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Authors: P. T. Deutermann

Sentinels of Fire

BOOK: Sentinels of Fire
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This book is dedicated to the memory of the nearly 5,000 navy men who lost their lives at the battle for Okinawa.

 

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Author's Note

Also by P. T. Deutermann

About the Author

Copyright

 

ONE

On my very first day aboard USS
Malloy,
a Jap fighter plane came within fifteen feet of taking my head right off before it exploded just above the water on the opposite side of the ship. The captain looked down at me from the bridge wing once all the shooting stopped, shot me a lopsided grin, and said, “Welcome aboard, XO. How do you like your coffee?”

An hour later I thought of a truly smartass reply, but at that very moment, I was speechless and a bit deaf, too. I had literally just come aboard. The bridge messenger, a young seaman who looked to be no more than twelve years old, led me forward along the starboard side through all the guntubs to ascend the weather-deck ladders up to the bridge. We'd gotten halfway up the first ladder when that kamikaze came in out of nowhere, its screaming engine audible above the sudden burst of fire from the midships forties, joined immediately by all the twenty-millimeter mounts. I had been standing underneath a four-barreled forty-millimeter gun mount when the gunners first spotted him. Every gun on that side opened fire. The messenger and I dropped back down to the main deck and huddled under the ladder to avoid the shower of brass cartridges raining down on our heads. The muzzle blasts were so powerful that I couldn't catch my breath, but that was nothing compared to seeing that Jap plane diving right at us, right at
me,
with that big, ugly bomb slung under its fuselage, even as pieces of its wings, tail, and undercarriage were being torn off by the gunfire from
Malloy
's massed batteries. At the last moment, the pilot lost either his nerve or his head, because the plane pitched up, rolled, and then kited right over the ship before crashing down into the sea, pursued by a sheet of flaming gasoline. A moment later there was a stupendous blast when its bomb went off just a few feet underwater, giving what was left of its pilot one last flight experience and raising a waterspout a hundred feet into the air.

Only thirty minutes earlier,
Malloy
had finished taking on fuel and transferring personnel by midships highline alongside the fleet oiler,
Monongahela.
Once I landed on
Malloy
's main deck, shed my life jacket, and collected my seabags, I headed forward as the bosun's mates retrieved the highline rig and the ship pulled away from the oiler, accelerating to 27 knots to get clear of the cumbersome and vulnerable underway replenishment formation. It had been a gray, drizzly day, with enough wind to bat the tops off of the waves as
Malloy
threaded her way through all the carriers, battleships, and cruisers of Admiral Raymond Spruance's Fifth Fleet. Spruance had been conducting air strikes against Formosa and the Japanese home islands for the past three days, trying to reduce what was left of the Jap air forces before the invasion of Okinawa began. The Japs had reacted by throwing kamikazes at the fleet formations, with some success, unfortunately. I'd transferred over to the oiler from the aircraft carrier
Franklin
—the Big Ben, as she was known—where I'd been the gunnery officer, on my way to take over as executive officer in the destroyer
Malloy.
Career-wise, it was a pretty big step. Two days after I'd transferred to the oiler, the Big Ben lost over eight hundred men in a kamikaze bombing attack and was so badly damaged that she had to retire to Pearl and, ultimately, to retirement status in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet.

The captain was back inside the pilothouse by the time I got to the bridge, talking to the ship's Combat Information Center, known as the CIC or Combat, on the tactical intercom, or the bitch-box. He acknowledged my presence with a casual wave, finished his conversation, and then got out of his chair to come shake hands. I introduced myself.

“I'm Connie Miles, Captain,” I said. “Reporting aboard for duty, sir.”

“Pudge Tallmadge,” he said as we shook hands. “Welcome aboard. I'm sorry your predecessor isn't here to do a proper turnover, but he was yanked off to go to command, and that does take precedence.”

“Amen to that,” I said. “I'll try to hit the deck running.”

The captain's nickname, Pudge, must have been strictly an academy thing, because he was anything but pudgy now. Gaunt would have been a better description, with gray hair, light blue eyes with dark pouches underneath, medium height, and a face that looked ten years older than his forty-one years of age. His real name was Commander Carson R. R. Tallmadge III, USN, and he was from the Eastern Shore of Maryland and the Annapolis class of 1929. He'd been in command of
Malloy,
one of the new Gearing-class destroyers, since taking over from her commissioning CO right after that officer had suffered a heart attack in mid-1944.

“Let's go below,” he said. He told the OOD—officer of the deck—that we'd be in his inport cabin and to keep the ship at modified GQ, or general quarters, until we got back out to our assigned station, escorting a three-carrier formation. The captain's cabin was just on the other side of the wardroom. Once there he buzzed the duty wardroom steward for some coffee, lit up a cigarette, and then asked me to give him my background.

“Class of 'thirty-five,” I recited. “Served in the
West Virginia
for my makee-learn tour, then in
Chester
as main propulsion assistant. Postgrad school back in Annapolis, then back to sea in
Houston
out of Norfolk as the assistant gunnery officer. A year and a half of shore duty at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, where the EDOs tried to convert me to engineering duty officer. That looked pretty boring to me, so I turned 'em down, which apparently hurt their feelings, because I was sent back to sea midtour to the Big E, again as assistant gunnery officer, right after Pearl.”

“You were aboard for Midway, then?”

“Yes, sir. Actually, I was supposed to have gone to
Yorktown,
but that got changed at the last minute.”

“That was lucky,” he said.

“Yes, sir, I thought so, especially after she went down. Went to
Franklin
from
Enterprise,
this time as
the
gunnery officer. Got off her to come here only days before the Japs got her.”

“Lucky again,” he said. “That's good. I firmly subscribe to what Napoleon said when he was asked if he preferred brilliant generals or lucky ones. Lucky, every time, he said. Are you married?”

“No, sir, I am not. Almost, once, but then she got cold feet after one of the wives at a wardroom dinner party told her what married life with a naval officer was like: the constant separations; a lot of responsibility but really low pay; the stagnant promotion system; and then some more about the endless separations. She was a bit tipsy, but she was pretty convincing. My fiancée asked me later if that was all true, and I had to admit that it was. That, as they say, was that.”

“Sorry to hear it,” the captain said. “All of those things are true, or were, I guess. My wife's one of those special women who can live their own lives when I'm gone, and yet make mine worth living when I'm home. About the only thing that's changed is the promotion opportunity: You know, enough people die, the survivors get promoted. You're lucky you and she explored the truth before you got hitched.”

“I suppose so,” I said. “She was a lovely young lady, but she was pretty clear on what she wanted out of marriage: kids, a nice home, a nice car, and an expanding horizon. This was about the time we were all taking a fifteen percent pay cut if we wanted to stay on active duty.”

“Remember it well,” he said, nodding. “And we were glad to hand it over, as I remember. It beat going on the bread lines or shoveling dirt for the WPA.”

“I wavered,” I said. “Almost got out. Madge, that was her name, Madge Warrren, got her father into it. He tried to convince me that a career in banking was a whole lot better than a naval career. Having watched most of the banks fail when I was still at the academy, I wasn't convinced.”

“What happened to her, may I ask?”

“She married a banker and became an alcoholic. I guess I was lucky to have dodged a bullet. In a manner of speaking.”

“Wow,” he said. “Well, speaking of luck, we're going to need as much of that as we can get, and all because we have one of the newer air-search radars.”

That was interesting—we'd had two air-search radars on Big Ben, but he was talking as if
Malloy
's having one was unusual. “Sir?” I said.

“L-day for the Okinawa campaign has been set of the first of April. Operation Iceberg, they're calling it. Gonna be a really big deal, Connie. Upwards of fifteen hundred ships and amphibious craft. A four-division assault, two Army, two Marine, almost 120,000 men, with the entire Big Blue Fleet in support. That's where we and our air-search radar come in. Spruance has ordered up a radar picket line, north and west of the main island of Okinawa. Six destroyers, augmented with some modified landing craft for additional close-in gun support, stationed in a big arc across the top of the island chain.”

“I don't remember hearing anything about a picket line for Iwo.”

“We didn't, because Iwo is six hundred and fifty miles away from the home islands. Okinawa, on the other hand, is only two hundred and twenty miles. Okinawa is considered by the Japs to be Japanese home island territory. They've got the entire Jap 32nd Army on that island, and the intel people are predicting a bloodbath.” He sipped some of his coffee. I noticed his hand was trembling.

“If you were on the
Franklin,
” he continued, “then you know that the Japs are on the ropes. For all intents and purposes, their fleet's been destroyed. They've resorted to kamikaze tactics pretty much because that's all they've got. Fleet intel estimates that they don't have all that many airplanes and pilots left, either, especially pilots, so they're making them count.”

Well I knew. We'd been the target of all too many kamikazes recently in
Franklin,
and, being the gunnery officer, I knew all about the horror show they could produce. Fortunately
Franklin
had been surrounded by a screen of antiaircraft light cruisers and destroyers, together with the side batteries of two battleships, so it was pretty rare that one got through. “Will this picket line be a formation, Captain?”

“I don't think so, Connie. It looks like we're going to be on our own, stationed maybe ten, twenty miles apart, to create the biggest possible radar coverage.”

“One ship on its own? That's a recipe for disaster.”

“Do tell. It's one thing to defend against a plane trying to bomb or torpedo a moving ship. Quite another when the plane
is
the bomb. Fleet intel says they'll soon run out of planes. I'm not so sure. I think they're holding back until we actually attack Okinawa. Remember, Okinawa Shima
is
Japan in their evil little minds.”

BOOK: Sentinels of Fire
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