The Commodore (11 page)

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 was 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 depth 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.