Sentinels of Fire Read online

  The air and surface plots meant that there were lots of men speaking quietly into sound-powered phones, both making and getting reports, but to my ears it was all just a routine hum. After three years of war, my brain had learned to tune out the routine and repetitive reporting and listen instead for the sounds of immediate danger, indicated by words such as “closing fast” or “inbound” or “multiple bogeys,” or that great catchall “oh shit.” Combat was the nerve center of the ship in terms of war-fighting. In addition to the surface and air pictures, the sonar operators had a console in one corner, meaning that all three dimensions of what we might encounter, air, surface, and underwater, were displayed in this one space.

  If Combat was the brain, then the gun directors and their associated weapons represented the fist. Malloy had three twin-barreled five-inch gun mounts, all of them controlled by a large analog computer down below the waterline in a space called Main Battery Plot. There were two gun directors, one that looked like a five-inch gun mount without any guns, mounted one level above the bridge, and a second, much smaller one, at the after end of the ship’s superstructure right behind the after stack. The forward director had its own radar, which would feed range and bearing information down to the computer, which in turn would drive the five-inch gun mounts to train and point at the computed future position of incoming targets. The after director was a one-man machine, without a radar, but it could be optically locked on to incoming targets as long as they were very close. It could control the lesser guns, the multibarreled forty- and twenty-millimeter anti-aircraft batteries.

  In practice, however, these smaller guns were usually controlled by human pointers and trainers, who concentrated on keeping the stream of projectiles being fired by their guns streaming just ahead of and slightly above an incoming plane. The five-inch could reach out nine miles under director control, but by the time the forties and twenties got into it, the Mark One eyeball was the director of choice. The forties and twenties were for the close-in work, the last ditches of defense. Earlier in the war, Jap bombers would only have to get within a few vertical miles to release their bombs and then turn away. Nowadays, however, the Jap planes were the bombs, so there wasn’t much of a fire-control problem when a kamikaze came, because he came straight at you. It was simply a matter of how much steel-clad high explosive you could put in his way that determined whether or not he arrived in one piece and killed the ship or did a flaming cartwheel into the sea.

  “Station Six-Fox reports she’s taking bogeys under fire,” Lanny announced.

  “Distance?” I asked. I scanned the plotting boards. Six-Fox was the Waltham, another radar picket ship. She was an older, Fletcher-class destroyer, with five single-barrel five-inch guns.

  “Fifteen miles southwest, XO,” Lanny said. He pointed down at the plotting table. “Right here.”

  “Our radars are not picking up Six-Fox’s bogeys,” one of the Freddies said. “Our CAP says the Japs’re coming in on the deck this time. Zeros, it looks like.”

  Just like this morning, I thought. I picked up my own sound-powered phone handset, switched to the combat action circuit, and called the captain at his station on the bridge. The captain’s talker, Chief Petty Officer Julio Martinez Smith, answered.

  “I need the skipper,” I said.

  “Um, we thought he was in there with you,” Smith said. Chief Smith was another CPO who worked for me; as chief yeoman, he was the ship’s secretary, or chief administrative petty officer.

  Shit, I thought. “Thank you,” I replied, as if it were perfectly normal for the CO not to be at his station during GQ. I hung up and left Combat, going back down the ladder to the wardroom and through it to his inport cabin. The wardroom was set up as the main battle dressing station, with the chief corpsman and his assistant waiting there with all their medical gear spread out on the table. They were surprised to see me in the wardroom at GQ, but I didn’t have time to explain why I was there. I knocked twice on the skipper’s door, opened it, and found the captain the way I’d left him, sitting in front of his desk and staring at nothing. He looked up, obviously startled when I poked my head in.

  “Waltham under attack from low-fliers,” I reported.

  “They are?” the captain asked. “Go to GQ. They’ll be here next.”

  “We are at GQ, sir,” I said. “I’ve been in Combat. I thought you were already out on the bridge.”

  The captain appeared to be confused. He shook his head. “Must have fallen asleep,” he said. “Damn! I’ll be right up. How far away is Waltham?”

  “Fifteen miles southwest. Our radar doesn’t hold her bogeys.”

  The captain shook his head again. “Fifteen miles—there’s no way we can offer mutual support. They’re doing this all wrong, XO. We should be in a loose gaggle, but close enough so that all the pickets can support each other.”

  I nodded. “Yes, sir, and we maybe should put that in our message to CTF 58. Right now, though, I’m headed back to Combat.”

  “Right, right,” the captain said, getting up. “I’ll be up in two shakes.”

  I felt the ship leaning into another turn as the OOD made random course changes, forcing me to grab the handrail as I climbed the ladder. If the Divine Wind was blowing, you did not steer a straight course and make it easy for them. But what was going on with the CO? He had never, ever flaked out like that. As I opened the door into Combat I heard raised voices out on the bridge and then the engine-order telegraph ringing up more speed.

  “Bogeys, bogeys, composition two, low and fast, three-five-zero, sixteen thousand yards and closing!” one of the radar operators announced.

  “Designate to director fifty-one,” Lanny ordered. I heard the director rumbling around on its roller path overhead while the gunfire-control system radar operators down in Main Battery Plot attempted to find and then lock on to the incoming planes. I wondered if I should go out to the bridge until the captain showed up, but then I heard the captain’s voice on the intercom. “We’re coming to zero eight zero, speed twenty-five to unmask, XO,” he said. “Open fire at five miles.”

  “XO, aye,” I responded. That was better, I thought. Much more like it. The guns could shoot a projectile out to eighteen thousand yards, or nine miles, but they were much more effective if we waited until the planes got into five miles, or ten thousand yards.

  “XO, Sky One. Director fifty-one is locked on and tracking.”

  “All mounts, air action port. Commence firing when they get to ten thousand yards.”

  Almost immediately the five-inchers opened up with their familiar double-blam sound as they began hurling fifty-four-pound, five-inch-diameter shells down the bearing. Two of the mounts, fifty-one and fifty-two, were firing shells with mechanical time fuzes, set to explode in front of the approaching aircraft. Mount fifty-three, all the way aft, was shooting some of the new variable-time fragmenting shells. The VT frags were equipped with a miniature radar in the nose that detonated the shell if it detected anything solid coming at it or near it.

  “Bearing steady, range eight-oh-double-oh, and still closing.”

  Eight thousand yards. Four miles. The guns were blasting away in irregular cadence now, their thumping recoil shaking the superstructure and stirring a light haze of dust out of the overhead cableways. The forties would join in next, but not until the range came down to about two miles, or four thousand yards. The twenties were good for about a mile. The individual gun captains were all experienced hands and would open up as soon as they thought they could do some good.

  “Director fifty-one reports splash one bogey,” the JC circuit talker announced.

  One down, one to go, I thought. It was hell having to just stand here and wait to see if the guns were going to take care of business. Then the first of the forty-millimeter mounts opened up. They were noisy guns, firing as fast as the loaders could jam four-round clips of shells into their feed slots. One man, the trainer, controlled the direction of fire. A second man, the pointer, on the other
side of the mount, controlled the angle of elevation. Both had to lead their targets, making split-second calculations in their heads as to how best to make that stream of white-hot steel heading out over the water intersect with the silvery blob that was coming in right at them.

  Suddenly, everyone in Combat felt a shock wave hit the ship, followed by a loud boom.

  “Splash, second bogey,” the talker announced. “Director fifty-one says his bomb went off.”

  No kidding, I thought. Not that far away, either. Still, we were safe, for the moment.

  I felt the ship turning as the captain ordered her brought about so that we would not get too far off our radar picket station. Right now our job was to stay alive, but our mission, ultimately, was to detect any more air raids headed for the fifteen-hundred-ship armada assaulting Okinawa. That meant we had to get back on station. The radar picket stations were designed to have interlocking radar coverage. If one picket wandered too far off station, it would create a hole in the radar screen plan. The Japs could detect where there was radar coverage and, more importantly, where there wasn’t any.

  We’re bait, I thought. We’re totally expendable. Jap planes that divert to the picket line don’t attack the invasion forces, so the heavies are glad to see them diverting. I felt more than a little helpless stuck here in Combat. On the other hand, maybe it was better to not see the Jap bomber that was about to burn us all to death.

  “Combat, Captain. What’s the raid status?”

  I jumped to respond. “Main raid is in a furball with the inner-ring CAP,” I said. “No more bogeys coming for us at the moment. Waltham hasn’t reported in.”

  “There’s a helluva big column of black smoke southwest of us,” the captain said. “Bearing two three five. Keep trying to raise her.”

  That was where the plotting table last held the Waltham. I turned to ask Lanny if Waltham had an escorting support ship. “Negative, XO,” he reported. “She was by herself.”

  I tried to quash the sinking feeling in my stomach. I was more determined than ever to put something in our report to CTF 58 about needing mutual support on the picket line. They were launching a new destroyer every thirty days back in the States. Surely they could find a few more for the most dangerous station in the Navy.

  I decided to go out to the bridge. Once the main attack group had done what they could over Okinawa, any stragglers that escaped the hordes of CAP would come back out and try their luck with the pickets. We were looking at a lull of maybe twenty minutes.

  The sunlight hurt my eyes when I stepped out onto the bridge. The GQ team made for quite a crowd, what with all the extra phone-talkers and the fact that everyone was wearing bulky gray kapok jackets and steel helmets. The captain was in his chair, sipping on a mug of coffee and sucking down a cigarette. There was a rule about no eating, drinking, or smoking at general quarters, but if the captain wanted coffee and a ciggybutt, he got them. Because the wind was abaft the beam, the air smelled of stack gas, overlaid with the stink of gunpowder from the earlier exertions. The five-inch gun crews were out on deck policing the brass powder cans littering the forecastle. The forty-millimeter loaders were jamming rounds into the clips they used to load the forties. There were contrails at high altitude as the outer CAP fighters searched out whatever bogeys were still out there after the main raid. The lookouts were scanning high and low for the telltale black dots that meant another kamikaze was inbound. I walked over to the captain’s chair.

  “How close did they get?” I asked.

  “Not very,” the captain said. “I think fifty-three got both of ’em with that new VT frag stuff. You could see the Able-Able common bursts behind the planes as they came in—they’re black, as you know—but then there were grayish bursts ahead of them, and they did the job.”

  “Still in short supply,” I said. “I couldn’t get much of it, even on the Big Ben. Maybe next time we go downtown we’ll get enough for all three mounts.” “Downtown” was the term for going off-line and back to the main fleet formation off Okinawa to refuel, reprovision, and rearm from fleet replenishment ships.

  The captain raised his binoculars to study that black column of smoke on the southwestern horizon. “Any contact with Waltham?”

  “No, sir. Once this raid is over I think we should go over there, see what’s happening.”

  “Send our CAP over to take a look,” the captain said. “We can’t leave station.”

  “I think it’s time to speak up, sir,” I said. “In our report to CTF 58, I mean. A second destroyer on each station would mean each kamikaze would face twelve five-inch instead of six. Surely they have enough to go around.”

  The captain gave a bitter grunt. “They need the extra tin cans to escort the high-value ships, XO. The carriers, the battleships. Go ahead and say that in the message, I don’t care, but them’s the facts of life. Plus, in all fairness, the bulk of the raids go there, not here.”

  The bitch-box spoke. “Captain, Combat.”

  The captain depressed the talk-switch on the bitch-box. “Go ahead.”

  “Stragglers outbound from Okinawa. Inner-ring CAP in pursuit, reporting low-fliers outbound in our general direction.”

  The captain gave me a weary look. I understood, nodded, and went back into Combat. A moment later the captain’s voice came over the ship’s general announcing system, the 1MC. Its loudspeakers were placed all over the ship so everyone got the word at the same time. “Heads up, people. This time they’re coming from Okinawa. Five to ten minutes. Search sectors zero niner zero south and west to two seven zero. Low-fliers.”

  Back in Combat, I asked the Freddies where our own assigned fighters were.

  “Loitering at fifteen thousand feet, but they’ll be bingo-state in about ten minutes.”

  Bingo state meant the planes would be down to just enough fuel to get back to their carrier. They’d barely be able to make one intercept on any stragglers from the Okinawa raid, and maybe not even that.

  “Reliefs coming out?”

  “Not yet, XO. After a big raid like that, they might be late. Especially if the bastards managed to get to a carrier.”

  Damned if we do, damned if we don’t, I thought. “Okay, send ’em home, but have them go via the Waltham’s last position. I need to know if she’s still with us.”

  “Bogeys still inbound,” the radar operator called, “but it looks like they’re headed for Six-Fox and Niner-George.”

  “Alert our CAP that they may get some action over Waltham,” I said. Then I called the captain on the bitch-box to tell him what I’d been ordering up. He said he concurred. I felt the ship turning again. The captain was taking no chances with bogeys inbound, even if they were after other picket stations this time. No straight-line steaming on the picket stations. One of the Freddies was trying to get my attention.

  “XO, the CAP has a tally on the Waltham. She’s DIW and burning aft. We’re vectoring our guys against that single bogey inbound on her, but it’s gonna be tight—they’re outa fighting gas, and our radar is intermittent on that bastard.”

  “How bad is Waltham?”

  “Guys said she looks like a surfaced submarine,” the Freddy answered.

  My heart sank. I reported on the Waltham’s status to the captain and recommended again that we head southwest to see what we could do.

  “We’ll have to get permission to leave station,” the captain said. “Any signs of a second big raid yet?”

  “Negative, and our CAP has only enough gas to make one pass at the bogey headed for Waltham. If they get into a chase, we’ll have no CAP until the next launch cycle. No replacement CAP for either station as of yet. The only active bogeys are outbound.”

  “All right,” he said. “Do this. Send CTF 58 a voice message. Make it a UNODIR. Tell them Waltham needs help, we’re headed over there, our CAP are bingo, and we hold no bogeys in our sector.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” I said. I knew the captain really wanted to head southwest and save Waltham if he coul
d, but the rules about leaving station were pretty stringent. Hence the UNODIR, Navy radio shorthand for “unless otherwise directed, I am going to do such and such.” That put the burden of abandoning Waltham on the admiral commanding the picket line and his staffies down in the amphibious objective area. They might well come right back and say no, but usually they’d let a CO sending a UNODIR message take his chances. If he left station and a big raid got through undetected, woe betide him.

  I felt the ship turning again and heard the bells for more speed as I drafted a short UNODIR voice message to Commander Task Force 58, our big boss down off Okinawa. I asked one of the Freddies to relay it via the fighter planes that were about to go back to their carrier. If we waited to send it through the regular naval communications channels, it might be two days before the message would even get to CTF 58.

  This was another reason there ought to be two tin cans on each radar picket station, I thought. One could go help another ship without leaving a hole in the radar screen.

  I scanned the vertical status boards. Waltham was indicated on the surface summary plot now as being thirteen miles west-southwest. The air summary plot showed a dotted line originating near Okinawa and headed for Waltham, but the line had stopped, meaning Malloy’s radar could no longer see what was probably a kamikaze headed for Waltham’s station.

  He’s on the deck, I thought, and nobody can raise Waltham. I was about to go out to the bridge to talk to the captain when the ship made a violent turn to port and the forties and twenties opened up. Before I could gather my wits I heard an airplane engine roar close over the ship, followed by a tremendous crash of steel against steel overhead. I ducked reflexively, closing my eyes and trying to make myself small, then realized how ridiculous I must look. I wasn’t even hurt. I opened my eyes. Every other man in Combat was down on the deck.