The Jersey Brothers

by Sally Mott Freeman

  Bill stepped over to a typewriter, scrolled in a blank sheet of paper, and began typing.

  The White House

  Washington

  To: Lt. Comdr. X. B. Taylor

  Bureau of Navigation

  If the Regulations permit, I should like to be notified first in the event of the death of either of my brothers, Lt. Elias Bertram Mott, II, at present serving on the USS Enterprise, and Ensign A. B. Cross Jr., missing after the bombing at Cavite in Manila. I feel that I could more easily break the news to our mother, Mrs. A. B. Cross, than could a stranger should either such unhappy events come to pass.

  Lt. Cdr. W. C. Mott

  7

  “THIS FORCE IS BOUND FOR TOKYO”

  JUST HOURS BEFORE SEVENTY-FIVE thousand troops on Bataan surrendered to the Japanese, the USS Enterprise and her escorts once again nosed out of the ships’ channel at Pearl Harbor in single file. After clearing the channel, the task force’s heavy cruisers and destroyers fanned out into protective positions. Admiral Halsey then issued the order to head northwest, and Enterprise signalmen relayed the directive to the rest of the convoy.

  Three long days and nights passed, with the crews in the task force still unaware of their destination. They pressed inexorably north and west into cooler and cooler latitudes. The goose-bumped crew finally changed out of their tropical uniforms into long-unused cold-weather gear.

  On Sunday, April 12, Benny Mott was once again on the watch in Sky Control, discerning what he could through the filmy morning mist. Down on the flag bridge, thirty-five feet below, Admiral Halsey was locked in his familiar pugilistic stance, his cap down low over his face, obscuring a set jaw, beetle brows, and unruly silver hair. Benny didn’t like not knowing their destination or mission but just then it didn’t matter. He believed to his core this man would get them there and back, recalling the fear, admiration, and camaraderie Halsey inspired during his midshipman years.

  BACK THEN, CAPTAIN HALSEY had been commanding officer of the Academy’s Annapolis station ship, the USS Reina Mercedes, a former cruiser captured during the Spanish-American War. Among its functions was to imprison transgressing midshipmen. Benny was glad he’d never met Halsey under those circumstances; their interactions had only been at pleasant social gatherings the Halseys hosted for upperclassmen, whom the couple treated with emphatic warmth. During these more relaxed affairs, Benny and Captain Halsey often discussed navy football and another common passion: the underappreciated virtues of their shared home state of New Jersey.

  Halsey had relished these chest-beating interludes about the state: “The home of Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Edison, and Albert Einstein!” he would crow in mock exasperation, drawing wide grins from Benny every time. At Annapolis, Benny and Bill were both known for their proud defense of the Garden State—against routine mockery. They even embraced their nickname, “the Jersey Brothers,” despite its implicit derision. Was it Halsey who started that? Benny couldn’t remember, but it stuck.

  The feisty Reina Mercedes captain enjoyed his own Jersey-native spiel—he was the product of generations from the august town of Elizabeth, onetime state capital, founded in the seventeenth century by English settlers. He groused that it was now known less for its critical submarine industry or as the birthplace of the electric car than for being the base of the notorious “Jersey family,” the oldest US Mafia syndicate in La Cosa Nostra (Sicilian) and the only one indigenous to New Jersey. The persistent media spotlight on the Mob irritated the state’s proud and long-established natives, including Captain Halsey and Midshipman Benny Mott.

  Benny would chime in with his own New Jersey yarns. “Well, sir, we love a spirited defense of our much-maligned state. You see, the Motts arrived with the Quakers back in the seventeen hundreds, but they didn’t just sit around pritheeing this and pritheeing that!” Halsey always appreciated Benny’s family high notes, including the Motts’ ancestral link to members of the iconic fraternal order that boarded the tea-laden vessels Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver in Boston Harbor in 1773. The rest of the story is textbook history, but rebel-hearted Halsey would laugh and clap Benny on the back every time. Between the two of them, New Jersey’s reputation was restored every time.

  The whole Enterprise crew felt Benny’s combination of awe and affection for Bull Halsey. Before every mission, Halsey reveled in his anti-Japanese epithets and scowling, serial invectives, like a football coach before the big game. The men loved his bellicose quips, including “Hit hard, hit fast, hit often,” and his “perfect willingness” to divide the Pacific Ocean with Japan: “We’ll take the top half, and they can take the bottom.” And they reliably whistled and clapped when he staked claim to Emperor Hirohito’s white horse when it was all over. Halsey would trot it right through Tokyo, he declared, and the Japanese language would only be spoken in hell when he was done with them.

  Never mind that Halsey was a late admit and graduated near the bottom of his 1904 Academy class. Nobody cared. The man they knew was a trained pilot, schooled in intelligence, and knew aircraft carriers like the back of his hand. “He can calculate to a cat’s whisker the risk of an operation” was the oft repeated quote among Enterprise’s 2,700-strong crew.

  That faith was needed more than ever right then. While they didn’t know their destination or the purpose of this mission, they did know that the odds were stacked against them. Two months earlier, a triumphant Enterprise had returned to Pearl after its first enemy offensives in the Gilbert and Marshall Islands. They had damaged or sunk a dozen or more Japanese vessels and downed more than forty planes. When Enterprise entered the channel, slid through the torpedo nets, and returned to port, every sailor in Pearl Harbor had lined the rails, cheering and shouting. Ships blew sirens and horns, and men of every rank whistled and hooted. Admiral Halsey was grinning from ear to ear on the flag bridge, taking it all in.

  In those early raids, Enterprise had been outnumbered but not outwitted, giving its sailors—and the country—a needed shot of good news. Still, it had come at a price. Though Enterprise had brought home the war’s first victory, the Gilberts and the Marshalls had been a trial by fire for its untested crew.

  While retiring from the engagement, Enterprise came under surprise attack by enemy bombers. Benny’s machine gunner on the port catwalk, George Smith, was killed, becoming the carrier’s first gunnery casualty of the war. An enemy plane had dropped out of formation and aimed straight for Enterprise’s deck. Its right wing hit the ship, killing Smith before skidding into the sea. Fuel from the plane’s ruptured tanks drenched half the carrier, all the way up to the superstructure. This first-known airborne suicide attack had stunned Benny and his men. None of them had even considered the possibility of an enemy plane flying directly into their ship.

  George Smith’s funeral gave the Enterprise crew their first taste of burial at sea. They’d stood at attention on the fantail while an honor platoon came to parade rest before them. The men bowed their heads and prayed as gun salutes and the trumpeting of taps competed to be heard above the rushing, high-seas wind. The body bag—weighted with lead shells so that it would sink quickly—was placed beneath an American flag on a stand, angled feetfirst toward the thrashing waters below. The draped figure was then released into the sea and disappeared beneath the ship’s steady wake. Until then, this ritual had only been practiced, like so many other war exercises and drills, off sunny, peacetime Oahu.

  ON THIS MISERABLY COLD April morning two months later, Benny turned his attention to the horizon. Tightening his plump fingers around the cylinders of his field glasses, he steadied his focus. With the weather stormy and foul and the rise and fall of the deck spanning 150 feet, he was not initially certain of what he’d just seen. Once assured that it was not the waters’ pitch and hurl tricking his eyes, he motioned to Enterprise’s Captain Murray and pointed to an approaching vessel. Murray was out the door at once.

  By the time Murray reached the wing of the flag bridge, a wraithlike outline of seven more ships
—two cruisers, an oil tanker, and four destroyers—appeared through the mist; a dull series of gunmetal-gray silhouettes against graphite seas and cinder skies. Within minutes, an entire convoy was in view.

  The lead vessel was an aircraft carrier, the spanking-new USS Hornet, and it was carrying a mother lode of unusual cargo. Atop her aft flight deck in two parallel rows sat sixteen dark-green Army Air Forces medium-range bombers. Were those B-25s? They were twice the size of an aircraft carrier’s elevators, which were used to raise and lower aircraft between the flight and hangar decks. “What in theeee hell?” Benny said aloud.

  He wasn’t the only one gawking. Speculation swept Enterprise, and within minutes, there were multiple theories about the force’s mission: The bombers were being delivered to reinforce a base in the Aleutian Island chain that stretched westward from Alaska to Russia, just as Enterprise had done with the bombers to Wake Island in what seemed an eternity ago. Others speculated they were destined for a Russian airfield on the Kamchatka Peninsula. “Only God and Halsey know for sure,” mused Benny.

  But speculation ended minutes later when they heard the admiral clear his throat over the ship’s loudspeaker. The men were quiet, expectant.

  “This force is bound for Tokyo!” Halsey bellowed.

  Wild cheers erupted from every one of the ship’s steel compartments. Benny shivered with excitement and disbelief. Down on the flag bridge, Admiral Halsey reacted to the elated chorus with a broad, satisfied smile.

  “This force is bound for Tokyo” was flashed in code to all the other ships. The Hornet and Enterprise convoys then maneuvered into a single force, named Task Force 16. It was composed of the two carriers, four cruisers, eight destroyers, two tankers, and two submarines. All bows of the largest assembly of American warships since Pearl Harbor pointed west at a determined twenty-three knots.

  Benny felt a surge of pride being part of the USS Enterprise. Despite the chronic fatigue and persistent anxiety over his troubled marriage and the well-being of his baby girl, his powerful bond to his shipmates was as inextricable as that of any family. Benny would do anything for this crew, and the feeling was mutual.

  While docked at Pearl, he had overseen the installation of state-of-the-art Oerlikon 20-millimeter antiaircraft guns throughout the ship, a vital upgrade ordered by Halsey after February’s tactical air strikes in the Gilbert and Marshall Islands. The old water-cooled cannons were removed, and potent new guns with unprecedented range and precision were positioned on catwalks and walkways on every level. Word traveled quickly regarding the powerful new artillery, and he’d gotten several heartfelt kudos and shoulder claps since their departure. Enterprise and her crew was his entire world now, and these gestures of confidence had come to mean everything.

  All too often, Benny lay awake during the brief intervals he was supposed to be resting on his hard, narrow sleeping rack. Before their departure, Jeannette had not only informed him that she wouldn’t ever be visiting at Pearl but also that her lawyer would be in touch. He was still reeling from it. A thousand times, he had sworn to himself that no child of his would ever endure what he had endured as a child. Now the full weight of her leaving him and taking their little girl was upon him, and he was powerless to alter her plans—especially from out here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

  He careened from despondence over his own troubles to wrenching anxiety over what had become of Barton. Was he alive, or had he been bayoneted and cast aside, never to be found? Had he been taken prisoner? This night, even steaming toward Tokyo, was no different for Benny. He needed the rest—desperately—but he had received no mail from home in weeks and was endlessly anxious for news. He watched for letters like a perched falcon, especially for those carrying a White House or Lilac Hedges return address—anything.

  After tossing, turning, and staring at the blank metal ceiling for what seemed like hours, he switched on the tiny light over his bunk and pulled out a piece of onionskin letterhead proudly embossed with a sketch of his ship. He needed to shake off the miserable scenarios gathering strength in the dark.

  USS Enterprise

  At Sea

  April 12, 1942

  Dearest Mother,

  I don’t know when I shall have another letter from you but I hope it will be soon. I enjoyed reading the diary entry that you sent about your trip to the shore. Guess I’ve read it through three times and each time it is like going home for awhile. It is so much you and conjures memories of our early days, of Sea Bright, Ocean Grove, Red Bank, the grand Atlantic and its wonderful swimming. If I could only have a little bit of that now I’d be rested and ready for anything. I guess that is not to be my lot for a while though.

  Bill has written me all about his new job. One of grave responsibility and trust. I hope he believes now that he can serve much more usefully there than at sea. Also, I’ve had a couple of letters from Dad. His letters were interesting and he seems quite proud of both Bill and me.

  Mother, I want to do something nice for you. I can afford it and I want to. The money is rolling in now and frankly I have no opportunity to spend it. So while I am saving (I am anxious to know if you received the bond I sent for safekeeping by the way) I feel there will be plenty of time left to buy and pay for war bonds.

  I want you to take the enclosed check and get yourself something nice. The time may soon come when you will no longer be able to obtain many things, if indeed it is not already here. You deserve it Mother, and don’t worry, we’ll still be buying bonds.

  I had in mind a nice coat for next winter, and I mean a really nice one—please go do this while the getting is good!

  Know that I love you Mother, and know that I will press on until I reach Barton. It keeps me going even on the worst of days.

  Please write and be brave.

  Your loving son,

  Benny

  p.s. I am enclosing some pictures of me with several war correspondents. Am not sure if they can be sent but if they are not at least one can try. Anyway, they will be in many newspapers so perhaps you can see them there.

  Benny was mindful that it was April 12, Barton’s birthday, and it was sure to be a bad day for her, particularly with the fresh crop of bad news coming out of the Philippines. After rereading the letter, he placed it and his signed-over allotment check in an envelope. He reached up and switched off the light; perhaps sleep would be his reward before the midwatch.

  TASK FORCE 16 CONTINUED its strong westerly course, covering three hundred to four hundred miles each day. With Hornet’s flight deck unusable thanks to the tightly parked B-25s, Enterprise search planes scouted two hundred miles out on both flanks while her fighter pilots patrolled protectively above. April 17 dawned raw and cold and the seas were rough. Still a thousand miles east of Tokyo, the carriers and cruisers fueled one last time before they left the tankers and destroyers behind for the final dash to the launch point. Throughout the afternoon and night, they rolled and pounded through the heavy seas. The screening ships were barely visible through a steady drizzle and low, pumice-colored skies.

  At 0315 on the morning of April 18, for the first time in six weeks, the insistent electrical clambering of the general quarters alarm ripped through the ship. Benny was standing the midwatch. He scanned the horizon through his binoculars—back and forth, over and over, without pausing as he awaited the next set of signals. Nothing.

  Then Enterprise jerked so sharply to starboard it nearly knocked Benny over. Seconds later, Captain Carey Randall, the marine commanding officer aboard, burst through Sky Control’s door. Jack Baumeister’s radar had picked up two surface contacts ten miles ahead, he reported; the task force was turning to avoid detection from the suspected Japanese patrol vessels. Together they waited, studying the horizon for forty-five minutes. Finally, the task force turned back, resuming its westerly course. They were still seven hundred miles from Tokyo; hundreds of miles from launch point.

  At 0500, an Enterprise scout bomber flew low over the deck. The pilot reac
hed out and dropped an orange beanbag with a scribbled message attached. He had sighted another patrol vessel, fifty miles ahead. Worse, he was sure he’d been spotted. Even with that news, gutsy Halsey pushed on for thirty more minutes, gaining another eleven miles that the fuel-strapped B-25s wouldn’t have to fly to gain safety after their raid.

  Suddenly, through the fog and rain, Benny made out two ships’ masts and a low black hull, about a hundred feet long, off the port bow. He immediately reported it via Enterprise’s sound-operated telephone. “We have a setup on enemy vessel. Request permission to fire five-inchers [guns].” He waited an interminable three minutes for a reply. But Admiral Halsey said no and instead dispatched the cruiser Nashville to sink it. The Japanese vessel fought back with its single gun until its rounds finally fell short, and the ship started sinking fast. Heart pounding, Benny picked up another patrol vessel in his field glasses. Enterprise’s fighter planes began to strafe it, but soon it too was sunk by the Nashville.

  Halsey wasted no time with his next order. There was no longer any doubt that they had been reported to the Japanese military by at least one of these civilian-manned “picket boats” surveilling the distant waters arcing around the home islands. At 0800, 650 miles from Tokyo and 150 miles short of the objective point, Halsey sent a signal to Hornet telling Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle to launch his planes:

  To Col. Doolittle And His Gallant Command

  Good Luck And God Bless You—

  Halsey

  Benny watched Hornet turn into the wind and speed up for the launch. Between the forward velocity of the carrier and the winds churned up by the stormy weather, the pilots had the benefit of a forty-six-knot (approximately fifty-five-mile-per-hour) headwind. The plane directors on Hornet’s deck also tried to time the launches so that the heavy bombers could take off on the up-pitch of the bow.