The Commodore (16 page)

“I think we should hold back two fish,” Bob Frey, the exec, offered. “I'm assuming the admiral wants us to join in once our fish hit something and the cruisers open fire. If it turns into a melee, a couple of torpedoes in reserve might come in handy.”

“Good idea,” Sluff said. “And I think once we're detached and get up on the western flank of their line of advance, we slow down. Way down—like fifteen knots. We'll be able to see them on radar, but they'll be depending on visual. A thirty-two-knot bow wave is visible at night.”

Once they were finished, the exec went below to CIC to duplicate the lines of attack geometry they'd laid out on the bridge's charts. An hour later, as usual, the plan changed.

“Bridge, Sigs, signal from the flag: Immediate execute: Speed fifteen.”

“Sigs, Bridge, understood.”

“Execute,” the chief called, and the OOD rang up standard bell for fifteen knots. A moment later the after stack popped a boiler safety, scaring the hell out of everyone on their topside GQ stations. With four boilers on the line, fifteen knots wasn't much of a steam demand.

Once the column had settled into the new cruising speed, a second signal came out, addressed this time to ComDesDiv 212. The chief wrote this one down and brought it to the bridge. “Destroyers detached, proceed north up western side of Slot. Take up torpedo ambush position ten miles north of cruiser line. Launch at will. Open gunfire once cruisers fire. Intend to skedaddle after fifteen minutes. Destroyers do likewise.”

“What in the world is ‘skedaddle'?” Sluff asked.

Billy Chandler, the gunnery officer, was from Birmingham, Alabama, although his accent had mostly disappeared. “That's a Confederate cavalry term, Cap'n,” he said. “Means to run like hell.”

“Francis Marion Tyree,” the exec said. “Not from Massachusetts, I'll wager.” The gunnery officer laughed.

Sluff smiled in the darkness. He might have to revise his first impression of the new admiral. “I think he's being realistic,” he said. “He's facing two light cruisers and one heavy. We're the only ones who can hurt the heavy cruiser, which means we'll have to try hard to ID her on the radar. If we can do that, she's our primary target. Share this with
Evans.
”

The meeting broke up. He called the chief. “Signal from ComDesDiv Two-Twelve to DesDiv Two-Twelve collective: Execute to follow, corpen three three zero, speed three zero.”

The chief read it back to him, and then had his boys get on the signal light to the
Evans.
Sluff asked Combat if they'd copied. They had.

A minute later, the chief was back: Signal understood on the
Evans.

“Execute,” Sluff ordered. “Officer of the deck, course three three zero, speed three-zero.”

Sluff sat down in his bridge chair to think. Why had the admiral cut short the run north? Was he worried about having air cover in the morning? Or had the Japs made more ground than they'd expected? The original signal said set condition I at 2300. It was now just past 2100, two hours and sixty miles short of the original order to go to GQ. He decided not to take chances.

“Sigs, Captain, tell
Evans
to set condition one.”

“Sigs, aye.”

He called the exec on one of the admin phones. He had to be careful of the bitch-box, because there were twelve stations on that circuit in different parts of the ship. All they had to do was press the button for Bridge and they could eavesdrop on everything said by the bridge.

“Bob, I think we should go to GQ now. I get the feeling that they know something we don't, or they don't know enough. Either way, let's us be ready.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Bob said. Sluff told the OOD to sound general quarters. Five minutes later, after all the manned and ready reports were in, he got on the ship's general announcing system, called universally the 1MC. He told the crew what was going on, what the plan was, what they knew—the composition of the enemy task group—and what they
didn't
know: when they'd show up.

“We have the advantage of radar,” he concluded. “We should see and be able to attack them before they know we're here. But once our cruisers start shooting, the Japs will launch a swarm of torpedoes at them—and at us. We'll commence firing at slow speed so they can't see our wakes. Once
we
start shooting guns, we're gonna dance around, high speed and big course changes, so be ready. Here's the good news: The task group is going to wait for us to fire our torpedoes, wait for them to hit, and then open up with guns for fifteen minutes. After that, the admiral has ordered us to, um, skedaddle. If you don't know what that means, ask a Southerner on your GQ station. That is all.”

 

THIRTEEN

The Slot

Sluff awoke with a start in his captain's chair. He hadn't meant to doze off, but he surely had. The air in the pilothouse was still heavy and wet. The ships were doing only fifteen knots and the tropical heat bore down on everyone, even this late at night. He thought he'd heard a rainsquall come pounding on the steel skin of the ship. That's probably what had put him to sleep. He looked at his watch in the red light of the bitch-box power button. 0115. Where were the Japs? Had they turned around? Had they gone another way? That was possible, especially after the ambush of the destroyer relief column the other night. They could have left the Slot way above where
King
was waiting and slashed south along the outside of the Solomon island chain. Their ships were fast enough to be able to do that and still get down to Guadalcanal, if that was their mission, and escape before dawn and the inevitable Cactus air force reprisals.

He got up and went back to his sea cabin, the tiny steel box behind the bridge where there was a bunk, a sink, and a steel toilet. He tried to wash his face but the fresh water had been shut off for GQ. The fewer water lines charged throughout the ship, the less the flooding in case of damage. The spring-loaded water tap sucked air, almost as if mocking him. He used the commode and then went back out onto the bridge. He could literally smell the bridge team: every man sweating in his bulky kapok life jacket and closed-up shirts and trousers. He momentarily envied the XO, whose GQ station in CIC had air-conditioning because of all the electronics.

He called the exec on the admin phone. “Anything?” he asked.

“Not a sign of them,” Bob said. “Our cruisers are loitering on an east-west track ten miles south of us.”

“They wait much longer, they'll have an interesting morning.”

The exec started to reply, but then a report came in over TBS, from
Evans.
“Contact report,” a voice announced. “Bearing zero one zero, range thirteen miles, composition, many. Solid radar return.”

The destroyers had been told to maintain radio silence on the TBS, except for initial contact reports.
Evans
had a first-generation Sugar Charlie radar, known to be unreliable, especially out at ranges approaching the visible horizon.
Evans
had directed the report at ComDesDiv 212, but the admiral down on the cruiser line would also have heard it.

“XO—we see anything on that bearing?”

“That's a negative, sir. There's a rainsquall line just south of there, but no contacts.”

Sluff thought fast. Thirteen miles was out of
King
's gun range, but if
Evans
's radar was in fact seeing something out there, they had very little time to set up the torpedo attack. He'd pulled
Evans
in to 250 yards astern precisely because he'd expected to be sending her ranges and bearings to the Jap column. That way she could shoot on
King
's solution.

Evans
spoke again: Enemy formation on course one eight five, speed three-six. Damn, Sluff thought, as he tried to piece together the relative positions of his two destroyers and the enemy formation. They needed to come right and close in on the enemy's track right now—assuming
Evans
had a real contact.

“Captain, Combat, let's assign the gunfire-control radar to that bearing and range, see if it detects some metal.”

“Concur, do it,” Sluff snapped. “In the meantime, set up a course and speed to get to torpedo launch position before they run right past us.”

“Combat, aye.”

Sluff turned to his JA sound-powered phone circuit talker, who happened to be the chief yeoman, Chief Meyers, the ship's administrative officer. “Tell all stations, stand by. We think they're here.”

He heard the chief pass the word. What the hell was wrong with our radar, he asked himself. He'd just assumed the
Evans
's radar couldn't see anything as well as
King
's, and yet …

“Captain, Combat, come to course zero eight zero, speed twenty-five, to get within attack range of the enemy's line of advance.”

Sluff waved his hand at the OOD, who started to call the new course and speed orders to the helmsmen. Then Sluff remembered: Stop. You have to order your two-ship formation to do that. Otherwise,
Evans
would be left in the dust as
King
accelerated to the east. The exec caught the error, too.

Sluff heard the TBS radio circuit light up with a signal, from ComDesDiv 212 to DesDiv 212, all two of them, to bolt east at twenty-five knots. Stand by, execute.

“Okay,
now!
” Sluff shouted at the OOD, and sixty seconds later
King
was accelerating to twenty-five knots and coming right to 080 true. The plan for a low-wake approach had evaporated.

“Captain, Combat, we see 'em. We
see
'em! Fire-control radar holds, and now our search radar holds.”

“Aim at the biggest one in the group,” Sluff replied. “And tell the admiral: attacking with torpedoes.”

As the ship pushed forward through the black night, Sluff heard the reports going out from CIC to the waiting cruisers. To his dismay, he heard the cruisers report
no
contacts on their radars. How could the cruisers start shooting if they didn't hold the enemy formation?

He called down to CIC and told the exec to tell the flag that
J. B. King
held enemy contacts on both fire-control and search radars. In other words, look harder! Use your gunnery radars. Obviously the search radar performance had turned to shit.

As his two ships charged through the hot, black night to their launch position, Sluff took a moment to think. Okay: We launch. Then what? Turn around? Turn south to parallel our targets and start shooting? Wouldn't that put us in the frame along with the enemy ships when twenty-four six-inch guns open up? Nope. Not gonna do that.

“Combat, Captain: Once we launch, turn our formation away to the north-northwest. I want to go
behind
the enemy column before we open up
and
stay out of range of the cruisers once they get going.”

“Combat, aye. We're three thousand yards from launch position.”

“Then slow down. Come to fifteen knots. Come right if you have to for relative motion, but let's smother that bow wave.”

The order went out over TBS a few seconds later, and
J. B. King
relaxed in the water as she slowed down. Sluff went out on the port bridge wing and looked aft. The torpedo tube mounts were trained out at about a forty-five-degree angle. He swept ahead with his binoculars and saw precisely nothing. The Jap formation was still pretty far out but coming fast. If CIC had done the numbers correctly,
King
and
Evan
s would launch a spread of sixteen torpedoes into the darkness on an intercept course that should cover the first half of the Jap column. Assuming the American cruisers were awake and alert, a single torpedo hit would bring a salvo of twenty-four six-inch shells down on the Jap ships.

Sluff heard the phone-talkers down on the torpedo deck shouting out: Stand by! And then came the first whoosh of a torpedo going over the side. Then the second one. Sluff went back inside and told the OOD to get ready for a course change back to the northwest to get out of the way of the cruisers' fire. He called Combat and reminded the exec to use a turn movement to get away, not a column. That way both
Evans
and
King
would pivot in place and hustle off to the north-northwest, away from any friendly fire.

“Captain, Combat, torpedoes away. Recommend coming to three three zero, speed two-zero when the signal is executed.”

“Let her go, XO,” Sluff said. “We need to clear tails and get out of here.”

The signal went out over TBS and was executed ten seconds afterward. The OOD gave the orders and
King
turned to port as she increased speed to twenty knots. Somewhere out there in the night sixteen torpedoes, containing 13,200 pounds of HBX explosive, were hurtling toward the computed intersection of the Japanese formation and the destroyers' firing bearing.

“Time to intercept?”

“One hundred seconds.”

Sluff went back outside to make sure he could see
Evans
paralleling
King
's movements and not running by behind them. It was too dark, even as close in as she was. He realized again that he was at a big disadvantage standing out here on the bridge wing. The tactical picture
was
available, but not on the bridge. He figured the exec would have called him had
Evans
not made the turn, but if he'd been down in CIC, he'd have known within thirty seconds that there was a problem. He told Combat to open
Evans
back out to one thousand yards.

“Mark teatime,” the exec called over the bitch-box.

Nothing.

Goddammit, he thought. If we missed the whole formation, the cruisers waiting to the south would lose their range advantage if they waited—