The Commodore (17 page)

The sky on their starboard quarter flared up into a mini-sunrise that began white but then quickly turned to yellow and then red. As it subsided there were two more, and then a fourth. Finally, the sounds of explosions came rolling across the black waters of the Slot like distant thunder. Then, hull down on the southern horizon, lightning flashed, illuminating the bottoms of low clouds over the sound.

“Combat, Captain, I think we just did some good work for Jesus,” Sluff called. “Ships are blowing up out there. Now: Give me a formation course to take us north of the Jap formation and just out of range of our own cruisers.”

“Combat, aye, and the flag reports they are in contact and have opened fire.”

Sluff hoped the admiral knew that the two cruisers couldn't just sit there, plugging along at the same course and speed. Whichever Jap ships evaded the American torpedo attack would launch many torpedoes at all those gun flashes to the south.

“Combat recommends a formation course of three five five, speed two-seven.”

“Transmit the order. Once we're on the new course and speed, order commence-firing.”

“Combat, aye. Order going out now. On the plot it looks like our cruisers are reversing course to the west.”

Good, Sluff thought. Fire a bunch of salvos, then reverse course. Without radar, the Japs would aim their Long Lances on a course to intercept all those east-headed muzzle flashes from twenty-four six-inch guns.

Standing in the starboard bridge-wing door, he trained his binocs out to the southeast. He felt
King
crouch for a moment as her twin screws bit down, and then she began accelerating up to twenty-seven knots. The night air was so humid he saw only blurred images in his glasses, but there was obviously a storm of six-inch fire landing on the Jap formation. Then he heard
King
's forward five-inch guns swing out. He stepped away from the open doorway just as the first salvos went out. This time the relative wind was from the port beam, so all the smoke and wadding particles were blowing clear of the bridge. The noise, however, came right on in.

Okay, think. Now they can see
us.
They'll start shooting back, and then one or two of them will launch torpedoes. He didn't want to maneuver just yet: a steady course and speed made for far more accurate gunfire than when the ship was twisting and turning.

“Combat, Captain, what's the range?”

“Fourteen thousand, five, and four of their ships have come to a stop on the plot.”

“Okay: Continue firing on this course and speed for one minute, then order cease-firing, and then a
turn
one eight zero, same speed.”

“Combat, aye.”

Sluff stood by his chair and mentally counted down from sixty. He wanted to execute the turn maneuver
right now,
but ten five-inch guns were happily sending hundreds of pounds of steel and explosive into the disordered Japanese formation. They would soon start firing back. The two cruisers to the south were presumably still hammering away. The resulting cross fire must be hell on earth right about now.

A blast of light and sound off the starboard bow, followed by six large columns of erupting water, concentrated his mind. They might be catching hell over there, but someone
was
shooting back, and doing a pretty good job of it. His own gun crews seemed to up their rate of fire when they felt the near misses. That had to be cruiser fire—too big for destroyer guns. He realized he'd lost count of the remaining seconds. A second salvo came screaming overhead, landing beyond them but not that far away. He could actually feel the thump of those shells exploding underwater through his feet and legs.

Damn! They'd been bracketed. Fire short. Fire over. Halve the range. Fire again—keep doing that until you start hitting.

Then he heard the radio order to cease firing, followed by the 180-degree turn. They were halfway though that turn when a third salvo came in, erupting in
J. B. King
's wake, halfway between
King
and
Evans.

Thank you, God, Sluff thought. Now: Steady up on the new course, head due south, and then start shooting again. He wondered if he should fire some star shells to illuminate what was left of the Jap formation for the cruisers. No. We all have radar. Star shells will just illuminate
us.

Another six-gun salvo landed astern of them, again raising huge waterspouts of seawater and smoke. Shit, Sluff thought. That's eight-inch stuff. We didn't get the big boy, but at least his salvos are trending behind us now.

“Captain, Combat, our cruiser formation is reversing course again. Two of the Jap ships have turned north. The rest are presenting a pretty confused plot.”

“Combat, Captain: Once we steady up, open fire again—but only for ninety seconds. Then slow down to fifteen knots. Are they within our torpedo range?”

“On this course, they'd be a marginal shot, using slow-speed fish—come left ten degrees and the picture gets better.”

“Okay, we'll do this: Resume firing for ninety seconds, then cease fire and come left and head straight at them, speed fifteen. When we get into ten thousand yards, launch our remaining torpedoes, reverse course, and get out of there.”

“We stand a chance of crossing our own cruisers' line of fire—wait one—flag says they're withdrawing to the south, and for us to follow them out.”

Damn,
Sluff thought. He hated to go back to base with unexpended torpedoes, but an order was an order. “Okay, immediate execute, speed thirty-five knots, course southwest to open the range on any pursuing torpedoes.”

“Resume firing?”

“Negative. If the cruisers are leaving,
we're
leaving. No reason to give the Japs an aim point.”

The signal went out a few seconds later, and
King
came right to the southwest, 230, speed thirty-five. Sluff went out onto the starboard bridge wing to see if the
Evans
was following. He couldn't make her out in the darkness, but her bow wave made a bright white V in the water on
King
's port quarter. He saw another six-gun salvo land off in the distance, six simultaneous red pulses of fire followed by thumping great waterspouts. He went back into the pilothouse and climbed up into his chair, suddenly very tired. The fight seemed like it had lasted for hours. He looked at his watch: 0210. They'd made first contact at about 0130. The whole thing had taken just forty minutes. Time passes fast when you're having fun, he thought.

“Bosun's Mate.”

“Goddamn coffee coming right up, Cap'n,” the bosun responded. Sluff smiled in the darkness.

 

FOURTEEN

The following morning the admiral convened an after-action conference aboard the flagship, USS
Providence.
He'd requested Sluff plus the COs and XOs of both cruisers and the CO of
Evans
to attend. The four ships had returned to Purvis Bay at 0530 and anchored. The fuel barges had appeared after sunrise GQ to top everyone back off; the Japs had not come down from Rabaul. Torpedo and gun ammo barges were laid on for noon, so the admiral called his meeting for 1030.

Sluff had offered to pick up the CO of
Evans
in his boat for the trip over to
Providence,
about a mile distant from where the destroyers had anchored. When they arrived, there was some momentary confusion on the cruiser's quarterdeck when two three-stripers arrived at the top of the sea ladder. The somewhat flustered OOD asked which one of them was ComDesDiv 212.

“I'm DesDiv Two-Twelve,” Sluff replied. “This is
Evans.
”

The requisite number of bells was sounded for each of them. A moment later, the exec of
Providence
popped out of a hatch to escort them up to the wardroom. He, too, was a full commander, and senior to both the captain of
Evans
and Sluff. He seemed to be somewhat surprised to see the “commodore” wearing silver oak leaves on his collar instead of silver eagles. They walked up the port side of the cruiser's main deck, past the quarter-mounted twin-barreled five-inch mount, underneath the forty-millimeter gun tubs, and then through a hatch and down one deck to the wardroom. There they were introduced to the COs of
Providence
and
Wichita,
both captains, and the admiral's chief of staff, another captain. The skipper of the
Wichita
had bandages on both forearms and looked as if he was in pain.

Sluff felt uncomfortable at being addressed as commodore by all these four-stripers, but if they thought the situation strange, they gave no indication of it. If he'd been just a lieutenant in command of a squadron of minesweepers, he'd have still been called commodore.

Finally the CO of
Providence
called a quiet attention-on-deck as Admiral Tyree came into the wardroom, followed by his aide and a tall, thin commander. The admiral looked a lot like the pictures Sluff had seen of Robert E. Lee, with the same wide forehead and piercing dark eyes, missing only the gray beard and mustache. He was about one inch shorter than Sluff, but carried himself with quiet dignity and a visible command presence.

“Gentlemen, good morning,” the admiral said. He spoke with a wide Southern drawl, confirming Bob Frey's guess that he was indeed not from Massachusetts. The admiral nodded to both of the cruiser captains and introduced himself to Sluff.

“Commodore Wolf, Caw Tyree. A pleasure, suh. Nice work last night. Nice work indeed.”

“Thank you, sir,” Sluff said. “This is Commander Brian Hopkins, CO
Evans.
”

The admiral greeted Hopkins warmly and then indicated for everyone to take seats. The admiral sat in the middle of the main wardroom table, apparently unconcerned with rank by just choosing the nearest seat. The other officers followed suit while the commander set up an easel board and arranged some papers and a message board on the table in front of him. He raised his eyebrows at the admiral, who nodded.

“Gentlemen, I'm Tom Reese, Admiral Tyree's operations officer,” he began. “The admiral has asked me to tell you what we know about the results of last night's match. This info comes from our own track analysis and a back-channel message from COMSOPAC.

“The enemy formation actually consisted of four destroyers, a light cruiser, and a heavy cruiser, six ships in all. DesDiv Two-Twelve's initial torpedo attack sank one destroyer, damaged a second one, and damaged the light cruiser,
Niitaka.
The heavy cruiser, the
Kako,
was not hit. In the subsequent gun engagement, the
Niitaka
was hit repeatedly and probably scuttled. The damaged destroyer was also sunk, probably by a combination of five-inch and six-inch gunfire. A third destroyer was damaged and withdrew, apparently to escort
Kako
out of the engagement, along with an undamaged destroyer.
Kako
was hit repeatedly with six-inch gunfire, but her armor held and she was still able to make thirty knots out of the engagement area. The admiral aboard
Kako
was killed during the engagement.”

Jesus, Sluff thought. How in the hell do they know that?

“The better news is that at sunrise this morning,
Kako
was sunk by one of our submarines on the way back to Rabaul. So, box score: We accounted for one light cruiser and two destroyers. Our sub took down the heavy cruiser, and whatever their mission was last night, it did not happen. A very good night's work.”

“Amen to that, gentlemen,” the admiral said. “Commodore Wolf, a question: I had some plotters last night tracking all my ships on the DRT. I noticed that after you launched torpedoes and then began firing when we did, you fired for only about ninety seconds and then made some, shall I say, dramatic course changes and even speed changes, if my plot can be believed.”

“Yes, sir, we did,” Sluff said. “It was all about avoiding Jap torpedoes.”

“This is a tactic you've developed to deal with the Long Lance?”

“Yes, sir. Their Type Ninety-Three torpedoes are vastly superior to ours. They can shoot them going thirty-six knots because they weigh almost three tons. If we did that with ours, they'd probably break up hitting the water.”

“Go on.”

“We assume that once they can see us, they will fire torpedoes at us after about a minute of visual tracking. They can see us when we start shooting. Muzzle flashes show them where we are. A minute of bearing analysis will tell them whether, on a relative basis, we're going the same way they are or the other way. It will also tell them if we're going fast, medium, or slow. That's all they need for an initial salvo.

“So: We shoot for ninety seconds, and then we do something—reverse course, speed up, slow down, something dramatically different with respect to the relative motion picture—
and
we stop giving them an aim point by turning off the muzzle flashes. Their Type Ninety-Threes go almost sixty knots. We can compute when the danger should be past. Then we reopen fire. Same thing again—ninety seconds, then a bold course and speed change and a cease firing. When we open up again it can look like a new set of ships is firing at them. At least that's what we hope they think, but, either way, they're shooting on visual bearings and an educated guess as to which way we're going and how fast. If we deny them a visual bearing and add a bold maneuver, we have a good chance of avoiding the Long Lance.”

“But your total rounds fired at the enemy formation is reduced by only firing for ninety seconds, yes?”

“We had ten guns between us, firing fifteen rounds per minute. That's two hundred rounds in ninety seconds. Five tons of metal on target. With radar direction, so most of those are going to be at least close to if not hitting. Your two cruisers were firing twenty-four six-inch guns, firing ten rounds a minute each: Three hundred sixty rounds in the same ninety seconds. Twenty-three tons of metal on target.”