Down to the Sea (20 page)

Off duty in the after fire room, Wohlleb was free to come on deck and watch the underway fueling from the Third Fleet's flagship, and right now there was no better show anywhere.
New Jersey
, displacing 60,000 tons and as long as three football fields placed end to end, loomed implausibly massive as
Spence
came close alongside to starboard, the leeward side of the battleship. The battlewagon sat so much higher in the water that Wohlleb had to crane his neck to look up to the main deck, and strain further to see the battleship's bridge, where for a moment he could have sworn he saw Bull Halsey himself looking down at the fueling operation.

It took some time to get lines across and pull two six-inch fueling hoses—forward and after—into place and connect them. Fueling commenced, only to be interrupted more than once when the hoses parted and had to be reconnected. Green water swamped sections of
Spence
's main deck forward as the helmsman struggled to keep the bobbing and corkscrewing destroyer on course.
Spence
was so low on fuel she was riding unusually high in the water, making the ship more difficult to handle in the heavy seas and high winds.

Shortly after noon, a huge swell rolled in that caused both hoses to rupture as
Spence
surfed up the crest so high that they “almost landed on top” of the battleship, the bottom of her hull “almost even” with the
battleship's main deck. With no ocean buffer remaining between the ships, there was a horrible sound of steel on steel as “paint on both vessels was scraped off.” Wohlleb was suddenly looking directly across to
New Jersey
's bridge—and into the whites of the eyes of her shocked officers. He saw and heard it all in slow motion: the battleship captain on the wing of his bridge raising a bullhorn, then his angry, amplified words echoing: “Get that goddamn ship outta here!”

Spence,
her foredeck and bow stained black with spilled oil from the forward and aft hoses being wrenched from the fueling trunks, pulled away after receiving only “6,000 gallons of fuel oil” in her tanks.
Hunt,
connected on the other side and fighting the wind about twenty compass points off her port bow, fared better, receiving “22,265 gallons of fuel oil” before casting off.

Wohlleb, knowing the show was over, went below for chow. He did not think to blame the new skipper for his ship handling, even though they had been in the lee of
New Jersey,
which should have provided some protection for fueling. It was apparent to Wohlleb that “Mother Nature had control” of the sea that morning. Tired and hungry, the sailor was not concerned about the depleted state of
Spence
's fuel supply nor alarmed about the worsening storm.

At twenty, Charlie Wohlleb was “too young to think of tragedies.”

 

H
ALSEY HAD BEEN LUNCHING
in the wardroom with his staff as
Spence
attempted to fuel from his flagship, sitting at his usual place at the head of the table. Facing a starboard watertight door that was toggled open for fresh air, he could gaze out “upon the open waters.” Whenever he did, Halsey could see the tips of
Spence
's antennae wiping in the wind.

When
Spence
had rocked wildly atop the powerful swell, Halsey had suddenly seen the “upper works and masts” of the destroyer, which momentarily turned “so fast and so menacingly” bow-on to
New Jersey
when the two vessels scraped hulls that he reflexively ducked to get out of the way, much as a boxer would slip a punch.

Halsey commented on the “violence of the action,” suggesting the
destroyer must be at fault. It was an opinion easy to form while riding and dining comfortably on a ship bigger than a New York City block. He was promptly informed by his staff that this was not an “isolated instance” and was told that other destroyers were having a difficult time fueling in the heavy seas. In a space of thirty minutes, several radioed reports had come in:

Surprised to hear of the widespread difficulties, Halsey spoke briefly with his chief of staff, seated next to him. Declaring they might have to “knock off fueling,” Halsey cut short the meal and announced that a “weather evaluation conference” would be held at 1:00
P.M.

Without waiting for other staff members to stand, aerologist George Kosco left the table and hurried to the weather office on the navigation bridge several levels above. It did not escape his notice that he had to fight a stiff wind as he made his way up the outside ladders. Upon entering the office, Kosco found to “his great relief” that the morning Fleet Weather Central report had arrived from Pearl Harbor and had already been deciphered by the aerology department, and that the “data had been modified to include local weather conditions.” This meant that Kosco had an updated weather map to show the admiral. Quickly reviewing the map, Kosco “right away formed the opinion” that a tropical storm was “getting a little closer” than he had expected, although he still “didn't think it was a typhoon.” Before he left for the meeting, Kosco tapped a few times on the barometer in the weather office and noted that the pressure—now 29.73 inches—was “falling steadily.”

When Halsey entered the wardroom promptly at 1:00
P.M.
, Kosco unrolled the weather map and placed it on the table that had been cleared of dishes and was now covered with a green felt cloth. The weatherman pointed to “a weak cold front stretching northwest to southeast” of their position. Kosco said he believed they were inside this “frontal zone,” which would account for the strong winds, heavy seas, and moderate rain squalls.

Then the aerologist showed Halsey the “storm center to the southeast” that was advancing northwest at “12 to 15 knots.” Kosco estimated it was “about 400 miles away.” From “all indications and reports,” he went on, it was “only a tropical storm”—the same one he had been watching for more than a day. As he had previously predicted, he still expected this storm to meet up and merge with the cold front, dissipate with the loss of warm air needed to fuel tropical storms, and “move off to the northeast” as it weakened.

When asked by Halsey where they might find better conditions for fueling, Kosco recommended a course “at right angles to the cold front” and moving a “safe distance behind it.” The area he thought best for fueling in the morning was 140 miles to the northwest, which would take the fleet away from where he believed the center of the tropical storm to be located.
*

Halsey liked the idea of heading to the northwest because it would shorten the return trip to Luzon. Since they were losing another day fueling, he figured they would be “cutting things pretty close.” As he was determined to launch strikes on time against Luzon—“storm or no storm”—Halsey ordered fueling discontinued and for Task Force 38 to form up in a semicircle that stretched for miles and proceed on a new fleet course at 17 knots toward the rendezvous point at 17 degrees north
and 128 degrees east, where fueling would commence at 6:00
A.M.
Several destroyers so low on fuel that they could “not be expected to operate more than two days at moderate speeds without running empty” were directed to proceed to the fueling rendezvous at a slower speed in company with the tankers, and en route to avail themselves of any opportunity to fuel should conditions allow. For some destroyers, it figured to be a close call.
Maddox,
for example, reported 14.6 percent fuel capacity, with
Hickox
at 18 percent, and
Buchanan
reported that she could make the rendezvous only by “mixing diesel and black fuel oil.”

Soon left in Halsey's wake and proceeding several knots slower was Acuff 's logistics group. They fell farther behind as the tankers tried for the remainder of the afternoon to service the destroyers that were so desperately low of fuel. At times, they turned off course to go downwind while attempting to fuel the destroyers over the stern, a “valiant but futile” makeshift effort for which the oilers were not rigged and which resulted in many snapped hoses.

Left behind with the replenishment group,
Spence
tried to fuel twice more that day but was thwarted each time. The destroyer butted hulls with one tanker—unbelievably,
Spence
's second collision of the day, which ended further alongside fueling efforts. They next tried to fuel from astern of a tanker, which was observed by Supply Officer Al Krauchunas, the ship's paymaster and the former professional ballplayer. The attempt had to be abandoned due to a “lack of visibility” that prevented seeing the “inflated canvas ball to which a line was attached”—the line by which the oil hose at the tanker's stern was to be pulled over the destroyer's bow.

As
Spence
expended more fuel and the level dropped in her tanks—now around 15 percent capacity—the destroyer rode “high on the water like a Spanish galleon,” which resulted in a loss of stability as well as providing the wind with more “sail” surface above water. The procedure for increasing stability in low-fuel situations was to take on ballast, filling empty oil tanks with seawater to provide weight and increase the ship's draft in the water—a “relatively simple” task, but one that took time and had to be monitored to ensure that no ballast water got into
the tanks that were feeding the boilers because the water would put out their fires. Krauchunas learned that the new skipper had decided against ballasting after “word was received” that fleet fueling was to commence at sunrise. Deballasting, or pumping out the seawater, took time, too—up to “six hours” for a fully ballasted destroyer—and had to be completed before tanks could be filled with fuel, as
Spence
had done during the night en route to the morning fueling rendezvous. After the long day of fueling failures, Andrea did not want
Spence,
which was expected to rejoin Halsey's Luzon-bound task force after fueling, to be the cause of further delays in the morning should the storm subside enough to allow fueling, only to find their tanks filled with briny seawater. Andrea's choice was a gamble: if the storm worsened and fueling was cancelled,
Spence,
in a light state, would be ill prepared to ride out heavy seas.

By midafternoon on
New Jersey,
Kosco was reviewing new weather information, and some of it was conflicting. The afternoon weather summary from Pearl Harbor indicated the presence of a “severe cyclonic storm…160 miles” northeast of the fleet, which was believed to be moving to the northwest. A delayed aircraft report from earlier that morning had the tropical storm “less than 200 miles southeast” of the fleet, in the same direction but much closer than Kosco's own estimate of “400 miles to the east.” Still, to Kosco's knowledge “no typhoon warnings had been broadcast” by any ship or land-based station, and he continued to believe they were dealing with “one of those violent tropical disturbances that spring up.” While he knew such storms could be “troublesome enough,” he didn't consider them “capable of the devastation” that could be dealt out by typhoons. Some data he reviewed disagreed with the location set for fueling as potentially being in the path of the storm should it recurve to the northward. Some of the Third Fleet's other weathermen—every aircraft carrier had its own aerologist and fully staffed weather office—discussed the situation over the TBS radio. Listening in, Kosco came to the conclusion that it “might be a good idea to go south.” With the wind “at the time from the north,” he thought the fleet might have an opportunity “to make a run for it,” and recommended so to Halsey. After discussing the “pros and cons” of a
run to the south with his staff, Halsey cancelled the previous rendezvous and designated a new location to the southwest at 14 degrees north, 127 degrees 30 minutes east.

That evening, Kosco studied “every report available” about clouds, seas, wind, and pressure readings in preparation for the usual 10:00
P.M.
“round-table rehash” Halsey held with his staff. Some of the data even originated from intercepted Japanese reports, but most came from U.S.-held bases and ships at sea. Kosco scoured everything, searching “vainly for the evasive center of the storm,” knowing that only by locating it could he “predict its behavior.” With a usual mix of scattered and conflicting reports, Kosco fell back on his extensive book learning and “historical data” to try to predict the storm's behavior. Unfortunately, there wasn't much of a written record for the region, as U.S. naval forces had not been operating in the far western Pacific for long.

Messages from the logistics group indicated it was not possible for Acuff 's tankers and other slower ships to reach the rendezvous point by 6:00
A.M.
At the staff meeting, a place roughly midway between the two earlier positions was selected—west of the fleet's position. Task Force 38, however, was closer to it than the logistics group and would reach the rendezvous well before sunrise. Both to “kill time” and “seek better weather,” Halsey directed a southerly heading beginning at midnight, then “reversing course” to the northwest in two hours for the new fueling rendezvous with the logistics group at 15 degrees 30 minutes north and 127 degrees 40 minutes east.

Following a “bit of shut-eye,” Kosco awakened after midnight, feeling that “something was wrong.” He went to the weather office and checked the reports. Although he continued to see nothing to cause him to think they were dealing with more than an intense tropical storm, he decided that it would be “safest” to continue on a “southerly course to clear the storm.” After briefing Carney, Kosco was taken by the chief of staff to the admiral's quarters.