Sentinels of Fire (28 page)

While we listened to the air-raid reporting circuit during the KR attack, Radio Central brought up a message. Halsey was taking the Third Fleet carrier striking forces north and west again to hit Jap air bases along a big arc ranging from Formosa to the southeastern coasts of Honshu Island in Japan proper. It was another good news, bad news deal: The good news was that Halsey was going up there to reduce the numbers of planes available for kamikaze missions. The bad news was that we were not going to have any night-fighters while the big-decks were away. Halsey had left four escort carriers behind to protect KR and the picket line, but the smaller carriers did not carry the precious night-fighters.

At 2330, the
1
MC quietly announced midrats. Individuals from the gun stations were cycled in groups of two or three through the messdecks for sandwiches and a mug of hot soup: midnight rations, or midrats, as the sailors called them. Most of the officers grabbed some soup and sandwiches in the wardroom, but everyone was careful to leave no station completely unmanned.

The commodore came in for some chow just after midnight. He and his two staffies had restructured the picket line as per our brainstorming session earlier.
Malloy
was now in the center of the overall picket line arc, fifty-five miles, not forty, north of Okinawa. Three hours earlier, starting at 2100, and while
Westfall
was still thirty miles away,
Malloy
and
Westfall
alternated bringing their air-search radars into standby for thirty minutes at a time, during which
Westfall
made five-mile position adjustments and then came back up on the air, each time moving closer and closer to
Malloy.
She was now ten miles from us. Our personal swarm of amphib gunships continued to match our movements, more or less. Station-keeping was not an art much practiced in the gator Navy. Each time we took our radar down, our weary radar operators got to take a short nap, as did the Freddies. They'd simply slump at their consoles and give in to what they'd been resisting all night. Otherwise, just about everyone on board, along with half the engineering department, was awake and wondering what the Jap devils would come up with next.

At 0130, as I was beginning to nod off in my chair on the bridge, we found out.

“Bridge, Combat. Holding six to eight bogeys, bearing three three zero, range sixty-five miles, inbound. There's something flying out ahead of them, something larger.”

“Our radar or
Westfall
's?”

“Our radar, Captain.
Westfall
is currently radar silent.”

“Alert the pallbearers, and
Westfall.
Tell her to stay radar silent. Plan to light her off when they get to thirty miles. Inform the commodore.”

“Combat, aye.”

The commodore's two staff officers were standing watch-and-watch in CIC, four on, four off. The commodore was in his cabin. The one on duty would call him, but I still had to make sure that they did. I called back to Combat and told them to tell the boss what I'd ordered them to do. Once again, I'd forgotten that I had a unit commander embarked.

The word was already going out over the sound-powered phone circuits, GQ in five minutes. I'd found that telegraphing the GQ alarm made for a better setting of all the watertight and firetight doors and hatches throughout the ship. It gave people five minutes to wake up, gather their wits, and head for their GQ stations, instead of falling out of their racks in a panic when the alarm rang, scrambling for shoes, life jackets, and helmets, and then pounding through passageways and up ladders in the dark. The phone-talkers alerted people on their circuit to go into each berthing compartment and rouse the petty officers, who then roused the sleeping crewmen, and then everything went better. Another Pudge Tallmadge innovation.

By the time the commodore came up to the bridge, GQ was as good as set throughout the ship. He commented that he hadn't heard the alarm, and I explained
Malloy
's system. Then, just to make sure, we did sound the general quarters alarm. The manned-and-ready reports came in in quick order.

“Bridge, Combat. We've got something new.”

My heart sank. “Go ahead.”

“There's a band of radar interference opening up on the air-search scope,” Jimmy said. “It's like someone's painting a ring around us, out at about forty miles.”

“That's chaff,” the commodore said from his chair on the other side of the pilothouse. “They've got a bomber out there, dumping chaff to disrupt our radar picture, and I'll bet he does have a radar of his own.”

“What's chaff?” I had to ask.

“Shredded aluminum strips,” he said. “We've been using it in Europe. You get a bomber to deploy bags and bags of aluminum foil clippings out ahead of our bomber formation. The air-defense radars see it and nothing else. Somebody's given the idea to the Japs.”

“Bridge, Combat, the interference is spreading across an arc, from three three zero to zero three zero, true. We've lost contact on the bogeys.”

The commodore leaned down to his own bitch-box. “Tell
Westfall
to come up on her air search. You guys go silent. Watch your surface-search radar for low fliers.”

“Combat, aye.”

“We'll wait three minutes,” he continued, “and then switch, your radar up,
Westfall
's down, and then we'll call
Westfall
in toward us at max speed. You ready with that star shell?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Start firing star at max range in”—he looked down at his watch while he did the time-motion problem in his head—“four minutes. Set for highest possible airburst. Tell the gators what we're doing, and how close the bogeys are.”

“We can't see the bogeys,” I pointed out.

“Then do a dead-reckoning plot—start the star shells when they're fifteen miles out. I want the stars to blind them, not us. Bosun mate, I need coffee.”

I relayed his orders to Sky One and then sat back in my chair and stared out the glass-free portholes. With that gash across the front of the pilothouse, they looked like Oriental eyes staring back at me. There was a fair amount of moonlight, not terribly bright but sufficient to reveal our little armada of gray gunships. My eyes were fully night-adapted, and the nearby small ships looked pale white in the moonlight. I wondered if we'd be able to see the suiciders; I had little doubt that they would be able to see us.

I marveled at the commodore's calm demeanor. This had become a technical fire-control problem, as far as he was concerned. Move the ships here, fire the star shells there, and then sit back, have some coffee, and wait to see how it all came out. I tried to remember if he'd actually ever been subject to a kamikaze attack on a destroyer. It was one thing to watch one come in on a carrier. When they came for us small boys, it was a lot more personal. Outwardly I tried to match his apparent calm, but inwardly it wasn't working. Even with two destroyers, one the Japs might or might not yet know about, along with a gaggle of small-caliber AA guns from the gators, we were still looking at six to eight suiciders, who apparently knew where we were, if maybe not how many we were. I wasn't sure if a Jap radar operator could tell the difference between a destroyer-sized return and that of an LCS. Either way, it took a major effort on my part to sit there in my chair and appear to be as confident as Commodore Van Arnhem.

Our five-inch swung out four minutes later and began slow, measured salvos of star shells. We'd alerted the gators so no one would panic when the five-inch began to speak. That chaff cloud had really clobbered the air-search radar, confirmed by
Westfall
when they came back on the air and we went down. We simply had to assume the suiciders would keep boring in. Somewhere out there in the dark
Westfall
was also closing us. They'd take a station two miles away, just outside of the ring of amphib gunships.

The first star shells burst way out there at eighteen thousand yards, ten miles, and hung in the air under their parachutes just like they were designed to do. Then Combat reported that the kamis had burst out of the chaff cloud at twenty-five miles and back onto our radars. They were already low, and they immediately split up, four going east, four going west, each section executing a wide circle around our little formation. Combat kept the gators informed as to what was happening, and I heard director fifty-one training around up above, straining for a lock-on. The commodore stopped the fireworks show and told us to load up with the real stuff. I wondered if the kamis were circling because they were trying to regain some night vision. They might also be trying to figure out what they were looking at when they could see. They were used to attacking a single destroyer, accompanied sometimes by one or more gunships. Now there was a crowd.

“Bridge, Combat. They're low and still circling, at about twelve miles now. Nothing on the air search, but they're all showing up on the surface search, so they're on the deck.”

The commodore ordered the entire formation, such as it was, on a course of due east at 12 knots. There was no point in going any faster or we'd leave our bevy of gators in our wake. Combat reported to the air-raid control center on the light carrier
Cowpens
that we were being attacked, although that was mostly pro forma. There was nothing
Cowpens
or any of the other light carriers could do about it.

Then suddenly, from eight points of the compass, they all turned in and began their attack. We couldn't see that from the bridge, of course, but the radars picked them up immediately, and warnings went out over both radio and sound-powered circuits.
Here they come!
I was about to jump out of my chair when I realized there was nowhere to go. In daylight I would have been out on a bridge wing, maneuvering the ship to make sure the maximum number of guns could cover any black dot coming at us—but at night?

I thought I heard director fifty-one stop its search and steady up on a bearing, but before I could even think, our two remaining five-inch mounts, fifty-two just in front of the bridge and fifty-three aft, opened up in a rapid-fire chain of gun blasts. The forties joined in moments later, and then the twenties. The night erupted into lines of tracer fire, sheets of fire from the muzzles of the twin five-inch mounts, and the scream of airplane engines. I was dimly aware that all of the amphib gunships were firing with everything they had, but at what, I couldn't see. Then there was a familiar boil of flaming avgas sheeting across in front of us, followed by a second one on the port quarter. I was literally deafened by all the shooting. The muzzle flashes from both the five-inch and the new forty-millimeter mount forward illuminated the interior of the pilothouse like heat lightning, revealing faces and hands in a flickering electric arc light like a movie theater projector gone wild. I actually saw the commodore, still seated in his chair, holding a cigarette to his mouth for a deep, glowing drag, with his eyes closed, his other hand clamped onto his coffee mug.

There was
nothing
for me to do, and that still astounded me. My officers and crew were doing what they'd been trained to do, and the din of gunfire, the eye-stinging flashes from the gun muzzles, the clouds of gun smoke streaming through our broken portholes, and above it all the scream of airplane engines driven beyond their mechanical limits overwhelmed my brain until I just sat there like some kind of head-bobbing mental patient, nodding and rocking out on the lawn of an insane asylum. Then I heard an approaching airplane engine, its scream rising like a locomotive's whistle as it comes at you, followed by a hail of what sounded like rivets smashing all over the bridge and against the sides. There was a great whooshing sound, and then a ball of fire appeared on the opposite side as the kami went into the water. I had to work my jaws to get my ears to pop as I tried to gather my wits.

Then it was over. Just like that: over. I blinked my eyes as I realized Combat was calling me on the bitch-box. I tried to reply, but nothing came out but a squeak. I cleared my throat, hoping no one had heard that, but how could they—we were all deaf. I tried again.

“Captain, aye.”

“Radar is showing no contacts,” Jimmy said. “I think we got 'em all.
Westfall
had one hit his fo'c'sle, but they said there was no real damage.”

“Very well,” I said. “Now: look out for chapter two—make sure they didn't have friends at high altitude waiting for us to focus on the low-fliers.”

“Combat, aye.” I was still trying to gather my wits. I'd never seen a fireworks show like that in my entire Navy career. The concentration of twenty- and forty-millimeter fire from our dozen gunships had made our five-inch fire seem insignificant. I looked at the gyro repeater. We were still headed east, and I assumed we were still at 12 knots.

We should turn around, I thought, head back toward station, figure out what we were going to do with
Westfall.
The commodore had some decisions to make. I looked across the pilothouse as the GQ watch standers tried to clear their ears and regain some sense of what was going on. The commodore was still in his chair, but the back half of his head was missing.

 

THIRTEEN

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, then started swearing.

“Captain?” someone was saying. “The commodore…”

“Yes,” I said. “I know. Get me damage reports, now.”

Chief Smith, my JA talker, spoke up. “They didn't hit us, Captain,” he said. “That last one came in strafing, but…”

“But what?”

“It was high, sir. He went over the ship.”

“I heard what sounded like a riveting gun,” I said. “Maybe not high enough?”

“Combat, Bridge.
Westfall
is requesting instructions.”