Tin Can Titans

by John Wukovits

  The commissioning ceremony varied little from ship to ship. On the Nicholas, after the invited guests had filed aboard, the Navy accepted delivery of the destroyer from the shipyard, and the captain, Lieutenant Commander W. D. Brown, took command. All eyes focused on the skipper as he issued his first order to his executive officer to set the watch. “Now we had manned a living man-o’-war, United States Ship Nicholas (DD 449), the first of the new fleet destroyers that was an equal match of the enemy,” wrote Watertender 1/c Virgil N. Wing.11

  After the ceremony, the Nicholas sailors shuffled below to change into dungarees and begin their first work as a crew. The men added two coats of war paint to the brass fixtures to eliminate the gleam, and scraped paint from bulkheads until they reached metal to reduce the chances in combat of enemy shells igniting the flammable covering.

  Aboard O’Bannon, an initial glimpse of the Boston contingent made MacDonald long for grizzled veterans. As occurred aboard the other destroyers, most recruits looked no older than nineteen, and he guessed that few had received more than a handful of hurried weeks of basic training. “An awful lot of them were very inexperienced in everything,” said MacDonald, who believed that “some of them were mere children who had fibbed to the recruiting officer.” However, in those early months of the war, “the services were hard-pressed for men, and a ship had to take what it could get.”12

  At least three-quarters had never been to sea. They knew only the rudiments of seamanship, many lacked a high school education, and some had no idea where Japan was. As MacDonald stared at the youths who uneasily stepped aboard, “duffle bags over their shoulders, uncertain which way to turn,” a veteran petty officer with a dozen years at sea muttered, “Look at ’em. How you going to win a war with a mob like that? They don’t know a gun mount from a horse. It’s a sorry-looking crew.”

  The astute officer arrived at a different conclusion, though. Although he agreed with his petty officer that these boys required training, “what I saw coming aboard was a cross-section of my country, as it was then—raw and untrained youth that had taken freedom for granted.” He described them as “timid and awkward,” an assortment of “clerks, mechanics and schoolboys, of Catholics, Protestants and Jews, of Irish, Italians, Scandinavians and colored boys,” but remarked that they were “all lovers of their country, would make a great crew.” He believed that at the commissioning, “we were not great fighters then, not by a long shot,” but he was certain that thorough training and sound direction from officers, chiefs, and petty officers would weld them into “great fighters.”13 His crew was green, but MacDonald had also witnessed London’s civilians respond with courage and dignity to the bombings. He was confident this young crew would respond, too.

  Fletcher’s executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Joseph C. Wylie, was not concerned about the crew. His military family had showed him that an effective officer could work wonders with novitiates. His South Carolina–bred grandfather had fought nobly for the South during the Civil War, and his two sisters had married military officers, one currently in the Army and the other serving in a submarine. Fletcher’s first executive officer also counted on the talents of the destroyer’s skipper, Lieutenant Commander William M. Cole, like Wylie a Naval Academy graduate. Together they would whip those recruits into shape.

  Even though the young crew had been rushed through training camps to man ships, Wylie noticed that most were literate and patriotically motivated. Joining the military neither for career enhancement nor adventure, they had one goal in sight—to smash the enemies who threatened their nation. “Superb,” Wylie said of the crew, “they were highly motivated. They just came to fight.”14 He and Cole could work with that.

  “We Have to Cross the Ocean in That Small Thing?”

  The transformation from recruit to seaman began almost as soon as the band at the commissioning ceremony sounded its final note. “From this day on,” said MacDonald, “it was nothing but hard work for all hands in getting the ship ready to sail, getting her supplied, and in training.” MacDonald added, “It never stopped, really, the training part.”15

  During the first three weeks of July O’Bannon operated out of Boston and New York. Old hands grew frustrated with the young sailors, who were slow in moving to battle stations and ragged in executing drills. Even though they operated within sight of New England’s coastline, the veterans demanded perfection, for they understood more than did these fresh-faced youngsters that once they reached the combat zone, tardiness and errors resulted in men dying.

  Seaman 2/c James F. Setter of the Fletcher had left his home in Richmond, Kansas, to volunteer for the Navy two months before Pearl Harbor, thus making him a wizened veteran compared to the stream of untested youngsters the Navy rushed out of training camps to the fleet. Setter had not seen his new ship before the commissioning, and while it lacked the majesty of those mammoth battleships, he liked that he was serving in one of the first of a new class of destroyers. Whether the vessel steered toward Hitler in Europe or the Japanese in the Pacific, he figured he would go to war in style. Setter suppressed a chuckle when he heard the young sailor near him mutter, “You mean we have to cross the ocean in that small thing!”16 He’ll learn, thought Setter.

  For the next month Fletcher, often accompanied by her sister ship, O’Bannon, operated off Cuba, conducting antisubmarine drills, air raid alarms, and other exercises that would become an all too familiar part of their everyday lives in the South Pacific. The shakedown “took us into southern waters at a time when the submarine menace was at its peak,” wrote MacDonald. Reports of U-boat attacks frequently interrupted their training regimen, and several times they were ordered to protect “poor defenseless merchant ships against this menace.”

  The first time O’Bannon arrived at the scene of an attack, only floating debris remained of what had a few hours before been a ship. Though an escort had already retrieved the survivors, the images of flotsam from the sunken ship made a lasting impression on sailors who had heretofore witnessed nothing more serious than bloody noses and scraped arms. “This was the first realization of war that nearly all my men had ever been confronted with,” said MacDonald. “A ship virtually blown to bits in the middle of the night leaving behind all forms of wreckage floating around in the thick oil.”17

  On August 14 O’Bannon and Fletcher plucked out of the water eighty-nine survivors from two British freighters that had been part of a large convoy the pair had been escorting in the Caribbean. The sight of injured sailors and the knowledge that people had died at the hands of the enemy more deeply affected the crew than did debris bobbing in the waves.

  A few of the O’Bannon sailors, convinced that their ship would be torpedoed, refused to go below at night, lingering instead on deck in their life jackets. Some came to MacDonald in tears and begged for a transfer ashore. MacDonald talked to each man, trying to help him understand that while no one aboard ship wanted to be there, everyone had a duty to defend their nation. Most listened to his words and worked through their misgivings, but Wilkinson had to transfer one sailor who shot himself in the foot to avoid battle.

  Nicholas was the first to embark for the Pacific. After the ship had arrived back in the Boston area after completing the shakedown, crew scuttlebutt focused on the ship’s ultimate destination. Some guessed European waters, where an assault against Hitler was bound to begin sooner than later, while others put their money on the South Pacific, then crying for destroyers and any other vessel the Navy could send. They had their answer on August 17 when Nicholas weighed anchor and the destroyer inched south from the New England coastline toward the Panama Canal instead of east toward Europe.

  Their shakedown complete, in mid-August O’Bannon was under way for Boston and final preparations for heading to the Pacific. MacDonald spent as much time as he could with his fiancée, Cecilia, whom he met at one of the numerous social occasions he attended while in Washington, D.C., before his London assignment. Before he left she handed him a medal o
f St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, to keep him safe from what appeared to be a long and bloody war. MacDonald slipped the medal into his left breast pocket, and from then on made certain the keepsake was with him in every action.

  In early September O’Bannon, accompanied by the seaplane tender USS Albemarle (AV-5) and her old companion Fletcher, left the Navy Yard at Portsmouth, Virginia, and set course for the Panama Canal. On September 9 the trio passed through the canal and exited into the Pacific. While thousands of miles separated them from the enemy, they now steamed the same waters as the Japanese, and would soon join Nicholas in the South Pacific to meet the urgent situation brewing off Guadalcanal.

  The initial three ships paved the way for the other destroyers of Desron 21, which were either just beginning shakedown cruises or were gathering for the North African landings. The trio hurried to the Pacific before the rest for one reason—the Navy and Marines at Guadalcanal needed them as soon as possible.

  One day after O’Bannon passed through the Panama Canal, the official record of Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, stated that Japanese forces “for the counter attack on Guadalcanal are now approaching the area. If our information is correct, they can be expected to arrive there in great strength.”18 He needed everything he could lay his hands on now, not later.

  At the same time, Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander in Chief, United States Fleet, and Chief of Naval Operations, wanted destroyers for a scheduled North African landing. Holding the reins of power, King allowed O’Bannon, Fletcher, and Nicholas to join Admiral Ghormley, then in command of the South Pacific, but retained the other new destroyers emerging from the nation’s shipyards, including those that would ultimately constitute Destroyer Squadron 21, for use off North Africa. Ghormley would have to wait for more significant reinforcements until after the North African landings.

  The first three of the sparkling Fletcher-class destroyers, MacDonald’s O’Bannon, Cole and Wylie’s Fletcher, and Wing’s Nicholas, hastened westward toward unknown perils, the vanguard of what would eventually be the most honored destroyer squadron of the war. For the last three months of 1942 this trio operated in the South Pacific maelstrom, where American and Japanese forces fought a no-holds-barred battle to gain supremacy in that part of the world. The three would implant a standard of excellence and would establish the criteria with which other squadron ships measured themselves for the duration of the war.

  With their early arrivals in the South Pacific, the officers and crew of O’Bannon, Fletcher, and Nicholas would gain valuable experience that they could share with the ships that followed. There was one problem, though: once in a war zone dominated by the Japanese, would they still be afloat to welcome those destroyers?

  They would find out near an island little known before the war—Guadalcanal.

  As soon as O’Bannon and Fletcher left the Canal Zone on September 11, bound for Bora Bora, 4,600 miles away in the Society Islands of French Polynesia, drills intensified. Aboard the Fletcher, the crew griped about the incessant calls to battle stations for antiaircraft tests, abandon-ship exercises, and every imaginable drill possible, but knew that Cole and Wylie had their best interests at heart. “We had the best skipper and exec in the Navy,” remembers Ensign Fred Gressard. “Capt. Cole was a wonderful person, beloved by the entire crew, who had a marvelous relationship with our XO [executive officer] Wylie. They were two of the best officers I ever met and they really had our crew trained well in such a short period of time.”19

  O’Bannon matched suit. With the destroyers steaming at 13.5 knots, Wilkinson’s piercing black eyes scrutinized every exercise as he looked for imperfections that might, against the enemy, cause death or injury. Taking lessons from his coaches, the former football player believed that endless repetition created a successful rhythm that was crucial for victory. He sounded the klaxon at any hour of the day or night, sending his crew to battle stations five or more times each day.

  The ships arrived at Bora Bora on September 25, completing a tricky passage between coral reefs that challenged the navigating skills of MacDonald and Wylie. They remained in the beautiful lagoon for three days, refueling and replenishing supplies, before embarking on the weeklong voyage to Noumea, New Caledonia, 950 miles east of Australia. Upon arrival, crews lined up to port and starboard as the destroyers entered the blue-green waters of the massive lagoon, but were disappointed when, instead of a tropical island replete with palm trees and jungles, they viewed what Wyle called “sort of a drab colony.”20

  Large enough to hold a major portion of the Pacific Fleet, the lagoon would become a vital naval base for operations in the coming months, but at this stage of the war, ship navigators had few charts to guide them in. MacDonald had already maneuvered through the coral reefs at Bora Bora, and he was now “leery about how to get into this place.”21

  Fortunately, Ensign Perry Hall, the junior officer-of-the-deck aboard USS Sterett (DD-407), noticed O’Bannon and Fletcher headed directly toward a minefield protecting the harbor. Hall informed another officer, who shouted to O’Bannon over the “talk between ships” radio (TBS), “Reverse your engines—you are standing into danger!”22 Wilkinson ordered an immediate reversal, and both destroyers backed away from the minefield until Sterett could guide them into the harbor. Hall’s quick action prevented the possible loss of both O’Bannon and Fletcher, two new destroyers whose absence over the next few months could have adversely affected the naval balance off Guadalcanal.

  After the narrow escape, Wilkinson and MacDonald made the usual call on the Commander South Pacific, MacDonald’s comrade from London, Vice Admiral Ghormley. Ghormley shared the most recent reports coming from the fighting off Guadalcanal, and told MacDonald that he was “trying to hold our foothold in the Solomon chain with a shoestring against very strong Japanese forces.” Ghormley added that he expected help would arrive, “but none seemed very close.”23

  MacDonald was surprised both by his friend’s pessimism and when Ghormley said, “You know, Donald, I don’t have any fighting admirals out here.”24 Maybe O’Bannon and Fletcher could help alter that condition.

  Traveling ahead of O’Bannon and Fletcher, Watertender Wing had experienced a similar Pacific crossing aboard Nicholas, with drills filling the hours. “Held drills and battle problems all day,” he added to his diary for September 11. “I held plant drills during the battle problems. What-would-you-do-if? Some practices in thwarting disaster, because in emergencies your thoughts are scrambled and unreliable.”25

  When later that month the ship pulled into Tongatabu, part of the Tonga Islands, 550 miles southwest of Samoa, Wing chatted with the crew of other ships then in port and learned that four heavy cruisers had been lost in the August 9 Battle of Savo Island.

  The sour tidings continued at their next stop, Noumea. One afternoon Wing crossed the moored ships to the USS Manley (DD-74), where he found an old Navy friend, Clyde Hynes, stretched out on a canvas cot. Wing sensed a different demeanor in the man, who had been known for his “energetic and tough” deportment during service on cruisers in the 1930s. “He was shook up and said so,” wrote Wing. “He had been in the initial assault landing at Guadalcanal and Tulagi.” Over the last month Hynes and Manley had ferried troops and supplies each night to the Marines on Guadalcanal, taking shelter by day underneath jungle overhang in island coves to evade enemy aircraft. Wing thought that a visit to Nicholas, with her guns and “our first-class equipment,” would bolster his friend, “but he didn’t have any of the spirit I knew in him before—his comments were feeble” after examining Nicholas. “He had changed. It was like hearing a whimper from Jack Dempsey.”26

  Wing could fairly easily dismiss ship scuttlebutt, but he could not ignore this evidence of war’s toll. If an experienced sailor such as Hynes, a man Wing knew and trusted, could be so affected by the hazards off Guadalcanal, how might the inexperienced hands of Nicholas and the trailing tandem react?

  “The Site of a
Life-and-Death Struggle”

  Wing’s concerns were justified, as the operation that had begun off Guadalcanal in early August had within one month dissolved into disappointing land battles and disastrous naval encounters. September and October 1942 off Guadalcanal, a part of the Solomon Islands chain, 1,100 miles northwest of Australia, rivaled that of the December 7 catastrophe.

  “We have been unable to prevent the Japs from bombarding our positions and from landing troops on either flank of the Marine Guadalcanal position,” assessed Admiral Chester Nimitz’s Command Summary on October 1. The summary concluded that the Japanese had been building their forces for almost two months in preparation for a major assault, with Guadalcanal as the likely target. “The enemy’s most probable next moves are the recapture of the Southern Solomons, and the extension of control in New Guinea.” The summary stated that the Japanese moves would be done by “a gradual infiltration followed by a major assault.”27

  Pessimism in the United States mirrored the military’s uncertainty in the South Pacific. Newspaper columnists and military analysts, including the New York Times’s esteemed Hanson Baldwin, cautioned as far back as January that the nation was ill-prepared for the losses that lay ahead and warned that the United States could lose this war. “Is Guadalcanal to be the story of a desperate adventure?…” asked Charles Hurd in an October article appearing in the New York Times. “Brief Navy communiqués now indicate that the island is the site of a life-and-death struggle.” Hurd was certain that “the tropical island is the focal point of an intent and apprehensive American interest in the war.” He explained that if the Japanese triumphed and held Guadalcanal, “it would be the southern anchor of a battle line extending all the way from the Asiatic coast and a point of departure for a dangerous drive on our supply lines.” However, “in Allied hands it would be a base from which to begin the task of rolling back the Japanese.”28