The Commodore Read online

  “What in the world is ‘skedaddle’?” Sluff asked.

  Billy Chandler, the gunnery officer, was from Birmingham, Alabama, although his accent had mostly disappeared. “That’s a Confederate cavalry term, Cap’n,” he said. “Means to run like hell.”

  “Francis Marion Tyree,” the exec said. “Not from Massachusetts, I’ll wager.” The gunnery officer laughed.

  Sluff smiled in the darkness. He might have to revise his first impression of the new admiral. “I think he’s being realistic,” he said. “He’s facing two light cruisers and one heavy. We’re the only ones who can hurt the heavy cruiser, which means we’ll have to try hard to ID her on the radar. If we can do that, she’s our primary target. Share this with Evans.”

  The meeting broke up. He called the chief. “Signal from ComDesDiv Two-Twelve to DesDiv Two-Twelve collective: Execute to follow, corpen three three zero, speed three zero.”

  The chief read it back to him, and then had his boys get on the signal light to the Evans. Sluff asked Combat if they’d copied. They had.

  A minute later, the chief was back: Signal understood on the Evans.

  “Execute,” Sluff ordered. “Officer of the deck, course three three zero, speed three-zero.”

  Sluff sat down in his bridge chair to think. Why had the admiral cut short the run north? Was he worried about having air cover in the morning? Or had the Japs made more ground than they’d expected? The original signal said set condition I at 2300. It was now just past 2100, two hours and sixty miles short of the original order to go to GQ. He decided not to take chances.

  “Sigs, Captain, tell Evans to set condition one.”

  “Sigs, aye.”

  He called the exec on one of the admin phones. He had to be careful of the bitch-box, because there were twelve stations on that circuit in different parts of the ship. All they had to do was press the button for Bridge and they could eavesdrop on everything said by the bridge.

  “Bob, I think we should go to GQ now. I get the feeling that they know something we don’t, or they don’t know enough. Either way, let’s us be ready.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Bob said. Sluff told the OOD to sound general quarters. Five minutes later, after all the manned and ready reports were in, he got on the ship’s general announcing system, called universally the 1MC. He told the crew what was going on, what the plan was, what they knew—the composition of the enemy task group—and what they didn’t know: when they’d show up.

  “We have the advantage of radar,” he concluded. “We should see and be able to attack them before they know we’re here. But once our cruisers start shooting, the Japs will launch a swarm of torpedoes at them—and at us. We’ll commence firing at slow speed so they can’t see our wakes. Once we start shooting guns, we’re gonna dance around, high speed and big course changes, so be ready. Here’s the good news: The task group is going to wait for us to fire our torpedoes, wait for them to hit, and then open up with guns for fifteen minutes. After that, the admiral has ordered us to, um, skedaddle. If you don’t know what that means, ask a Southerner on your GQ station. That is all.”

  THIRTEEN

  The Slot

  Sluff awoke with a start in his captain’s chair. He hadn’t meant to doze off, but he surely had. The air in the pilothouse was still heavy and wet. The ships were doing only fifteen knots and the tropical heat bore down on everyone, even this late at night. He thought he’d heard a rainsquall come pounding on the steel skin of the ship. That’s probably what had put him to sleep. He looked at his watch in the red light of the bitch-box power button. 0115. Where were the Japs? Had they turned around? Had they gone another way? That was possible, especially after the ambush of the destroyer relief column the other night. They could have left the Slot way above where King was waiting and slashed south along the outside of the Solomon island chain. Their ships were fast enough to be able to do that and still get down to Guadalcanal, if that was their mission, and escape before dawn and the inevitable Cactus air force reprisals.

  He got up and went back to his sea cabin, the tiny steel box behind the bridge where there was a bunk, a sink, and a steel toilet. He tried to wash his face but the fresh water had been shut off for GQ. The fewer water lines charged throughout the ship, the less the flooding in case of damage. The spring-loaded water tap sucked air, almost as if mocking him. He used the commode and then went back out onto the bridge. He could literally smell the bridge team: every man sweating in his bulky kapok life jacket and closed-up shirts and trousers. He momentarily envied the XO, whose GQ station in CIC had air-conditioning because of all the electronics.

  He called the exec on the admin phone. “Anything?” he asked.

  “Not a sign of them,” Bob said. “Our cruisers are loitering on an east-west track ten miles south of us.”

  “They wait much longer, they’ll have an interesting morning.”

  The exec started to reply, but then a report came in over TBS, from Evans. “Contact report,” a voice announced. “Bearing zero one zero, range thirteen miles, composition, many. Solid radar return.”

  The destroyers had been told to maintain radio silence on the TBS, except for initial contact reports. Evans had a first-generation Sugar Charlie radar, known to be unreliable, especially out at ranges approaching the visible horizon. Evans had directed the report at ComDesDiv 212, but the admiral down on the cruiser line would also have heard it.

  “XO—we see anything on that bearing?”

  “That’s a negative, sir. There’s a rainsquall line just south of there, but no contacts.”

  Sluff thought fast. Thirteen miles was out of King’s gun range, but if Evans’s radar was in fact seeing something out there, they had very little time to set up the torpedo attack. He’d pulled Evans in to 250 yards astern precisely because he’d expected to be sending her ranges and bearings to the Jap column. That way she could shoot on King’s solution.

  Evans spoke again: Enemy formation on course one eight five, speed three-six. Damn, Sluff thought, as he tried to piece together the relative positions of his two destroyers and the enemy formation. They needed to come right and close in on the enemy’s track right now—assuming Evans had a real contact.

  “Captain, Combat, let’s assign the gunfire-control radar to that bearing and range, see if it detects some metal.”

  “Concur, do it,” Sluff snapped. “In the meantime, set up a course and speed to get to torpedo launch position before they run right past us.”

  “Combat, aye.”

  Sluff turned to his JA sound-powered phone circuit talker, who happened to be the chief yeoman, Chief Meyers, the ship’s administrative officer. “Tell all stations, stand by. We think they’re here.”

  He heard the chief pass the word. What the hell was wrong with our radar, he asked himself. He’d just assumed the Evans’s radar couldn’t see anything as well as King’s, and yet …

  “Captain, Combat, come to course zero eight zero, speed twenty-five, to get within attack range of the enemy’s line of advance.”

  Sluff waved his hand at the OOD, who started to call the new course and speed orders to the helmsmen. Then Sluff remembered: Stop. You have to order your two-ship formation to do that. Otherwise, Evans would be left in the dust as King accelerated to the east. The exec caught the error, too.

  Sluff heard the TBS radio circuit light up with a signal, from ComDesDiv 212 to DesDiv 212, all two of them, to bolt east at twenty-five knots. Stand by, execute.

  “Okay, now!” Sluff shouted at the OOD, and sixty seconds later King was accelerating to twenty-five knots and coming right to 080 true. The plan for a low-wake approach had evaporated.

  “Captain, Combat, we see ’em. We see ’em! Fire-control radar holds, and now our search radar holds.”

  “Aim at the biggest one in the group,” Sluff replied. “And tell the admiral: attacking with torpedoes.”

  As the ship pushed forward through the black night, Sluff heard the reports going out from CI
C to the waiting cruisers. To his dismay, he heard the cruisers report no contacts on their radars. How could the cruisers start shooting if they didn’t hold the enemy formation?

  He called down to CIC and told the exec to tell the flag that J. B. King held enemy contacts on both fire-control and search radars. In other words, look harder! Use your gunnery radars. Obviously the search radar performance had turned to shit.

  As his two ships charged through the hot, black night to their launch position, Sluff took a moment to think. Okay: We launch. Then what? Turn around? Turn south to parallel our targets and start shooting? Wouldn’t that put us in the frame along with the enemy ships when twenty-four six-inch guns open up? Nope. Not gonna do that.

  “Combat, Captain: Once we launch, turn our formation away to the north-northwest. I want to go behind the enemy column before we open up and stay out of range of the cruisers once they get going.”

  “Combat, aye. We’re three thousand yards from launch position.”

  “Then slow down. Come to fifteen knots. Come right if you have to for relative motion, but let’s smother that bow wave.”

  The order went out over TBS a few seconds later, and J. B. King relaxed in the water as she slowed down. Sluff went out on the port bridge wing and looked aft. The torpedo tube mounts were trained out at about a forty-five-degree angle. He swept ahead with his binoculars and saw precisely nothing. The Jap formation was still pretty far out but coming fast. If CIC had done the numbers correctly, King and Evans would launch a spread of sixteen torpedoes into the darkness on an intercept course that should cover the first half of the Jap column. Assuming the American cruisers were awake and alert, a single torpedo hit would bring a salvo of twenty-four six-inch shells down on the Jap ships.

  Sluff heard the phone-talkers down on the torpedo deck shouting out: Stand by! And then came the first whoosh of a torpedo going over the side. Then the second one. Sluff went back inside and told the OOD to get ready for a course change back to the northwest to get out of the way of the cruisers’ fire. He called Combat and reminded the exec to use a turn movement to get away, not a column. That way both Evans and King would pivot in place and hustle off to the north-northwest, away from any friendly fire.

  “Captain, Combat, torpedoes away. Recommend coming to three three zero, speed two-zero when the signal is executed.”

  “Let her go, XO,” Sluff said. “We need to clear tails and get out of here.”

  The signal went out over TBS and was executed ten seconds afterward. The OOD gave the orders and King turned to port as she increased speed to twenty knots. Somewhere out there in the night sixteen torpedoes, containing 13,200 pounds of HBX explosive, were hurtling toward the computed intersection of the Japanese formation and the destroyers’ firing bearing.

  “Time to intercept?”

  “One hundred seconds.”

  Sluff went back outside to make sure he could see Evans paralleling King’s movements and not running by behind them. It was too dark, even as close in as she was. He realized again that he was at a big disadvantage standing out here on the bridge wing. The tactical picture was available, but not on the bridge. He figured the exec would have called him had Evans not made the turn, but if he’d been down in CIC, he’d have known within thirty seconds that there was a problem. He told Combat to open Evans back out to one thousand yards.

  “Mark teatime,” the exec called over the bitch-box.

  Nothing.

  Goddammit, he thought. If we missed the whole formation, the cruisers waiting to the south would lose their range advantage if they waited—

  The sky on their starboard quarter flared up into a mini-sunrise that began white but then quickly turned to yellow and then red. As it subsided there were two more, and then a fourth. Finally, the sounds of explosions came rolling across the black waters of the Slot like distant thunder. Then, hull down on the southern horizon, lightning flashed, illuminating the bottoms of low clouds over the sound.

  “Combat, Captain, I think we just did some good work for Jesus,” Sluff called. “Ships are blowing up out there. Now: Give me a formation course to take us north of the Jap formation and just out of range of our own cruisers.”

  “Combat, aye, and the flag reports they are in contact and have opened fire.”

  Sluff hoped the admiral knew that the two cruisers couldn’t just sit there, plugging along at the same course and speed. Whichever Jap ships evaded the American torpedo attack would launch many torpedoes at all those gun flashes to the south.

  “Combat recommends a formation course of three five five, speed two-seven.”

  “Transmit the order. Once we’re on the new course and speed, order commence-firing.”

  “Combat, aye. Order going out now. On the plot it looks like our cruisers are reversing course to the west.”

  Good, Sluff thought. Fire a bunch of salvos, then reverse course. Without radar, the Japs would aim their Long Lances on a course to intercept all those east-headed muzzle flashes from twenty-four six-inch guns.

  Standing in the starboard bridge-wing door, he trained his binocs out to the southeast. He felt King crouch for a moment as her twin screws bit down, and then she began accelerating up to twenty-seven knots. The night air was so humid he saw only blurred images in his glasses, but there was obviously a storm of six-inch fire landing on the Jap formation. Then he heard King’s forward five-inch guns swing out. He stepped away from the open doorway just as the first salvos went out. This time the relative wind was from the port beam, so all the smoke and wadding particles were blowing clear of the bridge. The noise, however, came right on in.

  Okay, think. Now they can see us. They’ll start shooting back, and then one or two of them will launch torpedoes. He didn’t want to maneuver just yet: a steady course and speed made for far more accurate gunfire than when the ship was twisting and turning.

  “Combat, Captain, what’s the range?”

  “Fourteen thousand, five, and four of their ships have come to a stop on the plot.”

  “Okay: Continue firing on this course and speed for one minute, then order cease-firing, and then a turn one eight zero, same speed.”

  “Combat, aye.”

  Sluff stood by his chair and mentally counted down from sixty. He wanted to execute the turn maneuver right now, but ten five-inch guns were happily sending hundreds of pounds of steel and explosive into the disordered Japanese formation. They would soon start firing back. The two cruisers to the south were presumably still hammering away. The resulting cross fire must be hell on earth right about now.

  A blast of light and sound off the starboard bow, followed by six large columns of erupting water, concentrated his mind. They might be catching hell over there, but someone was shooting back, and doing a pretty good job of it. His own gun crews seemed to up their rate of fire when they felt the near misses. That had to be cruiser fire—too big for destroyer guns. He realized he’d lost count of the remaining seconds. A second salvo came screaming overhead, landing beyond them but not that far away. He could actually feel the thump of those shells exploding underwater through his feet and legs.

  Damn! They’d been bracketed. Fire short. Fire over. Halve the range. Fire again—keep doing that until you start hitting.

  Then he heard the radio order to cease firing, followed by the 180-degree turn. They were halfway though that turn when a third salvo came in, erupting in J. B. King’s wake, halfway between King and Evans.

  Thank you, God, Sluff thought. Now: Steady up on the new course, head due south, and then start shooting again. He wondered if he should fire some star shells to illuminate what was left of the Jap formation for the cruisers. No. We all have radar. Star shells will just illuminate us.

  Another six-gun salvo landed astern of them, again raising huge waterspouts of seawater and smoke. Shit, Sluff thought. That’s eight-inch stuff. We didn’t get the big boy, but at least his salvos are trending behind us now.

  “Captain, Combat, our cruiser format
ion is reversing course again. Two of the Jap ships have turned north. The rest are presenting a pretty confused plot.”

  “Combat, Captain: Once we steady up, open fire again—but only for ninety seconds. Then slow down to fifteen knots. Are they within our torpedo range?”

  “On this course, they’d be a marginal shot, using slow-speed fish—come left ten degrees and the picture gets better.”

  “Okay, we’ll do this: Resume firing for ninety seconds, then cease fire and come left and head straight at them, speed fifteen. When we get into ten thousand yards, launch our remaining torpedoes, reverse course, and get out of there.”

  “We stand a chance of crossing our own cruisers’ line of fire—wait one—flag says they’re withdrawing to the south, and for us to follow them out.”

  Damn, Sluff thought. He hated to go back to base with unexpended torpedoes, but an order was an order. “Okay, immediate execute, speed thirty-five knots, course southwest to open the range on any pursuing torpedoes.”

  “Resume firing?”

  “Negative. If the cruisers are leaving, we’re leaving. No reason to give the Japs an aim point.”

  The signal went out a few seconds later, and King came right to the southwest, 230, speed thirty-five. Sluff went out onto the starboard bridge wing to see if the Evans was following. He couldn’t make her out in the darkness, but her bow wave made a bright white V in the water on King’s port quarter. He saw another six-gun salvo land off in the distance, six simultaneous red pulses of fire followed by thumping great waterspouts. He went back into the pilothouse and climbed up into his chair, suddenly very tired. The fight seemed like it had lasted for hours. He looked at his watch: 0210. They’d made first contact at about 0130. The whole thing had taken just forty minutes. Time passes fast when you’re having fun, he thought.