Down to the Sea (48 page)

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Bath's wartime record from keel laying to launching of a destroyer was 124 days.

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In all, Bath Iron Works built 31
Fletcher-
class destroyers, more than any other shipyard. A total of 175 ships of the
Fletcher
class—“the heart and soul of the small-ship Navy”—were commissioned by the Navy between 1942 and 1945, forming the core of the World War II destroyer force. Twenty-five
Fletcher
-class destroyers were lost or damaged beyond repair in the war; 44 earned ten or more battle stars; 19 were awarded Navy Unit Commendations, and 16 received Presidential Unit Citations.

^*
Thwarted in their supply mission, the Japanese returned to Paramushiro. Their commander—unaware of
Salt Lake City
's predicament—broke off the attack because his ships were running low on ammunition and fuel, and also for fear of being attacked by U.S. land-based aircraft. The Americans fought a “brilliant retiring action against heavy odds,” according to naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison, and Komandorski “should make a proud name in American naval history.” The Japanese made no further attempts to supply their Aleutian bases by surface ships.

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For six months Guadalcanal was bitterly contested by naval, air, and ground forces of the United States and Japan. There were numerous pitched battles in the jungle interior of the 2,510-square-mile island, as well as six major naval engagements fought in the surrounding waters, which became the ocean graveyard for so many ships that American sailors dubbed the region Ironbottom Sound.

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Radar, an acronym for “radio detection and ranging,” was developed independently in the United States, England, France, and Germany during the 1930s. The foundation for this discovery was half a century of radio development, plus early suggestions that because radio waves are known to be reflected, they could be used to detect obstacles in fog or darkness. World War II led to fast-track research to find better resolution and more portability.

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In the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force, hand salutes are traditionally given only when a cover (hat) is worn, while the U.S. Army gives salutes both covered and uncovered. In wartime on many smaller ships where officers and enlisted men were constantly passing each other in tight spaces, saluting was not required.

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Sonar, an acronym for “sound navigation and ranging,” uses sound propagation under water to detect submerged submarines as well as to navigate around sunken obstructions. Although developed by the British in 1912 and improved during World War I, sonar was not put into fleet-wide service by the U.S. Navy until World War II.

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The
Farragut
-class destroyer
Worden
(DD-352),
Hull
and
Monaghan
's sister ship, had been lost in January 1943 due to the same impediments. Leaving Dutch Harbor,
Worden
struck a submerged rock, tearing a huge gash in her hull. Floundering in heavy surf, the vessel was pounded against the rocks until her seams split open. When the flooding could not be stopped, the crew abandoned ship; all but fourteen were rescued by nearby ships.

^†
The Japanese submarine engaged by
Monaghan
was the
I-7,
a 2,500-ton long-range fleet submarine with a crew of 100 that could transport another 100 combat troops and a Yokosuka E14Y seaplane for reconnaissance flights. Eighteen months earlier, the
I-7
had participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

^*
A ship's commissioning is a ceremony where the officers and crew formally take charge of a vessel on behalf of the Navy. It differs from a launching and christening ceremony in that the new warship is deemed fully operational and ready for service. By long tradition, members of a new ship's first crew are called plank owners. In the days of wooden ships, plank owners upon transfer or retirement were awarded a piece of wood from the ship.

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In addition to
Spence
, the other seven ships—all
Fletcher
-class destroyers—of Arleigh Burke's renowned Little Beavers squadron were
Stanly
(DD-478),
Converse
(DD-509),
Foote
(DD-511),
Thatcher
(DD-514),
Charles F. Ausburne
(DD-570),
Claxton
(DD-571), and
Dyson
(DD-572).

^*
After major repairs in San Pedro, California,
Foote
returned to the war in time for the invasion of Leyte in late 1944, and saw action at Okinawa six months later. The destroyer received four battle stars for World War II service.

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Rear Admiral Sentaro Omori, in charge of the Japanese forces in the Battle of Empress Augusta Bay, was relieved of his command upon his return to Rabaul, so displeased were his superiors with his failure to get at the American transports or otherwise disrupt the landings. U.S. Navy Rear Admiral A. Stanton Merrill's victory was credited to his releasing Burke's destroyers to fulfill a primary offensive function as well as the task force's “swift continuous turns to avoid enemy torpedoes” while “pouring out continuous rapid fire”—tactics characterized by naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison as “masterpieces of maneuver.”

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Admiral Halsey was not present at his New Caledonia headquarters on November 24, 1943, as he was in Brisbane, Australia, for one of his periodic conferences with General Douglas MacArthur, the supreme commander of Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific Area. Standing in for Halsey at New Caledonia was his operations officer, Captain Harry R. Thurber.

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Onami
and
Makinami
went down with all hands and a large complement of military personnel from Buka, other than a few who managed to reach shore on rafts. After the battle, Japanese submarines rescued from the water 289 survivors from
Yugiri,
which carried a crew of 197 as well as 300 soldiers being transported on her deck.

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Among the Guadalcanal invasion flotilla that morning was the destroyer
Hull,
her crew at their battle stations ready to help protect the fifteen transports off-loading troops into landing craft.

^†
Participating in this first air battle between land-based Zeros and U.S. carrier fighters was Japan's ace of aces, Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, known as the “Devil of Rabaul.” Credited with destroying six F4Fs in the fight—including four from VF-5—Nishizawa in all likelihood shot down Tabberer. Tall, lanky, and an expert in judo and sumo, Nishizawa, whose flying skills would become legendary, believed that he could never be shot down in aerial combat. En route with other pilots to pick up replacement aircraft at an airfield on Luzon, he died in October 1944 at age twenty-five as a passenger on a twin-engine Nakajima Ki-49 bomber downed by two Navy fighters. Nishizawa personally claimed eighty-seven aerial victories, although some sources credit him with more than one hundred aerial kills.

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Tabberer
was 70 feet shorter but only a foot narrower than the
Fletcher
-class
Spence
, and although 35 feet shorter than the
Farragut
-class destroyers
Hull
and
Monaghan, Tabberer
was 3 feet wider. The length and narrowness of conventional destroyers—built for speed, not stability—could make them top-heavy in heavy seas, while destroyer escorts, with their shorter and wider hull design, exhibited no such troubling tendencies.

^*
This is as true today as yesteryear. On August 1, 2005, Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Mike Mullen told a gathering of chief petty officers at the Senior Enlisted Academy in Newport, Rhode Island: “I believe chiefs run the Navy. You may think that I run the Navy, but I assure you that the Navy runs because of what you do.”

^*
Contrary to what many people think, a ship's captain never actually operates the wheel or helm but leaves that job to an enlisted sailor, most often a quartermaster-rated petty officer. Whichever officer “has the conn”—usually either the captain, executive officer, officer of the deck (OOD), or junior officer of the deck (JOOD)—gives orders to the helmsman and others to direct the engines and rudder, thus controlling the ship's speed and direction.

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A notable alumnus of the U.S. Naval War College, established in 1887 and traditionally open to naval officers from other countries, was Isoroku Yamamoto, fleet admiral and commander in chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy, architect of the December 7, 1941, surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

^*
Denatured alcohol is 95 percent ethyl alcohol (used in beer), 4 percent methyl alcohol (highly toxic), and 1 percent pyridine. The last is added to give the mixture a vile taste so as to discourage its consumption, as it can be fatal.

^*
The high casualty rate suffered by the numerically superior U.S. force in taking this small island—half the size of New York's Central Park—ignited a storm of protests in the press and Congress. Tarawa was one of the two most heavily defended atolls (the other was Iwo Jima) to be invaded by American forces in the Pacific, and it turned into one of the bloodiest battles per square foot in the Pacific. More than 3,000 U.S. Marines were killed at Tarawa; only 17 enemy soldiers from a garrison of nearly 5,000 were still alive at the end of the three-day battle.

^†
Light CVL or escort CVE carriers were capable of carrying thirty to forty planes, compared with ninety planes on full-size carriers.

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With
Hull
and other destroyers preoccupied with rescuing survivors, the enemy submarine escaped undetected. However,
I-175
and her crew did not have long to live. Three months later, the submarine was destroyed in a depth-charge attack by the destroyer
Charrette
(DD-581) and destroyer escort
Fair
(DE-35) near Kwajalein.

^*
Standard speeds on naval ships are ordered by the bridge on an engine order telegraph that rings in the engine room (thus the term “rang up” knots). Speeds are shown in increments of 5 knots; forward one-third (5 knots), two-thirds (10 knots), standard (15 knots), full (20 knots), and flank (25 knots), and reverse one-third (5 knots), two-thirds (10 knots) and full (15 knots). Other speeds—17 knots, for example—were achieved by the bridge ordering on the revolutions indicator a specific number of engine revolutions per minute (17 knots equated to 165 rpm on
Hull,
although computing exact revolutions to specific speeds varied from vessel to vessel).

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During the war, Wrigley's best-selling brands—spearmint, Doublemint, and Juicy Fruit—were removed from the civilian market by company president Philip Wrigley to dedicate their entire production to the U.S. armed forces. After the end of the war, the brands were again available and quickly exceeded their prewar popularity.

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Kapok is a light, resilient, very buoyant fiber from a tropical tree cultivated in Asia, the Philippines, South America, and other humid climes. The kapok is the official national tree of Puerto Rico. Although previously used in life jackets and similar flotation devices, the fiber has been largely replaced today by man-made materials.

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The observations aboard
Farraguts
during power runs in September and October 1944 after major overhauls were supported by the findings of a dockside inclining test conducted at Puget Sound Navy Yard on the
Farragut-
class destroyer
Aylwin
(DD-355). This test, which determines a vessel's center of gravity and calculates how far it can heel over and still safely recover, was done a few days before
Monaghan
and
Dewey
left the shipyard. The results—not made widely known until later—found that
Aylwin
's stability “had been substantially reduced during the war years” by the added weight of new equipment, most of which had been installed on the other
Farraguts
as well. The test, most often done on only one ship in a class but used to determine the characteristics of all the other ships in the same class, confirmed that the top-heavy design for prewar destroyers had been made worse by continuous additions and modifications. That said, the
Farraguts
were certified by the Bureau of Ships—based on “theoretical computations”—to be able to recover from rolls of 70 degrees, although those who had taken them to sea thought the “idea seemed preposterous.”

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The squadron's other new destroyer commanders from Annapolis class of 1938 were William K. Rogers,
Aylwin
(DD-355), “a man's man…with a sense of humor that never lets him down and a modesty that is real”; Charles C. Hartigan Jr.,
Farragut
(DD-348), an academy soccer player known for enjoying “life in general and a good time best of all”; and C. Raymond Calhoun,
Dewey
(DD-349), the “good-natured, easygoing son of a naval officer.” The other two commanding officers in the squadron were classmates of
Spence
's James Andrea from the class of 1937: Burton H. Shupper,
Macdonough
(DD-351), an academy wrestler and “Long Island's pride and our joy,” and Stanley M. Zimny,
Dale
(DD-353), a handball champion and “loyal, energetic and unfailing pal.”