Ship of Ghosts (12 page)

“Everyone knows that you cannot assemble eleven football players who have never seen each other before, and go out and beat Notre Dame,” Lieutenant Hamlin wrote. “Even if they are good, they need to have some workouts to learn the signals and get to know each other. This team never got any workouts. Two hours after it assembled it was out on patrol.”

“
Follow me
,” Doorman had ordered. Traditionally, such a command enabled an admiral to lead his column without need of signals. Understated simplicity could work well enough if the squadron shared a foundational understanding of how the commander preferred to maneuver and fight. In this case, noting the murky situation faced by the newly gathered ships of the abortive ABDA organization, critics have said that more should have been required of its commander. The unasked follow-up to Doorman’s order might have been “
And then what
?”

T
he battle proper begins at 4:02
p.m
., when lookouts on a British destroyer spot three Japanese floatplanes in the north. Visibility is clear, northeasterly winds at Force 1 or 2, the seas rolling with ten-foot swells. On the horizon a blur of gray smoke appears. It grows
into a thicker streak of smoke, revealing the presence of distant ships. The minutes pass and soon, by 4:14, steel masts and the tops of foreign superstructures are rising on the northern horizon. Spotting the sprouting thicket of steel, a British destroyer in the van, the
Electra,
signals to Admiral Doorman: “
One cruiser, large destroyers, number unknown, bearing 330, speed 18, course 220 degrees
.” Three minutes later, the
Electra
sends a signal that brings chills: “
Two battleships, one cruiser, six destroyers
.” Before the report of battleships has a chance to register, another British ship returns a correction: “
Two heavy cruisers.”

Anyone privy to the signals exhales in relief, for the difference between battleships and heavy cruisers is as between life and death. Battleships were known to be about. Admiral Nagumo’s carrier group sailed with two of them, the swift
Kongo
and
Haruna,
tracking these waters without enemy peer. But these are not battleships—if they had been, their presence would have been forcefully announced at a range of twenty miles. Much to the relief of Commander Hara and the rest of the Japanese destroyer captains, the cruisers
Nachi
and
Haguro
are with them now. Admiral Takagi has ordered Nishimura’s troop carriers to withdraw while the cruisers and destroyers settle the question of their access to Java’s beaches.

Within minutes, Lt. Bruce D. Skidmore, stationed high in the
Houston
’s foremast, reports enemy cruisers bearing thirty degrees relative to starboard, steaming southwest on a nearly perpendicular course to the northwesterly oriented Allied line. The enemy fleet reveals itself slowly, like a winter forest growing out of the equatorial sea. The steel branches proliferate. There is no telling how large it is. On the
Houston,
a sinking feeling sets in that they are outnumbered. Yet somehow it manages to coexist with a prickle of excitement that the ship is finally going to get to do what it was built for. “We realized help would come, but not today,” said Marine Pfc. Marvin Robinson. “The feeling was—and I think the skipper had a large part to do with this feeling—‘Looky fellows, let’s give them hell. Let’s give them all we’ve got. They’ll be here.’” There is not a man on the
Houston
who doubts the crew’s morale, even in these most adverse conditions.

A halo of copper-orange flame envelops the silhouettes of two heavy cruisers, the
Nachi
and the
Haguro,
before clouds of cordite smoke conceal them and a light reverberation of thunder rolls in behind.
Excitement has gotten the better of the Japanese. Admiral Takagi’s flagship and its sister ship in Cruiser Division Five have opened fire at nearly thirty thousand yards. The range is too long by some two thousand yards. The projectiles take more than a minute to travel that far. Well ahead of Doorman’s column, white towers of seawater rise, stand briefly, then collapse from their base, the spray-whipped peaks drifting as mist.

Doorman evaluates his predicament, gauges time and motion, worries that the Japanese ships might beat him to the intersection of their converging courses. If that happens, the enemy will cross his formation’s T, thereby exposing his lead ships to full broadsides from the entire opposing line. Doorman changes course twenty degrees to the left, paralleling the course of the enemy cruisers. The maneuver momentarily hangs the three leading British destroyers out on the cruisers’ starboard bow, closest to the Japanese. The HMS
Electra,
the right-hand ship in the scouting line, attracts vicious fire. From fifteen thousand yards, the light cruisers and even a few destroyers can reach her. A spectrum of dye-colored foam rises around her. The
Electra
’s commanding officer, Cdr. C. W. May, has the ship “twisting like a hare” chasing shell splashes. Whether by reason of signaling problems or Admiral Doorman’s tactical preference, the lead British destroyers are kept on a leash. They do not form up to attack with torpedoes. Doorman orders His Majesty’s tin cans to scurry to the safety of the Allied column’s disengaged port side and form up into a column, awaiting their moment.

From overhead comes the buzzing of aircraft, as yet out of sight. Admiral Doorman has requested air support, but the call has gone unheeded. These planes are probably not friendly. On this day Surabaya’s air defense command will concentrate its meager resources on bombing Nishimura’s convoy, not protecting Doorman’s fleet. In the late afternoon, three A-24s escorted by eleven P-40s attack some Japanese troop transports heading for Java, claiming one sunk. Meanwhile, direct support comes from surprising quarters: A PBY Catalina, the type that has first spotted the Japanese fleet this morning, unloads a bomb at a Japanese destroyer. The big patrol bomber would have been more profitably used keeping station over the enemy force, reconnoitering it for Doorman’s benefit. A few U.S. Army B-17s of the Nineteenth Bomb Group, operating from Malang, make bombing runs over the Japanese escorts as well, but to no result.

Watching from the starboard side of the
Houston
’s signal bridge, Walter Winslow is awestruck by the sight of the fabled
Exeter
in action, her forward eight-inch twin turrets engaging a light cruiser just coming within range nearly dead ahead. His reverie ends a moment later when he is seized as if by a great hand and thrown against the signal bridge’s gray steel bulkhead, his battle helmet skittering across the deck. The
Houston
’s own main battery has let loose. Lieutenant Skidmore in Spot One watches the salvo’s flight all the way to its laddering impact, red-dyed splashes rising amid the Japanese cruisers. Via sound-powered phones he sends word from the foretop: “No change to opening range.” Winslow dares to rejoice: Though the first salvo has drawn no blood, it is right on target.

T
he
Houston
had a reputation as one of the best gunnery ships of her type. However, as in the gunnery departments of the other members of the
Northampton
class, things were done the old-fashioned way. She carried no radar to automate the gunlayer’s craft, no remote-control servo motors to take muscle and sweat out of the business of training and elevating guns. Ranges were triangulated by eye, as the fire-control officer optically centered his twin scopes on the target, their angle of convergence registering on a mechanical indicator dial that showed the range in yards. That datum was shouted down a voice tube to the plotting room, or Central Station, deep belowdecks, where the plotting room officer, Lt. Cdr. Sidney L. Smith, operated the ship’s mechanical analog computer. Smith cranked other vital data into the machine—the target’s bearing from the gun director, estimates of its course and speed, and the
Houston
’s own course from the gyrocompass repeater and her speed from the pitometer—and as the guns lashed out and shells landed, observers spied the shell splashes and called down to Commander Smith gun angle corrections, or “spots.” “Our first shots were fired almost ahead, only about twenty degrees on the starboard bow,” wrote Lieutenant Hamlin, “and with the ship charging ahead at twenty-eight knots the backward kick of those two forward turrets shook the old
Houston
like a leaf.”

The spotters on the
Houston
had a clear enough view of the forces arrayed against them: two heavy cruisers just ahead of their starboard beam, and two light cruisers, each leading a pack of destroyers,
closer in but farther to the west, bearing about thirty degrees relative.

As the pointer in Turret Two, James W. Huffman sat on a brass bicycle seat in a tight corner of the gun house, sweating in the dim red glow of the battle lanterns. Gripping a two-handled wheel that elevated the three guns, “Red” Huffman kept his eyes fixed on a large synchro-driven indicator dial within which a pair of small illuminated lightbulbs, or “bugs,” revolved in concentric tracks indicating the guns’ actual and on-target elevations. When the turret officer—Ens. Charles D. Smith commanded Turret Two—ordered him to “match bugs,” he would crank his hand wheels to align the bug showing the battery’s actual elevation with the outer bug showing the elevation needed to bring it on target. At the sound of a buzzer activated by the turret captain (a chief petty officer) Huffman would jerk the trigger built into the grip of his left-hand elevation wheel and the big guns would fire. The roar and recoil of the triple eight-inch rifles arrayed beneath him could unhinge the five senses. “Jesus Christ, you just can’t imagine,” Huffman said. “You lose track of every damn thing.” To reload, Huffman lowered the guns to a five-degree elevation so the loaders and rammers below him could stuff the breeches with projectiles and enough powder bags to suit the range. Then he matched bugs again, jerked the handle trigger, cringed at the deep rocking report, and repeated the cycle again.

Turret One developed mechanical difficulties from the fifth salvo, when a fuse box jarred loose from the turret’s bulkhead, disabling the electro-hydraulic ramming mechanism.

From that point on, according to Lieutenant Hamlin, the crew in the
Houston
’s forwardmost turret loaded and rammed the breech by hand, keeping pace with Turret Two on all but a few salvos. “This is a thing that you couldn’t do in peacetime,” Hamlin wrote, “no gun crew could do it, but they did.”

Some seventy men worked in each of the
Houston
’s two functioning main battery mounts. Below, loading the two hydraulic hoists that fed the handling room from the
Houston
’s magazines was exhausting work. Seaman second class William M. Ingram said they were at general quarters so often that he scarcely ever slept in the First Division’s crew compartment. He barely even knew where his bunk was. He kept a pillow and a blanket in the starboard-side powder box. Spartan accommodations and relentless working hours
notwithstanding, the gun crews sent five, sometimes six projectiles a minute rushing out at Japanese cruisers that were doing the same thing right back to them.

Scoring a hit with a naval rifle at the extreme range of more than eighteen statute miles was a bit like rolling snake eyes twice in a row. Arcing down after seventy seconds of flight, the projectiles fell at angles nearly vertical to the sea, both minimizing the chance of a hit and rendering a crippling waterline blow virtually impossible. Further reducing the odds was the erratic path of the targets, each ship turning in irregular zigs and zags. This kind of fight had been long rehearsed in exercises wherein victory emerged through seamanship: forming columns quickly to take the initiative, keeping the column closed and free of gaps to concentrate firepower and simplify command, and orienting it to greatest advantage relative to the enemy and the elements, a challenge complicated by wind, heavy seas, and smoke.

For some fifteen minutes as the opening salvos flashed and roared over the Java Sea, the Japanese concentrated their gunfire on the
Exeter,
leaving the
Houston
undisturbed. Captain Rooks’s target was the rear Japanese heavy cruiser, the
Haguro,
trailing Takagi’s flagship
Nachi
by about half a mile. The
Houston
’s guns roared, landing 260-pound projectiles all around the enemy ship. Japanese spotter planes launched by catapult from the
Nachi
and other of Takagi’s ships ranged up and down the length of the Allied column on its disengaged side, safely out of reach of the
Houston
’s expert gunners. Takagi’s cruisers made good use of the floatplanes’ spotting reports: Their salvos straddled the
De Ruyter, Houston,
and
Perth
as well as the
Exeter
. From the third salvo on, the
Nachi
’s and
Haguro
’s “overs” were missing the
Exeter
by as little as three yards to the disengaged side, indicating the steepness of the projectiles’ fall. Captain Gordon reported a “near-miss underwater well aft” that flooded some compartments and “had the apparent effect of lifting the whole ship in a most remarkable manner.”