The Commodore Page 8

  A third Betty blossomed fire from his left wing and then exploded in a huge fireball, closer now, four miles at best.

  There had been four. Where was number four?

  He finally found it, turning outbound in a desperate attempt to evade the firestorm of antiaircraft fire coming up from King. The gunners kept after him, even as he fled to the west, and finally a single round burst under his left wing and he turned into a ball of fire that slowly descended to the sea and then went in.

  King’s guns ceased firing, and Sluff had to shake his head to get the ringing roar out of his ears. He did a quick scan of the horizon north to west, looking for any skulkers, but the sky seemed clear. He swung his binocs right, to the east, and then swore. Eight miles distant, one of their division mates, most likely Gary, was stopped in the sea, sagging amidships with a huge bolus of fire, steam, and smoke erupting from her midships.

  Torpedoed. No question. There were two Betty bombers still circling the wreck, trying to set up for a kill. More ominously, there was no answering fire from the dying destroyer. He swept his binocs farther right. Westin was also smoking from a large fire aft, but she was still shooting at two bombers that were also circling, like wolves, waiting for the wounded destroyer to make a wrong move.

  “All ahead flank, make turns for twenty-seven knots,” Sluff yelled from the bridge wing. “Steady as you go!”

  He jumped into the pilothouse, took a bearing between the two destroyers, and ordered the helmsman to steer that course. He wished he’d had all four on the floor, but it would take an hour to get the other two boilers on the line for thirty-five knots.

  “Gun Control, Captain, engage anything within range.”

  “Control, aye, but I can only use my two forward guns as long as we’re headed straight at them.”

  “Understood,” Sluff said. “I’ll turn when we close the range, but for right now, shoot at those bastards however you can.”

  “Control, aye.” A moment later the two forward gun mounts, mounts fifty-one and fifty-two, began to blast away at the two Bettys circling Gary. There were a few airbursts, but the Japs kept circling, until one made a quick turn, slanted down to five hundred feet, and dropped a stick of bombs on the hapless destroyer. Sluff watched in horror as the bombs went off, erupting from starboard to port, with one, perhaps two making direct hits. Both Bettys then made a run for it as King made the air hot for them.

  Sluff told Gun Control to shift targets in the direction of the destroyer that was still shooting. He looked back for the Gary and saw that she was gone. There was an ugly cloud of steam and black smoke hovering over the sea, which appeared to be covered in small, black dots. The guns opened up again as J. B. King raced in, and the two Bettys circling Westin maneuvered hard to escape the new barrage of five-inch fire. As he focused his glasses, Westin hit one of the jackals still circling her and a large fireball fell into the sea. His brother, the second Betty, pulled away from the scene, apparently saw J. B. King approaching, banked hard, and leveled down for a torpedo attack on King.

  Sluff didn’t have to tell the gunnery officer what to do. Mounts fifty-one and fifty-two shifted targets and began rapid fire on the approaching bomber, which was now maybe three miles away. Bursts began to appear alongside it, but then Sluff saw a thin shape drop from her belly.

  Long Lance.

  “Right full rudder,” he called, to swerve the ship away from the approaching torpedo. The turn allowed the rest of King’s guns to get into it, and they quickly splashed the final bomber. The huge torpedo raced past them down the port quarter, a cloud of steam spitting out of the back end as it went by. Okay, he thought. Enough of going in circles. “Rudder amidships. Make turns for twenty knots. Quartermaster, give me a course for Tulagi.”

  Suddenly it got quiet as the ship settled down on a new course.

  No, wait, Sluff thought: Westin’s got problems, but she’d been able to defend herself. But Gary? He couldn’t go to Tulagi without picking up her survivors.

  “Officer of the deck, I need a bearing to the point where Gary went down.”

  “Two niner zero,” the OOD called out, after consulting an alidade out on the port bridge wing to get a bearing to the debris cloud astern.

  “Steer two niner zero,” Sluff ordered.

  As the ship came about, it became clear that Gary was now just a cloud of dirty steam. That quick. Wow. Welcome to the war, Commodore.

  “Bridge, Combat, radar’s clear of bogeys. I think we’re missing Gary.”

  “That’s affirmative,” Sluff said. “We’re heading that way now. Looks like she took a torpedo and then a stick of bombs from that last Betty. Westin’s got a pretty big fire going, but she was still shooting when the Japs finally left. So: The air scope’s clear?”

  “Yes, sir, no air contacts.” Sluff looked at his watch: 1015. The entire attack had lasted, what—six minutes?

  “Officer of the deck, secure from GQ and set the recovery detail,” he ordered. Then he called Gun Control on the bitch-box. “Keep two five-inch gun mounts and all the forties manned and ready.”

  He went back to his chair. More fuel oil all over the place, he thought, and then was ashamed of himself. Poor bastards in the water weren’t thinking about J. B. King’s pretty decks just now.

  He wondered why the commodore had ignored King’s warnings. Gary probably hadn’t even been at general quarters when the torpedoes came. He also wondered what he would have done if the commodore had been on board King and told him not to go to GQ. Could a unit commander do that? Would he have obeyed?

  He told the officer of the deck to maneuver the ship to a stop in the middle of all the dots now visible in the water. “You know what to do,” he said.

  The OOD just nodded.

  NINE

  The two remaining ships of DesDiv 212 didn’t reach Tulagi Harbor until sunset. J. B. King had picked up 225 survivors of the Gary, and then had had to take Westin in tow. She’d been hit by a torpedo just aft of her aftermost gun mount, losing her stern and, thereby, propellers and steering. Because she was down by the stern and not the bow, J. B. King could tow her at almost five knots, and they’d made Tulagi before any more air raids showed up. The harbormaster had sent out a crowd of small boats to take off the Gary survivors and the worst of the wounded from Westin.

  The repair facility at Tulagi was by now, sadly, well versed in what had to be done to make Westin seaworthy. Soon a fleet tug would be dispatched to bring her back to the floating dry dock in Nouméa. Once a bevy of Mike-6 boats had surrounded the wounded ship and nudged her close to shore, J. B. King had gone alongside a fuel barge for some much-needed black oil. Then they anchored about five hundred yards away from Westin, whose superstructure was being covered up by camouflage netting strung out from the beach. That’s when Sluff found out who the new commodore of DesDiv 212 was.

  Gary had been surprised and then hit with a perfectly delivered Long Lance torpedo amidships. A second Betty had dropped a string of six bombs from starboard to port. Five were near misses, although the shock had probably opened seams all along the destroyer’s thin hull and hastened her sinking. It turned out that the sixth had hit just below the bridge and taken out everyone there, including the ship’s captain and the commodore. When they got into Tulagi, Westin’s CO, who turned out to be one of Sluff’s classmates, had sent J. B. King a visual signal informing Sluff that, since he, CO Westin, was fifteen lineal numbers junior to Sluff, Commander Harmon Wolf was now acting ComDesDiv 212.

  Sluff invited the CO of Westin for a meeting over in his cabin. He sent King’s boat so that the damaged destroyer didn’t have to launch one of her own. His name was Tom Miller. Although Sluff didn’t remember him from the academy, he did remember the name. He greeted Miller on the quarterdeck and took him up to his inport cabin. Miller looked exhausted and more than a bit sad. He’d lost twenty-six men in the attack and the fire back aft had come very close to mount fifty-five’s magazine, requiring that it be flooded. His uniform wa
s still wet from the fire-fighting efforts, and there were bloodstains on his cuffs. Sluff sat him down, opened up his safe, extracted a bottle of Old Grand-Dad, poured a measure into his personal coffee mug, and offered it to the shaken CO, who downed it in one grateful pop. Sluff restored Grand-Dad to the security of his safe and then asked if Miller could figure out why in the hell the commodore hadn’t acted on King’s radio warnings.

  “We heard you loud and clear and went to GQ, although our radar didn’t hold any contacts. I knew you had the new SG model so I figured you weren’t making shit up.” He paused, inhaled, and let out a long whiskey-tinged sigh. “Latham is—was, I guess—a bit of a strange duck. Always on the lookout for slights, real or imagined, to his authority. Larry Goddard, CO Gary, told me one time that he had to hold school-call on the wardroom on how to talk to the commodore, lest he take offense at the way something was said. Personally, I think he had a bad case of short man’s disease. You couldn’t tell him anything, unless you first set it up so that it came out sounding like he’d thought of it first. He was also a screamer, and you know how the troops love that shit. I was awfully glad he was in Gary and not riding me.”

  “I don’t think Gary was even at GQ,” Sluff said. “At least you were shooting.”

  “Well, Commodore,” Miller said with a weary grin, “I sure as shit hope you tell it that way in your report.”

  “Oh, hell, Tom, I’m not the commodore of anything. I’m just senior surviving skipper. Trust me, there’ll be a new four-striper coming up from Nouméa in just a couple days. Now: How the hell they gonna get you going again?”

  Miller shook his head. “That torpedo took off the final fifty feet of my ship,” he said. “Broke both shafts in several places, removed the entire stern along with the rudders…” He stopped and shook his head. “That torpedo whiplashed the entire ship,” he continued. “Bent watertight doors, knocked machinery off its foundations. I’ve still got people shoring bulkheads in the entire after part of the ship. We got the big fire out pretty quick, but I still don’t have a clear picture of all the damage.”

  “Can they make you seaworthy here in Tulagi?” Sluff asked.

  “Barely,” Miller said. “Either way, we’re eventually gonna have to be towed back to the States, or at least to Pearl, which means we’re talking four thousand miles at five knots, tops. I don’t know if Halsey has the assets to do that. He may just decide to scuttle her.”

  Sluff had no response to that possibility. It was that real. Westin was a Benson-class destroyer, and, although not exactly obsolete, in comparison with the new Fletcher class she was far less capable. The big bosses might very well decide to cut their losses, send the crew back to the States to man up a new Fletcher, strip her for parts, and then consign the old girl to Davy Jones’s locker.

  The radio messenger knocked on the door and brought in the message board. “Oboe from COMSOPAC,” he announced. Sluff had sent out a brief report on the air raid, the sinking of Gary, the loss of Commodore Latham, and the fact that Westin had no back end anymore. This must be the reply. He scanned the message.

  The date-time group was less than an hour ago. It was an operational immediate precedence, known in radio central parlance as an “Oboe.” It was addressed for action to J. B. King, information to the other four ships involved. He read the text aloud. “CO J. B. King assume duties as ComDesDiv Two-Twelve. Tow Westin from Tulagi ASAP. Rendezvous with USS Bobolink, USS Carter, USS Evans, currently en route Cactus. Once handover of Westin complete, Carter, Evans, King return Cactus for NGFS duties. CDD Two-Twelve acknowledge.”

  Sluff showed the message to Miller. “Well, there you go, Commodore,” Miller said. “Congratulations. I think.”

  Sluff shook his head. “Temporary,” he said. “Like I said, there’ll be some eager-beaver four-striper here by tomorrow, probably. But: That said, how soon can you set up to take a towline? I’d like to transit Torpedo Alley in the dark if we can.”

  “Give me an hour to get a final damage assessment, make sure we’re safe to go to sea. I’ll send you a light as soon as I can.”

  Sluff nodded. Miller got up, thanked him for the shot of Dutch courage. “Take a good hard look at your hull,” Sluff said. “If you think she’s not ready for sea, we won’t go.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, as King remained at anchor awaiting word from Westin, a message came in from COMSOPAC changing the plan, confirming what the old destroyer saw: If you don’t like the plan, just wait a minute—it’ll change. The two destroyers coming northwest from Nouméa had been detached from the slow-moving fleet tug and told to proceed at best speed to Guadalcanal, there to rendezvous with J. B. King, chop to ComDesDiv 212, and await further orders. The fleet tug, USS Bobolink, would keep chugging toward Tulagi at twelve knots and get there when she got there. The two destroyers, however, would arrive in Ironbottom Sound waters by dawn tomorrow.

  Sluff called the exec to his cabin and told him what was going on. They’d decided to shut down one boiler room for the night while steaming auxiliary on the other until sunrise. That would give the engineers some much-needed rest. The ship had been refueled and the gun boss had managed to cadge a few hundred more rounds of five-inch ammo from the base magazines. The exec said he would tell radio central to take the communications guard for ComDesDiv 212. Sluff agreed while reiterating that his “appointment” was going to be short-lived, but he recognized that, since the commodore and most of his small staff had been killed aboard Gary, any messages addressed for DesDiv 212 needed somewhere to land.

  While they were speculating on what the “further orders” might be, Chief Hawkins on the signal bridge called down.

  “Cap’n, we’re getting a light in from Westin. They’re experiencing progressive flooding and they’re putting all their people ashore as a precaution. There’s more but we’re still taking in the message.”

  Sluff thanked him for the heads-up and told the exec. They both headed topside to the bridge. There was nothing King could do other than come alongside and add her pumping capacity to that of the damaged destroyer, but if Westin was truly experiencing progressive flooding, that would only delay the inevitable. Apparently that torpedo had done a whole lot more damage than tearing off the ship’s stern.

  It was a peculiarity of Tulagi Harbor that the water depth along the shore fell off steeply to a depth of hundreds of feet. That meant damaged ships could be brought right up to the shoreline, literally moored to palm trees along the beach, and then covered with camouflage netting so as to appear to be part of the island to visiting Betty bombers. Westin was now no more than fifty feet offshore and was using her boat and some landing craft from the harbormaster to ferry the crew from the sinking ship to the shore. Sluff offered J. B. King’s launch to the CO of Westin by flashing light, but he said he had enough help.

  “What’s left of her stern is damned near awash now,” the exec said. “I’m surprised they can’t get flooding boundaries set.” The scene in front of them was beginning to look like a movie set, with work lights on deck illuminating the desperate effort to keep the pumps running even as a muted evacuation was under way from the forward end of the ship.

  “She’s not that old, XO,” Sluff said, feeling helpless. “But that torpedo probably opened her seams from end to end. Those damned things hit you amidships, they break you in half, like Gary. If they hit you on one end or the other, the explosion torques the hull so bad that suddenly you’re fighting hundreds of small leaks. Dammit!”

  They watched for another thirty minutes as the small landing craft surrounded the dying ship, their hulls barely visible in all the diesel smoke and spotlights as they bumped up against the destroyer’s sides to get people off. Then came the sound Sluff had been waiting for: a loud crack, as the first of the mooring lines holding her to the shore parted like a gunshot. Then came another. Suddenly he could see her main deck tilting toward him. Westin was beginning to capsize.

  “Hope to Christ they safed their de
pth charges,” Sluff muttered. By now several of the King’s officers were lining the bridge wing, watching the evolving spectacle. There was no talking. Everyone knew that there, but for the grace of God …

  Three more mooring lines parted in quick succession and, like an exhausted whale, Westin rolled slowly to starboard until her mast reluctantly touched the water, and then she subsided in a tumult of boiling water, steam, dust, and smoke, all made surreal by the small searchlights mounted on the harbor boats as they backed out of harm’s way. The doomed destroyer turned turtle, her back half well down in the water, her stumpy sonar dome visible now just behind the bow, and then she slid out of sight in a rumble of escaping air and the sudden bright stink of fuel oil. There was a moment of silence, and then the diesel engines of the various boats assaulted the night air as they pushed into the foaming patch of black water, looking for any people who might have made it off in her last moments.

  Sluff waited anxiously for a series of thunderous explosions to erupt from Westin’s depth charges as she sank past set-point depth, but nothing happened. Then he remembered: The torpedo had taken her stern off. Including the depth-charge racks. At this moment, while there were all those boats circling in there and possibly even sailors struggling in the water, that was very good thing.

  “Bring me a message blank,” he said. COMSOPAC needed to know what had just happened. He stared back out over the dark waters of Tulagi Harbor. Of the Westin, nothing remained but a three-hundred-foot-long patch of foaming bubbles, as sixteen hundred tons of steel tumbled soundlessly down the drowned flanks of Florida Island into the abyss below.

  TEN

  At 2200 that night, two high-priority messages came in from COMSOPAC. Both were addressed to ComDesDiv 212. The first acknowledged Sluff’s report about the loss of Westin, and instructed him to pass on to the CO of Westin that air transport would be dispatched to remove him and his crew to Nouméa.

  The second message revealed what that term “further orders” was all about. According to coast watchers, six Jap destroyers were preparing to make a high-speed run down the Slot to land reinforcements for the Jap garrison on Guadalcanal. They were expected to arrive at or around midnight of the next day. Since there were no cruisers available following the debacle of the Savo engagement, DesDiv 212 was ordered to intercept and break up the resupply effort. Sluff called the exec and asked him to get all the officers not on watch to assemble in the wardroom.