Tin Can Titans

by John Wukovits

  Operations cut from Halsey’s playbook, these missions permitted his men to take the initiative instead of passively reacting to Japanese moves. When Halsey visited Fletcher during this time, he noticed that the crew wore blue-dyed T-shirts. “You’re informal,” he said to Cole.

  “Admiral, we have a war to fight,” was the reply.1

  Better words could not have been uttered to the old destroyerman.

  Commander MacDonald was as pleased as Halsey with the switch to the offensive and was certain that his crew, having been bloodied in the major November engagement and in numerous smaller encounters as part of the Cactus Striking Force, would be up to the challenge. However, two issues gnawed at him. The original three destroyers now operated with inexperienced skippers and crews, and MacDonald hoped his ship and men would not suffer due to those untested arrivals trickling into the South Pacific. He also prayed that senior commanders who took Desron 21 into battle would properly employ destroyers as separate units capable of mounting massed torpedo attacks. He had debated this topic with his compatriots, both during formal meetings at Noumea and over drinks at officers’ clubs, and all agreed the destroyers worked more effectively as an independent arm.

  Their forays up the Slot during the remainder of the year kept them on the move almost around the clock. Ships returned from one mission only to load up with more ammunition and fuel and head back into the Slot for another. In addition to surface engagements with enemy cruisers and destroyers, they conducted bombardments, hunter-killer missions, and patrols. They rocketed five-inch shells shoreward and antiaircraft fire skyward. They dropped depth charges and eluded enemy fighters.

  In commanding the squadron, Captain McInerney juggled his ships, sometimes sending part of his squadron to conduct one assignment while the remainder of the squadron executed other tasks. On June 3, for instance, while Nicholas, Fletcher, and Taylor were at anchor in Espiritu Santo, La Vallette was undergoing maintenance work, and the other destroyers escorted ships to and from Guadalcanal.

  The nearly yearlong Battle of the Slot offered exhaustion and fear, death and loss, exhilaration and joy. By the time it ended, the Japanese no longer controlled the Solomons.

  “The Fightingest Thing Afloat”

  “Isn’t there some way, some place, where we can win a real victory over the Americans?” asked Emperor Hirohito of his commanders after the military withdrawal from Guadalcanal. He wanted a triumph that would cement the Japanese hold in the Solomons, but military action in the first part of 1943 fell abysmally short of that objective. “The way we’re waging war now raises the enemy’s morale just as on Guadalcanal,” he complained.2

  One commander stepped to the front. In the same month that Halsey formed Desron 21, Commander Tameichi Hara received command of Destroyer Division 27. His four older destroyers could not match MacDonald’s O’Bannon in speed or radar, but Hara’s skills as a commander compensated for some of the ships’ shortcomings. In his flagship, Shigure, like her American counterpart O’Bannon the only Tokyo Express destroyer to emerge without losing a man, Hara gained acclaim in the South Pacific for his daring and competence. Other commanders called Shigure the “Ghost Destroyer” and nicknamed Hara the “Miracle Captain” for the many times he eluded his foe. Even Hara admitted that his time in the South Pacific in 1943 “was indeed the most glorious period of my career.”

  His initial examination of his destroyer crews revealed that they were undisciplined malcontents who required extensive training before he would be comfortable taking them into battle. Hara repeatedly drilled the crews, telling his officers that if they could not perfect matters in practice, they would certainly perish in battle. Promoted to captain in May, Hara opted to retain command of Shigure instead of handing it over to another officer. He believed his squadron required a steady hand in the flagship in the coming months, and that his experience made him the obvious choice.

  Like MacDonald and Halsey, Hara loved destroyers. He claimed that they “were the work horses of the Imperial Navy” and that, as the Fletcher-class destroyers were doing for Halsey, they capably filled in for the larger warships until those battleships and cruisers were needed. “My happiest duty in the Imperial Navy was in destroyers,” he said.3

  In Hara, MacDonald and his compatriots faced a worthy foe.

  Hara’s counterpart in the Slot, MacDonald, matched his antagonist skill for skill. He and his crew left Tulagi-Purvis Bay, across Ironbottom Sound from Guadalcanal, and turned northwestward to enter the Slot. Few threats existed along the northern arm, which comprised mainly Santa Isabel and Choiseul Islands, but the southern arm featured airfields and harbors along its length, especially on Vella Lavella, Kolombangara, and New Georgia Islands. Almost every day the Japanese, often commanded by Hara in Shigure, entered the Slot from the northwestern end while MacDonald and his Desron 21 mates approached from the southeastern end, groping for each other in the passageways and channels of the nautical no-man’s-land. The two sides engaged in a multilayered struggle that lasted for much of 1943, a clash consisting of hundreds of incidents ranging from antisubmarine patrols to four major surface encounters that brought the destroyers into close combat with each other.

  “It was the beginning of a long and violent campaign,” described Time magazine. “Up & down the lush green coasts and pale, flat waters of the Solomons, the 2,100-ton O’Bannon and her sisters steamed with bones in their teeth and a swift hard punch for Japanese ships great or small. She and the other lean, thin-skinned cans, manned by youngsters fresh from colleges and high schools, screened the big ships, fought submarines, covered landings, popped Jap planes out of the coppery skies, blasted shore installations with their 5-in. rifles.”4

  MacDonald and the captains of the Desron 21 destroyers started most operations by conferring with the squadron commander, McInerney. The group discussed the rights and wrongs of previous missions, and McInerney outlined the plans for upcoming missions and shared information from Halsey.

  In the Slot during 1943, however, the Japanese did not always allow time to discuss missions. “Get under way and go up the Slot” was the oft-heard command from headquarters; “more later.”5 Fast alerts sent ships scrambling to counter the Tokyo Express.

  In groups of three to six, the destroyers embarked on nightly runs up the Slot. Often “we weren’t told exactly what was coming,” wrote MacDonald.6 Men aboard the O’Bannon figured that whenever Officer’s Cook 3/c Rudolph Rivers walked to the bridge with a thermos of coffee for MacDonald, they were about to charge up the Slot, for MacDonald would not need the liquid unless he planned to remain on the bridge all night. Muttering profanities under their breath, the crew prepared for hours standing at stations and waiting for a clash that would inevitably arrive at some point.

  “Sleepless and stunned,” MacDonald said, “we would come down from battle or bombing, only to refuel, load ammunition and supplies, and turn the prow northward to the shoals of death.… Everybody could see what direction we were heading in, but they didn’t want to believe what they saw.” MacDonald tried to alleviate some of the concern by explaining over the loudspeaker what they might expect. He could not always divulge specifics, because sometimes even MacDonald had little idea of what awaited, but he believed that if the men felt their skipper was honest with them, they would be more conscientious for him when the firing started.

  “I just told them in a matter-of-fact way and voice something like this: ‘Men, we probably will intercept a light Japanese task force at about 10:30 o’clock tonight. Sleep a little if you can, until the call for battle stations. Whatever you do, don’t worry. Leave that to me.’” He found that even a few words produced results beyond what he expected. “Cheerless as these little talks were, I am surprised at what they did for the morale of the crew.”

  His crew even began joking about their commander’s brief messages. One time when he announced, “We may meet a light Japanese task force at 10:30 o’clock,” a Swedish machinist’s mate said, “Ja, ligh
t battleships, light heavy cruisers and light barges that make 45 knots an hour.”

  MacDonald did not realize how much the men appreciated his words until the night he forgot to talk to the crew. His quartermaster later asked about the omission and told MacDonald that the men had been standing around the loudspeakers waiting for him to speak. It was then that MacDonald realized his men “had become almost superstitious about these cannonside chats. Some of them felt that it was a ritual necessary to victory, that without it they might be sunk.”7

  Each trip started in late afternoon so that the ships would arrive in no-man’s-land around dark. On the rare occasions when cruisers accompanied them, the destroyers formed an antisubmarine screen and maneuvered into standard night antiaircraft formation after dark, at which time the crews went to general quarters until the next morning.

  They became expert at spotting dark-shrouded landforms identifying their location off New Georgia or one of the other islands. They had to be skilled in such matters, for night in the tropics arrived with a suddenness that startled newly arrived sailors, as if the ocean swallowed the orange-red sun and every trace of light in a massive gulp. Faint pinks on the water’s surface turned dark in the humid tropical night, with the brilliance of the Southern Cross constellation and other stars twinkling above offering a wondrous contrast to the darkened stage below.

  In quieter moments, when he could for a few moments escape the dangers of the battle zone by being alone with his thoughts, Seaman Chesnutt found comfort in observing the beauties of nature that, under more normal circumstances, could have adorned a travel poster highlighting South Pacific attractions. “At night when we were steaming along, I could look at the bow of the ship and as it cut through the waves, phosphor[escence] would cause sparks in the water,” he wrote. “It was unusual and pretty. When everything was dark and no lights, we could also see the stars so much better. It looked as if there were millions of them and they were very bright. It was beautiful.”8

  Men also stared into the pitch black, alert to the potential terrors that might be lurking. “We knew it was always possibly dangerous because of submarines or lone bombers,” said Machinist’s Mate 1/c Willy Rhyne of O’Bannon. “You always had something to worry about. They kept us alert. Anything could happen at any time. Going up the Slot, we were at battle stations all night.”9 The enemy seemed to know the ins and outs of every inlet and channel in the Solomons, and even if they did not, flares often aided their efforts by marking the destroyers’ courses.

  The crew leaned on each other for reassurance. Rhyne gained confidence because of the experienced, disciplined crew around him. He placed his life in their hands, and they in his, and in unison they handed their futures to MacDonald on the bridge. The ship’s crew became an intricate organism of its own, depending on each man in the same way a body depends on internal organs. They took pride in being part of what the men called the “Dungaree Navy,” a reference to the blue jeans and work shirts the sailors wore and to the lack of rigid decorum that structured life on battleships and cruisers.

  “Little has been written of the part that our destroyers are playing in the Pacific War, where they are called upon to fulfill such a variety of missions that they have become multi-purpose ships, engaging in any form of combat,” wrote Commander Frederick Bell, skipper of USS Grayson, in 1944. “Bantamweights in comparison with the great battlewagons, they pack a punch out of all proportion to their size. They are triple-threat weapons, built to strike at any enemy on or over or under the sea.” Bell quoted an admiral’s characterization of the destroyers that operated in the Slot “the fightingest thing afloat.”10

  Lacking the occasional specific mission, such as a bombardment, Desron 21 destroyers plied the waters in search of submarines or barges. They returned to Tulagi-Purvis Bay early the next morning, enjoying the pleasant scent of tropical flowers and the cool early morning breezes yet unsullied by the day’s glaring sun. Once at anchor, crews brought aboard ammunition to replace whatever had been expended the night before and refueled the ship to be ready for the next night’s run up the Slot, catching whenever possible an hour or two of rest in the midday sun.

  “We shall never forget the countless, seemingly endless hours we spent at General Quarters while prowling in enemy waters, dodging bombs, shells, mines, and torpedoes,” wrote Lieutenant Commander Henry DeLaureal of the Taylor. “Someone aptly called the ‘Slot’ a hellhole. And after we returned to our anchorage at Tulagi, we were visited regularly by Jap snoopers and bombers. How we would have liked to have strangled the Jap who used to come down to Purvis Bay every night, depriving us of rest when it was so badly needed by all!”11

  The stress of spending what correspondent Foster Hailey termed “another sizzling day” in the tropical heat exacted a toll on everyone. Temperatures in engine rooms often soared beyond 120 degrees. Men showered, only to be covered with sweat before they stepped on deck. One skipper compared it to living inside a heated steel box, where the oppressive warmth nearly suffocated the crew as they performed their tasks. “Even at dusk, when black clouds tumbled across the mountains and the heavens descended in a mighty deluge there was no relief, for moisture condensed within the ship and dripped down the bulkheads or drifted about in wisps of foggy dampness. We could not get dry. We could not keep cool. And there was no rest.” The skipper said that operating in the Slot aboard a destroyer was “like going to jail, with the added inconvenience of running the risk of being drowned.”12

  Men abandoned their quarters belowdecks—which, Hailey wrote, “fairly crawled with heat,” much as if they lived in “a Turkish bath”—to sleep topside. Sailors plopped mattresses wherever they found space on deck, and hoped they were interrupted only a few times by rain bursts. Hailey said that each morning the crews would awaken “and rise from their sodden bunks to greet the blood-red sun of a new, hot day almost as tired as when they turned in the night before.”13

  Seaman Whisler and his O’Bannon shipmates shook off their weariness and trod to their stations as another day and night in the Slot beckoned. “It’s what you had to do,” said Whisler years later. “You get so tired that you just lay on your life jacket and catch every minute of sleep. When you were at general quarters, you stayed there day and night! I think that’s why today I sleep so well. I value sleep. I can fall asleep in five minutes now.”14

  Hailey, who had covered other battles and other units in the war’s first year, gained increased admiration for the destroyers of Desron 21 with each day that he accompanied O’Bannon and Nicholas into the Slot. Surface engagements, however deadly, were typically fleeting moments of intense fighting. Running up the Slot, however, ground on day after day. “There were days and weeks of only hard work,” Hailey conveyed to home-front readers. “Most sailors will tell you those were worse to live through then the purple nights when the Tokyo Express was running and Advance Striking Force, Tulagi, was on the prowl.”15

  Attentive to signs among his crew, MacDonald noticed that the tension he observed among the younger sailors the previous fall had now also taken a toll among the veterans. The heaviest worriers, MacDonald thought, were often some of the smartest crewmembers, because they more clearly understood the risks and visualized the dangers.

  One night a respected veteran approached MacDonald and, with tears in his eyes, said, “Captain, I can’t go back up there. I can’t endure it. Don’t you see, sir, we’re up here until we’re dead!’” MacDonald had expected something like that, for “a lot of us had begun to feel that we were up there until we were dead, that we were the sacrifice that must be made until new ships could be built and sent and new men could be trained.”

  “I know,” MacDonald said, trying to console the man. “We all hate it. We all want to go home. We can’t quit. You know the enemy. We must stop him.”16 After explaining that he could not order the man stateside, he added comforting words until the veteran regained his composure and returned to his station.

  MacDonald could not
control his crew’s issues with the home front. Some contended with problems, such as learning in a letter that a father or a baby son was ill, or that a girlfriend wanted to break up. While they laughed at the propaganda statements broadcast over the airwaves by Tokyo Rose, such as when she mentioned that a Japanese wrestler could handily defeat Popeye, they fell into melancholy when she played romantic favorites from Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, or any of the other popular singers back home. “People back there were having a good time,” MacDonald wrote of the home front. “Out here people were dying.”17

  As the weeks passed, MacDonald had no choice but to send some men home. One sailor with twelve years of experience broke under the strain and had to be transferred to a hospital. Lieutenant Malcolm M. Dunham, O’Bannon’s doctor, who had been a concern of MacDonald’s following the November Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, required a change of scenery to avoid a complete collapse. Dunham left in March for a hospital in New Caledonia, where he capably served for the rest of the war.

  One officer who had been awarded a Silver Star for his actions on December 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor, developed a nervous condition from which “he rapidly wilted physically from the beautiful specimen he was when he first arrived to somewhat of a shadow of his former self. When this became very evident to me,” said MacDonald, “it was felt that for his own good we had better transfer him to some other duty.”18 The officer later regained his health and returned to command his own ship.

  A chief pharmacist swallowed mercurochrome in an attempt to leave the ship, and MacDonald worried about a young ensign who, because he lacked confidence and knowledge of his duties, failed to gain the respect of the petty officers and crew. On one bombardment run, two men purposely failed to appear at their stations in the lower handling rooms in hopes of being court-martialed and sent out of the fighting zone. MacDonald had another solution in mind: “We’re going back up there [the Slot] again tonight and, instead of your being given freedom, when I call for general quarters I’m going to lock you up.”