, however, refused to permit League of Nations' representatives to inspect their illegal fortifications on the Marshall and Caroline Islands.)
Today must be a happy one for the investigation committee. Now they can examine Corregidor's fortifications at will with the Americans accompanying them, not as hosts, but prisoners.
The Japanese broke Corregidor as they have broken the Allies elsewhere, by overwhelming power. Even before Bataan fell, Corregidor was under regular fire from the opposite peninsula closing Manila Bay. There, at Ternati, the Japs placed fourteen-inch batteries which daily pounded Corregidor's back. The tortoise's tail was being hammered. In the opposite direction, the head was under fire long before the April 8 surrender. There the Japs had 105-mm artillery, moved by a circular road around Bataan to almost pointblank range across the two-mile stretch of bay.
For dive-bombing the Japanese had one chief target—a power plant. Their other targets were the coast defense guns and anti-aircraft. All were fully exposed. The first three bombers went straight for the power plant, literally at Corregidor's heart, which pumped air into the tunnels upon which depended the safety of every living thing in Corregidor. Life in these tunnels was almost one continuous air raid. There were people who emerged from the fanned air and electric light only by night; like a submarine crew, they never saw sunlight. Some suffered from “tunnelitis,” a condition under which a human being becomes so stultified that he is unable to go outdoors. Heavy Jap bombs could be heard reverberating inside the tunnel.
The Rock was never starved out. When Bataan fell there was abundant food, nearly enough for 80,000 persons for eighteen days. This could feed approximately 12,000, living the life of moles, for a minimum of four months. The besieged, like all hard-pressed people, often attributed to the enemy more intelligence than they possessed. During a six-week lull in the campaign, they said: “The Jap idea is simply to let Corregidor alone so the defenders will be forced to eat at U.S. instead of Japanese expense. They consider Corregidor a big concentration camp.”
But the Japanese thought far more of Corregidor than that. They had carefully plotted the currents around the shores. For example, when 57 Philippine scouts, aided by sailors and Marines, forced some Japanese, flanked by the sea, to commit suicide by jumping from the cliffs, the Japs sent over an airplane which dropped a message of guidance for those remaining on the beach. The message said: Soldiers, you are ordered to find a log or other floating object and swim straight from shore, using the wood as support. Not far out from the beach, you will find a current which will carry you rapidly in the direction of Subic Bay.
Instead of concentrating on the immediate invasion of Corregidor, however, the Japanese tried several games of deception. Laboriously they fitted hundreds of sea buoys with tiny electric bulbs and towed them around Manila Bay, causing the report upon Corregidor that invasion was imminent. After a while they abandoned this plan. But small Manila shipyards kept busy building tiny craft to supplement Japan's formidable landing barges, which are lined with one-half-inch steel plate.
The Japanese repeatedly used the psychological weapon. In mid-March, they dropped pamphlets directed to Lt. General Jonathan Wainwright, stating the fortress would fall within two weeks. In early April, they dropped more pamphlets: The help you are promised will arrive in a fortnight, but you will fall within a week.
The American anti-aircraft was excellent. The courage of the men who manned the coast artillery guns under dive-bombing was a thing of wonder to those who witnessed it. But neither the anti-aircraft nor artillery could fire without betraying their positions. Had it been merely a duel between Corregidor's batteries and those of the Japs, Corregidor would have held out indefinitely.
Once more, aircraft were decisive. When Japanese shore batteries concentrated upon the machine guns lining Corregidor's beaches and capping her eminences, the artillery could ordinarily have hit back. But the artillery pieces—in many places, exposed in open pits—were undergoing bombardment by planes. Just as the artillery could not defend the machine gun and ack-ack posts from fire from shore, similarly the ack-ack and machine guns under the battering of shore fire could not defend the artillery against dive-bombing and high-level bombing.
Before Bataan fell, Japan was like a man holding a needle three inches before his nose and trying to thread it with only one eye open. Japan kept stabbing with her thread but, because she lacked forward observation posts upon Bataan, was unable to give directions to the gunners in Ternati. Being unable to adjust vision to both eyes, she continually missed threading the needle. Japanese planes did not dare to remain over Corregidor's ack-ack long enough to give sustained directions to the Ternati batteries, and the batteries behind the Bataan lines were firing blind.
Only after Japan secured observation posts on Bataan could she commence fire which silenced the anti-aircraft and opened the way for continuous dive-bombing directly upon the pits of the coastal
guns. Even before the artillery duel of the closing phase, the Japs sent high-speed ground-strafing planes across the water from what they hoped were the blind angles of the island. Coming at over 300 miles an hour, the fighters hedgehopped over the Rock's back or between its two small peaks, machine-gunning and dropping bombs.
When Bataan fell, in a certain sense Corregidor's work was done. It was Corregidor at their back which had sustained Bataan's defenders from January 4, when the first line was drawn across the peninsula from Abucay to Moron.
The hours for the men at “Skinny Wainwright's” headquarters (on Bataan) to eat were determined by when small boats could cross the two miles of water. They ate, therefore, at 8:30 in the evening and 3:30 in the morning and fasted seventeen hours daily. By the first week of April only nineteen cavalry horses were left uneaten upon Bataan, but food was still coming regularly from Corregidor.
Corregidor was for Bataan what the U.S. is for the Americans in Australia—a safe place at one's back, though dangerously far away. When Bataan fell, scores of highly trained pilots of the Air Forces, captured by the Japs but left unguarded on Bataan's beaches—with four months' fighting as ordinary infantrymen in Bataan's hills behind them—swam across to Corregidor. It was like swimming the Pacific to America. Wherever the handful who escaped Corregidor sit today they are praising Wainwright. Whatever has happened to him, he will be known forever among those veterans as a beloved and admired first-class fighting general.
WOMEN STORM BARRICADES IN AUSSIE STORES
Somewhere in Australia—May 13, 1942
Urban Australians saw their first barricades yesterday, but they were erected not in the streets against the Japanese but in the department stores against women shoppers.
Thousands of merchandise-hungry women, anxious to buy clothing before rationing tickets were issued, attacked the counters with a fanaticism and indifference to wounds which veterans of the Indonesian campaign pronounce equal to the Japanese at their most suicidal. To halt these Amazons, floorwalkers—unable to stem the rush—threw up benches, making small fortresses within the store where the invaders were compelled to attack by the dozens instead of by hundreds.
Weller's War Page 38
