Vengeance: Hatred and Honor

by Brett Ashton

  Several of the guns on the port side opened fire on the high altitude formation. Two of them had begun a diving attack of some kind, but the angle wasn’t nearly steep enough for a dive-bomb run, and they were still too far away to get the right angle to release a bomb on target.

  One of the aircraft in the formation to the aft erupted into a ball of flame, skipped across the water, and exploded. The other started trailing smoke, the normal point where a damaged aircraft would turn back, but this one kept coming with all of its guns blazing and a bomb on the bottom of it.

  The two attacks were being timed out, high and low, so the attack was continuous and keeping the guns of the ship pointed in different directions; that was obvious. But they were not lining themselves up for any normal use of weapons that I could see. There would be no chance of hitting a ship with a bomb from either of those altitudes, angles, and speeds, and have the aircraft which dropped it still survive the blast.

  The two high-approaching aircraft were coming in closer and pushed over into a steeper dive that was still too shallow to drop a bomb. They were moving extremely fast.

  Wild cyclones of automatic weapons fire spun up from the ship as the Buffalo reached its maximum potential of firepower.

  The gunners on the starboard side converged their fire on the remaining aircraft as it sped toward us. A wing ripped loose from it, rolling over violently and splashing into the sea, just off of the starboard side of the ship. Its bomb exploded, raining shrapnel down over the open decks.

  “It should have turned back long before that,” I said to myself. “And why was an aircraft attacking so low loaded with a bomb?”

  Just then, one of our guns must have hit a bomb on one of the high altitude attackers because it blew up and showered debris down into the sea several hundred feet from the ship. The other one spun out of control and hit the water about fifty feet from the fantail.

  Several more from the high altitude formation broke loose in a pattern that looked like a typical dive-bomb attack. So I put the ship in another starboard turn to lower our profile toward them, but just as that happened, several more low altitude aircraft sped toward us from the aft side of the ship.

  These were Val dive bombers; why would they be coming in low like this?

  The two high altitude bombers, both Judys, missed the ship by a pretty wide margin, evidently because of inexperienced pilots. But the Vals, apparently loaded with bombs, kept coming straight on.

  Once again, the Buffalo’s guns cut them to ribbons, this time at a safer distance out, but it was still very disturbing. “What on God’s Earth are they doing?” I said to myself.

  The attack continued like this several more times at a very rapid but even pace. The Japanese would sometimes actually drop their bombs but we were lucky to be missed each time. This was either because of the poor skill of the Japanese pilots or the superb skill of the Buffalo’s crew.

  But mixed into the shifting formations of attacking aircraft, there were always several coming in either at angles much too steep to drop their bombs or much too low. And those ones always came in very straight and very fast, and would keep coming even after you hit them, until you completely destroyed them. Those were the ones that absolutely scared the ever-living daylights out of me.

  Sometime during the fourth or fifth wave of these attacks, my attention turned toward one of the escorting destroyers. They were under furious attack as well, and I thought maybe I could figure out what the Japs were doing if I watched them from a different point of view.

  A Val dive bomber broke loose from the high altitude formation and began a shallow dive. There was, as before, no way to release a bomb from that angle and hit a target. At an altitude of about five thousand feet, he pushed his aircraft over into a very steep dive. The anti-aircraft guns on the destroyer had hit him several times by then, and the aircraft was trailing smoke. There was no way to release a bomb at that angle and speed and expect it to land on target, let alone pull out of a dive like that without the pilot losing consciousness.

  As the aircraft continued on, there was no bomb release. “Maybe they hit the pilot?” I thought to myself. But I quickly disregarded that because it still didn’t explain the attack angle.

  Then, with no apparent attempt to pull out, or veer away, that airplane crashed straight down into the center of the superstructure of the destroyer and exploded into a huge fireball.

  Because I remembered the Japanese sailor who blew himself up on the deck of my ship that very morning, I figured out what they were doing. And when I realized this, had I not been busily engaged in directing my own ship in combat, I would have surely been sick.

  “Admiral, something is different,” I said.

  The attack had been over for almost two hours. I had consulted the major before deciding to invite the admiral to the bridge to give him the report on my observations of the battle.

  “How so?” the admiral responded.

  “The attack pattern has changed. Some dive bombers aren’t releasing their bombs. The dive pattern has shifted from a straight run from a high altitude, to a slight dive until they reach a lower altitude and higher speed, followed by a dive which would be too steep to use a bomb effectively.”

  “Why couldn’t these just be unskilled pilots?” the admiral asked.

  “It’s like they don’t intend to pull out, sir. Usually you can hit a Nip’s plane once or twice with anti-aircraft fire, and they turn away, but some of these are not turning back, even when obviously damaged. And then there are the low level bombers that come in right down almost on the water.”

  “What would be the purpose of such an approach?” he asked me, looking a little puzzled.

  “That’s just it. They could never release their bombs without getting caught and killed in the blast themselves,” I answered.

  “So just what is it you think they’re trying to do?”

  “Well, the Japs are a different culture where honor is everything and to lose a fight brings an ultimate dishonor. My marine division officer, an expert in Nip culture, reminded me of the passage from Sun Tzu’s Art of War: ‘On desperate ground, I would proclaim to my soldiers the hopelessness of saving their lives. For it is the soldier’s disposition to offer an obstinate resistance when surrounded, to fight hard when he cannot help himself, and to obey promptly when he has fallen into danger.’”

  “What exactly are you saying, Commander Williams?”

  “Sir, I think we are winning the war much more than the Japs can face up to. Look at all the territory they had at their peak and where they are now. And with us taking back the Philippines, there seems little hope for them maintaining their empire for much more than a few years.

  I continued, “It may seem crazy to you or me, but I think they are deliberately crashing their aircraft into us, because they are fighting as Sun Tzu would say, ‘on desperate ground.’”

  “That’s insane!” he said. “What kind of a nut job would do something like that?”

  “Is it really, though?” I asked. “Look, sir; if you completely set aside the abhorrent principles of killing yourself like that and look at it from the tactical viewpoint,” I added as he began to look at me like I was one of those “nut jobs.”

  “But Commander Williams, all through the war, there have been examples of injured Nips crashing their aircraft into our ships,” the admiral said, apparently still not willing to believe it.

  “I understand, sir, but think about it: for the price of two or three planes, bombs, and pilots, they might be getting hits that would sink an aircraft carrier or battleship. Whereas before, we would shoot down twenty or thirty of them, and some of the time, they still wouldn’t even get any hits at all.

  “It is an act of desperation, for sure,” I continued. “And the pilots themselves would have to be insane to do it. But I think if that’s what they’re doing, insane or not, they are going to get some very terrifying results from it. Because how do you defend yourself against a man who knows
he’s already dead?”

  “I see your point, Commander Williams,” the admiral said. “Do you have anything else to report?”

  “Just the observation that the enemy has to be very desperate to do something like this, sir. I think we have them on the run in the worst possible way, and from here on out, they are going to fight like cornered rabid dogs.”

  And rabid dogs are all that they were in my mind. To me, they were nothing but the most utterly soulless and depraved animals to ever live, and I became frustrated that I could not think of enough to do to eliminate this blight from the face of God’s Earth.

  Wounded Buffalo

  Now, when you are the commanding officer of a ship during wartime, there are your good days, like the flag raising at Iwo Jima; your bad days, like the events following the bombing of the Franklin; and then there are your outright terrible days. There was a time when the Buffalo experienced several really bad days in a row, which then stretched out to weeks in a row.

  During a war, you learn to expect that bad things are going to happen, but you never know just what will happen, when it will happen, or how bad it will be. No matter how prepared you are, it is never quite accurate to say you are ready. When something finally does happen, you suddenly experience the cumulative effects of the decisions you make on a daily basis. After being in command for only a short time, you realize not many decisions are unimportant, so you always have to think them through, try to predict what the outcome of them will be, then hope for the best.

  It’s really not that much different than daily life, except if you make the wrong call as the skipper of a Cleveland-class cruiser while the Japanese are shooting at you, almost thirteen hundred people could end up dead in a hurry.

  We were out patrolling, mostly for submarines, as part of a destroyer/cruiser task force. The idea at the time was to keep the Japs from threatening the supply lines to the forward bases, of which Iwo Jima was one. We were essentially escorting three destroyers, providing additional air support for them in case of attack while they hunted for submarines.

  As the flag ship for the group we had the “fortune” of having an admiral and his staff on board. I never liked being the flagship of a group of ships because sometimes the admirals like to think they are in command of the ship rather than the task force, and that really can get in the way.

  If you have ever seen the Pacific Ocean, you would know it is really something to behold. It can get very rough at times, but for some long periods of time, it can become very smooth and peaceful, like glass. It is almost like the ship is floating on a very large mirror where everything in the sky is almost perfectly reflected in the water.

  This day was one of the smooth days, the kind you really like because you can see everything coming for miles around the ship. Things like periscopes and torpedo wakes really stand out when the ocean is like that, and in combat, that can really make a huge difference. It couldn’t be counted on to always protect you, but it did tend to relax you a bit.

  I was on the bridge with my old friend from the Oklahoma, Chuck Lewis. We were reviewing the procedures for air combat and training, not that I wanted to make any changes; that would be the executive officer’s job. I just always felt as captain, I needed to know what the department heads were thinking and how the crews were trained in case of a crisis, as well as knowing how the ship’s systems operate. That was the kind of thinking that won me the Navy Cross at Pearl.

  As well, it is a sign of a good officer to know precisely where his authority ends, and not to step on the authority of those above and below you, as well as not allow them to step on yours. As captain, you do have the trump card of the ship, but you really have to know how and when to use it, or you could end up in big trouble from the admirals in a hurry.

  Chuck was in the middle of telling me about some of the improvements in the optics on the directors for the secondary batteries when I noticed one of the watches on the starboard side sit up and grab his binoculars. It is interesting how you get “in tune” with the crew and recognize exactly when one of them notices something wrong.

  I held up my hand to signal Lewis to stop talking and looked off in the direction the watch was looking, and with my other hand, reached for my own binoculars. For several seconds, I scanned the water between the horizon and the starboard bow.

  The escorting destroyers were pretty far out, so the sound of the Buffalo going through the water didn’t mess with their sonar. The water was perfectly smooth except for a series of tiny ripples, almost undetectable by the human eye, maybe several hundred yards out, and proceeding at a rapid pace directly across the course of my ship.

  “Damn!” I said to Lewis, just as the watch turned around and shouted, “Torpedoes starboard bow! Range six hundred yards!”

  “Battle stations now!” I responded as I began the mental calculations on exactly how to defend my ship for the attack that had just begun.

  We weren’t totally unprepared, but we weren’t exactly expecting an attack on a day like this, either, which is probably exactly what the captain of the Japanese sub was thinking, and why he decided to attack. In some ways, it was just like Pearl. It was a surprise attack.

  “Sneaky Jap bastards are good at that,” I thought.

  It still amazes me how fast the human mind, even when caught by surprise, can look at a set of variables and come up with the best possible solution for the situation. I could see four distinctly different wakes coming toward us, fanned out over several degrees from the firing point, and right away, I could tell the captain of the Jap sub that fired them was a good shot. His turn in the game was well played, and now, what should I do about it?

  If the Buffalo would accelerate quickly enough on a straight course, we could have one pass aft, but we would still be hit by at least two, probably three. If we maintained current course and speed, we would have one pass forward and still be hit by three. If we could turn quickly enough, with enough acceleration, maybe we could have one pass forward and one aft, but still be most likely hit by two, and if extremely lucky, maybe one or even none. A turn to port would leave the ship’s propellers toward the torpedoes, resulting in the possible loss of propulsion. A starboard turn would protect the propellers but would sacrifice some ship’s stores and forward battery powder magazines.

  However, if a torpedo hits the engineering spaces in a turn either direction, particularly below the armor belt, propulsion could still be lost. And a hard starboard turn causes the ship to roll to port, leaving the armor protection well above the normal level in the water. A port turn would push the ship’s armor deeper into the water on the starboard side and minimize the damage done to the internal systems. It all depended on how fast the Buffalo could accelerate and how quickly she could turn.

  On top of all of that, the crew wouldn’t reach their battle stations until well after the torpedoes hit. A good portion of the watertight doors and hatches would not be closed, so there would be a lot of additional flooding to deal with.

  All of these thoughts, and more, flooded my mind as I worked out the different scenarios. In the blink of an eye, my mind turned out a hundred different pictures of what could happen next. The lives of all on board depended on getting the best possible answer, and maybe even that wouldn’t be good enough. And in another blink of an eye, I selected the one on which all of our hopes and prayers would shortly come to rest.

  “Hard to starboard, emergency flank speed! Now, goddamn it!” I shouted to the helmsman, who no doubt was prepared for my orders and began spinning the wheel in his hands as quickly as I spoke. And slowly, too slowly for comfort, the twelve-thousand tons of steel named Buffalo began to accelerate and turn to face the oncoming torpedoes.

  As the seconds passed, the ship began its predicted roll toward the port side, thus raising the starboard armor belt high up out of the water. I stared unblinking at the oncoming torpedo wakes as they sped toward the unprotected underbelly of the Buffalo. Timing was everything, and this had to be timed ju
st right, or the best possible outcome could quickly become the worst.

  I turned my attention to the closest of the torpedoes, the forward one. It began to look like it would miss by a long shot, evaded by the quickness of the Buffalo’s starboard turn. I looked at the aft one and knew it would be close but would most likely miss. The ship, as I predicted, would not be agile enough to avoid all of the torpedoes. By then, the other two were getting very close, so I decided it was time to put the armor belts back into the water to protect the ship, as they may, from the inevitable explosions. No way around it; some of us were going to die.

  “Hard to port!” I shouted at the helm. And, much more quickly, the Buffalo responded, having accelerated to attack speed. The ship rapidly began a starboard roll, shoving the armor belt deep down into the water.

  I quickly checked my forty-five as I watched the oncoming torpedoes.

  Several twenty-millimeter guns opened fire in a last-ditch attempt to detonate the torpedoes before they contacted the ship. Sometimes, if you are lucky, it works, but most of the time it doesn’t.

  The forward one sped by some distance from the ship. The second one was going to hit the bow section of the Buffalo; it was inevitable. The third was going to hit amidships. The fourth was going to be close, maybe feet or inches between hit or miss; it was hard to tell. All I could do to protect the ship had been done at that point, so I ducked and waited the last few seconds for the explosions, resigning the Buffalo and her crew to their fate.

  Boom! The first torpedo hit forward, sending a plume of water and small debris high above the ship that showered down over all of the forward weather decks. The Buffalo convulsed violently as the smell of the chemicals in the explosives mixed with fuel oil filled the air.

  Boom! The second torpedo hit amidships, and once again, the Buffalo, in the thrashing violence of agony, tried to leap out of the water. “That’s the one that is going to hurt,” I thought to myself as more oily salt water showered down over the bridge.