Down to the Sea (21 page)

“What do you think of a turn to the north?” Halsey asked.

Kosco reiterated that the safest course was to continue southward and that there was a “danger” that a turn to the northwest might take
the fleet “nearer the track of the storm” and cause it to “hit us.” He explained that the storm was “increasing in intensity.”

At that point, Halsey asked what it was like outside.

“Severe,” Kosco said, “although not excessively so.”

Halsey discussed his operational concerns with Carney. Continuing to the south, while it might be the safest “in a weather sense,” would put them farther from Luzon. Also, spending time to search for calmer conditions in which to fuel would take up valuable time and delay the planned air strikes. Halsey expressed his determination “not to be feinted out of position” for the Luzon strikes by bad weather.

Carney, forty-nine, a methodical planner who nevertheless put value on doing the unexpected in the course of battle, knew the thinking processes of Halsey, whom he informally called “Admiral Bill,” having been his chief of staff for the past eighteen months. Prior to that, Carney, a 1916 Annapolis graduate who saw action against German U-boats in World War I, had commanded the cruiser
Denver
and was twice decorated for valor in the Solomon Islands. Once, proceeding through unfamiliar waters near Bougainville, Carney took advantage of adverse weather to lay a large quantity of explosive mines along sea lanes extensively under use by the enemy while also bombarding shore installations. Like his boss, Carney knew that MacArthur was “counting on” their carrier air support for his invasion of Mindoro. The chief of staff understood that Halsey felt he should “live up to that commitment…rather than retreat” before bad weather. By giving the word, Halsey could have “deserted MacArthur and headed south for a hundred miles or so” and “bypassed” the approaching storm, but after being caught out of position so recently at Leyte, Halsey felt he must “stay until the last minute.” In any case, it was the four-star admiral's decision to make, and nobody—Carney included—was “disposed to argue with it” once Halsey's mind was made up. Halsey decided to let stand his order to turn to the northwest at 2:00
A.M.

With “doubts about the wisdom of changing course to the northwest,” Kosco returned to the aerology office. He felt as if they were engaging in “hand-to-hand combat” with the storm rather than doing
any “long range planning.” Getting “out of the way” seemed the best action, and for that reason he had advised continuing to the south. He put in an order to be awakened when the 3:00
A.M.
Fleet Central weather report came in.

At 2:00
A.M.
, Task Force 38 changed course to 320 degrees. Almost immediately, the barometer dropped and the weather worsened.

The fleet was in the path of the typhoon that Army meteorologist Reid Bryson had issued a warning about thirty-six hours earlier.

 

W
HEN
K
OSCO AROSE
from a “short and restless catnap,” he made his way to the navigation deck. Now as he climbed the outside ladders the wind tore at him and the seas were so “turbulent they made even the mighty
New Jersey
roll and sway.” After checking the latest reports, Kosco decided that “things didn't look that bad” on paper. Although the barometer continued to fall (29.65 inches at 3:00
A.M.
), he still believed the worsening weather was “due to a tropical storm passing.”

At 3:45
A.M.
, Kosco made his way to Carney's cabin to brief him, and together they went to Halsey's quarters. The admiral came out of his bunk and put on robe and slippers, and the three of them went into the flag wardroom.

Kosco said all indications were that the storm was increasing in intensity and was “almost due to hit us if we continue to the northwest.”

Halsey asked, “What do you recommend?”

“We turn immediately to the south,” Kosco answered.

Halsey asked Kosco to conference with other group commanders and their weathermen via TBS radio to see what he could glean. The aerologist did so around 4:30
A.M.
, coming away with various opinions as to the storm's position and path—or even what to call it, some saying “cyclonic storm” and others “typhoon,” a term Kosco had avoided because he did not feel he had a large enough “field of reports” from which to make that forecast, and did not want to make a “snap judgment” and
sound a typhoon warning on a “mere hunch.”
*
There was agreement that a course to the south would be best to avoid being overrun by the storm. It was also unanimous that no ships would be successfully fueled that morning in such heavy seas. One task group commander, Rear Admiral Gerald Bogan, who had sent his own message that morning to Halsey recommending a run to the south to avoid the storm, considered the possibility of fueling “under existing conditions very slim.”

Shortly after 5:00
A.M.
, Halsey “reluctantly decided” to turn to the south. He ordered all ships to change to a southerly course and maintain 15 knots. “Loath to give up his last attempt” to fuel in time to carry out the planned strikes against enemy air forces on Luzon, however, Halsey directed the fleet to “commence fueling as soon as possible” after sunrise, adding that the destroyers should fuel first from astern of the oilers if necessary—a method that had been “clearly demonstrated” as “not feasible” the previous day.

Halsey's two orders—go south and fuel—were “not compatible.” With heavy winds and swells from the north, it would not be possible to fuel on a southerly course. To fuel, the ships would need to turn around and head upwind—into a “collision course” with an enemy of a different kind.

 

A
FTER A STARLESS,
“blacker than pitch” night of howling winds and mounting seas, the sun did not rise at dawn on December 18 as much as it backlit a lurid yellow-gray sky, illuminating the heaving swells pushing down from the north that formed endless “mountains of waters.”
The wind—“a hell's chorus of fury”—whined deeply and sorrowfully, as if the “sea and air were in pain.” Clouds of spray, spume, and rain whipped across the surface, blending sea and sky, obliterating the horizon, and lowering visibility.

At 7:00
A.M.
the Third Fleet turned northward into the brunt of the storm for fueling. Before the course change, Kosco briefed Halsey on the worsening weather, and the aerologist “voiced an opinion” that continuing south would be safer, while heading north would “probably take us back toward the storm.” After discussing the situation with his staff, Halsey decided that, “rather than to retreat,” they would “stay in the area” and “carry out our commitments.”

On many ships, there was less thought that morning about fueling and more about how to “just stay afloat.” Directed to a new course of 060 degrees and a speed of 10 knots, the ships came about in “very rough seas” against headwinds up to 50 miles per hour, and many were soon “riding as though caught in some giant washing machine.” The fleet had never before attempted to fuel in such rough seas, and under these conditions Acuff decided that his “oilers [should] not attempt to fuel” the destroyers. Rather, the destroyers would be brought alongside aircraft carriers, utilizing the greater stability of the larger ships in the undulating seas. A destroyer was ordered alongside each of Rear Admiral Bogan's three big carriers,
Hornet, Hancock,
and
Lexington
. Observing from his flag bridge on
Lexington
as one yawing and bouncing destroyer approached—disappearing except for her mast into a deep trough before rising atop a high swell—Bogan “didn't like” what he saw and directed the destroyers to clear lest they collide with his carriers. Not long after, a message was sent to Halsey stating that “present conditions” did not permit fueling the destroyers by any method.

The 7:30
A.M.
fuel reports of destroyers low in capacity were:

 

Yarnall,
20 percent;

Stockham
and
Welles,
22 percent;

Moore,
21 percent;

Taussig,
18 percent;

Colahan, Bush, Franks, Cushing,
and
Wedderburn,
15 percent;

Maddox, Hickox,
and
Spence,
10–15 percent.

 

A little after 8:00
A.M.
Halsey ordered the fueling efforts discontinued and “regretfully notified” MacArthur by radio dispatch that he “could not meet our commitment” to strike Luzon the next day. The fleet turned south again.

Shortly afterward, radio reports came over the TBS of ships “pounding heavily in the mounting seas” and experiencing loss of steering control, engine difficulties, and men washed overboard. The smaller carriers with the fueling group, not as stable as their larger brethren, reported planes breaking loose from their tie-downs, colliding and slamming into bulkheads, and catching fire.

It had become “rather apparent” to Kosco that they were dealing not with an “ordinary tropical storm” but with one that was exhibiting “typhoon conditions,” as the wind and sea continued to raise havoc with the fleet and the “ceiling rested virtually on the deck,” with visibility down to 500 yards. He watched with alarm the barometer on
New Jersey
“falling very, very rapidly” from 29.59 to 29.20 inches in one hour—the “typical barometric nosedive of a typhoon.” Then the “wind went around further to the northwest,” backing counterclockwise—another “sure sign” to the weatherman of a typhoon.

Kosco believed the fleet would be far enough south to escape the mountainous, confused seas that he knew could cause damage to “all ships,” and which any smaller ship “improperly ballasted would not be able to ride out.” Still, he thought about their backtracking to the north that morning in a “last, vain attempt” to fuel. He wondered how “much difference” the short (an hour in each direction) but unfortunate detour in the wrong direction—keeping them that much closer to the center of the storm—would make in the end.

The aerologist now understood that the Third Fleet was “making a race” with a full-blown typhoon to get out of its path.

That morning aboard
Spence
, Quartermaster 2nd Class Edward F. Traceski, twenty-two, born in Turners Falls, Massachusetts, to Polish immigrant parents, assumed the 8:00–to-noon watch in the wheelhouse. Stationed near the helmsman and with a panoramic view from the bridge's long row of brass-framed portholes, Traceski maintained the daily deck log, “recording all the happenings of the ship, course changes, speeds, and formations.”

A slender five foot ten with thick brown hair and a shy smile, Traceski had come aboard
Spence
in the Boston Harbor in June 1943, in time for the trip through the Panama Canal out to the fight in the Pacific. “Everyplace we stopped,” he noticed, “they put on
more armaments and more armaments,” all of which
Spence
had used amply during those heady Little Beavers days.

Traceski, who had stood two four-hour watches on December 17, was on the bridge for several fueling attempts. For a day and a half it had been an increasingly “rough ride” in tumultuous seas—made all the worse by
Spence
's lighter-than-normal condition with mostly empty fuel tanks. Throughout the night they had steamed on only one boiler to conserve fuel, although in order to “maintain station” in the formation of the replenishment group
Spence
had to keep her speed between 10 and 12 knots. No one below deck had gotten much rest or food; everyone's main preoccupation had been with finding someplace safe to hold on as the destroyer was tossed about in high seas.

When Traceski came on duty, he took one look into the near-zero visibility outside and knew there would be “no possible chance to fuel” this morning. Minutes later, the fleet's latest plan to fuel had been scrubbed. He was “not sure” whether the skipper had “done the right thing” in not taking on ballast during the night, as Traceski heard over the TBS other ships had done.

Also coming on watch at 8:00
A.M.
was Seaman 1st Class Edward A. Miller, nineteen, of Clark, New Jersey, a former deckhand who had previously witnessed the nearly disastrous attempt to fuel
Spence
alongside a tanker, stopped after the destroyer “slammed into the side of the tanker, jolting several men off their feet” and causing some injuries.

A happy-go-lucky former Boy Scout who had been advised by an uncle who served years earlier in the Navy to do the same so he could have a “dry bunk and three hot meals a day,” Miller had enlisted in January 1943 and gone to boot camp at Great Lakes in Illinois before being assigned to
Spence
. He had requested destroyer duty because his uncle told him there were fewer by-the-book regulations aboard smaller ships. From the beginning he had “loved the dungaree navy” and the camaraderie of knowing everyone aboard, not possible on carriers or battlewagons with crews numbering in the thousands.

Before going on watch, Miller went by the galley and found that the cooks had discovered it “simply out of the question” to serve hot meals.
Most of the food they tried to prepare had ended up on the deck, along with assorted pots and pans.
So much for three hots a day,
Miller thought as he downed a few sips of lukewarm coffee and stuffed a cold dinner roll in his pocket before taking off down a passageway. Even his rolling, well-balanced gait on experienced sea legs was not enough to keep him from staggering like the town drunkard, bouncing from one bulkhead to the other. When he emerged on deck heading for the outside ladder to the bridge, Miller saw the seas “were like mountains” and the winds were “blowing the tops off the waves in a foamy, horizontal spray as if a giant was blowing the froth from an overfilled beer mug.” The wind-driven rain stung like needles on any exposed skin, and the salt spray was so thick it was difficult to see anything. When he reached the main battery's fire-control compartment above the bridge, he opened the hatch and quickly closed it behind him, relieved to be out of the elements. Here, in a cramped space with two other sailors and a gunnery officer, he was scheduled to spend the next four hours, ready to control the firing of
Spence
's 5-inch deck guns in the unlikely event they had to be used in such heavy weather, which usually found submarines staying below periscope depth and enemy aircraft grounded.

That morning in the wardroom, supply and disbursing officer Al Krauchunas took part in a meeting in which the ship's officers “conversed with the captain over the problems of the day.” Over inky coffee and sliced cold cuts, Jim Andrea asked to hear from each division head about any “problems they were encountering” or which they anticipated would “present themselves during the day.” It was a calm and orderly meeting, and Krauchunas, when asked, gave an upbeat report on the status of the ship's supplies: they had consumed 20 percent of their provisions and had plenty of stores.

The chief engineer delivered news of a more dire nature. Lieutenant ( j.g.) Lawrence D. Sundin reported they had remaining only “9,000 gallons of fuel; 5,000 gallons in forward tanks and 4,000 gallons aft”—which was approximately 6 percent of the destroyer's capacity. As long as they could continue to operate on one boiler and maintain their consumption rate of “300 to 350 gallons per hour,” Sundin estimated
they had enough fuel for “24 hours at a speed of eight knots.” After that, they would be dead in the water. They were carrying 10,000 gallons of diesel fuel for the auxiliary generators, Sundin said, but he did not want to burn diesel unless they had to because it contained residual water, which could put out the fires in the boilers and contaminate the plant.

Sundin also pointed out that the vessel was operating below the ballasting point required by the Bureau of Ships.
Fletcher
-class destroyers were instructed to carry 200 tons or 60,000 gallons of fuel and/or water ballast—“about 40 percent of capacity”—to maintain optimal stability in any sea state. It was strongly felt by Sundin that if fueling was not going to take place that morning, the pumping of seawater into the empty fuel tanks should commence.

Krauchunas knew Andrea had not taken on ballast during the night because he wanted the ship to be ready to receive a full capacity of fuel so they could return to their screening duties with Halsey's task force. Without ballast, Krauchunas had not considered them to be “in danger of turning over, nor was there any thought along that line.” In fact, “normal routine was carried on through the night.” The ship had stayed in damage-control condition Baker—the “normal wartime cruising condition which left open those watertight doors necessary to permit a normal flow of traffic” between compartments and levels.

Not long after the wardroom meeting broke up, Chief Water Tender James Felty, who had turned twenty-five two days earlier, was ordered to transfer fuel oil from two forward wing tanks to an inboard tank that provided fuel for the forward boilers. The wing tanks, A-507 and A-508, were then to be filled with seawater ballast. Each held 8,000 gallons.

Born and raised in the heart of coal country in Matewan, West Virginia, Felty had joined the Navy in 1937 at age seventeen, intending to make the Navy a career. His two older brothers also “took off for the Navy” as soon as they finished high school, so determined were the Felty boys not to follow their father, and nearly every other adult male they knew, into the coal mines.

Strong and long-limbed, Felty was a steady and accomplished worker
who took pride in being one of the plank owners of
Spence,
which he considered a “good ship” after earlier assignments on a fleet tanker and an old four-pipe destroyer. Felty's first action had been in the Solomons, and even working below deck in the fire rooms he had heard plenty of gunfire. He grew accustomed to being in combat without actually seeing anything; the secret was paying attention to one's own job, and there was always much to do in engineering. In the days when
Spence
fought under Arleigh Burke, they had “all four boilers on all the time” in order to produce ample steam to feed the turbines that powered the propellers to answer the calls from the bridge for added speed, which Felty learned meant “right then” and not later.

Shortly after 10:00
A.M.
, Felty finished transferring the fuel. A few minutes later the order came to commence ballasting, which Felty did, passing the word over the sound-powered phone to two men standing by to take soundings on the wing tanks, the tops of which were accessed through a hatch in the mess hall. Felty learned from speaking on the phone with another chief water tender in the after fire room that pumping had started back there, too, with salt water being directed into empty fuel tanks C-8 and C-9. As the ship could take on about “30,000 gallons of ballast in one and a half hours” with simultaneous pumping forward and aft, it would be two hours or so before
Spence
reached the level of 40 percent capacity required for proper stability.

About thirty minutes later, Felty, unable to reach the men at the wing tanks, decided to “go up and see what was the matter.” That took him a short distance across the heaving, slippery main deck. When he reached the mess hall, he found everything okay with his men and the tanks filling without any problems. Before going back to the fire room, Felty went forward to the chief 's berthing compartment in the bow and retrieved his kapok life jacket, which he slipped on and secured for another weather deck crossing.

As Felty headed down a port passageway he was thrown hard against the bulkhead when
Spence
took a big roll to port—so far over that he found himself on his hands and knees on the bulkhead listening to the din of loose gear crashing about him. The ship hung there momentarily
before slowly starting to right herself, as she was designed to do. It was then that the lights flickered and went out. No emergency lights came on in the passageway. “In complete darkness,” Felty worked his way down the passageway until he came to a port hatch open to the main deck. Eight or ten young sailors were gathered at the hatch, not sure whether they should stay inside the listing ship or take a chance out on the deck awash in churning green water.

Felty still intended to go out on deck to the hatch and ladder that went to the forward fire room because “it was my job to be there,” figuring since he had made it across the deck once he could do so again. But now his exit was blocked by the “scared sailors,” who would not move from the opening.

 

A
T APPROXIMATELY
10:30
A.M.
, supply officer Al Krauchunas left the galley after making sure that sufficient sandwiches had been prepared, since the crew would be subsisting on them until further notice. Clutching the handrail as the ship “pitched and tossed,” he made his way to his disbursing office, where he checked to see that all cabinet doors, furniture, and equipment had been made secure. He decided to go back to the wardroom, a journey that would take him on deck for a short distance. He did so facing “hazardous footing and raging wind.” On one roll to starboard, the whaleboat was engulfed in the flood and ripped free of the davits holding it in place. The whaleboat swept by, “narrowly missing” Krauchunas before disappearing over the side. He allowed himself the thought that it would be his responsibility to report the loss to the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts, and wondered if a checkmark in an appropriate column would suffice or whether he should write an eyewitness account.

“Slowly and steadily,” Krauchunas made his way forward, overcoming the “blinding mist, wind and water” to stumble into the passageway leading to the wardroom, where he landed “completely drenched.” When he found the wardroom deserted, he decided to “seek relief from the pitching and rolling” by going to his nearby stateroom and “hitting
the sack.” Once there, he removed his wet clothes, donned fresh dry ones, and lay in his bunk listening to the sounds of
Spence
enduring “continuous bucking and rolling,” including the roll to port from which the ship had not come fully back.

Krauchunas heard a phone ring in an adjacent room. Soon the chief engineer peered into his room. “You better get topside, Al,” Sundin said. “We've taken water down the stack into the engine room.” Sundin hurried away, closing behind him the watertight hatch leading from officer country.

Having recently been topside and nearly washed overboard with the whaleboat, Krauchunas still thought his stateroom was a safer place to stay. But then the lights blinked and went out. A dim emergency light flickered on in the passageway, and Krauchunas, “concerned with the sudden turn of events,” decided to head back to the wardroom. He stopped at the door to the wardroom and peered inside. Several officers not on duty were now sitting on lounges and in chairs, each with a “concerned look” on his face. Deciding the atmosphere was “not at all encouraging,” Krauchunas turned away and started down the darkened passageway toward the main deck, “struggling to remain upright,” as the ship had never straightened up again after rolling to her port side. As he passed the captain's stateroom, he heard a voice “spouting a few words of anger and disgust.” Krauchunas looked in and saw the ship's medical officer, Lieutenant ( j.g.) John C. Gaffney, sitting in a chair and having trouble keeping it from sliding across the compartment. Krauchunas liked Doc Gaffney and decided to stay. He sat down on the lower bunk of a double-bunk unit, and the two men exchanged “words of fear and some assurances regarding the storm.”

Spence
took a “sudden roll to port” and remained in this position for “agonizing moments” before slowly starting to come upright.

Krauchunas by then was on the deck, having been thrown backward off the bunk into the passageway and showered with books, ashtrays, and other loose items from the cabin. Without hesitating, he scrambled on all fours for the nearest hatch—left open or pushed open—that led onto the deck.