by Jon Stafford
The little squadron smartly made its turn and headed to the southeast, rapidly drawing out of range.
“Well, sir,” Cashion said, “That ship wasn’t there yesterday according to the fly-boys. Here’s the chart of the island. See, Roemboi Bay. ”
The two men talked for several minutes. Then Rodgers turned to a sailor. “Ask Lieutenant Pruitt to come out here.”
Executive officer Weldon “Skip” Pruitt came in from the plot room behind the bridge where he was in charge of navigation, plotting the courses of all American and hostile ships as well as planes on a big wall chart.
“Skip, figure this out for us,” Rodgers began. “We need a setup. Where are we, right here?” He pointed.
“Yes, sir.”
“Assume that they have a cruiser in Roemboi Bay, here. Assume that they shove off right now, knowing that we’ll call in planes to blow them up if they don’t. Assume that they already have steam up, because they’d be crazy not to, even though we saw no smoke. They must go north until they clear the New Guinea mainland to the west here.” He pointed again. “After that, assume that they head west to Sorong, Ceram, or some place like that in Indonesia. Assume that they build to, ah, twenty knots as soon as they can. It’ll take them a while to light up all of their boilers and build steam. We want a course and speed to go around the island the other way, up the east side, and meet them north of Noemfoor. I’m guessing we have a little farther to go, though not much.”
As he spoke, Rodgers displayed mannerisms that had become his trademarks. When making a detailed point, he would frequently point his fingers at the chest of the person he was speaking to, with his right hand fashioned as though he were holding a baseball. Then, when he finished his point, he would flop his right hand over so that the palm was up. It was the same motion baseball pitchers have made for a hundred years to indicate to the catcher that their next pitch would be a curveball, that they wished to “turn the ball over.”
“But, Skip,” he continued, “here’s the important part. We can’t wind up ahead of these people, or even with them. We think it’s likely that they’ve brought a convoy of reinforcements up during the night and that this cruiser has some destroyers with her. So I want to come out behind them. I want a stern chase. If they’re too strong for us, say a load of destroyers with this cruiser, they could put us all in the water in a hurry if we come out ahead of them and they’re between Humbolt Bay and us. We sure can’t stand up to broadsides from a cruiser. We must be able to get out if things get too hot for us. I am betting we have more speed than they, so they can’t catch us, but we can catch them. Give me a plot for that.”
“Yes, sir.”
Within five minutes, Pruitt returned. He was carrying the map, with a course suggestion drawn on it.
“Sir, we’re here now. We’ve passed the eastern edge of Noemfoor. If we take up zero degrees now, taking us directly north at twenty-seven knots, it’ll bring us abreast of the north edge of the island in about forty minutes. From what you say, the enemy will take on a track of about 340 degrees and be, say, fifteen miles ahead. Of course, the more northerly they go, if they take up 0 degrees, the closer they’ll be to us when we both clear the island. But it’s hard to see that they’ll be closer than ten miles.”
“Okay. Skip, thanks. Sam, you okay with that?”
“Sure, we have to try something. That’s good.”
Rodgers nodded. Cashion went to the phone in the bridge and informed the other captains. The little squadron took up the course and speed recommendations, and Cashion and Rodgers spent the next two-thirds of an hour discussing possibilities.
“I agree that there’s certainly no logic in them staying in that bay with that damn cruiser, sir,” Cashion said.
“Yes, exactly,” Rodgers said, running his hand over his face, which never would be shaven that day. “Unless they want to sacrifice that ship for the defense of the island and try to camouflage it so the fly-boys can’t see it. We never did see any smoke.” He shrugged.
“I can’t imagine they intend to do that,” Cashion theorized. “They must suspect that we intend to invade, but for all they know Admiral Crutchley and his cruisers are right behind us. A light cruiser wouldn’t hold up his people for twenty minutes, camouflaged or not. No place on that scrap heap is high enough to hide any kind of a ship for long. They must have brought up reinforcements, like you said.”
“Well, we’ll find out soon enough. Tell me what kind of hitting power they might have on that cruiser.”
They spent the next few minutes discussing the hitting power of the various calibers of Japanese cruiser guns: 5.5-inch, 5.9-inch, and six-inch guns.
As they came near the northern edge of the island, radar began to pick up the images of ships on the other side. Cashion got the first report and went back to Rodgers.
“Sir, radar thinks there are three of them, no idea of size.”
“Okay.”
In the next five minutes, both forces crested the northernmost point of the island, and the signalman approached the squadron commander.
“All right, Billy.” Rodgers smiled at the young man, now all of nineteen.
“Sir, it’s a light cruiser and two destroyers. ‘Guns’ thinks it’s a six-inch cruiser.”
Rodgers interrupted before the boy could finish. “What’s the range?”
“About twenty-four thousand yards, sir.”
“Well, Sam, it’s no load of destroyers,” Rodgers said, obviously pleased.
“Yes, sir, this is what we hoped for. It’s a bigger cruiser than what we would have liked, but don’t you want to tackle them?”
“Sure! We are ordered to attack any force mousing around this island, so long as they’re not superior to us. These people are not superior to us. Besides, now that they’ve seen us, if we let them go, they could sneak back with more ships and reinforcements anytime they got around to it. It could ruin the invasion timetable. What time is it?”
“It’s 1035, sir.”
Rodgers turned to Cashion and kindly touched his shoulder. “As usual, Sam, I want everyone in the command to have his lunch before we open up.”
“Yes, sir!”
Cashion went to the phone and communicated with the other captains.
Men stood silently on the decks of the American ships.The fleeing enemy was in full view in the distance, and sober looks came upon their faces. Some busied themselves with petty tasks, but many stopped and stared. What they had feared so often during the long periods of tedium now struck them hard. Their fragile hold on life, and their helplessness against the heartless power of weapons, came to them all too clearly. They felt like insignificant specks on the surface of the Earth. A well-placed shell, an unknown element, a single misstep, could take their lives in a split second. Nothing in their past seemed to count for anything now. All of the things that had protected them from infancy, a mother’s love, a father’s strength, what they had learned, and what skills they had built, now seemed absent, pushed away.
Some could not keep the fear from their faces. Each looked inward, searching his heart. Many of the youngest men, just kids really, who had been in high school a year or so before, thought of their mothers,
home. Most thought of their wives, sweethearts, and children, wondering if they would ever see them again. Those who had no one, the older men especially, worried over their ship and what would befall her. Their gaze did not last long. In a second or two or ten, they stopped staring and went about their work.
What occurred to many was another emotion: pride. They thought of their training, their leaders, their weapons, and their ships—the things that had absorbed so many endless hours, days, months, and changed them so much. And they had the competitive zeal of young men who itch to be in the contest, to win. For some, it was easy to think of battle in the same way they had thought of a high school football game, as a mere contest, even though the issue was now life and death. Most would have agreed with the old salt on the Kaulk, who mumbled under his breath, “I guess it’s time.” Many took a second to pray, feeling awed by the stakes and their frailty. Many sought forgiveness for their sins.
While the slowly converging forces were quite equal on paper, the truth was that the Americans had every advantage. Only the chance of battle held any hope at all for the Japanese. The Americans had superior leadership, five men who worked together as well as any on Earth, innovative men who would find an enemy’s weaknesses and exploit them. They had more experienced crews and better quality ships with the Fletchers and the big-gunned Reed. And they had the best naval weapon in the world, the five-inch, .38-caliber dual-purpose main gun.
One of their advantages, though as yet unknown, was the fire control officer on Kaulk, Lieutenant Frederick C. Harner. Looking back on this day, some in the squadron would conclude that the young officer’s knack in aiming the five-inch guns amounted to witchcraft. All four fire control directors in the squadron, all young lieutenants, used the Model 37 Fire Control System present on all US destroyers and cruisers. But Harner had much more success with his guns than the others. With his two forward firing guns out of the squadron’s ten, Harner was able to make as many hits as the rest of the force combined! In time, all were to see that it was actually skill, a sixth sense with weaponry that was enough to make him a future chief of the Bureau of Ordnance.
A stern chase was always a long chase. This one was no exception. As the American ships built up steam and speed and blacker smoke billowed out of their funnels, it soon became obvious that they were about three knots faster than the Japanese. This gave the squadron commander just enough time to organize his force as he wished. After about twenty minutes conferring with Cashion, Rodgers ordered him to get the others on the TBS. In a few seconds, the other three captains were all listening, and Rodgers came to the phone.
“You three there?”
All three acknowledged.
“This is pretty much what we want. We do not want to follow these people in line. They’re likely to pump torpedoes into us if we make it easy for them. Let’s fan out in a sort of crescent formation with C.T. out the farthest to port, and next, Dude, you two fairly close to each other. You two decide how close. Reed to starboard. Those are the two sides of the crescent, each side of it about a thousand yards on either side of the base course of that cruiser.
“Pete, we want you and Kaulk to be dead astern of that cruiser. That will give us the crescent or arc. You follow her wherever she goes, but lag behind the two sides eight hundred or so yards. The three of us will conform to your course changes just as you conform to hers.”
One of them began to interrupt, but Rodgers continued.
“No, just listen for a minute. That’ll put the wings or sides about two thousand yards apart. C.T., Dude, shoot only at those two destroyers. We know they’ll turn and launch torpedoes against us. But with us fanned out, Sam and I don’t think they have much of a chance of hitting a thirty-nine-foot-wide destroyer with a torpedo from six miles off.”
The men all agreed.
“Kaulk and Reed are going to tackle this Tiger cruiser. Pete, Reed is going to ‘front’ that thing for you as best we can. We’re going to fire at him as fast as we can and put on a good show. With the rest of us weaving and them weaving, which will spoil everyone’s aim some, they might just forget about you trailing behind. Unless they fire at you, don’t weave. You should have the best chance to make hits.”
Rodgers continued. “Here’s the last part. If that thing turns to give us some broadsides, I want all of us to converge on her and ignore those destroyers. If we don’t, she could sink one of us in a hurry. So, let’s try this arc setup. If it’s not working, I’m sure you’ll tell me. Then we can try something else. Open fire when you want.”
Again all three men concurred, and Rodgers hung up.
“Sam, what’s the range now?”
Cashion answered as he hung up the phone to “Guns.” “Eighteen thousand.”
“That’s too far. When do you want to open fire?”
“Sixteen thousand would be good,” Cashion said.
“Okay.”
At 1252, the Japanese beat the Americans to the punch when the light cruiser, Akasi, opened fire. In two minutes, the two Japanese destroyers, Mishi and Shimia, opened fire. They were still out of range, and the shells fell about half a mile short. Reed opened fire at 1308, at some sixteen thousand yards. The Fletchers followed within a few minutes.
Japanese fire from the cruiser came close in the beginning, twice straddling Paulley and coming reasonably close to Bindle. When it became obvious to the enemy that Paulley and Bindle were firing at the two destroyers, the cruiser shifted over to Reed.
Nevertheless, despite their preponderance of shell power and advantage in range, the Japanese only hit Reed once during the entire engagement, at 1415, when a dud hit the deck in front of “A” turret.
Rodgers and the others were knocked to the deck. Amazingly, the debris from the impact hurt no one. As unflappable as always, the squadron commander looked down carefully on the smoking hole in the bulkhead. He grinned and ordered a course change. But none of the subsequent six-inch shells landed within two hundred yards.
Reed’s fire was furious enough that the crew felt it throughout the big destroyer. Sailors standing on the deck bounced several inches high with each report of the four forward guns. Metal trays in the crew’s mess clanged, and the china in the officer’s mess clattered.
It didn’t take long for the heat of the tropics to exhaust the men in the turrets and one deck below in the shell hoists. It was ninety-five degrees outside on this afternoon. Inside the ship, it was even hotter. Despite the ship’s speed, temperatures reached 140 degrees in these very confined areas. Men could only stand up to it for about an hour before they fainted.
“Sir,” Cashion told Rodgers, “we can’t continue like this.”
“Why, what’s on your mind?”
“We’re expending ammo at a very fast clip, and we have gun crewmen passing out every few minutes or so. If we come to a crunch here, we don’t want to have our efficiency impaired.”
“What do you recommend?”
“Let’s fire six rounds a minute. That will give us hours’ worth of shells. And tell the guys to go to a regular system of rotating the crews.”
Rodgers nodded, and Cashion passed the word around. Still, the crews continued to approach exhaustion. The men who fainted, caked in dirt and grease, were carried
out on the deck by their fellows, where they were cooled off and rehydrated. Then most went right back into the turrets. Some passed out two, even three times but were still ready to go back in.
While all of the other ships on both sides gyrated continuously in their movements, Kaulk did not. She began to hit Akasi almost from the beginning of the engagement. The crew could see the hits through the Model 37 Fire Control System. But the range was still great enough that the hits weren’t visible through binoculars on the bridge of any of the American ships, and this caused much soul-searching.
At about 1425, Rodgers got Reed’s young fire director on the phone. “Don, are you hitting that thing?”
Lieutenant Lanaman replied. “Sir, I believe we’ve hit her at least once. Several near misses.”
“What about Kaulk?” Rodgers wanted to know.
“Sir, I have no idea what they’re doing that I’m not, but I think they’ve put three or four shots into her.”
“Really!” Rodgers smiled.
“Yes, sir. And maybe, ah, seven–eight near misses. Sir, there’s no doubt that we are hitting her!”
“Thanks,” Rodgers said with a shrug, hanging up the phone and relaying the news to Cashion. “Well, Sam, are we not piercing the armor on that thing or what?”
Cashion, who had been constantly looking through his binoculars, had no answer. “I have no idea. I haven’t seen a hit yet. If we are hitting her, why aren’t we seeing anything? If our stuff ’s just bouncing off, we’re in big trouble. Maybe she has more armor than we thought.”
Meanwhile, Trediger and Hennessey were conducting their own battle on the other side of the crescent. At 1502, they called their commander, who had been listening to them talk to each other on the TBS for quite a while.
