The Violent Sea

by Russell Moran

  “Let’s take a look at some of our intelligence numbers,” I said to Halsey, Kinkaid, and Spruance. “As I remember from the course I taught at the Naval Academy, the Japanese have 67 plus ships in total: one fleet carrier; three light carriers; nine battleships, including the gigantic Yamato and Mushashi; fourteen heavy cruisers; six light cruisers; 35 plus destroyers; and over 300 planes.”

  “Harry, what does your reading of history say about Japanese losses?” Halsey said.

  “The Japanese Navy lost, or rather will lose, one fleet carrier, the Zuikaku, three light carriers, three battleships (including the Musashi), ten cruisers, and eleven destroyers. So, history tells us that Japan will see the end of the battle with six battleships remaining, including the Yamato, 10 cruisers, and 24 destroyers, or a total of 40 ships surviving. They also lost over 300 planes and suffered 12,500 casualties. I’m going to change those numbers. I’m going to sink each and every one of the 40 remaining ships, and the Ford has the firepower to do it. Now here’s an important point. The Japanese have a reverence for battleships that borders on religious zeal. At the end of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, Japan will realize that it lost all nine of their revered battleships, including the grand prize of all, the Yamato. This is psychological warfare with bombs to back it up. In my day we would call this ‘mind fucking,’ which is exactly what I’m going to do, fuck with their minds by sinking all their ships. Beats the hell out of killing thousands of innocent people with atomic bombs.”

  Halsey, Kinkaid, and Spruance stood there shaking their heads and grinning like dolphins. Halsey then punched his right fist into his left hand.

  “Harry,” he said. “let’s go fuck some minds.”

  ***

  The history of military operations, just like political battles, is replete with missed communications, ambiguity, and flat-out bad information. I was also concerned about the command structure, which was anything but streamlined. Kinkaid, with his Seventh Fleet, reported to General MacArthur as Supreme Allied Commander Southwest Pacific, whereas Halsey and his Third Fleet reported to Nimitz as Commander in Chief of the Pacific Ocean areas.

  Halsey is a smart, likable guy, but sometimes I think his brain is located on the tip of his jutting chin. He sent out a communication that was a masterpiece of ambiguity. Among other things, he said, “Task Group 38.4 will be formed as Task Group 34.” Some thought it was simply a statement of what was likely to occur. Others, including Admiral Kinkaid, thought it was a direct order. Kinkaid was not an addressee of the telegram, but the Seventh Fleet picked it up as normal information gathering. Kinkaid concluded that TF 34 had been formed and would take station off the San Bernardino Strait. His escort carrier group—with no battleships to attack ground troops and no submarines, positioned itself south of the strait to support the invasion force. Admiral Nimitz, in Pearl Harbor, reached the same conclusion. Halsey did send out a second message at 17:10 clarifying his intentions in regard to TF 34: “If the enemy sorties (through San Bernadino Strait) TF 34 will be formed when directed by me.”

  Big problem. Halsey did not send this message by telegraph, which Kinkaid would have picked up, but rather by voice. Nor did Halsey send a telegraphic copy to Nimitz. The serious misunderstanding caused by Halsey's ambiguous wording of his first message, and his failure to notify Nimitz or Kinkaid of his second clarifying message, was to have a major influence on the subsequent course of the battle. These guys are lucky to have the Ford on their side, I thought.

  Halsey had left the San Bernardino Strait completely unguarded. As one historian wrote: “Everything was pulled out from San Bernardino Strait. Not so much as a picket destroyer was left.” This would complicate the battle plans, to say the least.

  So, for the next three days, the Battle of Leyte Gulf would work its way into history books (with a few changes as I predicted).

  We took a few losses as well. Our combined fleets lost one light carrier, the USS Princeton, two destroyers, and one destroyer escort. We also lost more than 200 planes and suffered 3,000 casualties.

  Commander Mike McDevitt, one of Halsey’s staff members, stood next to me on the bridge of the Ford. Halsey had requested that McDevitt be there to help coordinate our attacks, and I readily agreed.

  I sent successive sorties of F/A 18 Hornets, F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, and EA-18G Growlers at each of the Japanese ships. Their anti-aircraft batteries were no match for our modern planes. We did lose two Hornets and three Growlers, but their missiles and bombs sent ship after ship to the bottom.

  ***

  On October 26, the battle was winding down. As I had planned, we sank 39 remaining Japanese ships, but there was still one survivor. Meg’s battle station was next to me on the bridge. Where else?

  “Honey, is that the Yamato I see on the horizon?”

  Mike McDevitt laughed at Meg’s use of the word “honey.”

  “Oh my God, there she is,” I said.

  “Do you want me to alert Battery Three?”

  McDevitt laughed out loud. He wasn’t accustomed to seeing an admiral’s aide recommending tactics and weapons.

  Battery Three is the missile battery that houses our Harpoon anti-ship missiles. The Harpoon anti-ship missile is 12.6 feet long, 13.5 inches in diameter, and weighs 1,523 pounds. The warhead alone weighs 488 pounds. It’s designed to penetrate the hull of an enemy vessel and detonate inside the ship. Depending on where it penetrated, one Harpoon missile could sink a ship. With a monster the size of the Yamato, I figured it would take two or three.

  “Go ahead and alert Battery Three, Meg. Your call, your shot.”

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  “I mean that I’m giving you command of the attack on the Yamato.”

  The thought quickly passed through my mind about telling my friends that my pretty, lady-like wife sank the biggest battleship ever built.

  “Do we know where her magazine is?” Meg asked.

  “It’s just forward of her aft big gun turret,” Mike McDevitt said. Like all officers of his time he studied the layout of the enemy’s major ships, just as we do in our time.

  “Flight ops, this is Lt. Fenton on the bridge.”

  “Read you, lieutenant.”

  “I want you to fly a drone over the Yamato and drop a bomb just forward of her aft big gun turret. Make it a smoky bomb. I want to use it to target our missiles.”

  Meg was referring to our Harpoon missile guidance technology, where a commander can lock the bird onto a target by a visual sighting, including smoke.

  We watched the Yamato as a huge plume of smoke rose skyward.

  “Battery Three this is the bridge,” Meg said, in a loud calm voice.

  “Battery Three aye.”

  “Prepare to launch. Lock your tracking radar onto the big plume of smoke.”

  “Missile one is ready to fire on your command, Meg, I mean lieutenant.”

  “Fire one,” Meg yelled.

  I knew that the Yamato carried armor plating on her hull. But, on the other hand, the Harpoon missile is both fast and heavy. Although only a few seconds away, it seemed like we waited an hour for the Harpoon to strike.

  A huge plume erupted skyward from the Yamato’s deck just behind the aft gun turret. McDevitt called it just right. The Harpoon hit the ship’s magazine.

  “Fire two,” Meg said, her voice steady and determined.

  Another eruption. We could see the ship beginning to list to starboard.

  Meg looked up at me.

  “I don’t think this is a time to worry about saving taxpayer money,” she said.

  “Fire three.”

  Another wait, another explosion, this one toward the bow. As we watched, the stern of the Yamato gracefully left the water as she slipped beneath the waves.

  The last time I heard such pandemonium was when Navy beat Army in the remaining few seconds of the big game.

  Completely ignoring protocol, I picked Meg up in my arms and hugged her.

  “Hey, babe, you didn’t
just fire missiles. You targeted them perfectly as if you put them on the ship yourself.”

  “Admiral, I have an observation,” said Frank O’Leary, officer of the deck.

  “What’s that, Frank?”

  “There’s nothing left to shoot at.”

  Chapter 32

  Meg and I climbed aboard a Seahawk helicopter along with Commander McDevitt who would return to Admiral Halsey’s staff. Halsey wanted to see us, and he invited Admirals Spruance and Kinkaid as well. We met in his office on the flag bridge. Although not as spacious as the Ford’s, the room was large, good for a meeting.

  “Can it possibly be true what Mike McDevitt told me, that this charming young lady sank the Yamato?” Halsey said.

  “Well, I had the help of some accurate anti-ship missiles, a team of excellent technicians, and targeting intelligence from Commander McDevitt here,” Meg said, polite and self-effacing as always.

  “Not many a man can brag that his wife sank the largest battleship in the world, Bill,” I said.

  “Harry, when you told us that your objective was to sink every enemy ship involved in the battle, I thought you were being unrealistic,” Spruance said. “But you did it—a clean sweep— including nine battleships. Your thinking about battleships is on target. Yes, the Japanese do revere their battleships, and I think you’ve given them a morale problem. Only time will tell if you convinced them to give up, but I have a feeling that they just may throw in the towel.”

  “Admiral Halsey, I just got a telegram from CincPac with orders to deliver it to you immediately,” Halsey’s aide said.

  He looked at the piece of paper, and his face broke out into a wide smile.

  “It’s from Admiral Nimitz, folks. Listen to this.”

  THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT HAS REQUESTED A MEETING WITH OUR GOVERNMENT IN STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN.

  Chester A. Nimitz, Fleet Admiral

  “That’s the entire message,” Halsey said. “Pardon me if I feel a bit optimistic right now.”

  “I don’t think they want to exchange Swedish meatball recipes,” Meg said. “It can only mean one thing. They’ve lost, and they know it.”

  “Gentlemen, if you will excuse us, Meg and I have an appointment with a wormhole.”

  Chapter 33

  Meg and I returned to the Ford, and I ordered the helmsman to steer a course that would take us to the patch of ocean where we hit the wormhole. A patch of ocean is no way to describe an exact position, and to cross the wormhole that’s what we’ll need—an exact position, not a patch of ocean. Tall order if you don’t know the position you’re looking for. Meg thinks we’ll just have to suck it up and cruise in circles, hoping that we’ll somehow encounter the wormhole.

  “Admiral Fenton, this is Lieutenant Bowman in navigation. Sir, there’s a petty officer here with me who I think you should talk to. He has some information about the wormhole.”

  Show me a straw and I’ll grab for it.

  “Send him up, lieutenant.”

  “Good afternoon, sailor. Lieutenant Bowman says that you have some thoughts on our wormhole problem. What’s your name?”

  “Dan Maloney, quartermaster third class, sir. I should have thought about this before, admiral, but I didn’t fully understand our problem until recently. I think I may have a line of position to the wormhole.”

  Holy shit, this kid thinks he has a line of position or LOP. A line of position is nothing more than a line on a chart from one location to another. It doesn’t give you a fix, just a line—a line that you’re on. Add one or two more lines converging on the same spot and you have a fix.

  “You have our complete attention, Dan. Talk to us.”

  “I was on the fantail watch on the stern. (A fantail-watch stander’s job is to keep a lookout for anything that may be a problem on the aft-end of a ship, such as a flock of seagulls that could interfere with flight operations). I could see the shoreline from where I stood, and I noticed a beautiful old tall church steeple. Here, sir, I took a photo of it. I had no sooner snapped the picture when we went through that light and rumbling experience that you described as the indications of a wormhole. You’ll notice, sir, that a guy wire is across the photo, giving us a better idea of just where the line of position is.”

  “Oh, my God,” Meg yelled. “A line of position just as we hit the wormhole. Do you realize how important this is, Dan?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m a third-class quartermaster in the navigation department, and I know a lot about fixes and lines of position. If I understand it correctly ma’am, we just need to steam along that line, and hope that we hit the wormhole. The OOD can give helm commands using this photo.”

  “I’m going to the bridge to talk to the navigator, your boss. Nice work pal, and thank you for the heads up. You’ve earned a decoration. Come with me to the bridge.”

  The navigator and I agreed that he and Dan Maloney would stand on the fantail, and as soon as the church steeple lined up with the guy wire, he would mark the spot on a chart. The OOD can then order right or left rudder based on the image of the steeple relative to where he’s standing on the bridge. It’s sort of like looking for the meatball when you’re coming in for a landing.

  As we approached the area, the navigator looked through his binoculars and saw a church steeple that he identified from the photo. He then looked down at the chart.

  “Bingo. Thank God the church steeple is marked.”

  “It’s not precise,” Meg said, “but it’s a hell of a lot more information than we had a few hours ago. It could mean taking hours or days to find the wormhole rather than months or, God forbid, years. We’re lucky that young Dan Maloney was in a picture-taking mood. Wormhole, here we come.”

  Chapter 34

  From the photo, we estimated that the church steeple was three miles from the ship when Maloney snapped the picture. Commander Bill Thompson, the Navigator, plotted the lines the ship would follow, keeping as close as possible to the line of position. The procedure called for a Williamson turn every three miles. When you execute a turn like that you wind up on the exact reverse of your course when you started the turn. We would then turn slightly to starboard to cover the next piece of ocean. By my count we were on our twelfth trip along the line.

  “Thank God this ship is huge, hon,” Meg said. “If it were smaller I think we’d all be seasick by now. Hey, what was that?”

  The daylight turned dark, and the ship began to rumble. The ship erupted in screams, laughs, and fist pumps. In exactly two minutes, as always, the daylight returned. I focused my binoculars on the shore. The old church steeple was still there, but a lot of modern buildings surrounded it. Meg clicked on the TV. The date and time were indicated on the lower right hand of the screen. October 28, 2018. We had been gone for only two days.

  “I should contact NavOps,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll like to know where we’ve been.”

  “We have a lot of communicating to do, honey. Let’s go to your office.”

  “Take the con, lieutenant,” I said, indicating that he should take control over navigation on the bridge. “Lieutenant Meg and I are going to my office.”

  “Hey, what are you doing?” I said when we walked into my office.

  Meg almost sprinted to the computer against the wall.

  “Research, honey. Google, come to mama.”

  “Oh my God, Harry. The War in the Pacific ended on November 3, 1944, one week after the Battle of Leyte Gulf. We never bombed Hiroshima or Nagasaki.”

  She walked over to me, crying. She put her face into my chest and wrapped her arms around me.

  “Do you know how many hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children you saved, baby. Because of you, there never was a Battle of Luzon, Manila, Iwo Jima, or Okinawa. Instead of that famous photo of the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima, they should have a picture of Harry Fenton standing on the bridge of the Ford. You carried out your objective and sank every Japanese ship at Leyte Gulf. Just like you intended, the Japanese packed
it in. They knew they couldn’t win against a guy named Harry Fenton. I love you, baby.”

  “Well, I think you’re exaggerating a bit, honey, but like you, I’m happy that we shortened the war. And you, pretty lady, sank the largest battleship in history. Hey, let’s catch up on the news for the past two days, and then I should make an announcement.”

  We watched Fox, CNN, ABC, and NBC. All the anchors were babbling about the happy news that the USS Gerald R. Ford, was no longer lost.

  As I expected, NavOps cancelled our maneuvers with the South Koreans and the Japanese. I was happy about that decision. After sinking almost an entire Japanese fleet, it would have been a weird experience working with them, rather than killing them. President Blake personally called the South Korean and Japanese governments to postpone the exercises. Blake knows how to treat friends.

  ***

  The shrill sound of the bosun’s pipe broke through all the yelling and celebrating.

  “Attention all hands, attention all hands. Stand by for Admiral Harry Fenton.”

  “Good afternoon everyone. You are now officially round-trip time travelers. We have all had an incredible journey. Because of the courage and dedication of all crewmembers of the USS Gerald R. Ford, we changed history, for the better. Lieutenant Meg has just done some fast research on the Internet. Because of the actions of the Ford in sinking the entire Japanese naval armada at Leyte Gulf, we managed to shorten the War in the Pacific by almost a year. Because of you fine people there was no Battle of Luzon, Manila, Iwo Jima, or Okinawa. We never dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Thus, we’ve saved hundreds of thousands of lives. The history that Lt. Fenton just read tells us that Japan capitulated one week after we sank her fleet at the Battle of Leyte Gulf. I can find no better words than the traditional Navy way of expressing it—Well Done. That is all. Carry on.”