“Guad-al-canal.” Benny had sounded it out the first time he’d located it on a map—the largest of the Solomon Islands on the northeastern approach to Australia. He’d never heard of it, but nor had a single US Navy admiral until July when the vigilant coastwatchers first reported the landing of laborers and heavy construction equipment there. Since then, loss of life and limb had mounted nonstop—by the troops battling ashore, by the sailors at sea, and by scores of carrier pilots all seeking to both attack enemy positions and defend hard-won ground.
The sun had barely cleared the horizon when Enterprise got its next scouting report—another disappointing one. A sizeable Japanese air squadron had launched and found Hornet. Benny focused his field glasses astern. Hornet was at least ten miles away, but he had a clear view of the evolving battle.
Through fiftyfold magnified lenses, Benny could plainly see one after another of Hornet’s planes getting shot down—then, worse, a bright orange geyser of flames erupting from the ship itself. He’d witnessed a similar sight just ahead of Yorktown’s incineration at Midway. By the size of this explosion and the profusion of smoke, he knew Hornet was also doomed. Within seconds, Benny was notified that Hornet’s crew had been ordered to abandon ship and her remaining planes redirected to Enterprise’s flight deck.
Meanwhile, both Hornet and Enterprise fighters had scored hits of their own on two of the advancing Japanese carriers. But the carriers had still managed to launch their Zeros and were steaming toward Enterprise like wounded, raging bulls. In a flash, Benny calculated the shrinking distance between the ship and the incoming planes and relayed firing instructions to his AA gunners with the urgent, rapid articulation of an auctioneer.
Bullets ricocheted off Sky Control’s metal overhang, and for the first time since the war’s outbreak, Benny understood the sudden mortal grip of fear. Only adrenaline and the repetitive rigors of years-long training kept him from seizing up.
He was not one to forget the timeworn aviator creed that flyers were a ship’s first line of defense; her antiaircraft guns, a close second. Seaborne radar had risen in value and accuracy since Pearl Harbor, but at the moment, it offered little defense against the sky itself. Enterprise radar units had detected the Zeros closing in, but low clouds limited pilot visibility to less than five feet. As a result, neither the Enterprise pilots aloft nor the ship’s AA gunners could get an early fix on the Japanese planes.
Suddenly a second wave of planes, this time Aichi Val bombers, dropped from the clouds, and Benny, following their course through his binoculars, alerted his portside gunners to the planes’ position. The gunners whipped their weapons to a seventy-five-degree angle and, in a split second, unleashed a torrent of hot lead on the Val bombers bearing down on the ship.
From his summit post, Benny had a commanding view of the unfolding battle. Perspiration drenched his khaki uniform as he stood in the open aft section just forward of the stack. He gripped his bullhorn with one hand and the railing with the other as the ship zigzagged violently to spoil the multiple attackers’ aim.
Jack Rountree and Roger McCabe, Benny’s spotter and phone talker, were with him, both battle hardened from Enterprise’s August clashes in the Eastern Solomons. When either sighted a plane, Benny hollered the bearing and elevation over his bullhorn, and Rountree repeated it over the ship’s sound-operated telephone. Later he couldn’t remember whether the plane or the new 20-millimeter portside gun had fired first during this wave of attacks, but he remembered his amazement at the tremendous burst of fire from the new equipment.
Twenty-millimeter tracers soared over the stack, thirty feet aft of Sky Control. The leading aircraft crumbled in flames and dropped to the sea. A simultaneous whoop went up in Sky Control and the portside gun gallery.
Japanese Val bombers dove in a shallower pattern than their American counterparts, generally about a fifty-degree dive. They bore down expertly on Enterprise, one after another after another. As each plane closed in, antiaircraft batteries opened up, and a barrage of tracer shells riddled the planes. Benny, Rountree, and McCabe watched in a combination of horror and admiration as exploding shells hit their marks over and over, and enemy planes became so many flaming shards slamming into the sea.
Every time Benny barked out the bearings, he reminded his gunners to lead the plane, which they did with repeated success thanks to those countless hours of mind-numbing rehearsals. If the plane kept steady in its dive, the pilot would likely be killed and the bomb not released. But even if the pilot tried to “jink” out of the cone of fire from the ship, time-tested theory had shown that the bomb would still miss the ship because the tracers would follow and heckle the plane. Benny had always contended that the main function of antiaircraft fire was to throw off the pilot’s aim; planes shot down were a bonus.
Line after line of fifteen-plane air groups continued to drop below the cloud cover and hurtle toward Enterprise. After each wave, there was just enough time to reload the burning-hot AA guns before the next phalanx came at them in a glinting, buzzing fury. Gone was Benny’s fear now; it had been replaced by pure competitive instinct—and anger as hot as a spent tracer shell. Goddamn it, this one’s for those boys I lost in the Eastern Solomons.
Benny’s bullhorn was wet from the spit of his orders, but his voice came through strong and clear. The gunners processed his staccato directions almost simultaneously and threw plane after enemy plane off target. Victory was beginning to feel possible—even imminent. At this point, Benny greeted Associated Press correspondent Eugene Burns, who’d made his way up to Sky Control for a better view of the action. Jubilant, Benny clapped Burns so hard on the back that Burns winced in pain. “Ha, you think that’s bad,” Benny said in a moment of dark humor. “Stick around!” But the jovial moment was short-lived.
Rountree tapped Benny on the shoulder and pointed at the first airplane in yet another wave of bombers. At eight thousand feet, it punched through the bruise-colored cloud ceiling and, with steely accuracy, bore down at 120 degrees toward Enterprise’s starboard beam. In a split second, Benny shouted coordinates into the bullhorn. The ship jerked radically to throw off the pilot, but this time it also threw off the gunners’ aim. Their tracers only glanced the attacker, and the pilot managed to release his deadly load. Seconds later, the bomb tore through the flight deck and exploded just off the stern; an earsplitting explosion of fuel tanks followed.
The rest of the planes in that wave were either shot down or they missed badly, except for one near miss that violently rocked the ship—even as repair and rescue crews raced to the initial explosion site. While they triaged among the wounded and dead and trained fire hoses on the burning flight deck, another squadron of fifteen Japanese dive bombers lowered toward Enterprise. This time the five-inch-gun batteries found their targets, again and again. The first shell hit an incoming plane in the engine. The bomber disintegrated eerily before Benny’s eyes and then dropped silently from the sky in a series of spare parts. Thirteen more were either shot down or their aim was thrown off. But Enterprise was not to be spared. The last plane in the attack wave came screaming in, astern of the ship, its machine guns strafing and winking at Sky Control as it dove.
Bullets clicked and bounced off the overhang like a hailstorm. Benny ducked but managed to keep his sights on the plane and continued shouting instructions. But he knew as soon as its bomb was released from the bay that it would hit the ship. He gripped the railing and braced for impact. Enterprise rocked and shook with repeated explosions as the bomb penetrated deep into her infrastructure.
The report came up that the bomb had exploded in the ammunition-handling room, instantly killing its entire gunnery and damage-control group. The forward aircraft elevator was on fire, too, and more than thirty officers’ rooms below were destroyed.
In the brief lull that followed, Benny spotted movement in the water a few hundred yards out. Two Japanese pilots were clinging to what appeared to be an aircraft wheel and tire. Thinking they should be taken a
s prisoners for interrogation, Benny made the announcement over the loudspeaker. He was horrified in the next instant when all the automatic weapons on the starboard side opened up on the clinging pilots. He shouted, “Cease fire at once!” but not soon enough to save them. Burning grief and rage over lost comrades and a desire for revenge had overwhelmed the gunners, who had fired almost in unison.
Seconds later came another shock. Rountree hollered to Benny and pointed astern of the ship: another fifteen torpedo planes were charging at full throttle and low over the water, this time bearing down on both sides of the bow, intent on ensnaring Enterprise whichever way she zigzagged. The bow gunners went right to work on them, as did gunners from Enterprise’s screening vessels, just as the attackers opened their payloads for a devastating double-sided strike.
But at once from amidships, port, and starboard, every gunner started firing at the incoming planes. Despite the raw terror of what they’d just been through, their aim remained intact. The most remarkable strike was made by a forward port gunner. He had fixed his sights on the nose of the plane but due to a slight deflection, he hit the tail instead. The plane flipped backward into the sea as if lassoed by an ace cowboy’s rope. More than half this group of planes was neutralized, but the last two managed to release their payloads, sending two more torpedoes plunging deep into the ship. Fire and rescue crews raced toward multiple sites of concussive explosions and horrific carnage.
As suddenly as it began, after sixty planes in four waves of continuous attacks, in what became known as the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, was over. It had lasted one hour and fifteen minutes, the longest sustained aerial attack ever on an American ship. Smoke from the fires and the reek of cordite from untold thousands of rounds of expended ammunition hung like a pall over bloodied Enterprise. But at least the Japanese had failed in their mission of the day; the air and seas around Guadalcanal remained under Allied control, and Enterprise remained afloat.
Other ships were not so lucky. Just over the horizon, fires continued to rage aboard the doomed Hornet. The pocked and burning deck from which Colonel Doolittle had valiantly launched his Tokyo-bound squadron of B-25s was slanting toward a certain descent to the ocean floor, three miles down. She’d been in service a year and six days, and would be at the bottom of the Pacific by the next morning.
Drained and weak from exhaustion, Benny slumped against the railing to catch his breath as wounded Enterprise retreated to the Allied base at Nouméa for urgent repairs. His chest tightened at the prospect of the impending sea burials, the gunners he would need to replace, the grieving mothers he would need to write.
But here again, he had survived. For what? His resilience now ripped away, he felt a deep and unshakeable loneliness. But then came the answer: for his daughter, Jeanne Marie, of course. It was her future he was working to protect out here, no matter what her mother did to hurt him.
WHEN FINALLY RELIEVED FROM Sky Control, Benny felt his way along dim, watery passageways to the forward handling room, in ruins from the first bomb hit. He waded on, navigating in the knee-high water by patting his hand along the passageway wall. With the aid of a flashlight, he located where his quarters had once been. Ajar from the blast, the warm metal door creaked open. He took one tentative step inside to test the footing, and then ventured another. His old surroundings were barely recognizable; the room was a smoky tumult of wet, scorched debris.
The impact of the blast, the leakage, and the heat from the nearby fires had each wrought damage. Benny poked around the compartment as long as he dared, recovering only a dented box containing the remains of his white dress hat and his Naval Academy sword, still warm from the heat of the blast and bent in a semicircle.
It would never again be extracted from its sheath, but somehow that didn’t bother him. He fingered the scabbard’s ornamental filigree, and then tucked the ruined weapon under his arm and continued down the dim passageway. His next stop would be the battle dressing stations and his next task identification of his dead gunners. He paused on the hangar deck in front of a large, defiant sign erected by crew members, still wet with industrial-grade paint.
“Enterprise vs. Japan” was rendered in large, uneven letters. The reality stunned: at the conclusion of the Battle of Santa Cruz, the USS Enterprise was now the only operational American aircraft carrier in the hostile waters of the Pacific. One by one, every other prewar flattop had either been lost in battle or forced to withdraw for lengthy repairs. Lexington had gone down in May at the Coral Sea battle. Yorktown was lost at Midway less than a month later. On the last day of August in the Eastern Solomons, Saratoga had taken a second devastating torpedo hit and retired to drydock at Pearl Harbor. Wasp, en route to Guadalcanal two weeks later, was fatally struck by three torpedoes. And now Hornet’s pyre burned over the horizon.
Over the course of 1942, Enterprise had been struck a total of six times by Japanese bombs or torpedoes and had suffered hundreds of casualties. The painted sign reflected both the grimness of the situation and the grit of a determined crew: this sole surviving American aircraft carrier in the seventy-million-square-mile Pacific war front was in no mood for backing down.
15
THE OTHER WAR: ARMY-NAVY FOOTBALL
ON NOVEMBER 1, 1942, a mangled USS Enterprise staggered into Nouméa, New Caledonia, for repairs. Compared with other war-darkened Allied outposts in the Pacific, Admiral Halsey’s Nouméa headquarters was ablaze with lights, as hordes of Seabees—the navy’s skilled construction and engineering battalions—worked around the clock. With so few ships and Enterprise now the only functional carrier, the urgency of nighttime repair work outweighed security concerns.
The Santa Cruz attacks on Enterprise were the fiercest ever launched against a single vessel in the war, and the damage was extensive. The forward section of the hangar deck—from the number one aircraft elevator clear to the quarterdeck—was a grotesque collage of charred and twisted metal. The powerful blasts had also recast the hangar deck into a bizarre configuration of mountains and valleys. Every inch of it had to be cut, flattened, and rewelded.
The number one elevator shaft was so badly damaged that it was beyond repair entirely. The only positive note was that it was stuck in the upright position at the flight deck level, and so wouldn’t hinder launching of aircraft. The officers’ living quarters had to be pumped dry, repaired, and resealed to be usable. In the meantime, makeshift sleeping quarters were created by stringing up curtains in open areas to provide a modicum of privacy.
Seabees from the repair ship Vestal boarded Enterprise at her docking. The foreman estimated it would take three weeks to repair the damage, but Admiral Halsey made it clear that was three weeks he didn’t have—they would have to get it done in ten days. For those living aboard the carrier, there was no respite from the spark and sputter of the welders’ arcs.
Benny called Bill shortly after the ship arrived.
“I’m not sure if it’s worse for you there,” Bill said, “or me here, waiting for word—over and over again—whether you made it through! Jesus!” Bill had read the Santa Cruz dispatches about the damage Enterprise had sustained, and the casualty estimates. But there had been no casualty list, only word that losses to gunnery had been particularly high. He was electrified when the call came through and grateful beyond words that his brother had survived yet again.
“Listen, Bill,” comforted Benny, “in the things that count, we’re getting the upper hand. If they want to trade some more, well, let ’em. I think they’ll find the exchange even less in their favor going forward.”
“Anybody taking furloughs while they fix her up?” Bill asked. The abrupt topic shift reflected his concern about discussing too much war information over the phone lines. Nouméa was a free French island and friendly port, but it was known to have its Axis sympathizers. From half a world away, he couldn’t be sure that Benny was safe from determined eavesdroppers. But the subject change was not unwelcome.
He could hear the wistfuln
ess in Benny’s voice. “My God, wouldn’t I love that! I’d hoped to get out of the trenches for the holidays, but it’s not looking that way now. You’ll have to have a few good eggnogs for me, I guess.”
“You do know the big game is on, don’t you?” said Bill. “It’ll be different this year, of course, but wish we could go together like the old days.”
“Are you actually going?” Benny asked in a raised voice tinged with envy. “Are you going to the army-navy game?” he repeated, now hollering into the phone. Last Benny had heard, Congress was pushing for the game’s cancellation. “Well, I’ll be there in spirit, you can count on that—wish I could lend you my topside megaphone!”
The rest of the conversation centered on the game’s executive level rescue, relocation, and various other war-related adjustments—and, lastly the odds, a ritual the brothers had held dear for years. The distance between them closed with time-honored bets on score spreads and game stars before they reluctantly said their good-byes.
With the tireless vigilance of a surgical team bent over a life-support patient, the Seabees labored day and night so Enterprise could return to the urgent contest for Guadalcanal. Tipped off by coastwatchers and confirmed by scout planes, Halsey knew the Japanese were returning with an armada to strengthen their garrison and regain control of Henderson Field.
Enterprise had scarcely arrived at Nouméa before being ordered out again, taking the hard-working Seabees and their thrumming pneumatic drills with her. Enterprise hastened out of Nouméa on November 11 and made straight for the treacherous waters off Guadalcanal. From November 13 to 15, the solitary carrier and her escorts resumed their offense—an increasingly dangerous mission as fewer and fewer screening vessels were available to provide cover. At least eighteen American warships had already gone down off Guadalcanal, giving Savo Sound at the island’s southern end its nickname “Ironbottom Sound.” Japanese ship losses were even more numerous.
The Jersey Brothers Page 18
