The Commodore (12 page)

 

TEN

At 2200 that night, two high-priority messages came in from COMSOPAC. Both were addressed to ComDesDiv 212. The first acknowledged Sluff's report about the loss of
Westin,
and instructed him to pass on to the CO of
Westin
that air transport would be dispatched to remove him and his crew to Nouméa.

The second message revealed what that term “further orders” was all about. According to coast watchers, six Jap destroyers were preparing to make a high-speed run down the Slot to land reinforcements for the Jap garrison on Guadalcanal. They were expected to arrive at or around midnight of the next day. Since there were no cruisers available following the debacle of the Savo engagement, DesDiv 212 was ordered to intercept and break up the resupply effort. Sluff called the exec and asked him to get all the officers not on watch to assemble in the wardroom.

When the exec knocked on his door to tell him that everyone was assembled, Sluff showed him the second message. The exec whistled softly. “Two-to-one odds in a night fight against the masters of that game,” he said.

“Well, yes,” Sluff said. “But now that we know how they do it, I plan to hand it right back to them.”

When they came into the wardroom all the officers stood up as custom required. Sluff went to the head of the table, sat down, looked around the room, and said, “Okay, seats.”

Everyone sat down.

“It's late,” Sluff began. “It's also hot and dark, and everyone's tired, so I'll keep this short.” He paused for effect. “Tonight we watched a destroyer succumb to her damage. That was not a pleasant sight. Fortunately, we're pretty sure all her people got off safely ashore. The people in
Gary
were not so lucky. You saw the survivors today. They have my sympathy, but we did warn them that an attack was coming and somebody pretty senior dropped the ball. There will be an investigation of her loss, so I want each of you who were on the bridge or in CIC to write down what you remember about the minutes leading up to the actual attack and hand it in to the XO.

“Now: You may have heard that I've been designated as ComDesDiv Two-Twelve. That is a temporary expediency. The system needed a landing place for all of the division's message traffic.”

That produced some tired smiles.

“The operational reason for that expediency is that six Jap destroyers are going to show up off Cape Esperance tomorrow night to land supplies and reinforcements for the Nips over on Cactus. We've been told to break that up.”

“Who's ‘we,' Captain?” Billy Chandler, the gunnery officer, asked.

Sluff smiled. “Yeah, Billy,” he said. “We started out as a three-ship division, but now we're down to one. Actually, two more tin cans, the
Carter
and the
Evans,
are showing up tomorrow morning to join the fight. I plan to meet with their skippers as soon as they get in and refuel, and then we'll go out there tomorrow at sundown and kick some Jap ass. I need you to get the word out to your people that another night fight's coming. Once we have a plan of attack, we'll meet again so everyone's up to speed. Now: Go write down what you remember in your wheel books and then get some rest.”

Sluff was up on the bridge by sunrise as the harbor waited for the morning air raid from Rabaul. This time the Cactus fighters had been able to get up to intercept the raid, and nothing much came of it. The casualties of yesterday appeared to have taken the fight out of today's Betty squadron. The destroyers
Carter
and
Evans,
both Benson-classes, came steaming into Tulagi at 0830 and were assigned anchorages near
J. B. King.
They were both fairly new, sporting five single five-inch guns and ten torpedo tubes. Tugs pushing fuel barges came chugging out shortly thereafter, and then each ship launched a boat to bring its captain aboard
J. B. King.
The day had opened as every other day in the Solomons, hot, humid, with growing squall lines already assembling to the west over Savo Island. The oil slick from the late departed
Westin
was no longer in evidence.

Each of the captains had brought along his navigation officer, who in some destroyers were beginning to be called the operations officer. Sluff was waiting for them in
King
's wardroom with the exec and his own navigation/operations officer, Lieutenant Tim McCarthy. The two skippers were both from the class one year behind Sluff, and both called him commodore. Sluff went through his usual disclaimer about that, sat everyone down, and then laid out what he planned to do that night. As he began talking he was struck by the fact that both of the other COs had immediately assumed their roles as his tactical subordinates. He was the senior CO, and they were here to learn the plan and then go execute it. It was one of the Navy's better aspects: Lay out who's who, and then everyone falls in line and gets to work. They were all three-stripers and commanding officers of a destroyer. Sluff Harmon was the senior officer, and therefore the boss. No hurt feelings, no quibbling, no discussion. He found it heartening.

Sluff began with a question. “Have either of you fought a surface action with the Japs?” he asked.

They both shook their heads. Both of them had done carrier escort duty and had been through some air attacks, but that was it.

“There's six of them and three of us,” he said. “But: They're going to be loaded with troops and supplies, and we are going to be loaded for bear. Doesn't mean they can't fight, but they'll be encumbered by their mission, which is to get into coastal waters along Cape Esperance and get all those soldiers and rice bags ashore.

“My plan's fairly simple: We're going to set up a patrol line athwart their most likely course into Guadalcanal.
King
here has a really good SG radar suite, so we should be able to detect them before they even know we're there. When they're in range, I want all three of us to fire five torpedoes each. That's fifteen fish. We'll shoot straight up the bearing of the lead Jap. When the torpedoes start going off, we will open fire with everything we've got—for one full minute. Then we'll cease fire, turn diagonally to the northwest or northeast, depending on which way we were headed when it started, run for two minutes at best speed, and then slow and open fire again. For one minute.”

He paused for a moment. “The reason for this is that they'll shoot Long Lance at our gun flashes. It'll take 'em a minute to figure out the attack geometry, and that's when we douse our gun flashes and maneuver so as to
not
be there when the Long Lances arrive. We'll do this for as long as it takes: maneuver at high speed in a great big circle around their formation, opening fire for one minute, cease firing, maneuver again, resume firing. With luck they'll think they're surrounded by an entire posse of American ships. Even if they don't, they'll be getting hit from a continuously varying sector. Now: This means four-boiler ops, because we need to move, and I mean,
move,
like they do. As you know, their tin cans routinely go thirty-six knots.”

“What happens if it all falls apart?” the CO of
Evans
asked. “Do you intend to control the formation like the cruiser guys do?”

“Before it starts, I'll use flashing-light signals as much as possible, and I'd like you two guys to remain radio-silent. I'll use TBS radio once the shooting starts.
King
will lead the column, and we'll pass you range and bearing data. If your radars can see them, great. If they can't, use our data. If it all turns to crap, then Nelson rules, okay?”

Both skippers nodded. “Oughta work,” the CO of
Carter
said.

“With any luck,” Sluff said. “Now, why don't all you ops people go up to CIC and work out the charts and formations. Plot out a dry run on a chart. See how it shapes up; look for holes in the plan, and whether or not we need any more comms or special signals. Oh, and the standard distance between ships will be a thousand yards.”

“Why so long?” the CO of
Evans
asked.

“Because they're used to our being only five hundred yards apart. That makes us a more compact target for their torpedoes. This way, we're hopefully outside their spread calculations.”

The two COs nodded. The meeting broke up and Sluff took them to his cabin. He asked them to brief him on their ships' capabilities, since they were both the class that had preceded the Fletchers. He was especially interested in whether or not they had a CIC and the new surface SG search radars.
King
was a brand-new ship.
Carter
and
Evans
were two years older.
Carter
had a CIC kludged together in the captain's sea cabin and the older SC radar.
Evans
had the earlier-version radar, but no CIC.

“Okay, then we will probably be sending you targeting data,” Sluff said. “I don't want another melee like Callaghan fought. I'd like to set the fish to run out to their max ranges at the low speed setting. Oh, and I want torpedo target depth set at five feet.”

“
Five
feet?” the
Carter
's CO asked. “They'll broach.”

“I talked to some sub COs when we came through Pearl,” Sluff said. “They're all up in arms about their torpedoes not working. They're being forced to use the magnetic exploder, but they're convinced the fish are running too deep. One CO told me to set the depth back to the first pin, five feet, and you might hit something.”

“I hadn't heard that, but I've read a lot of after-action reports full of torpedo complaints.”

“The Japs don't have that problem, do they,” Sluff said. “And the only fix for the Long Lance is to guess when they shoot 'em and then maneuver boldly to get out of their way. I said we'd turn after every firing run, but I want you to know I'll be playing that by ear. If I see them steady up, even under fire, then I figure they're turning the big dogs loose, and we're gonna do something. We may even slow way down. Okay?”

The
Carter
's CO asked Sluff about the battleship action. Sluff asked what they'd heard down in Nouméa.

“The SOPAC staffers are saying the
South Dakota
screwed the pooch right in the middle of it and had to withdraw.”

“What else?” Sluff asked. The
Carter
's CO cleared his throat. “They said you bailed out of the destroyer line when the big boys started shooting and the Japs started shooting back. That the only reason you weren't hit was because you weren't there.”

“That's exactly correct,” Sluff said. “I wasn't there—especially when the Long Lances arrived.”

The two captains looked at him with incredulous expressions.

“Look,” Sluff said. “Ching Lee put all four of his tin cans in a line in front of the two battleships. He issued no plan and there was no SOP. He told us to start shooting when they started shooting, and that's what we did. My CIC reported that the Japs were getting hammered, but then they turned east, steadied up for about a minute, and then turned north. That told me they'd just launched a swarm of torpedoes against our line, and the operational reports from the Savo fights all said the same thing: They aim for the front of the formation, for the van. Basically, I felt like I knew what was coming, and so, yes, I turned out of the formation.”

“Um,” the
Evans
CO began, but Sluff held up a hand.

“Consider this, okay?” he said. “There were eighteen guns of sixteen-inch caliber behind us firing at the Japs. The range was down to ten thousand yards—five miles—and those two battlewagons were throwing eighteen
tons
of metal at that Jap formation every forty-five seconds. The four destroyers in the van were throwing one
half
-ton of metal at the same formation. Now I'll admit that it felt good to light up the night with five-gun salvos, but our contribution to what was happening was insignificant. In my view, that's the problem with tying destroyers to the main body of heavy-caliber ships. Look: We all keep thinking—guns. But our main battery ought to more properly be the ten torpedoes we can each set loose into the equation. Admittedly, our fish are nowhere near as good as theirs, but ten torpedoes fired from a destroyer equals eight thousand pounds of joy juice, or four tons versus one-half ton from our guns. Basically, when the elephants got into it that night, we became Long Lance sponges. That's why I bailed, and why
King
was the ship picking up survivors after the battleships left us all behind to fend for ourselves.”

The two COs stared down at the deck and said nothing.

Sluff grinned. “Heresy, yes?”

Carter
's CO shook his head. “Tomorrow night it's gonna be just us chickens, so what you're proposing makes a lot of sense. But if I'm part of a cruiser or even a battleship-cruiser formation, I'm inclined to do what I'm told.”

Sluff nodded. “I understand that,” he said. “But here's the thing: Tonight I think
King
will have the best radar picture, so I'll want you to do what I tell you to do, even if that sounds a lot like ‘Do as I say, not as I do.' Or did, I guess. We're gonna be outnumbered by some ships that are pretty damned good at this night-fighting stuff. Our only chance will be to surprise them before they even know we're there.”

They nodded again, but Sluff had the feeling he hadn't convinced them. He knew what the problem was: Admiral Lee had put four destroyers in a column formation ahead of his battleships. He'd had every right to expect them to stay there, perhaps, and this was hard for Sluff to swallow, to soak up the initial salvo of Long Lance torpedoes. Now Sluff was demanding that these two skippers do what
he
told them to do in the upcoming fight. As he had not. He tried to think of some argument to make that would show why his situation was different from that of the battleship action. He couldn't.