The Commodore (10 page)

“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.”

God
dammit,
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 actually 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.

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.”