Sentinels of Fire (31 page)

More nods.

“If they come from dead astern, we have two five-inch barrels,
eight
forty-millimeter barrels, and four to six twenties, depending on the angle of approach. Here's my point: Heretofore, we've always presented one side or another to maximize the number of barrels firing at the incoming Jap. The problem with that is, if we don't get his ass, he hits us in the side and opens us to the sea. For those of you who saw
Westfall
die last night, you saw one open her up, and two more tear her in two, because three out of four hit her on the side, in the same place, in rapid succession.

“Here's what I think: If we present the side, either side, to four kamis coming in a line formation, we're done for. We might get one or even two, but two more will fly through the forward engine room and break us in half. Whereas, if we present the front end or the back end to a line formation, they can tear up the entire superstructure above the main deck, but they can't open us to the sea. Since we have more barrels pointed aft than forward, I'm thinking we show them our sternsheets and take it from there.”

“We give up two quad forties amidships if we do that,” Chief Lamont said.

“I know,” I said. “If we still had mount fifty-one, I'd point the bow at them. But here's the thing I keep coming back to: The five-inch aren't that useful. At long range, nine down to three miles, they're the
only
thing that can hit them. After that, they're of no use, because their shells won't have armed before they're flying right past the targets. The five-inch have stopping power, I'll admit, but it's the forties and the twenties that can tear these line formations apart. I'd rather get hit with fragments than a whole Zero, with bomb—and not in the side.”

There was silence around the wardroom table. We'd been presenting our broadside, as it were, to all the attacks we'd seen. With this new tactic, that wouldn't work anymore. The side was what they were after. Send three, four, hell, ten suiciders, and there was no way out for the target destroyer.

“Gonna be hell on wheels for all the gun crews topside,” Chief Christie said.

“Yes, I know,” I said. “So what can we do to protect them better than we've been doing?”

“Tell 'em to jump right the hell over the side when the second kami shows up over the fantail?” Lamont offered.

“Why the second?”

“'Cause we'd have shot down the first one, Captain,” he said. There were some grins around the table, but they were halfhearted.

“That's what's different now,” he continued. “They're
gonna
hit us. We can shoot down as many as we can, but those numbers you just talked about, three hundred knots, they're gonna hit us.”

“And I'm saying it's better to get hit along the length of the superstructure, as opposed to three or four of them breaking us open to the sea.”

“That superstructure you're talking about,” the chief said. “That's where
we
are.”

“That's where I am, too, Chief. I'm not arguing that they're gonna git us. I'm simply recognizing that they don't necessarily have to
sink
us.
Westfall
was gone in sixty seconds with most of her crew. Look, we can't survive what they threw against
Westfall
unless we keep them from opening up the hull. We need them to tear up stacks, director columns, life rafts, the mast, but
not
the hull. Now, let's talk about protecting all the people in the path of these things.”

“Yeah, sure,” the chief said. “Like I said, we gonna jump over the side?”

“Yes.”

That produced a moment of stunned silence.

“Look, we make sure every man topside has a kapok life jacket
and
a flashlight clipped to that life jacket. We brief the gators: If we get one of these line attacks, there are going to be lots of our people in our wake. Look for those lights when it's all over. Pick 'em up. I'm serious. The gun crews see that there are a bunch of kamis coming down to hit us along our whole length? Jump. Go over the side. We have fifteen amphib craft around us. Go over the side, wait until the main event is over, and then turn on your light. Whatever happens on board, you're going to be safer in the water than on the oh-one level where three, four, five goddamned kamis have crashed, with all their gasoline and their goddamned bombs.”

Marty raised a hand. “You're serious, sir?”

“Yes, I am. We cannot survive what they did to
Westfall
last night. No lone destroyer can. I believe they'll be back tonight with the same program. They had a controller out there last night, and he had to have seen what happened. I'm talking about saving as many lives as we can, given what's probably coming.”

I looked around the table at their incredulous faces.

“I know what you're thinking,” I said, “and I'm not saying we're going to abandon ship at the first sign of a night attack. If they come in the conventional manner, one, two, diving at us from wherever, we stay on station and we shoot them down.

“But if our radar sees that they're coming in line formation—four, five, six of the bastards—then I'm going to point the stern at them and blow the ship's whistle. You hear that, get your people to safety. You don't
have
to go over the side, of course. Mount fifty-three's crew can open the emergency hatch to the upper handling room and drop down there. Quad forties on the oh-one level aft? Get down to the main deck, get inside the superstructure, and from there, down to the second deck berthing spaces. Midships forties? Same deal—get down to the main deck and get inside.”

I paused to think. “I know this sounds like heresy, but I'm telling you, here's what I saw happen to
Westfall
last night. Those bastards came in three-second intervals, and no one,
no
one, had the first chance in hell of living through that. All their guns—and, unlike us,
Westfall
still had
all
their five-inch—were ineffective against that. Fact of life, people: The guns are ineffective against that. I'm trying to save your lives, so don't fight me on this. We'll shoot at them for as long as the guns can do good work for Jesus, but after that, you hear the ship's whistle blowing, execute the survival plan. Get below the main deck, and if you can't do that, go over the side.”

Every man at the table was staring at me, and it was Jimmy who asked the salient question. “The bridge team,” he said, “and CIC. What do they do?”

“Drop down to the wardroom,” I said. “We'll give it our best shot, which is the five-inch opening up to start hitting at eight miles. But if it's a line formation, at some critical point, I want all hands to get down, get down into the ship, because the oh-one level and probably the main deck are going to turn into a sea of fire. As bad as that is, it's better than turning to shoot at them and exposing our flanks.”

There was a long moment of absolute silence. Then one of the other chiefs had a question. “You think Halsey's
not
going to send reinforcements?”

“Who's this Halsey guy?” I asked. “Has the Big Blue Fleet
ever
given the first thought about what's going on up here? We're on our own, gents. It's time to think clearly. Tomorrow, there may be a dozen new tin cans coming up here. Tonight? It's just us chickens, along with our gator gunships. We're on our own here. Let's stay alive, shall we? Somebody needs to welcome all those reinforcements.”

*   *   *

After that meeting, I called Jimmy, Mario, Marty, and Chief Lamont into my cabin. They were all obviously disturbed by what I'd said out there in the wardroom. They sat together stiffly on the bunk-bed couch; I sat at my desk.

“Guys, are you with me on this?”

“Absolutely, Captain,” Jimmy said. “I get it. There's no defense against the line formation attack.”

“Marty?”

“I'm uncomfortable with abandoning the guns in the middle of a fight,” he said. “But yes, I get it, too. There's no point to having a hundred fifty men glued to their gun stations if four kamis are going to use them for a landing deck.”

“That's the point, gents,” I said. “I'll fight this sumbitch to the bloody end, but I recognize an impossible situation when I see one. Go out there to your people and figure out a plan. Practice an escape route. Make sure everyone topside has a working flashlight tied to his kapok. Jimmy, let's get the COs of the gator gunships aboard. I want to talk to them personally. There's no reason for them to be operating in the dark. And another thing: Jimmy, retransmit the message we sent out last night about
Westfall
and the picket line. It's possible they never got it.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Jimmy said. “One thing: I'd like to comb the GQ station bill for CIC and the bridge. There's no need to have
all
those people up there for a nighttime attack. I'm thinking people like the Freddies, if we don't get CAP. The quartermaster, bosun mates, signalmen…?”

“You're right. We'll go to a normal GQ posture, but if an attack shapes up we can begin stripping down the supernumeraries. Mario, thin out the damage control teams topside. Consider this: If the superstructure is wiped slick, what gear would you wish you'd gotten off the main deck and down below?”

“All the fire hoses and P-250 pumps, for damned sure,” he said. “Although that means having gasoline tanks inside the ship.”

“If we take a couple of kamis tonight, three twenty-gallon fuel tanks won't make much of a difference,” Marty said.

“Okay,” I said. “Those are the details I need you guys to work on, before sundown. We can't plan everything, but we can sure as hell think about it today. I need to talk to the gunship skippers now. If Halsey's been raising hell in southern Japan we may have a quiet day while they regroup. But they will regroup, and I don't think we'll see any reinforcements for us up here until dawn tomorrow.”

“If Halsey and the big-decks are all north and west of us today, why do they need a picket line at all?” Marty asked.

“Kerama Retto,” I reminded him. “We're the only warning the gators and the freighters will get if the Japs take advantage of Halsey's absence and decide to firestorm the anchorage.”

“Damn,” Chief Lamont said to no one in particular. “No damned slack in this man's outfit.”

When they left I found Lieutenant Commander Canning waiting outside my door. I invited him in, half expecting him to be profoundly against what I'd been proposing. He surprised me.

“That made a lot of sense, Captain,” he said. “Perhaps if we'd been embarked up here and not pushing beans and bullets down in KR one of us would have thought of it.”

“Maybe,” I said. “If you'd lived long enough. Besides, if there were ten ships up here instead of just one, we could design an AA formation and eat 'em up.”

He nodded. That remained the crux of the problem: never enough destroyers. “They have to fly two-hundred-some miles to get at us down here,” he mused. “What's it going to be like when we're ten miles offshore of the main islands?”

“That'll work both ways, I think,” I said. “Ten miles is well within battleship gun range. Maybe those gray elephants will get to contribute something besides a nice flag cabin for once.”

 

FIFTEEN

By 2200 we'd all settled in for the much-dreaded night watch. I'd gathered all the gunboat skippers aboard
Malloy
to talk through tactics and what we might expect tonight following the sinking of
Westfall.
One of the possibilities was that there'd be
no
attack, because the kamikaze forces had launched a major raid against the carrier formations during the early afternoon, once again breaking their attack pattern. Not all the planes that had come out had been kamis—there'd been torpedo planes, bombers, fighters, the works—and while the fleet formation's CAP had cleaned house, there'd been a lot of damage done. More than ever, I was convinced our message about
Westfall
had been lost or at least overlooked in all the excitement.

The gunship skippers had been a mixture of lieutenants, lieutenant commanders, and even a few seasoned warrant officers. We were down to eleven, as I had sent some back down to KR with
Westfall
's survivors, along with one of our three LCSs to give them some protection en route. I didn't have to tell them about what had happened to
Westfall
—they'd all seen it just as close up as we had. We'd kicked around several ideas about what to do with the gunships if another line attack materialized, and decided that the best approach was to put them into roughly two columns behind us, aligned with the axis of attack if there was time, and then make the kami column fly between those two columns and the resulting valley of death that all their guns could create, if only for about thirty seconds. Only the LCSs had radar, so for the most part, the gunboats would simply be shooting in the same direction they saw our tracers going in the dark. Better than nothing.

The skippers had been in full concurrence with our plans to abandon the topside gun stations once the radar-controlled five-inch ran out of shooting room. They were well equipped to get astern of us if we were disabled and pick up any jumpers. One warrant bosun made a suggestion: Have each of the crewmen stuff a Dixie cup, the sailor's familiar round white hat, in his trousers pockets, and put it on once they were in the water. The white fabric made it a lot easier for rescue boats to find them in the dark.

It was definitely a surreal meeting, sitting around the wardroom table and talking about the best ways to find men floating in the water at night and how we were going to deliberately abandon the weather decks if the column formations appeared again. I knew there was something sacrilegious about a destroyer's commanding officer talking about doing anything but fighting the ship until she sank beneath his feet, but all I had to do to stand firm was conjure up that vision of hell I'd seen last night when we all were able to see right through
Westfall
's broken back.