The Commodore Page 28

  “Three minutes,” Larry said, as they all stared at the evolving plot on the DRT. And then Bob Frey called down from the bridge, his voice audibly excited. “Explosions north of us, lots of them. Sounds like torpedoes.”

  Not ours, Sluff thought. Dragon had made his own attack. Good!

  “Gun flashes north and west, sounds and looks like five-inch. I think Dragon’s going in.”

  Sluff was torn. He really wanted to be out on a bridge wing right now, seeing what Bob Frey was seeing. He stared down at the lighted DRT table, not seeing it. Then he focused. This was the tactical picture. Up on the bridge they could hear shells and see flashes, but that was not the tactical picture. The smudgy No. 2 pencil squiggles on the DRT trace paper—that was the picture.

  “Get your guns ready, Bob,” Sluff replied. “We’re almost there.”

  “Commodore,” Larry said. “We should turn now—that way our guns will be settled on a steady course and speed when we open fire.”

  “Good call, Larry, get the orders out,” Sluff said. Larry put out an immediate-execute to the division, turning them due west and accelerating to twenty-seven knots now that the fish were gone. A moment later, Bob Frey called down reporting more explosions as their own torpedoes slammed home.

  Sluff turned to Larry. “All ships, commence firing.”

  Larry had barely finished speaking into the handset when all five of J. B. King’s went to work, firing in rapid-continuous mode under director control, blasting away as fast as the crews could load the guns and the magazine crews could push more shells up the hoists.

  Sluff blew out a long breath. He’d done his job. Now it was up to the gun crews of his three destroyers and Dragon’s three destroyers, a total of thirty five-inch guns punching out fifteen rounds per minute each. Four hundred fifty rounds a minute being fired at a cluster of Jap ships who’d already been attacked by sixty torpedoes and the concentrated fire of one heavy and two light cruisers. As the status reports flew around Combat, Sluff studied the unfolding track charts. The enemy force was still headed generally east but their speed was falling off rapidly. They can see us now, he thought, and even if they’re being hit, they can launch their own torpedoes, not to mention start hurling eight-inch shells at our little line of destroyers. Then he realized something, looking at the track geometry: It’s not “can launch”; it’s “have launched.”

  “Larry,” he said, “torpedoes are coming. We have to maneuver. Turn the formation to due north by column movement. Immediate execute. As soon as we’re on course, order a cease-firing.”

  This time Larry didn’t ask any questions. He sent the corpen signal out by TBS and then executed it. J. B. King heeled to port as she swung around to the north, headed for a track behind the enemy cruiser-destroyer formation, with Morgan and Whitfield in hot pursuit. Her guns continued to blast away during the maneuver, making it hard to hear reports in Combat.

  Sluff held his breath. Did we turn in time? The Type 93 Long Lance came at you at nearly sixty miles an hour. Larry ordered the radar tracker to report the positions of the two ships behind them every minute so that he would know when to order the cease-fire.

  “Morgan’s made the turn,” Larry said. “C’mon Whitfield.”

  Then Sluff swore. The tracker marking Whitfield, the third ship in his formation, started making marks on top of one another. Something had happened back there. He called Bob on the bridge.

  “Can you see Whitfield?” he asked.

  “Wait one,” Bob shouted back over the banging of the two forward gun mounts. Then he was back. “She’s not visible and not firing. Morgan is right behind us, but Whitfield is not visible.”

  “Track shows Whitfield has stopped,” Larry said. “Recommend the cease-fire order now, sir.”

  Sluff put up his hand in a wait-one gesture. In his concern about Whitfield, Sluff had forgotten to give the cease-fire order. Had the Japs caught their ninety-degree course change to the north? Had those canny bastards detected the fact that the bearing to all those five-inch gun flashes had stabilized for a minute and then begun to draw north? A moment later, three solid thumps penetrated the ship’s hull from near misses going off close aboard.

  Yes, they had. A frantic call from Bob on the bridge confirmed what they’d heard down in Combat.

  “Combat, Bridge, heavy stuff, incoming. And star shells. And something else—we just saw a big explosion south of us. Magazine-size.”

  One of the cruisers had eaten a Long Lance, Sluff thought. They couldn’t just keep steaming in a straight line anymore, now that the Japs could see them. He had three choices: keep going north to run behind the enemy formation and start a broad weave to defeat their optical gun directors, or turn west again and try to outrun the Jap heavy cruiser’s gunfire, or, finally, turn east and run right at them.

  Multiple thumps erupted around them, sounding closer this time, but from the other side. He realized at least one of their heavies had trained her entire eight-inch gun battery on them and was now bracketing and halving. Cease firing? Or keep firing?

  “Range and bearing to the Jap formation?” he asked, trying to keep his voice calm.

  “Zero eight one and down to eight thousand yards, Commodore,” the radar operator said in a voice that was definitely not calm. Outside, King’s five-inch guns continued to hammer away at the Jap formation, shaking the bulkheads and causing a fine rain of dust to settle over Combat. Gun smoke had begun to infiltrate the vents.

  So at least one Jap heavy cruiser was still in business, he thought, and she was focusing her guns on their little formation. An ear-thumping blast punched down through the overhead in Combat as something big exploded directly overhead, audibly raining shrapnel all over the ship. Nothing penetrated all the way into CIC, but it was obvious the Japs had found the correct range. Then the radar operator swore and announced he’d lost the picture.

  Time to decide.

  “Cease firing,” he ordered. Larry repeated that to their one remaining ship, Morgan.

  “Come right by column movement to one one zero, speed three-five,” he ordered. Once again, Larry sent the order out to Morgan by TBS. Below and behind them, they could hear King’s forced-draft blowers spool up into a banshee scream as the ship went to full power. All the fixtures in CIC began to shake, rattle, and roll.

  “Recommence firing when the turn is complete,” Sluff said. “They can see us now; no reason not to shoot at them.”

  Larry’s expression bordered on panic. The commodore was going to run right at them. Again. “Why?” he asked softly, as King straightened up from the turn and then settled into a thirty-five-knot lunge at their enemies.

  “We can’t outrun an eight-inch gun,” Sluff said. “They can shoot eighteen miles; we’re only four miles away. They’ll expect us to run west.” He looked up at the small sea of pale faces looking at him in the red light. “We’re not gonna run,” he said. “We’re gonna go right at them and tear those bastards up.”

  He looked down at the plot one last time. The pencil lines were all merging. Time to go topside.

  “I’m going to the bridge,” he announced. “Larry, tell the flag we’re headed into the Jap formation. Tell Dragon, too; he may be able to help.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Larry said, but his face was white.

  Combat, without radar, had become superfluous. The plotters, trackers, talkers, and the radar operator all stared, openmouthed, at the commodore as he left CIC.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The Slot

  When he got to the top of the ladder leading out to the pilothouse, Sluff had to step aside as corpsmen ushered wounded men down toward the primary battle dressing station in the wardroom. He confronted a bloody scene when he finally stepped out onto the bridge. The shell that had taken out the radar had shredded much of the bridge with shrapnel, and there were still wounded men lying on the deck. He wondered why no one was attending to them and then realized it was because they were dead. He looked for the skipper.

&
nbsp; Bob Frey was in his chair, his forearms covered in bloody bandages. The forward gun mounts were still blasting away to port into the darkness ahead of them, and the wind from their thirty-five-knot advance across the dark sea was streaming through a hundred holes in the pilothouse’s bulkheads and overhead. Sluff hurried over to Frey’s chair. The captain looked up at him, blinked a few times, and then passed out. Sluff saw that there was more blood seeping out from under the bottom of his life jacket and that his helmet had holes in it. Someone had fastened his seat belt, which was the only thing holding him in his chair.

  Then three star shells burst in quick succession, and Sluff finally got a visual look at their enemy. A Chikuma-class heavy cruiser was off their port bow at a distance of only a few thousand yards. The ship was down by the stern and there was no bow wave visible, but the Chikumas carried all four of their twin-barreled eight-inch guns forward. Every one of them was pointed at J. B. King. As he stared, openmouthed in speechless horror, all eight guns fired right at them. A tornado of shells howled overhead, ripping the night sky with a hot, slashing sound. Sluff and everyone else still alive on the bridge instinctively ducked, as if that would save them.

  High, he thought. They went high. He stood up.

  J. B. King’s five-inch were still firing away at the Chikuma, and they were getting hits, too, as the dull red boattails of each round bore across the close distance in a hot, flat arc and buried themselves in her superstructure, each one followed by a blast of flame that tore out parts of that fearsome pagoda structure.

  He looked past the Chikuma. Behind her were the remains of what looked like four Jap destroyers. One was upside down, her dark hull covered with figures climbing out of a burning oil slick. Her propellers were clearly visible, as was an enormous hole in her midsection.

  A second was in two pieces, the bow upside down and partially submerged, the back half floating calmly as if nothing had happened, but smoking from every orifice. Beyond that he saw two, possibly three more wrecks, all burning brightly. The flares burned out as King surged past the crippled cruiser, her guns straining aft as she tried to stay on the wounded beast. Then behind them there was a gigantic explosion, which once again lit the seascape. Sluff ran out to the port bridge wing in time to see his sole remaining destroyer, Morgan, disappearing in the fiery throes of a magazine explosion. He looked back at the Chikuma, which was training those eight guns in King’s direction again, even though she was paralyzed.

  “Left full rudder,” Sluff yelled, and the helmsman, so scared that he was crying, spun the wheel. King heeled to starboard and began to turn across the cruiser’s bow, even as she got off another salvo of eight-inch. All the rounds went astern, blowing up in noisy succession right behind them. King’s guns, now given a clear field of fire, continued to blast raking shells at the cruiser. She was afire now from stem to stern, and even though King’s five-inch could not penetrate her armored spaces, there could not be too many people still alive above her main deck. Then Sluff saw one of the Chikuma’s secondary, five-inch mounts spit fire in their direction. This was followed by two hits on King, one along her port side, which ricocheted off into the water. The second went off in the air at about bridge-wing height, once again flailing King’s superstructure with shrapnel. Sluff reflexively turned his head and ducked as a piece of metal smacked him right on his steel plate and made him see stars. He shook his head, stood back up, and felt the plate. There was a palpable dent. He started to laugh but then recognized incipient hysteria.

  Sluff ordered the helmsman to steady up as King rushed through the gap between the cruiser and the two shattered destroyers. Astern, the immolation of Morgan subsided into a massive cloud of eerily glowing steam, which was quenching the lives of nearly three hundred officers and men.

  Then they were alone, and somewhere out there in the darkness there was another ship that had managed to put a torpedo into Morgan.

  “Cease firing,” Sluff yelled to the Gun Control talker.

  “Wha-a-t?” the astonished talker replied.

  “God damn your eyes, cease firing!” Sluff roared, and the astonished talker relayed the message to the gunnery officer.

  “Right standard rudder,” he ordered. The Jap gunners tracked their gun flashes, and if they were on the ball, torpedoes were already coming for them. “All ahead standard, turns for fifteen knots.”

  The replacement helmsman, who was manning both the rudder and the engine order telegraph, repeated the order, and then King began to slow down as she slewed to starboard.

  Now, he thought. We have to find that bastard. Standing by his chair, he picked up the sound-powered phone handset, switched to the JC circuit, and called Gun Control. He didn’t recognize the voice that answered. He asked for a name.

  “Chief Gonzalez,” the voice replied. “I’ve got the conn up here. Gun boss, director officer are gone.”

  “Okay, Chief,” Sluff said. “This is the commodore. I need you to put up some star shells, on an arc between three zero zero and zero five zero true. There’s another Jap out there and we need to find him. We have no radar.”

  “Hell, Commodore,” the chief said. “I know that. I’m standing on the fucking antenna. Director one is out. The mounts are in local control. Lemme see what we can do.”

  “Light up the sky, Chief, and then be ready to go back to work. It could be a cruiser out there.”

  “Good deal, Commodore.”

  For the next two minutes Sluff kept maneuvering the ship through various courses and speeds. Now that King wasn’t shooting, the Japs should not be able to see them. The wounded cruiser was dropping farther behind them, her burning superstructure the only evidence of her presence. Sluff wondered where his own cruisers were, and whether or not they’d gotten the message that he was going to attack into the Jap formation. And where was Dragon?

  Suddenly the two forward gun mounts began to fire, their barrels pointed high, as they punched out a series of parachute flare shells into the night sky. After a minute of this the sky lit up with the eye-searing glare of magnesium parachute-flares in all directions. Sluff stared out into the suddenly painful bright light, looking for—

  There she was: a Hamakaze-class destroyer, four thousand yards away and coming at full speed, her bow wave so large that her entire front end was obscured. Without orders, the chief up in gun control ordered King’s five mounts to open fire on her immediately. As Sluff watched, the Jap destroyer began turning hard to port to present her guns and torpedo tubes, but as she did so, the shells from King’s guns hit her all along her length and she burst into flames and began to slow. She was only three thousand yards away now, but her guns were strangely silent as King’s guns punched shell after shell into her, some hitting low along the hull, some hitting along her main decks. When he saw live steam erupting from her sides, he knew she was done for. He was amazed at how well King’s gun crews were scoring hits because each one was firing in local control: a pointer and a trainer gripping their yokes in the gun houses, staring through 7 × 50 binoculars slaved to the yokes. At this close range, however, wherever they centered their crosshairs, that’s where the shells went, and within a minute, the Hamakaze was a flaming wreck, steam roaring out of her shattered stacks and her twin-barreled guns pointed off at odd angles. Finally, a five-inch shell found one of her magazines, and the ship exploded in a white-hot blast.

  Once Sluff could see again, she was gone. King’s guns continued to fire into the glowing cloud of smoke and steam, and then, one by one, they went silent. The flares sputtered out as they fell into the sea with their parachutes on fire. With his ears ringing, Sluff ordered the helmsman to put the rudder over to port five degrees. He didn’t give a course order. He wanted King to turn slowly in the darkness until he knew there were no more Japs out there readying torpedoes for him. Behind them they could hear the sinking Jap destroyer’s depth charges going off. He called Combat.

  “Heard anything from the flag?” he asked as he looked around the pilothouse
, which was a blood-spattered mess. In the dimmed red lights it looked worse than it probably was.

  “Negative, sir,” Larry said. “We can’t raise anybody. I think all our antennas are gone.”

  “We just sank a Jap destroyer,” Sluff said. “There’s a heavy cruiser somewhere behind us, but she seemed to be out of action. We’ve lost both Morgan and Whitfield, I’m afraid.”

  “We’re still in the dark down here,” Larry said. “I’ve sent some people topside to see what’s happened to the radar.”

  “The radar antenna is physically down on the signal bridge, so we’re gonna be blind for a while. I think there’s one more cruiser unaccounted for.”

  “Well, we’ve totally lost the picture down here, Commodore,” Larry said. “I’ve got the radio gang headed topside to see if they can get us a working antenna. Gun plot says we’re about out of ammo for the five-inch and that they have a lot of shrapnel casualties topside among the AA gun crews. Recommend we come west and get the hell out of here.”

  Sluff looked at the gyrocompass repeater. They were still turning left, passing 300 degrees true.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll steady up on two seven zero. Whatever exploded overhead took out a lot of the bridge and director personnel, too. The skipper is unconscious so I’m in command up here for the moment. See if you can find the ship’s exec and get him up here.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll get on that, although his GQ station was back aft at secondary conn,” Larry said. “Um, that’s topside.”

  “Well I know,” Sluff said. The exec probably would have been in Combat except for the fact that Sluff and his staff had taken up all the room. Now he was probably one of the shrapnel casualties.

  “See what you can find out,” he said. “But I don’t want to stay on any course for too long in case there are more torpedo shooters out there. It’s darker’n a well digger’s ass out here. The GQ quartermaster bled all over the chart so I don’t even know where we are.”