After some trial and error, we set up a jig that allowed a single round of 20 mm to blast its way right through a fifteen-foot length of bamboo. Since the upper pool was above sea level, we were able to lay a “pipeline’” all the way around to the area where the boats were tying up. That’s when we discovered there were lots more people living near the Tanabuli harbor than we’d known about. I’d always thought that water would have been abundant in the tropical forests of Santa Isabel, but I had to admit, the water coming out of that spring was exceptional. There was plenty of standing water in the jungle, but you wouldn’t want to drink it. We showed the headman what we’d done and invited him and his people to make free use of it.
At midnight Boss received a radio message from one of the boats. Two of our boats had been sunk, two others badly damaged. What was left of the four-boat patrol was limping back to Tanabuli with casualties and survivors. Boss roused me from my tent out at the aid station by field telephone, and I woke Higgins, the two new hospitalmen, and Wooly McAllen, who’d camped in with us. The two boats returned about two hours later and came directly to the point where those women had been filling jugs with spring water. They jammed their noses into the sand so we could get the wounded off, which is when we learned what had happened. The patrol had detected a group of radar contacts headed for Guadalcanal, just off a spit of land we called Tanga Point. We’d named it because it stood out so well on radar, which was great for navigation.
As all cats are gray in the dark, all radar contacts are about the same size unless it happens to be a battleship. The group had closed in at relatively slow speed to suppress their wakes and see what was out there. That’s when star shells suddenly turned night into day and four, count ’em, four Jap destroyers tore into the approaching MTBs with five-inch gunfire. The boats frantically went to full speed to avoid the hail of shells only to run into a convoy of those armed amphibious barges, all of which also opened fire on the badly surprised torpedo boats.
The Japanese fire was so intense that the boats simply scattered, every skipper for himself, but not before two of them were ripped apart by five-inch shellfire that ignited their high-octane avgas tanks, providing even more light for the Jap gunners. Realizing they’d caught the MTBs flat-footed, the Japs turned on searchlights. One of the wounded gunners said he fired back but it was like shooting into the oncoming headlights of a train. He’d hidden behind his gun shield and fired blindly in the direction of the incoming fire. He had no idea if he’d hit anything, friendly or enemy. We ended up with twelve seriously wounded casualties and a total of twelve men who never came back. Of the two boats that had made it back, one was going to become a hangar queen, useful only for parts.
Wooly turned out to be a great help. Even before this crisis, he’d been able to direct me in evaluating cases of sickness, which were slowly approaching the battle casualties in numbers. Mysterious jungle fevers with hair-raising names: malaria, parasitical infections, super-aggressive fungal infections, not to mention spider and occasional snake bites—he’d seen it all and knew what to do about it. I learned a lot, and when he introduced me to some of the natural remedies he’d acquired with the aborigines, my eyes were truly opened.
Our first patrol had turned into a total fiasco. Boss Cushing was beside himself, both with anger about what had happened and his losses. The next day a US Navy destroyer hove to in the deeper waters near Tanabuli. They had an appendicitis case and I was the nearest doctor; theirs had been taken down with malaria. They sent the patient in on their motor whaleboat and the ship’s skipper, a full commander, had come along. He was of average height but seriously thin, with dark circles under his eyes and a nervous twitch in his right hand. I couldn’t tell how old he was. He chain-smoked cigarettes and never stopped looking around for trouble. He was apologetic when he saw that we had our hands full, but I told him it was okay, we’d done what we could for our wounded, so lemme have a look. I operated forty minutes later and then turned him over to my guys for the post-op watch. Boss showed up about then and he and the skipper got to talking. I joined them out on the edge of the pool. When the commander heard what had happened, he had some interesting advice.
“Sounds like you guys are making this up as you go along,” he said. “You operate on a shoestring, go looking for trouble, pit wooden boats against Jap destroyers, and then get your asses kicked. Did you train for this specific mission?”
“No, sir,” Boss admitted. “We just went out on patrol like we always do.”
“Well, that’s a problem,” the commander said. “Especially after you’ve just made a move to a new base and you’ve been inport for a while. Here’s the thing: as we’ve learned to our bloody sorrow, the Japs are masters of the night surface action because they have trained for years to do that. That first Savo fight, right after the invasion, was absolute proof of that. The last big fight, where two admirals managed to literally collide with a Jap cruiser formation—you guys hear about that?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “We took in some of the wounded; it was pretty bad.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Let me make some recommendations: don’t just go out there to see what happens. Pre-brief your mission: where are your guys going and for what purpose? Who’s gonna be in charge? What could go wrong and what do they do then? You want to disrupt Jap convoys? Pick a specific area, concentrate on that area, assign sectors for patrol, and allow no freelancing. Then, and this is the important bit, go out there during daylight and practice it. That’s when you find out whose radios and radars actually work, who can stick to the plan and who can’t. Then and only then, run the mission. Finally: debrief it—lessons learned, were there new Jap tactics, what guns worked best for the mission and which ones didn’t, the whole deal.”
Cushing was taken aback. “That’s how the destroyer force does it?” he asked.
“That’s how the destroyer force does it now. We’ve got a couple of new commodores—Burke, Moosbrugger—who have introduced an analytical approach. We brief until everybody understands what we’re going out to do. We train continuously in the basics because of all the personnel turnover. We practice the maneuvers. After that, it’s up to the gods, but at least we know what we’re trying to achieve, where and when, who’s in charge, who’s in charge after him, and at what point to bail. And who’s got our backs when it all turns to shit—who’s been held back in reserve to come help if needed.”
“Shee-it,” Boss said. “Held in reserve? We’re just not that organized.”
“And that’s your fault, Skipper,” the commander said gently. “That’s your job, isn’t it?”
I thought that was a bit hard-hearted, especially for a skipper who’d just lost a bunch of people, with several more whimpering in pain up in the cave. Boss, however, rose to the occasion. “Thank you, sir,” he said, nodding. “We’ve been winging it for so long it never occurred to me to, well…”
“Remember how we learned that, Skipper?” the commander asked with a wry smile. “And here’s the good news: when the Japs started this war, they came to the battlefield with everything they had. Yes, they kicked our collective asses, with the one exception being Midway. But now America the Beautiful has turned into America the Really Angry Industrial Beast. The arsenal of democracy, they’re calling it. The Japs lose a heavy cruiser and they may or may not be able to replace it. Like at Midway: they lost four big carriers and a hell of a lot of their best pilots. They sent their first team and lost damn near all of it. Our fleet sent our first team to Guadalcanal last year, and they all died. The difference now is that we have three more first teams on the way. The Japs? I think we’re going to overwhelm them. Which is why we can now start to think about how we fight, and how to fight smarter. Even you hooligans: you don’t need any more nights like last night, right?”
“Right as fucking rain,” Boss said. “Sir.”
“There you go, Skipper,” the commander said. “You guys need anything? We’ve got ice cream.”
I�
�d been listening from the sidelines. The destroyer captain’s words sounded familiar; we’d heard that lesson before from that downed pilot we’d retrieved. It wasn’t my place to criticize Boss’s operations, but the mess last night, as the old farmer’s joke went, was Two.
ELEVEN
Losing two boats and most of their crews, plus the other casualties, resulted in an inquiry. I didn’t know this, but every time the Navy lost a ship sunk in battle, there was an inquiry. The loss of an aircraft in battle required a squadron-level report on what they thought had happened. This wasn’t to apportion blame but rather to see if anything tactically useful could be learned from the loss. The loss of a cruiser, or, in the case of Savo Island, four heavy cruisers, precipitated an inquiry at the flag officer level. As Boss explained it to his skippers in his somewhat diminished wardroom, the so-called chain of command worked both ways. Officers were appointed to positions of command with the expectation that they would do their utmost to achieve victory in battle. If they didn’t, the service wanted to know why. He gave an example:
“Well, sir, we had two cruisers and ran into two battleships. We had two options: run like hell, or attack them.”
“Which did you do?”
“We attacked them.”
“What happened?”
“They flattened us. We had eight-inch guns. They had fourteen-inch guns. We lost both cruisers.”
“Maybe you should have chosen option one.”
And there it was, in the cold, clear hindsight always exercised by officers who had not been there. The chain of command was also the chain of accountability. The word “chain” had not been chosen lightly. There was always an inquiry. There was always a reckoning. That’s what came with the titles of admiral or commodore or even captain. Do your very best, but there will always be an inquiry. If you think that’s unfair, then don’t take the command.
“I’m probably gonna get relieved,” Boss said. “And I accept that. I should have been doing what that CO recommended. That’s my fault.”
“That’s bullshit!” one of the boat skippers sputtered. “We were sent out here to attack the Japs. We’ve been doing that since the invasion. Nobody told us how to do it, or where to do it, or when. Last night was no damn different.”
“Yeah, it was,” Boss said with a sad smile. “Somewhere, sometime, the Japs sat down and said: how do we deal with these damned PT boats? They brainstormed the problem, and then someone said: let’s ambush the bastards. Four destroyers escorting a bunch of the barges? You think that just happened by chance? Remember what that pilot told us after the last mess we got into?”
Nobody had an answer for that.
As it turned out, he was right, although the Navy, in the end, provided him with a fig leaf. A captain and a commander came up from Nouméa via seaplane to conduct the inquiry, during which time the boats stayed in. They made quick work of it. The commander called an all-officers meeting on the second day in the so-called command tent, which the Seabees had made up by combining four tents into one. Boss was notably absent.
I thought he looked too young to be a three-striper but there was no mistaking those silver oak leaves on his collar. To me he looked more like a Marine than a typical naval officer: lean, heavily muscled arms and shoulders, and just under six feet tall. He had short black hair, pale blue eyes, and an expression on his face that said he was serious as a heart attack. The audience was noticeably sparse. We’d lost four officers out there last night, and I had three more up in my sick bay, one of whom was iffy.
“I am Commander Preston Cogswell,” he began. “Lieutenant Commander Cushing is being transferred to Panama, where he will take command of a new MTB squadron fresh out of stateside training. He will take them through advanced training at the boat base in Colon and then bring the new squadron out to the Western Pacific.”
“Who’s gonna replace him?” one of the skippers asked bluntly. He’d normally have asked that question in a more respectful tone of voice, but he was exhausted and really upset by our losses.
“I am,” Cogswell said, just as bluntly. He scanned the faces at the table, watching as that news settled in. Oh, boy, I thought to myself; they’ve replaced a lieutenant commander with a three-striper? Things are gonna get really interesting here in dear old Tanabuli.
“I’m coming here from being XO on San Juan, which is an anti-aircraft light cruiser,” he continued. “And before that I was commanding officer in Emerson, DD-722. Most recently San Juan’s spent most of her time escorting carriers, but I’ve also done a couple of stints here in the Slot. I’ve fought Jap cruisers and destroyers up close, and by close, I mean being under eight-inch and six-inch gunfire at fifteen hundred yards. I’m a true believer in the notion that the Japanese navy is not to be trifled with. I also believe that a PT boat has no business mixing it up with their first team unless it’s a truly desperate emergency.”
Nobody was going to argue with that.
“So,” he continued. “The mission is going to change. We’re going to remove the rest of the torpedo tubes from the boats and replace them with their weight in guns. We’re going to leave the Japs’ capital ships to the carrier aviators, and we’re going to specialize in sinking as many of those so-called amphibious barges as we can.”
“That’s what we have been doing, Captain,” one of the skippers said. “I was out there for this latest fiasco. We weren’t there to sink destroyers with torpedoes; we were there to tear up resupply barges. The destroyers were just part of the problem. Four destroyers? That was a surprise.”
There were nods around the room. I watched to see how this commander would react. His expression indicated that he was not exactly pleased by the tone of the skipper’s voice. He stared at Lieutenant James for a few seconds. I thought we were in for a tongue-lashing, but then he surprised us.
“Yes, of course,” he said, finally. “My mistake.”
The tense atmosphere changed. I, for one, was truly surprised: commanders didn’t apologize to a bunch of lieutenants and jay-gees. The commander continued.
“Let me begin again,” he said. “Things are changing. Up to now, these barges have been the main resupply method for supporting the Jap army on Guadalcanal. However, I’ve just been to Admiral Halsey’s headquarters on Nouméa. His intel people think the Japs have decided to withdraw from Cactus.”
That revelation produced a murmur of surprise.
“They think they’ll establish new defensive lines on New Georgia and Bougainville Island, much closer to their main base at Rabaul. That’s the real reason this squadron was moved up here.”
He sat down at the head of the bamboo table and took a minute to light up a cigarette while we all waited to see what was going to happen next. Higgins and I exchanged glances. It was clear he was just as apprehensive as I was about the new skipper, especially one who looked and talked like this guy did. Commander Cogswell indicated that if anyone else needed a smoke to have at it. Several did. Cogswell continued.
“This squadron is going to grow. In addition to replacing the boats you just lost, six more are being added to bring us up to a complement of eighteen. Now, then: the MTB force in general has a reputation for winging it, and by that I mean just going out there in the dark and seeing what you can stir up. Given that there’s no official US Navy doctrine for the employment of MTBs, no one can fault you for that. Trouble is, this loosey-goosey approach just cost you two boats, twenty-four dead or MIA, nine wounded, and two more boats damaged, one of which is a wreck. That’s unacceptable, so be advised that I intend to introduce a little more rigor to our operations.”
He paused to take another huge drag on his cigarette, then stubbed it out on an ashtray made out of a cut-down 40 mm powder casing. “XO,” he said. “Introduce the boat skippers to me, please.”
Deacon, who’d been listening with rapt attention, seemed startled at being called on and did one of his pelican launch maneuvers getting up out of his chair, all elbows and knees as he gathered up hi
s lanky frame.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Well, I’m Deacon Haller, the squadron XO. Class of thirty-six. One battleship tour in West Virginia, second tour in a four-piper, Summerfield, one year at the PG school back in Annapolis. Going on two years in MTBs. I’m also skipper of the 307 boat, which is an Elco brand.”
“Okay,” Cogswell said. He wasn’t making notes but I had the impression that he was mentally recording everything being said. He just had that look about him. He then turned that rangefinder gaze on Hump Newton, who was sitting next to Deacon. Hump swallowed nervously and then gave his brief history in the USNR. At that moment, one of the boat crewmen stuck his head into the tent and signaled for me to come out. Higgins came with me. He told us a Catalina had landed to move our wounded south, so we went down to the landing and commandeered a boat. Using the boat meant we could take them directly to the Catalina, which had anchored in the harbor. We left the officers to the tender mercies of our new boss.
The next week featured what Cogswell called a “safety stand-down,” where all the boats stayed in and the skippers reviewed damage control, first aid, firefighting, gun maintenance, lifesaving equipment and a myriad of other things that tended to be ignored due to the pace of operations, with their individual crews. Cogswell personally inspected each boat in company with the boat’s skipper. These weren’t spit-and-polish inspections. He wanted to operate every feature on each boat and to build a deficiency list of things that needed fixing. For their entire time in the Solomons, when something broke, the boat crews would try to fix it, but if there weren’t any parts and there was a workaround, it would stay broken. The commander seemed to have the novel attitude that all the equipment should actually work. He assembled a team of four enginemen who were deemed by the rest of the enginemen to be the best in the squadron. From now on, when any boat had an engine problem, that team would attack the problem, not just the boat’s lone engineman. Teams were also formed for electronics and guns.
The Hooligans Page 11