The Commodore (22 page)

He didn't get a chance to look at his watch until he made it to his chair. It was 0235, which meant that the Japs had now thrown night-capable bombers into the Solomons campaign, maybe even equipped with radar. He looked out the bridge windows and saw only the typical Solomon Islands darkness. No visible moon, the air heavy, wet, and still in the low nineties, even at this early hour. Then he heard the radio speaker above his chair come to life. The task group commander ordered the formation to execute an immediate-execute turn together to the north and head right for the approaching bomber formation, speed twenty-seven knots. Then he executed it, and all the ships swung left and began to accelerate.

The Japs wouldn't be trying to drop bombs at night. This would be a torpedo attack, and by presenting their narrow bows to the oncoming bombers, the admiral had much reduced the target aspect of the American column. Sluff called Combat and asked if
King
's radars held the approaching planes.

“In and out, Captain,” the exec said. “I think they're just now descending to drop level. I'm guessing Bettys. As soon as we get a solid contact, I'll designate to director one.”

“But on this course, we can only bring one gun to bear,” Sluff said.

At that moment both cruisers opened fire. Each of them could bring six barrels to bear on the descending aircraft. Their radar-controlled dual-purpose six-inch guns were designed to fill the air in front of an approaching bomber formation with white-hot shards of steel at a range of ten miles. The destroyers would have to wait until the bogeys got into seven or eight miles before they could even reach them, depending on their altitude.

“Captain, Combat, we've got 'em on the surface-search radar now, which means they're down on the deck for a torpedo run. Fifty-two will open up in about forty seconds.”

Sluff didn't like this setup, but there really was no alternative. If they turned perpendicular to the attacking waves, each destroyer except
King
could bring five guns to bear, and the cruisers fifteen. But he knew the reason they were turning into the attack. Come right or left and the torpedoes would have six hundred feet of cruiser to collide with; this way, they had fifty-five. He stared out the front portholes. Mount fifty-two was in automatic, its barrel raised and quivering in response to the delicate servomotor commands coming up from the main gunnery computer.

B-Blam! Fifty-two finally got into it. Between muzzle blasts, Sluff could see the northern sky filling with brilliant flashes as the light cruisers laid into the first wave of bombers. Then he saw flaming contrails light up in the near distance and then descend into the sea, where they were snuffed out in an invisible crash. Fifty-two was going strong, blasting away at some invisible radar contact flying right at them at close to 160 miles an hour. Sluff felt absolutely helpless. Either they would steam right through the swarm of approaching torpedoes, or they'd take one on the chin and the front half of the ship would disappear in a magazine explosion. And all
King
could do was shoot one damned five-inch at them.

The sky ahead was now looking like the Fourth of July, with flaming contrails going every which way, shell bursts stabbing the night sky in groups of three and sometimes six, and then he heard the bombers as they roared overhead, chased now by
King
's forty-millimeter and even twenty-millimeter guns in a quick swinging arc of fire. Then the after two mounts opened fire, finally able to bear on the outgoing Japs. Fifty-two went silent, and then Sluff saw the hatches open and a few men jump out to begin wrangling the brass powder cases out of the way of the mount's training circle. The relative wind caused by the twenty-seven-knot ordered speed quickly blew all the smoke out of the pilothouse.

Had the torpedoes passed? He was about to call down to Sonar to see if they'd heard anything, but at twenty-seven knots, the ship's sonar was effectively deaf. And then off to port, at some distance, a bright white light bloomed into a yellow and then red ball of fire, reaching for the sky.

Shit, Sluff thought. Somebody caught one. Then the speaker came to life again as the admiral ordered a reversal of course, 180 degrees, speed still twenty-seven knots, to head back in the direction of the outbound bombers. There was nothing to say that the Japs, too, wouldn't turn around and have another go. Halfway through the turn, with the ship heeling hard to port as the rudders forced the stern to go sideways into the sea,
King
was directed to go to the assistance of
Wichita.
Sluff picked up the handset and rogered for the order.

“Combat, Captain—where's the
Wichita
?”

Combat came back with a range and bearing to
Wichita
's last known position, and Sluff ordered the OOD to come to that course. Once the ship steadied up,
Wichita
became visible fine off the port bow, illuminated by a glowing fire that seemed to be consuming her forward superstructure from the inside out. Sluff studied the wounded cruiser through his binocs as
King
closed in and then figured out what was wrong.
Wichita
was missing her bow and forwardmost gun turret. She was down by the head and making no way through the sea. He ordered the OOD to slow down and approach the cruiser from astern and then had the bosun call away the rescue and assistance team. Then he remembered the Jap bombers.

“Combat, Captain—what are those Bettys doing?”

“We no longer hold radar contact, Cap'n,” the exec replied. “The rest of the formation is still headed south but the air-raid reporting net has gone quiet.”

“Keep an eye peeled, Bob,” Sluff said. “Nothing to say those bastards can't make a wide swing around Savo and then come back up here to finish off the
Wichita.
Looks like she's lost everything forward of turret two. There's also a nasty fire at the base of her bridge. I want to go alongside so we can put some hoses on that.”

“Combat, aye.”

Sluff then took the conn and maneuvered the ship in a wide arc so that she could then turn and come up alongside
Wichita
's starboard side. He had his talker tell DC Central to set up fire hose parties along the port side. He then slowed to bare steerageway and came alongside the darkened cruiser. He could see several men up on the starboard bridge wing, illuminated by the fire that seemed to be eating its way upward toward them. He backed
King
gently and then
King
's damage-control parties began to play two-and-a-half-inch fire hoses on the glowing steel above them, creating huge clouds of steam. He had to back and fill several times, maneuvering gently so that the two ships wouldn't bump up against each other in these close quarters. The streams of seawater coming from
King
had the desired effect, dousing the visible, external fires. Several portholes along the cruiser's starboard main deck exploded when hit by the relatively cold seawater, and
King
's damage-control men trained their hoses to inject high-pressure streams directly into the interior of the badly damaged ship. Amidships, the bosun's mates passed over a four-inch hose to the cruiser's damage-control teams. They connected it to their own fire main, and then
King
was able to augment the damaged ship's two operational fire pumps.

After twenty minutes, Sluff was getting nervous about being so close in alongside the
Wichita,
which, having lost almost two hundred feet of her hull forward, was now in danger of becoming unstable and capsizing—onto USS
King.
He kept an eye on her forward mast, which was rocking gently in what little seaway there was, but also hanging for a few seconds at the end of each roll. That was a bad sign. He was too close to determine how far down by the bow she was.

“Captain, Combat. From the flag:
Providence
holding intermittent air contacts to the west. The Japs might be coming back. Flag says they are turning around and will attempt to get between
Wichita
and the Bettys' attack line.”

“Focus on your surface-search radar, Bob,” Sluff said. “They'll be low on the deck. We're on the wrong side of
Wichita
to shoot, so I'm going to back down and come up the other side. You have comms with
Wichita
?”

“Negative, Captain. Maybe use the 1MC topside speakers?”

Great idea, Sluff thought. He asked the bosun to bring him the announcing system's microphone.

“Ahoy,
Wichita:
The Japs are making another run, from the west. I'm going to back down and come up your port side to provide AA fire. Are your guns operational?”

Sluff's amplified words echoed strangely in the steel canyon formed between the two ships' hulls. There was no reply for a long thirty seconds, and then the CO of the cruiser came up on his announcing system. “The torpedo dismounted our turbogenerators,” he said. “We're on emergency diesels, all boilers off the line. Trying to get steam up. After turrets can shoot in local control, but we can't see right now. Radar's down, main battery plot has electrical fires and smoke. Appreciate any AA help you can give us.”

“I'll stay on your port quarter, then, Captain,” Sluff said.

Sluff waited for the midships crew to disconnect the fire-main hose and then ordered a slow astern bell and eased
King
back down the cruiser's starboard side, maneuvering the rudder so as not to rake the cruiser with his port anchor. Once he was clear astern, he came left and then stopped, perpendicular to the cruiser's stern. He noticed that an awful lot of her black waterline across the transom was exposed. He could also see that she had about a ten-degree list to starboard.

“Captain, Combat, three bogeys inbound on the surface-search radar, range fifteen miles. Coming straight in. Director one is on the lead plane and we'll open fire when they're at nine miles.”

“Open fire when they're at
ten
miles,” Sluff ordered. “Maybe we can spook 'em out of here if we happen to hit one.”

“Combat, aye, ten miles.”

Sluff heard mount fifty-two train out to port and ordered up ten knots. There was no point in high speed right now, not until he thought Long Lances were coming. The Bettys were known to be flying fire hazards; flame one, the other two might bolt. Otherwise, and especially if they had radar, they had a sitting duck in the stationary light cruiser.

The five-inch erupted into their familiar symphony and Sluff went out onto the port bridge wing to watch the show. He was proud that his officers and crew were pretty much in automatic when it came to fighting. He visualized the fire-control problem, which, on a direct attack, was simple. The computer would be aiming the shells at a point in space in front of and slightly above the approaching bombers, steady bearing, decreasing range.

There. An orange flare blossomed out in the distance as one of the Bettys suffered a gas-tank hit. He put his binocs up and could see that the plane was still coming at them, but losing lift and descending toward the black sea. He could actually see the other two, flying in close formation on either side of the burning plane. He wondered if they could see the cruiser. With her stern pointed at them, maybe not. They sure as hell
could
see
King,
with four five-inch guns blasting away at them, joined now by the forty-millimeter batteries with their double-thump gunfire and red tracers arcing out at the incoming planes, initially too low but then rising and, finally, someone connected with the Betty on the right. The plane literally blew up, sending a fountain of fiery wreckage in all directions. The third Betty jinked left, away from the exploding plane, just as the first bomber hit the sea in a sheet of flame.

They were close now. Sluff decided it was time to maneuver.

“All ahead flank, come
left
to”—he glanced down at the pelorus on the bridge wing—“three
two
zero.”

“Three two zero, all ahead flank, aye,” cried the helmsman and lee helmsman.

King
jumped to it, squatting briefly before surging ahead and then left into a hard turn. Sluff watched the sea surface intently by the light of his guns' muzzle blast, looking for the telltale signs of approaching torpedoes. His five-inch followed the third Betty as it made its escape. Sluff thought he saw a thin trail of smoke coming from its left engine, but then it disappeared into the darkness. A moment later all the guns went silent, leaving only the ringing silence of the air all around the ship, smashed into nothingness by all those guns, broken soon by the sounds of brass powder cases rolling around on the deck.

Sluff ordered the ship to slow down and told the OOD to take her back to the
Wichita,
which apparently had escaped any torpedoes launched in her direction. Or, the pilots had panicked, just dumped their fish, and turned away into the safety of darkness and opening range from the decidedly unfriendly welcome provided by
J. B. King.
Way out on the port quarter, Sluff could see a fire on the water, the remains of the first Betty still burning.

“Combat, Captain, two out of three ain't bad. We'll go back to
Wichita,
see what we can do for her. May have to rig a tow, although with no bow…”

“Combat, aye, and the scope is clear for the moment. No contact on the rest of the formation.”

“Tell the flag what happened and that we're assisting
Wichita.
”

 

NINETEEN

Wichita
managed to get steam up two hours after the night torpedo-bomber raid, but then had to back down all the way over to Tulagi, accompanied by
Providence
and two destroyers in case the Japs came back at sunrise.
J. B. King
and
Evans
went ahead to refuel and take on ammo and provisions. Once
Wichita
had been taken into the harbor,
Providence, Malone,
and
Stayers
joined the morning operation pit stop. At ten thirty the admiral summoned Sluff to the flagship for a meeting and lunch. As he was riding over to the cruiser he saw what looked like two Fletcher-class destroyers in the distance heading into the harbor from the southeast.