The Commodore Page 7

  Sluff, sitting in his chair on the bridge, initialed the RFS report and handed it back to the exec. As soon as the ammo was safely stored in the magazines, they’d be ready to get under way on one hour’s notice. The three Bs of warship survival: beans, bullets, and black oil. The forward plant was coming back on the line, the aerials had been repaired, and Sluff sensed that the crew was ready to get back to dealing with the Japs.

  “Bridge, Signal Bridge.”

  “Whatcha got, Sigs?” Sluff answered. The officer of the deck watch was set back on the quarterdeck while the ship was at anchor, but the signalmen, the eyes of the ship, always knew where to find the captain.

  “Gig approaching, Cap’n,” the chief said. “Got a ball. Might be the new commodore. We can’t make out a burgee while he’s bow-on.”

  A brass ball on the flagstaff of the approaching boat meant a four-striper on board. “Right,” Sluff said. “Make sure the exec and quarterdeck are ready. I’ll come back to meet him.”

  By the time Sluff got back to the quarterdeck, the swallow-tailed red and white pennant on the boat’s flagstaff was finally visible. The exec was waiting and ready, the quarterdeck cleared of all the usual stand-arounders, and swabs were being deployed along the main deck to get the last traces of fuel oil off the route to the captain’s cabin.

  The commodore turned out to be a red-faced man, a bit overweight and shorter than Sluff. He came up the accommodation ladder, saluted the national ensign on the fantail, saluted the officer of the deck, and requested permission to come aboard. The petty officer of the deck rang out four bells on the topside speakers and announced, “Destroyer Division Two-Twelve, arriving.”

  “Welcome aboard, Commodore,” Sluff said, extending a hand. He had to bend a little bit to achieve the handshake. The commodore looked up at him, squinted, and then said, “Harmon Wolf, right?”

  “Yes, sir, and this is my exec, Bob Frey.”

  The commodore shook hands with the exec and then wrinkled his nose. “You have a fuel spill?” he asked. His eyes were darting around, doing a quick inspection.

  “No, sir,” Sluff said. “We picked up the survivors of Walke, Calhoun, and Morgan. They were pretty much covered in it.”

  “Oh, right,” the commodore said. “Okay, let’s go to my cabin.”

  Sluff glanced at the exec before answering. First little hiccup. “We can go to my cabin if you’d like, Commodore,” he said. “But the unit commander’s cabin on this ship was converted to a Combat Information Center when she was built.”

  The commodore blinked as if totally surprised by this news. “I had planned to embark, Captain,” he said, his almost petulant tone of voice indicating that he was not pleased by this unexpected development.

  “You still can, of course,” Sluff said. “I’ll move into my sea cabin, you take over my inport cabin. We’ll fit your staff in wherever we can.”

  The commodore nodded. This was the standard procedure, but he’d obviously expected that a brand-new destroyer like J. B. King would be properly appointed to support a unit commander.

  Sluff and the exec escorted the commodore to Sluff’s inport cabin. They had to dodge sailors who were reloading ready-service AA ammunition clips along the deck mounts and sponging up little patches of fuel oil. The exec had sent the petty officer of the watch ahead to clear the way, but there was still a lot of activity. The sailors tried not to stare at the diminutive division commander. The commodore’s eyes never stopped moving, looking over every detail as he made his way up the main deck. Once they were in the cabin, Mose brought coffee. Sluff sat at his desk, the commodore in the only other chair, and the exec plopped down on the couch.

  “Tell me about the battleship fight,” the commodore said. “And why J. B. King left the formation.”

  Whoops, Sluff thought. Word do get around. He nodded and related what he’d told Halsey. When he was finished, the commodore sat there without saying anything. Then he got up and began to pace around the cabin. “That will not happen under my command, Captain,” he said. “I want to make sure you understand that.”

  “Absolutely, Commodore,” Sluff said. “Unfortunately we didn’t have a unit commander for the destroyers, and Admiral Lee—”

  The commodore turned and shook his finger sideways. “Admirals do not normally communicate with individual ship captains,” he said. “But when they do, it’s incumbent on you to follow the last order given and not to take independent action.”

  “Our last order from Admiral Lee was to open fire when the big guys did.”

  “Not talking about that,” the commodore said. “Talking about your last stationing order. The last order to you was to take station in the van. Absent any other orders, that’s where you were supposed to stay.”

  “And be torn up by the Long Lances that I knew were coming?”

  “You could not know that,” the commodore pointed out. “You might suppose that, but you could not know that.”

  “And, yet, we’re here now, and the rest of the van destroyers are on the bottom of Ironbottom Sound.”

  The commodore stared at him. Sluff realized he might have gone a few words too far, but, on the other hand, he might as well stake out his command philosophy while he could. Or, while you’re still in command, he realized.

  “XO,” the commodore said, softly. “Give us a minute, please.”

  The exec got up and left the cabin. When the door closed, the commodore sat back down. “You’re new to this, Wolf,” he said. “Your ship is new, your crew is new, and you are new. That’s the only reason I’m not going to relieve you of command right here and now. Here’s a secret you apparently don’t know: When a senior officer gives an order, it just might be that he knows a lot more than you do about the tactical situation. He may or may not have time to bring you into the picture. He may only have time to give you an order. And when the senior officer does that, and the junior officer does something else, it can fuck everything up. In your case it didn’t, but if you make a habit of obeying some orders and not others, inevitably it will. I have to know, right now, that if I give you tactical orders, you will obey them to the letter and you will not ‘improvise’ according to your instincts, hunches, or superstitions.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sluff said.

  “You’d better,” the commodore said. “I intend to run a tight division. We’re only three ships right now, but more are coming out from Pearl and even LantFleet to make up for our losses out here. We will drill and we will practice and we will drill some more, so that when the Japs come, they’ll be facing an enemy as disciplined as they are. I do not care what you think about anything, but you’d damned well better care about what I think of you and your ship. Clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Sluff said. He felt his face getting face red with embarrassment.

  “Good,” the commodore said. “One last thing: I understand you’ve been to see Halsey?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t do that again, ever.”

  “They summoned me, Commodore,” Sluff said. “It’s not like I went looking for an audience.”

  “Bully for you,” the commodore said. “But understand this: In the future, they’ll summon me. And if they summon you, you summon me, got it?”

  I wonder, Sluff thought. If Halsey wanted the straight skinny, he was reportedly inclined to go directly to the source. “Yes, sir,” he said again.

  “Now you may call my gig,” the commodore said.

  “Will you still want to embark, Commodore?” Sluff asked.

  “I’ll let you know, Captain,” the commodore said. Sluff called the exec back in and asked him to escort the commodore back to the quarterdeck. He should have been the one to do that, but at the moment, he was too angry to be sufficiently respectful. As the commodore left, he did have to ask himself the question: Who you mad at—him or yourself?

  Destroyer Division 212 set sail from Nouméa Harbor at four thirty that afternoon. The commodore’s flagship, USS Gary, a Porter-class
, led the column of three, with Westin, a Benson-class, second, and J. B. King bringing up the rear. The commodore’s staff had sent over a copy of the DesDiv 212 standard operating procedures, which Sluff had read and then told the exec to make sure all the officers read as well. As the ships left port and navigated through the minefield channel, the commodore used signal flag hoists for all his tactical signals. The ships were stationed at five-hundred-yard intervals, the traditional distance between destroyer-type ships operating in a column formation.

  Sluff was sitting in his captain’s chair, watching carefully as the ships turned through the various legs of the swept channel. The quartermasters and the exec were busy taking fixes every three minutes to make sure that they didn’t play follow-the-leader into the minefield. When they finally emerged, the formation speed was increased to twenty-seven knots and a course was set for Guadalcanal, nearly six hundred miles distant. The commodore signaled one of the numbered zigzag plans, executed it, and the ships then began to make seemingly random course changes, turning together alternately left and then right of the base course in accordance with a cammed clock mounted on the steering console. The commodore had put them on one hour’s notice for thirty-four knots, which meant that the engineers down below had to light off the other two boilers periodically just to keep them hot.

  The exec, finished with close navigation, came over to the chair.

  “What did I miss?” he asked.

  “A C-plus ass-chewing,” Sluff said. “Maybe a B, but, I don’t know, it lacked a certain finesse.”

  The exec grinned. “They still mad about our turning away from the Long Lances?”

  “Apparently so,” Sluff said. “I don’t regret it for a moment. I’d still rather be the ship picking up people in the water than be the people in the water. Wasn’t like it mattered to those battleships.”

  “I heard a story when I went over to the repair ship to expedite the antenna jobs,” the exec said, glancing around to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “From a guy who said he works at SOPAC headquarters. Intel type. He said the rumor is that Lee put the tin cans up front and then slowed the battleships down once the shooting started. Four destroyers shooting made a pretty good light show so they became the Japs’ aiming point. The destroyers soaked up the Long Lances, while the BBs avoided the danger.”

  Sluff sighed. “Problem is, XO, that could be considered our mission. Everyone says the tin cans are expendable, and this may have been a case in point. Anyway, our new boss was very unhappy with our independent thinking. My independent thinking. Brought up the old your-boss-knows-more-than-you-do example. No more of that shit, if you please, Mister Christian.”

  “Wow,” the exec said. “Seriously hidebound.” He glanced out the bridge windows. “Kinda like this formation.”

  “Yeah, we’re too close to one another,” Sluff said. “Makes good JO training for the ensigns, but one Jap sub could fire a spread, and no matter what the zig or the zag was, a properly fired spread of torpedoes could get us all because we’re packed in too close together.”

  “Perhaps we should send a signal,” the exec said with a perfectly straight face. “Make that observation to His Lordship, suggest we widen it out a little.”

  “Lay below, Bob,” Sluff said with a grin. “Before I conclude you’re gunning for my job.”

  “With this guy in charge?” the exec said. “No thankee very much.”

  With the ships running at twenty-seven knots only a quarter mile from each other, Sluff decided to stay on the bridge for a while. His junior officers did not have much experience with close-in formation steaming. He called for Mose to bring him supper whenever it was ready and settled back in his chair. It was going to be a long six hundred miles. He hoped there’d be fuel barges at journey’s end. Even with two-boiler ops, they’d burn at least half their fuel.

  EIGHT

  Twenty-four hours later, the column beheld the green mountains of Guadalcanal on the northwestern horizon. The flagship sent out a flashing-light signal: Proceed independently to Tulagi, refuel, report RFS when completed.

  That was plain enough, Sluff thought, and asked CIC for a course to Tulagi at twenty-five knots. J. B. King was down to just above 50 percent fuel, courtesy of that twenty-seven-knot bell all night. On the other hand, they’d run through Torpedo Alley, the waters between Nouméa and the Solomons used by American ships to get to Guadalcanal, like a dose of salts. Jap submariners were not known for their aggressiveness, and a trio of destroyers zigzagging through the night at high speed made them a poor prospect for torpedo attack from a submerged sub.

  Halfway across the sound, CIC reported that they were picking up approaching air contacts. Sluff sounded GQ and slowed to twenty knots. The raid was still forty miles out, and he didn’t want to be trapped in the confines of Tulagi Harbor when torpedo-laden Bettys started diving on him.

  “Combat, Bridge, does the commodore hold this raid?”

  “They haven’t reported it, Captain,” the exec said. “We’ve passed it on, but apparently Gary’s radar doesn’t hold them.”

  Sluff put binocs on the other two destroyers, which had already passed them en route to the fuel barges at Tulagi. Both had air-search radars, but they were the older models, not as capable as the one J. B. King had. Westin was in the lead, headed straight for Tulagi. Gary was astern of her by about two miles. Both were drawing away from J. B. King.

  “Go back to them and confirm the number of bogeys and their course and speed. Any sign of a response from Cactus air?”

  “No, sir, they hold the raid as incoming but they have no assets to launch. Recommend starting a big circle in case these are Bettys.”

  Sluff ordered the officer of the deck to put the rudder over three degrees to starboard and hold it. “Betty” was the navy’s aircraft recognition name for the Japanese G4M medium-range bomber, which could deliver either bombs or the airborne version of the Long Lance. Navy fighter pilots also called them Zippos, in honor of the famous cigarette lighter, because the G4Ms’ fuel tanks were unprotected and one solid burst usually was enough to flame them. But first you had to hit them, and preferably before they hit you.

  Sluff reached for the bitch-box talk switch as the bridge GQ team double-checked that unneeded equipment was stowed, everyone was properly dressed out for battle, and their sound-powered phone circuits were up and ready. “Gun Control, Captain, open fire at maximum radar-controlled range.”

  “Control, aye, we’re locked on the lead bomber right now. Combat says there are fourteen of ’em, constant bearing, decreasing range, now twenty-one miles.”

  Bad news, Sluff thought. Fourteen bombers against one destroyer equated to really bad odds. Hopefully the other two tin cans would wake up and join the fight. Then a thought struck him: If the other two destroyers couldn’t see the raid, they might not even be at general quarters. The sky was a bland, gray haze. He had no idea what the real visibility was. He watched the five-inch guns up forward swing out and point north. The planes were still out of range, but they wouldn’t be for long. The guns would commence firing at about ten miles. If they were coming in at three hundred knots, they’d be in range in less than two minutes. As the ship turned in its defensive circle, the guns trained left until they came into the stops, and then whirled off to the other side to pick up the track. Maybe he should steady up? Begin circling again when they got closer? Before he could decide what to do about that, the bitch-box lit up.

  “Bridge, Sigs. Signal from the commodore: What are you doing?”

  “Reply as follows: Preparing to engage inbound air raid, three four zero, twenty miles.”

  “Sigs, aye.”

  Goddammit, Sluff thought. Fourteen enemy bombers inbound over Ironbottom Sound in broad daylight and he’s sending me flashing-light signals? Don’t they have radios over there in Gary?

  “Bridge, Sigs. From the commodore: Proceed Tulagi as directed. Do not hold any air raid.”

  At that moment, Sluff could not actuall
y see the Bettys, if that was what they were, but he knew from reading the reports from previous engagements out here that they usually started letting down at thirty miles in a slant dive to the surface for a torpedo attack. And this was the time of the morning when they usually came.

  He stared into the sky on the reported bearing, but saw only gray. By now, he calculated, they couldn’t be more than ten miles from the ship. A second later, J. B. King’s five-inch guns opened up in rapid fire, making enough noise that Sluff could no longer think about what to do about the other ships. He had his own fight to deal with. Hopefully the other ships would see what he was shooting at and realize that, yes, old boy, there was an air raid in progress. Then he saw them, black dots, emerging out of the low cloud base, getting bigger by the second.

  The swarm of black dots split up, four coming for J. B. King and the rest turning left to go after Gary and Westin, who still appeared to be oblivious, the silhouettes of their five-inch guns clearly still centerlined. Sluff yelled approvingly when he saw the first of “their” Bettys burst into flames and go cartwheeling into the sea. Then a second one did the same as J. B. King’s five gun mounts filled the air with variable-time fused projectiles, five-inch rounds that had a tiny radio in their nose. The radio would beam out a signal ahead. If anything reflected the signal back at the nose of the projectile, the fuse sensed it and detonated the round, hopefully right in the plane’s face. He kept the ship in that slow turn because that made it really hard for a bomber to set up a torpedo solution.