Down to the Sea (32 page)

In a harbinger of the days that lay ahead, three hours after Halsey's flagship,
New Jersey,
dropped anchor at Ulithi on December 24, 1944, the battleship “received a direct hit on the main deck” from a 5-inch shell fired by a U.S. ship conducting antiaircraft practice outside the lagoon. The shell pierced the main deck, passed through the second deck, and “lay unexploded in a washroom.” Three sailors were injured.

Arriving the next day by seaplane was a “very concerned, very upset” Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, the recipient a week earlier of his fifth star, a new rank created that month by Congress. Both Halsey and members of Congress “had expected” that Halsey too would receive a fifth star, but his promotion
had not yet been approved by a military hierarchy that had not forgotten the admiral's strategic blunders at Leyte Gulf. Now any Halsey promotion would be “typhoon-delayed” as well.
*

Nimitz came to Ulithi to hear from Halsey why he had taken his fleet into “the dangerous semicircle of a typhoon,” which Nimitz and his Pacific Fleet staff believed to be a reflection on Halsey's “seamanship.” Nimitz carried a top-secret cable from Chief of Naval Operations Ernest King, who according to a Nimitz aide “practically tore the Navy Department apart” over the typhoon losses. Addressing himself to both Nimitz and Halsey in the cable, King said he wanted “to know the circumstances which caused operating units of Third Fleet to encounter typhoon which resulted in the loss and crippling of so many combatant ships.”

In a private meeting aboard
New Jersey,
Nimitz informed Halsey that he had already appointed a court of inquiry to investigate and hear testimony from various parties involved. Word had not yet been made public about the three lost destroyers, and Nimitz would hold off another two weeks before issuing a press communiqué about the disaster—by which time most of the next of kin would have been contacted. The human losses were staggering even to Navy commanders accustomed to weighty matters: with only some 90 survivors accounted for from the lost destroyers, more than 700 men were missing and presumed dead. When he did finally speak publicly about Halsey's run-in with the typhoon, the soft-spoken Nimitz pulled no punches, describing it as “the greatest loss that we have taken in the Pacific without compensatory return since the First Battle of Savo,” the first major naval engagement of the Guadalcanal campaign.
†

Nimitz had brought with him from Hawaii the officer he had selected to lead the inquiry: Vice Admiral John H. Hoover. The compact Hoover, a fifty-eight-year-old native Ohioan, had graduated from Annapolis in 1907, three years after Halsey. Designated a naval aviator upon completion of flight training in 1929, Hoover was captain of the aircraft carrier
Lexington
at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor. He now served as commander, forward area, Central Pacific, in which capacity he reported directly to Nimitz and had no dealings with Halsey. Years earlier, Hoover had been nicknamed “Genial John” because of his “dour personality.” He was considered a “capable enforcer” of naval regulations and policies and a man who could “not be browbeaten,” even by the famously irascible Ernie King, under whom Hoover had served in a number of commands.

In a formal letter to Hoover dated Christmas Day, Nimitz directed him to serve as president of the court of inquiry, which would consist of two other admirals. Nimitz wanted them to begin the next day, “or as soon thereafter as practicable,” for the purpose of “inquiring into all the circumstances connected with the loss” of
Hull, Monaghan,
and
Spence
and the damage sustained by other ships of the Third Fleet “as a result of adverse weather on or about 18 December 1944.” Nimitz directed Hoover to include in the court's findings a statement of facts and give its opinion as to whether “any offenses have been committed or serious blame incurred.” In the event of the latter, Nimitz expected the court to “specifically recommend what further proceedings should be had.”

By naval statute, the court of inquiry would be “more inquisitorial than adversarial”—an investigative and fact-finding proceeding. Yet courts of inquiry were “serious affairs” that could “cripple or wreck careers.” There were more ominous possibilities, too. Based on the findings and recommendations of the court of inquiry, Nimitz could decide to hold a court-martial, in which defendants would be charged with infractions of military law; if they were convicted, a range of punishments could be levied, from losing rank to being drummed out of the service or imprisoned.

The court convened the morning after Christmas.

Nimitz had appointed as judge advocate Captain Herbert K. Gates, although he was untrained in the law. Rather, his specialty was marine engineering. A 1924 graduate of Annapolis, Gates, forty-three, a native of Michigan, was commanding officer of the destroyer tender
Cascade
(AD-16), equipped to provide destroyers with spare parts and repairs on everything from typewriters to guns and boilers. As the court of inquiry would be fact-finding, with few rules of procedure and evidence to follow, Nimitz had decided that Gates' expertise in naval engineering and ship repair would be invaluable to the members of the court as they strove to understand how the ships of the Third Fleet “reacted to storm conditions and storm damage.” The technical-minded Gates would have much leeway to bring before the court any of a vast array of information he saw fit.

Gathered in the wardroom of
Cascade
were Gates, Hoover, and the other two members of the court: Vice Admiral George D. Murray, fifty-five (Annapolis 1911), a former commander of aircraft carriers (
Enterprise
and
Hornet
) who had fought under Halsey earlier in the war and now worked for Nimitz as commander air force, Pacific Fleet, and Rear Admiral Glenn B. Davis, fifty-two (Annapolis 1913), who had won the Navy Cross in the battle for Guadalcanal in November 1942 while commanding the battleship
Washington
(BB-56) and engaging and sinking the Japanese battleship
Kirishima
in the first head-to-head confrontation of battleships in the Pacific theater. Davis was now a battleship division commander who had been “in the thick of the action in the Pacific” when Nimitz summoned him to Ulithi to serve on the court.

After identifying four enlisted men who would alternate as court reporters in the preparation of the official transcript, the court's first order of business was the decision to “sit with closed doors,” meaning that other naval personnel as well as war correspondents, “casual observers and the curious” would be excluded from all sessions.

After some other preliminaries, such as administering oaths to one another and reading aloud Nimitz' letter authorizing the formation and makeup of the court, Gates asked about the order in which wit
nesses were to be called, pointing out that the Third Fleet was scheduled to sortie from Ulithi in four days for a return to the Philippines. The court decided to call the “fleet witnesses first,” followed by the survivors.

There was also what amounted to another formality: officially advising James Marks, the only commanding officer from the three sunken destroyers to survive, that “in view of the loss of
Hull
” he would be considered a “defendant.” As officers who lost ships routinely faced such inquiries, it came as no surprise to Marks, who entered the wardroom with his appointed counsel, Captain Ira H. Nunn, an Annapolis (1924) and Harvard Law School (1934) graduate and former destroyer skipper who had won a Navy Cross two months earlier at Leyte Gulf for “pressing home numerous successful attacks against hostile aircraft and surface ships” while in command of a screening unit during amphibious landings.

Preston Mercer was also called before the court and advised that given the loss of
Hull
and
Monaghan,
both attached to his destroyer squadron, he had “an interest in the subject matter” and would be allowed to be present during the course of the inquiry, examine witnesses, and introduce information pertinent to the inquiry. As an interested party rather than a defendant, Mercer did not have counsel.

The first witness to be sworn in was Rear Admiral Robert Carney, who had commanded the cruiser
Denver
(CL-58) before being assigned as chief of staff to Halsey. Carney was asked by Gates to acquaint the court with the operations of the Third Fleet and “events leading up to the matter…which took place on December 17th and 18th.”

Speaking uninterrupted for some minutes, the chief of staff explained that the fleet had been conducting air strikes on Luzon from December 14 through 16 in support of the landings on Mindoro, and that the fleet was “further obligated” to deliver additional strikes on Luzon beginning on the nineteenth. He explained that the plan called for “a retirement” toward the fueling rendezvous set for the morning of December 17. While the rendezvous was kept, Carney said, the wind
and sea conditions made fueling difficult. Although the fleet was “very expert at fueling at sea” and had previously done so “in the wake of typhoons,” such “expertness and experience testifies to the unusual conditions that existed that day.”

According to Carney, Halsey concluded “about midday on the 17th that there was a tropical disturbance to the eastward of the fleet's position.” The fuel situation in the destroyers was “somewhat critical by reason of three successive days and nights of operations” off Luzon, with “many destroyers reporting in the neighborhood of 15 percent oil.” Carney said “the problem” was to get the fleet fueled in order “to resume offensive operations on the 19th.” He said their best estimate at that time was that the storm was moving in a northwesterly direction and that it would recurve to the northeast. This, Carney explained, was “based on a study of the current weather map” and “the history of December typhoons.” Using this information, the fleet set a new fueling rendezvous for the next morning.

That night, with the weather deteriorating, the fleet was “unable from available data to accurately determine the existence of a typhoon system nor to accurately estimate the storm's character or movement.” In the early hours of the eighteenth, Carney said, a decision was made to “head in a generally southerly direction in order to be south of the storm track,” where calmer conditions might be expected. Efforts were made at daylight “again to do some fueling but that had to be abandoned.” It wasn't until “mid forenoon of the 18th before we had accurate information that a genuine typhoon did in fact exist, where it was, and what it was doing.” Courses were “adjusted” at that point, Carney said, for “comfort and safety.”

Still speaking without being asked questions, Carney gave—perhaps inadvertently—his most revealing insight into Halsey's mind-set after he first learned that ships had been lost in the typhoon.

“The fleet was refueled on the 19th at a rendezvous sufficiently south of the storm track to give good weather, and efforts were made to go over the fleet track to pick up survivors from the ships then defi
nitely known to be lost…. Air searches and by surface vessels were initiated to the extent possible with the concurrent necessity for getting back to the Luzon area for the resumption of the offensive operations.”

To the extent possible?
Was Carney saying that continuing offensive operations had a higher priority than rescuing U.S. sailors in the water?

“Word had been received that survivors from
Hull
and
Spence
had been picked up and had stated that their ships had foundered,” Carney went on. “The fact of
Monaghan
was not disclosed until the destroyer
Brown
reported picking up six survivors from
Monaghan
on the 21st.”

Notwithstanding the reports concerning the loss of
Hull
and
Spence
and survivors being picked up in the water late on the eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth, the fleet began “on the night of the 20th a high speed run toward Luzon.” Only when the “residual seas became increasingly heavy” as they “overtook the storm again” were the air strikes cancelled. “Upon retirement toward the fleet's base [Ulithi],” Carney said, “a final check by searchers, air and surface, was made in the hope of finding further survivors.”

Again it sounded as if rescue operations—for Halsey and the Third Fleet—were a decidedly lower priority than was getting on with the war.

Returning Carney to his testimony about the fuel status of destroyers on the seventeenth—“15 percent fuel oil on board”—Gates asked whether that was a “normal amount” for destroyers to have before replenishing.

“No,” Carney said. “The operations were extensive by the necessity for high speed run-ins initially on the night of the 13th and by three consecutive days of carrier strikes. The obligation [of the fleet] was a heavy one and those operations did not permit interim fueling or topping off.”

Neither Gates nor the court had any further questions for Carney.

Not surprisingly, Nunn, the Harvard-trained lawyer representing Marks, did have questions—more than a dozen. One area of interest had to do with what orders were given by Halsey to the fueling groups—one
of which
Hull
belonged to—“after the fueling was abandoned on December 17th due to bad weather.”

“That would not be a matter for Commander Third Fleet to concern himself with,” Carney said testily. “The rendezvous was given to the force and group commanders and they would issue their own orders.”

The battle-hardened Nunn did not back down as he faced the higher-ranking officer. “In other words, a rendezvous with the fueling units was given by Commander Third Fleet and he expected them to meet that rendezvous?”