The Commodore (14 page)

“Combat, aye.”

Sluff heard the orders going out to resume thirty-three knots speed, and then a course change order to 040, farther right than he had expected. Then the warning to stand by for a torpedo attack. He relaxed in his chair as they sped up and then executed the turn. The Japs had quit firing once they'd dispatched torpedoes, probably because they couldn't find the Americans.

“Combat, Captain: Any idea of what we've accomplished?”

“There are three contacts milling about in one location,” the exec replied. “There's one intermittent contact, but no sign of the other two. The good news is that they're all bunched together.”

“And not moving south?”

“No, sir, probably rescuing survivors. Recommend we slow down early and send the fish in, before they realize what's happening.”

XO was right, Sluff thought. “Concur, set it up. And once our fish arrive, we open fire again, and this time we keep it up until they stop shooting back.”

“Combat, aye.”

Two down, four to go, he thought. Maybe only three if that fuzzy contact was low in the water due to battle damage. It was a strange feeling to sit here in his chair on the bridge and listen to his exec issuing formation orders. But there was no getting around it: The exec and his team down there had a plotting table that showed where everyone was and which way they were moving, friendlies and enemy alike. They had a radar picture, which meant that they could assign search radar contacts to the gun director's radar directly, converting them from contacts into targets.

Another course change went out, this time to 060, as the exec adjusted their direction of attack to ensure their torpedoes would be within range. Then a speed change, followed by a final stand-by for launching torpedoes. The fires on the local horizon were muted now. Hopefully the Japs thought the Americans had gone into the night. When that ship blew up and lit up the sea, they'd have been able to see there were only three American destroyers out there opposing them, not cruisers or something even bigger.

The ship plowed into the sea as she slowed and her own wake caught up with her, the bow pushing a mass of water to either side as the guns came out to the surface-action starboard position, pointing south. He watched the pitometer needle as it wound down to the left to indicate fifteen knots. When it stopped moving, the order went out to let them go. This time it was
King
's after torpedo mount firing, with none of the recoil and hammering blasts of the five-inch. Just muffled thumps as five torpedoes leapt into the black water and drove away into the darkness. Behind
King
the other ships were also launching, and soon a swarm of fifteen torpedoes would be streaking toward that dull glow on the horizon only four miles away.

He waited. He wanted to ask Combat how long it would take, but he didn't want to disturb their concentration. As the fish ran toward the cluster of Jap ships, the gun director and main battery plot were honing their solution, getting ready to take control of the gun mounts and begin rapid continuous fire. As soon as the first shells started landing, the team in CIC would see the splashes showing up as small pips among the bigger ship targets. They could then call main battery plot and apply spots, small adjustments in range and bearing to merge those little contacts with the actual Jap ships.

“Bridge, Combat, mark intercept time.”

Nothing happened.

Five seconds, ten seconds. Fifteen. Had every one of those fish missed?
Nothing
out of fifteen fired?

Then came a single large explosion in the general direction of the Jap formation. A yellow-white ball boiled upward, and then another one, both explosions turning red and then into a profusion of what looked like tracer fire erupting into the night in all directions. A magazine hit, he thought.

Okay. Three to go. He reached for the bitch-box to order commence-firing, opened his mouth to say the words, but the forward gun mounts beat him to it with satisfying blasts. He jumped out of his chair and went out onto the starboard bridge wing to make sure the entire formation was shooting. It was, with fifteen five-inch guns flashing yellow gouts of fire to the southwest. There was enough light from the gun flashes for him to see his other two ships,
his
other two ships, their images blinking like a slow-motion film as their guns fired, the red-hot shells arcing away, rising at first and then descending in a lethal arc, ending in a red flash as they either hit something substantial or tore into the sea and then went off underwater.

The Japs started shooting back, but the volume of fire was nothing like the first time. He thrilled to the knowledge that they were battering their blinded and confused enemy. Then he remembered: Once they can see you, they'll send the big dogs.

“Combat, Captain,” he called, shouting over the noise of the forward guns. “Speed three three.
Now.
”

“Combat, aye,” the exec replied. “We're killing them. Can't tell the shell splashes from the targets anymore.”

The order went out on an immediate execute. Speed thirty knots. Move. Jump out of the way of any incoming fans of Long Lance. We saved some fish—they would have, too.
J. B. King
settled for a moment in the froth of her suddenly accelerating propellers and then lunged ahead.

We did this before, he thought. Vary the speed. Now we need a course change, too. He called Combat and told the exec to order a thirty-degree change of course to the right. The range no longer mattered: the American guns could shoot out to eighteen thousand yards, but he was still wary of giving the Japs a steady fire-control solution.

“Tango, this is Tango Baker. Immediate execute: Corpen zero niner zero, I say again, corpen zero niner zero, stand by—execute!”

The ship heeled to port as she came around, still accelerating from fifteen to thirty knots. Sluff had a blinking memory of a Western movie, with the Indians riding around the wagon train in a big circle, shooting everything up. He heard a ripping sound above the ship as a salvo of Japanese fire passed right overhead. He fought off a sudden urge to turn right into the Japanese formation, to take it down to point-blank range and kill them all.

Reason prevailed. From eight thousand yards out in the darkness and executing a huge circle around the cluster of Jap destroyers, they should be able to pound them into submission with relative impunity.

“Captain, Combat,
Carter
's been hit in her after engine room. Can't sustain thirty knots.”

“Slow down to twenty, then,” Sluff said, “relative” obviously being the correct term of art. More shells passed overhead, a little lower now as the Japs searched for the correct range. He went out to the bridge wing to see if
Carter
was burning and thus more visible, but all he could see were the flashes of gunfire from both ships behind him. He put his binoculars out in the direction that his own guns were pointing, trying to hold them steady as blast after blast of fire and smoke cracked the night air, almost right in his face. There was still a red glow in that direction, but it was now punctuated by the flashes of their own shells going in.

“Combat, Captain, how many of them still afloat?”

“Two for sure, possibly three, but there's so much shell-splash return over there we can't be sure.”

“Cease firing, and
turn
the formation back to the northeast, zero six zero, speed two-zero. I'm declaring victory before they find the range.”

“Combat, aye, ceasing fire, zero six zero, speed two-zero, by turn movement. Going out now.”

A turn movement meant that the ships would turn together instead of following the guide ship in a column, as in a corpen movement. The sooner they turned, the sooner they'd be running away from the Long Lances while presenting the smallest possible target to those dreaded torpedoes.

The sudden silence brought palpable relief. His ears still rang from the five-inch salvos, and the inside of the pilothouse looked like a seedy pool hall with all the smoke. He could hear the clink and clank of brass powder cases rolling all over the forecastle deck. As long as they outran any torpedoes coming their way, they could indeed declare victory. It looked like they'd sunk half the Jap resupply force, if not two-thirds. He looked at his watch by the light of his red-lens flashlight: 0215. The Japs would have to retire now because they needed to be well out of range of the Cactus air forces by daylight. His orders had been to break up the resupply effort. As soon as they turned north back toward Rabaul, it would be mission accomplished.

“Combat, Captain: Get me an update on
Carter
's damage. I plan to run northeast for twenty minutes, then turn down in the direction of Tulagi. What's the range to the Japs now?”

“Range is thirteen thousand and opening. Radar shows two contacts now; the third one is no longer onscreen. Looks like we maybe got four of them.”

“Four out of six ain't bad,” Sluff said. “And if those other two are damaged, Cactus'll be after them by daybreak. Get a report off to the flyboys with their position and probable course and speed. Tell 'em they were carrying Jap soldiers, so there may be some work to do in the morning.”

He shone the light on his watch again. If they ran for twenty minutes at twenty knots, they'd be almost twelve miles away from the Japs and any pursuing torpedoes. It was still darker than a well digger's ass out there, so the Japs
should
not be able to target them, much less pursue. That was one of the big differences between Jap and American destroyers: The Japs carried reloads for their torpedo tubes. The Americans did not.

Combat came back five minutes later with a report on
Carter
's damage. A shell that went off right on the deckplates had wrecked her number two engine room. The entire engine-room crew had been killed by the explosion and subsequent superheated steam leaks. The space had been isolated, but
Carter
was starting to fall behind. Sluff ordered up eighteen knots to keep his formation together.

“You still hold those two ships?”

“Yes, sir, and they appear to be headed back up the Slot. We're still developing a track on them.”

“Good,” Sluff said. “Pass it on to Cactus once you compute it. In the meantime we're gonna keep heading northeast and then swing south. Get the quartermasters to make sure we're not running into dangerous ground ahead.”

“Combat, aye.”

Sluff went back to his captain's chair, took off his steel helmet, and crushed the urge to bum a cigarette from someone. He'd quit smoking years ago, but in times like these … “Bosun's Mate,” he called.

“Bosun's Mate, aye,” came a voice from behind his chair.

“Make some damn coffee, if you please,” Sluff said.

“Damn coffee, aye.”

 

TWELVE

Purvis Bay

By midafternoon the three ships of DesDiv 212 were anchored in the anchorage at Purvis Bay, next to the Tulagi base. All three had rearmed and refueled upon return to the Tulagi complex.
Carter
's after engine room was a total loss, so it was likely she was bound for Pearl or even all the way back to the States. She had been able to maintain eighteen knots on the trip back to the anchorage, but a single-screw destroyer wasn't worth much in a fight. They'd buried their dead at sea on the way back, and now they were simply awaiting orders while mourning their shipmates who'd joined the almost three thousand other American seamen already asleep in the deeps of Ironbottom Sound. The single, small hole low on her starboard side belied the devastation in the engine room.

Sluff had sent off an abbreviated operational report of the night's action to COMSOPAC, but there had been no reaction as yet. He'd issued an order to the division to let their people stand down and get some rest now that all three were back to a full ammo allowance and fuel load. If
Carter
ended up being sent back, Sluff had ordered her to off-load some of her VT-Frag five-inch ammo before leaving the forward area.

Sluff had met with the other two COs at noon. The captain of
Evans
had been delighted with the apparent results of the night's running gunfight. The captain of
Carter
had been subdued and obviously saddened by the loss of an entire engine-room crew. The Japs had achieved only one hit on the division, but it had been a costly one.
Carter
was probably out of the war for some time, and with all the newer destroyers coming on line, she might actually never come back. Sluff had asked the other two skippers to send over their track charts for the engagement so that he could prepare a more detailed report. He was proud of what they'd accomplished and how it had been done, but he kept those sentiments to himself at his meeting with the other two skippers out of respect for
Carter
's losses.

After lunch with the other two captains, he'd met with his own wardroom and praised them for a job well done. They'd achieved a total surprise attack on that Jap formation, and the survivors had gone back to Rabaul instead of on to Guadalcanal with their troops and supplies. Or some of them, anyway.

“Right now, we're the only ships here that can go after these bastards,” he'd told them. “All the original heavy cruisers have either been sunk or are back in Pearl getting major repairs. The battleship fight the other night took the wind out of their sails, but they
will
be back, and I, for one, am anxiously awaiting the arrival of some more cruisers, even light cruisers. And yet: We showed what can be done if the tin cans are allowed to go first with torpedoes. Even
our
torpedoes.”

The officers had laughed at that, but it was a bitter laugh. Everyone knew that their torpedoes were vastly inferior to what the Japs were launching at them.