by Brett Ashton
The crew was becoming very frustrated by the total lack of action thus far, and some were even expressing that somehow the war might be over before they actually had a chance to fight. It was as though they were thinking that somehow there would be a shortage of Japs to kill, and they wanted to get in there and do their share while they still had the chance. There was too much of a feeling of invulnerability on board for me. The North Carolina was considered to be the most powerful weapon on Earth at the time, and “nobody could touch us,” they said.
While I was optimistic because of the enthusiasm they displayed in their training, I did not share their feelings in general. In spite of the intensive drilling, this was still an untested crew, and nobody knew how they would respond in actual combat. I was one of the very few onboard who had actually experienced combat, and that experience was still an open wound to me. The recruiters’ posters and newsreels that started coming out at the time made it all look and sound like it was some kind of glorious thing to be in combat. But the reality of it, once you have been there, is quite different.
Sure I wanted to kill Japs. I wanted to shoot at them with everything the Showboat had to offer. But my mind was full of the desire to retaliate for the attack on Pearl in a way most of the rest of the crew could not yet relate to. Hopefully, they would never have to. It is a hard thing to survive the loss of a ship you served on. My mind was still full of the images of the men I knew who died on board the Oklahoma. And those images burned in my soul. However, I was not afraid to be there in the least bit. I was too angry for fear.
The difference, I suppose, was that I had been in combat and lost. I had one of these battleships shot right out from under me, and we, the crew of the Oklahoma, along with all the rest of the crews of the ships in Pearl Harbor during the attack, thought we were invulnerable, too. But the Okie was still upside-down in Pearl Harbor with a third of her crew still entombed within, and my battle scars were still very visible.
Some of the younger officers and crew asked me what combat was like, almost with a bit of a gleam of admiration in their eyes. I tried to tell them in a way that would make them ready without evoking too much fear in them. But without that fear, how could somebody ever really understand?
There is a certain intangibility of thought that goes with an experience like war that seems to defy explanation. How do you describe to somebody that depth of horror that you can’t even reach after the fact yourself? And how do you train somebody to continue in a firefight with that kind of horror pressing in all around them? The average man on this crew was just nineteen years old. Just a few short months ago, these men were digging around on the farm in the States or going to high school. How do you relate to them the experience of somebody getting blown apart or burned to a crisp right before your very eyes?
In the long run, I thought it would work out better just to drill them on their respective tasks so their attention would stay on their jobs, no matter what happened. Then wait for them to have some actual experience and let them sort it out on their own.
On the plus side, there was a slow trickle of news coming in about the rest of the war. We had won the Battle of Midway, largely because of being smiled upon by Lady Luck, and that tended to boost morale. On the other hand, once again because of luck, the United States Navy had just suffered a most humiliating defeat at the Battle of Savo Island. You never can predict the outcome of a battle because of the extreme variables that play into the situation. On one hand, we knew we could put up a good fight. And on the other hand, we also knew, in a glib sort of way, that we could lose. But I was one of the very few men on board who felt the sting of the latter.
I always got a kind of kick out of the recruiting posters. You know the ones—“Fight for your country! And defeat those cowardly Japs!” There was something the recruiting posters didn’t really mention very much. That one thing, which the crew in their enthusiasm wasn’t really thinking about, was the one thing that bothered me to no end. The Japs would be shooting back, and they were very, very good at it. The Empire of Japan had been at war for decades, and the United States had not been at war for decades.
They knew what they were doing. Did we?
Radar on the carriers, for some reason, was not working well that day. Ours was picking up targets at its ultimate maximum distance more as ghosts. Sometimes, we would see them and then they would be gone, just like that. The Japs were looking for us for sure, and there would be no doubt about it when they finally found us. There was just a feeling in the air that on that day we would be bound for combat, and it was going to be intense.
Early in the afternoon, reports started coming in about a Jap carrier that was spotted and attacked. Reports also came in about attacks on Henderson Field on Guadalcanal carried out by carrier-based aircraft. With the strategic importance of the base at Guadalcanal, I was sure we were going to run into a major force of Japanese whose only purpose for being there was to kill us. We were on high alert and about to head into the thick of things. General quarters sounded, and the ship rapidly prepared for battle, only to wait for hours until anything materialized.
At about 1600, Combat Information Center (CIC) called up to my station in Sky Control and reported a large wave of incoming aircraft. I looked over to the Enterprise and saw that they had started launching planes at a very rapid pace. I told the machine gun officer and other crew up there with me to “look sharp; the enemy has found us.”
A call went out over the ship’s communication systems for all stations to report that they were still ready for combat. The ship began to accelerate in the water, adding to the exaggerated motion you normally feel at the top of the tower in Sky Control as the ship hits the swells. We began to turn in closer to Enterprise. Our mission was to protect her.
Right on cue, the various stations under my command began reporting in. “Sky One, ready. Secondary Three, ready. Sky Four, ready.” My talker marked each one off on his check sheet as they all reported in. The machine gun officer reported, “All automatic weapons ready, sir.”
I took one last quick look around the deck to make sure we were ready. From my position in Sky Control, I could see most of the ship below me and could quickly assess the status of the various guns and directors. Everything was manned and ready, and a very large portion of the guns were beginning to turn toward the sky over Enterprise. It was assumed the carriers would be the primary target of the Jap attack.
For the first time since the sinking of the Oklahoma, I had the chance to fulfill the promise I had made to myself. I would never, during the course of the war, be caught unarmed again. I could still see in my mind the look on the faces of the aircrew of the Kate, which dropped the torpedo on the Oklahoma as it zoomed overhead, close enough that I could have shot it.
I unsnapped the holster that held my trusty new Colt forty-five (the old one was still on the Oklahoma) and pulled it out and checked it. A round was in the chamber, and it was cocked with the safety on. “Cocked and locked,” as they say. I slid it back into the holster and nervously began tapping the handgrip as I waited.
About a minute later, my sound-powered phone cracked to life with the voice of the talker for the bridge: “All stations report.” The tone of his voice struck me as being rather tense. I gave the order to my talker to report all air defense readiness to the gunnery officer, who relayed the message to the bridge.
The Showboat was ready for a fight, and, hopefully, the crew was as well.
The carrier’s radar, for some reason, didn’t detect the Japs at the range we would have wanted, but there was still a fair cap operating above us. It didn’t take long for the Enterprise and Saratoga to get the rest of the planes into the air, but even still, there were only fifty-four Wildcats to meet the 160 Japanese coming in.
The battle lingered for a time in the air above us as the American pilots desperately tried to protect the fleet. This gave the rest of the fighters on the carriers a little extra time to get airborne. You could see planes dropp
ing from the sky, trailing smoke in the distance as the battle developed. They were a little too far off to tell whose they were.
The radar operators in CIC began to give continuous updates on range and numbers of enemy aircraft. It looked for a short time like the battle was going toward the Saratoga, but then it turned back toward the Enterprise. It was only a short matter of time until the Japs would be able to break through the air defenses and begin to attack the ships. And it didn’t look like they would be breaking through in small numbers.
The target designator operators focused in on several aircraft which suddenly moved in closer at a very rapid pace. “Concentrate fire on the bombers; the fighters have second priority. Here they come,” I said to the crew, thinking it would be easier to survive a strafing attack than a bomb or torpedo.
At 2000 yards maximum, the twenty-millimeter guns didn’t have the kind of range I would have liked. I found myself wishing, not for the last time, for a longer range, higher caliber, automatic weapon. And the remaining one point ones and fifty-caliber guns were considered to be a last-ditch effort against the modern Jap planes we were facing. The only real long-distance weapons on board usable against aircraft were the ship’s twenty five-inch dual purpose guns, and we were going to use them as much as we could. So when we did finally decide to open fire, the five-inch guns would open first, then the automatic weapons as the Japs got closer.
Just about then, several puffs of flak smoke appeared above Enterprise from her own guns, along with the delayed sound of the explosions.
Several seconds later, the order came from the gunnery officer. “Commence firing!”
“Commence firing!” I repeated.
The reaction was almost immediate. Boom, the first gun fired. A few seconds later, boom, boom: several more opened up. Then, for the first time, I witnessed the whole port side of five-inch guns on the North Carolina erupt in continuous gunfire. The entire ship shook beneath me, as if the ocean itself was shaking from the violence of it. The noise was deafening. It was almost impossible to communicate with each other in Sky, let alone on the phones to the other stations of the ship. Most of the communication in Sky was given by hand signals. I would slap one of the target designator operators on the shoulder and point at the Jap plane I wanted him to shoot at.
The Japanese aircraft continued to press the attack closer, and it wasn’t long until we were surrounded. The starboard guns opened up, doubling the noise level. Thick black puffs of smoke filled the sky above us as the guns continued to fire.
Still, the Japs kept coming closer and started making actual runs on the Enterprise.
The Showboat’s twenty-millimeter and one point one-inch guns lit up all at once, not adding so much to the volume of the noise but the intensity. Rather than being able to hear individual gunfire, it was just an intense roar of total deafening noise. Giant cyclones of tracer rounds streamed forward from the guns of the ships around us, following the pattern of attack of the oncoming enemy.
Time after time, enemy planes kept being knocked down, but for how long? How long could they press the attack? How long could we defend against a determined onslaught of this magnitude?
I didn’t have to wait long for my answer. One broke through and dropped a bomb aimed at the Enterprise. A puff of smoke and water billowed up next to the starboard side; it was a very near miss. We knew we weren’t the main target of the attack; the carriers were, but that didn’t slow our gunfire a bit. We were all in the same fleet, and it was our fate to live or die together. We needed them for air cover as much as they needed us for anti-aircraft fire support. Without one or the other, we would all be vulnerable.
And soon enough, my observations proved out. There were plenty enough Japs in the air to attack all of the larger ships in the formation. And they began to break through the fleet’s defenses more rapidly than I could count. Bombs began to rain down all around us; several of them splashing large amounts of water over the Showboat’s main deck and several close enough that the blast knocked some of the crewmen off their feet. But we were very lucky to have a skilled navigator, who kept the ship turning to dodge the dive-bombers, and none of them struck us.
I became aware of a voice that I could barely hear on the sound powered phones: “Sky, bridge; are we on fire?” I looked down for the first time since the battle started. The entire superstructure was covered in thick smoke from the guns being blown aft by the winds over the deck. It was a little bit shocking. My attention until then had been toward the sky, and in Sky Control, we were well above the smoke. It took a couple of seconds to look around and see that there was no fire; it was just the guns. “No we are not on fire, repeat, we are not on fire!” I shouted back through my phones, turning my attention back skyward toward the real threat.
Apparently, one of the other ships saw all of the smoke coming from our guns and thought we had been hit.
Where I was, I had a clear view of what was going on, and it wasn’t pretty. All the anti-aircraft guns were blazing at their full fury, trying to fight off the attack. I had never seen anything like it before. Indeed, the Showboat was proving her worth in combat, but the question still remained: “Would it be enough?”
Several more Jap planes slipped through. One made a dive on the Enterprise and released a bomb. I watched as it sailed down and struck the ship on the aft part of the flight deck. Several seconds later, boom, an orange fireball and black smoke rose into the sky above her.
I continued to watch the damaged carrier in brief glimpses as I frantically worked to do my job. “Bridge, Enterprise has been hit!” I shouted into the phones. A large column of black smoke begin to pour out of the big E; I didn’t have to imagine what was going on over there. I knew all too well, and while I was sympathetic to their plight, all I could do is hope we wouldn’t be next.
Just then, a Zero broke through and began a strafing run towards us. I would have to guess he was coming down as an attempt to identify us, being that the Japs had never seen a battleship like the North Carolina in the American fleet before. It seemed to me he had to be pretty suicidal to even attempt to get as close to us as he was getting.
“Get that Nip out of my sky!” I shouted at the machine gun officer as I reached for my own forty-five, drawing it out of its holster and flipping the safety off. He was coming in very fast and low, with a stream of tracer fire erupting from the guns of his aircraft. Below me on the main deck, a dozen smaller fifty-caliber and twenty-millimeter machine guns spun around and sent a stream of tracers back to greet him. I could see the expression on his face as he approached over the forward part of the ship and below my position in Sky Control.
It was now or never, so I decided to take my shot. I leveled the sights of my Colt at the canopy and pulled the trigger over and over until it went empty. Any sound my gun made was insignificant next to those of the Showboat, and the only way I knew it fired at all was because of the way it jumped in my hands from the recoil.
Now you may think me a little bit touched in the head by my old age or something. Or maybe I’m just an “old salt” telling sea stories. And that’s alright. But exactly when I fired the sixth round, several things happened. A bullet hole appeared in the Zero’s canopy, blood splattered on the glass, and the Jap pilot convulsed and slumped forward.
About a half a second later, large chunks of the structure of the aircraft began getting blown off from the Showboat’s guns, striking the plane. Smoke streamed from the engine and then flames until it hit the water off of the starboard side. Now, I know the gunners of the North Carolina shot that plane down, and I can understand how you could think I’m just an old man telling sea stories, but I also know I killed that pilot.
We only had to wait about thirty seconds for the next hit on Enterprise. This explosion was bigger, as if it hit a powder magazine or something, followed by several secondary explosions. The fireball was tremendous. I could tell she was beginning to pick up a list. It’s very easy to see on a carrier at any angle because of
the large flat top.
Again, we didn’t have to wait long for another hit on Enterprise. Maybe two minutes. The third hit was amidships by the island structure. Even more smoke poured out of the ship.
Then, without warning or any obvious reason, the Enterprise turned hard to starboard. Several smaller ships had to evade to keep from being run over. She was hard over and running at full speed, out of control. She began to list so far that aircraft just started falling over the side. She had obviously lost her rudder controls, and they slammed into the full starboard position.
It wasn’t much longer when the Japanese attack ended, and they began to withdraw. The order was given to cease fire. As rapidly as the overwhelming noise from the Showboat began, it ended, and the following relative quiet was as stark as the noise had seemed. I looked at my watch and noticed the entire attack only took seven minutes.
Some forty minutes passed with the Enterprise still turning circles before their steering problems were corrected. Most of the fires were put out fairly soon as well, but it was still easy to tell she was having some difficulty. We stood by, doing circles right along with her, guarding against the possibility of another air attack. We did expect another wave of Japs.
There was only light damage from enemy strafing and one casualty, but it was pretty obvious the Enterprise would not survive another attack. She was beat up pretty bad, and we expected the second wave within a few hours.
Later on, our radar did pick up another large wave of enemy planes to the southwest of us. It was right about where we would have been had the Enterprise’s steering not failed. Evidently the Japanese did not spot us again because a second attack never materialized.
By the end of the battle, the Japs had lost a small aircraft carrier and at least seventy planes with experienced crews, which I was sure they could not afford to lose. The North Carolina was credited with seven kills and assisted with many more. And just as importantly to the overall strategy of the war, Guadalcanal remained in American hands.
