The Hooligans

by P. T. Deutermann

  “Marines see flares, low on the horizon. Pretty dim, so they’re way the hell out there. That radio’s awfully quiet.”

  One of the skippers questioned the long silence. Another reminded him that that’s the way Cogswell had wanted it: I start shooting flares, you boys go in on them. Still, from our perspective back at the base, the silence was a bit unnerving. The Marines called again. They had just seen a large explosion on the horizon. They said it looked like an ammo dump blowing up; big red-yellow blast followed by streamers. Still nothing on the radio. Deacon asked the radio operator to check the frequency. Radio’s okay, he said. I asked Deacon if he was going to call the commodore, but he said he’d been told in no uncertain terms not to do that. My eyes were heavy, so I bedded down in one corner of the bunker and immediately fell asleep.

  I was awakened by activity in the bunker about four hours later. The patrol was coming back in and people sounded excited. I immediately wondered if I was facing a big casualty list, but Deacon assured me the opposite was true as he left the bunker, so I went to find some coffee and something to eat. I was sitting under a palm tree on an ammo crate when the boats rounded the point and headed in. I counted five boats plus the command boat and the lonesome end. Good start, I thought. Seven went out; seven came back. I saw the commodore jump down off the waist of his boat and greet Deacon with a big grin. Then I saw that the lonesome end boat had four empty torpedo tubes. Even better, I thought. Since there was general but seemingly happy confusion down at the landing, I took a hike out to the cave to check on my patients.

  I had three in residence, and they were not battle casualties. All three had high fevers and were truly sick. I feared malaria, which was endemic in the Solomons, but I had no facilities to test for it. A Catalina arrived mid-afternoon with mail and some spare parts. I quickly got them to hold until I could get these three guys down to the harbor. This provoked a bit of a spat because they had a full manifest waiting for them over on Cactus. Finders keepers, I retorted. By the time I got this all sorted out and the plane on its way, it was just after dark. I went to the command bunker to report the disposition of my patients. There I found Deacon and the commodore deep in conversation as they reviewed the events of the night before. They had charts out on the table and several of those green-fabric-covered notebooks favored by the Navy on the table. They took a break when I showed up.

  “Doc,” Cogswell said. “I think we need some professional medical care. In fact, I know we do. Can you help?”

  I understood immediately. I went topside, found a passing sailor, and told him to go tell Chief Higgins that the CO needed professional medical care. The alarmed crewman took off in a hurry, and soon Higgins arrived with a canvas bag marked prominently with red crosses. Cogswell positively beamed when Higgins then produced two large cans of grapefruit juice and the requisite medicinal additives. Both he and I joined in, of course, and then Cogswell told us what they’d accomplished last night.

  “They walked right into it,” he began. “We were all just sitting there, waiting for them along their track. No wakes, engines idling, no radio transmissions except mine. Dark as a well-digger’s ass out there. I started firing star shells when they were into 1,500 yards, and when the first one burst, all the boats charged in and tore their asses up. Our guys went by them at twenty-five knots to allow time for more heat, and I don’t think a single barge returned fire.”

  “There were two destroyers?” I asked.

  “Yup, there were. Our guys swept through the convoy, tearing up every damn boat they could see, and then took off like striped-assed apes in diverging directions. I did the same, but at slow speed. I headed west, while our shooters all ran east. And then the best part: the lonesome end boat. There were several barges on fire and both destroyers moved into the convoy to find our boats. Fires meant lots of light. Lonesome end, Goody Walsh in the 418 boat, was just sitting there, some 2,500 yards away, bow on to the convoy. One of the Jap destroyers became visible crossing slowly from left to right across his bow. Goody kicked it in the ass and then let go with all four torpedoes. Four went swimming, three hit, two exploded and caused the ship’s magazines to go up. The other tin can turned away to avoid torpedoes while the first one just sat there in two pieces and burned to death. Goody took off, as per instructions. It worked, Doc. It goddamned worked.”

  “Congratulations, Commodore,” I said. I almost felt sorry for Boss Cushing at that moment for having missed it. For us to bag a Jap destroyer was especially satisfying. They and those scary seaplanes had been our nemesis from day one. Chewing up the resupply barges was satisfying, but sinking a Jap tin can was wonderful.

  “Just one thing,” Cogswell said. “All of our shooters got a close-up look-see at the barges. They all reported the same thing: there were no troops in those barges. Barrels of whatever they put in them, but apparently, in the past, there’s also been eighty to ninety troops. I need to report that fact; tonight, as a matter of fact.”

  Chief Higgins asked why the rush. “Because,” Cogswell replied. “It might be that the Japs are starting to take troops off Guadalcanal.”

  THIRTEEN

  The next morning, the commodore was summoned down to Cactus by Major General Patch, US Army, now in charge of the Guadalcanal fight. The First Marines had finally been relieved in November, and an entire Army division was now carrying the water. A Catalina arrived just after daylight, bringing medical supplies for me and a ride for the commodore. The weather closed in that afternoon, so Cogswell didn’t get back until the next day. Deacon had a surprise for him: an attaboy message from Halsey himself, who, in his best laconic tradition, said simply: “Good job. Do it again. Often.” Cogswell himself also had news, following an operations conference at Henderson Field. His report of no troops in the barges confirmed the higher-ups’ suspicions—the Japs were evacuating, and doing so by sea at night from their ever-constricting enclave up along Cape Esperance. Interdicting the barge convoys became the mission now.

  “Night before last we hit ’em and then skedaddled,” he said. “Now they want us to hit ’em, run, but then hang around out there in case there’s a northbound train coming our way later, and then hit ’em again. We have to figure out how to do that while staying alive.”

  “Where did you hit them the other night?” I asked, looking over at the wall chart displaying Guadalcanal and the nearby islands.

  “Southwest of here,” Cogswell said. “They were probably within twenty miles of Cape Esperance.”

  “That was around one in the morning, right? I’m asking because the math doesn’t work.”

  “How so, Doc?”

  “Those barges supposedly can only go eight knots, so from the place where you hit them, they still had two and a half hours to go just to get there. Assuming it didn’t take thirty minutes to recover from your attack, they’d get there at oh-three-thirty. Then they had to off-load supplies and onload troops. Say thirty minutes. It’s now oh-four-hundred. From Cape Esperance to the nearest islands, the Russells, it’s about thirty miles. To New Georgia, which they control and where they could hide for the day, it’s another thirty.”

  “I get it,” Cogswell said, walking over to the chart. “They’d still be out on the sea at dawn, sitting ducks.”

  “Which tells me,” I said, “they’re arriving at Cape Esperance, off-loading supplies, and then dispersing the barges and hiding them for the day. That night they load up, only now they have eight, nine hours to get to New Georgia before dawn.”

  “So, there’d be no point in our staying out there,” Deacon said. “They’re not going to make the return trip that same night. Because they can’t.”

  “And yet,” Cogswell said, “there they were, creeping toward Ironbottom Sound at one in the morning. We’re missing something here.”

  Deacon spoke up. “What if we sent out the whole squadron?” he asked. “Half to the route they usually use, coming down from New Georgia while hugging Santa Isabel to avoid our destroyers out in th
e Slot. The other half on the west side of the Slot, along the most direct route to the Russells and/or New Georgia from Cape Esperance. Get our tin cans to patrol the open waters of the Slot around Savo Island. That way we cover the coastal waters, the tin cans cover the deep water.”

  Cogswell considered this, and then he and Deacon went to the chart to see how that would lay out. I took my leave. I was flattered when they included me in these evening brainstorming sessions, but I knew when it was time to leave it to the pros. Cogswell stopped me.

  “Stick around if you can, Doc,” he said. “Deacon and I are both pretty tired and we’re gonna make mistakes. A devil’s advocate would be very helpful. A sober one even more so.”

  I looked ruefully at my empty screamer cup, and said, “Yes, sir, of course.”

  By next morning we were making preparations for the entire squadron, minus one boat with two of her three engines out of commission, to sortie that evening. Deacon was holding briefings for the boat officers, while the crews topped off fuel tanks, tweaked radars, onloaded extra ammo, and razzed the other crews as to who would sink the most Japs tonight. Cogswell had sent out his plan to his bosses, asking for destroyer support. Now we waited to see what the Navy could come up with. If the Japs were actually evacuating their army from Guadalcanal, this might be the last chance to reduce the size of that army, especially since we all kind of figured that once Cactus was secure, our ground forces there would be going north in pursuit. Cogswell was hoping this might get headquarters to move on his request.

  The answer came by radio message one hour before sundown. The destroyers, along with two light cruisers, would be operating 100 miles north tonight and had already departed. They wished us happy hunting.

  Cogswell was disappointed, but not too surprised. “I can just hear their commodore,” he said. “Do we have an operations plan? A communications plan? Have we rehearsed it? Do we know where the Peter Tares will be setting up station?”

  Just like that skipper had explained to us. I was about to point out to Cogswell that he was proposing an operation that looked an awful lot like what Boss Cushing had been doing. The four boats who’d gone out with him knew the drill, but the add-ons joining the party tonight? On the other hand, the MTBs were the best hope of intercepting a Jap evacuation convoy because they would be seeking the cover of shallow waters, bays, coves, inlets, and river mouths. That was our playground, not suitable for destroyers. Then he surprised me: “Wanna come along?” he asked.

  Absolutely, I told him immediately. I’d only been out once before and I’d caught hell for doing it because I was their only doctor. The risk really wasn’t worth it. And yet: I was sick and tired of hearing all about their exploits secondhand at evening prayers. I told myself that going out, with the entire squadron this time, would be justified if we got ourselves into a fur-ball. It was BS, of course, but I’d been really impressed watching the commodore tighten up the squadron and then produce our first real clean-sweep victory. A young sailor brought me a steel helmet and a kapok life jacket, and then escorted me to the command boat.

  By two in the morning I was barely able to stay awake. The squadron had made a high-speed run across the Slot just before sundown, dropping off pairs of boats at strategic points to get maximum radar coverage. I learned that not all boats had radar, and not all radars worked all the time, either. The plan had changed again. Without destroyer support, all we could do now was try to cover as much of the Slot as we could and hope to intercept somebody. Once we took up a station, about two-thirds of the way across the Slot, we shut down two of three engines and basically just drifted. We didn’t want to make wakes in case there were Kawanishi around, but we had to keep one engine on the line in case we got jumped.

  There was time to get a more detailed tour of an MTB and I learned some interesting things about her. Such as: everyone said that PT boats were made of plywood. They weren’t—they were made of premium-grade mahogany and, to a great extent, handmade at that. They were double-hulled and designed by racing yacht naval architects. Sleek, sturdy, overengined, only about the last third of the planing hull actually touched the water when at full power. Even stranger, the third, middle engine faced aft instead of forward like the other two. This necessitated a complicated gearing arrangement to get its power back to the stern.

  Once again it was hot, muggy, and really dark out there, with no lights showing anywhere, at sea or ashore. We could see the occasional yellow pinprick of a flare light up in the sky way to our south as the Army skirmished with Jap patrols on Cactus, but otherwise it was so dark we had to cover the instrument panel because it looked so bright. Cogswell stayed down below with his radar plotter. The rest of the crew wedged themselves into various corners or gun mounts and slept. The sea was flat calm for a change, although we could feel a deep swell rolling in from the Solomon Sea to the west of us. The black bulk of Savo Island was invisible to the south, but the memory of the literally thousands of men, ours and theirs, asleep in the cold deep beneath us was never very far from any sailor’s thoughts out on those waters. They called it Ironbottom Sound for a reason.

  The radio speaker up on the bridge made some sputtering noises, and then: “Calico, this is three-oh-two. Radar contact, three-five-zero, range twenty-three thousand yards, composition six, closing.”

  I heard Cogswell down in his plotting room acknowledge and then rebroadcast the contact report to all the boats, using the collective call sign for the entire squadron, which tonight was Goblins. They all should have heard the initial report, but he was making sure that everyone got it by repeating it. Our command boat crew heard it and suddenly no one was sleeping. In a minute I heard the other two engines light off, and suddenly I was no longer sleepy. A cloud of engine exhaust coiled its way up over the superstructure. The helmsman put one engine in gear and turned the boat slowly to move us out of the engine exhaust. Then I heard Cogswell’s voice from down below.

  “Goblins, this is Calico: Contacts are on course one-seven-zero, speed thirty knots. Intercept time in twelve minutes. All units, converge at low-wake speed on enemy track line.”

  One of the boats called in. “Calico, these are not barges,” he said. “Radar blips too big. These are warships.”

  I went below, hot as it was down there, especially with a kapok life jacket on. Cogswell and his plotter were hunched over the plotting table, which was illuminated by a dim red light. It wasn’t a real plotting table, but rather what had been the fold-down plywood sheet that served as the crew’s dining table. Cogswell was talking to himself.

  “Not barges, then what?” he asked himself. “Have they sent a destroyer squadron this time to get their people out? Or is this a clutch of cruisers?”

  “Range is eighteen thousand; constant bearing,” the plotter reported.

  Then the westernmost boat, 415, came up on the net. “Radar contacts, in and out, composition six or more, bearing two-four-zero, range fifteen thousand yards, headed northwest.”

  Cogswell acknowledged. I was looking over his shoulder in the cramped quarters of the crew’s mess, trying not to get in his way. Cogswell was plotting the new contacts himself while the radar operator stayed on the ships coming down from the north. These new contacts were going out to sea, while the ones north of us were headed right at us. Cogswell picked up the radio and told the 415 boat to head west and visually identify the contacts he had on radar.

  “Range is fifteen thousand, steady bearing,” the operator said. His voice was just a wee bit higher as these unknown ships closed in on us.

  “Can you see the other boats?” Cogswell asked.

  “Affirmative,” the operator said. “They’re closing, but not very fast.”

  Cogswell had told them not to make wakes until we knew what was coming at us. We waited for those tiny green blobs on the radar display to get close enough for us to pop some flares. If this was a Jap destroyer squadron approaching, that would be the last thing we ever did.

  “Range is thirteen tho
usand; steady bearing.”

  I suddenly had an idea, but before I could say anything the 415 boat, the one southwest of us, came up on the net. We could clearly hear explosions and gunfire in the background. “Japs, Japs, Japs!” the skipper shouted into the microphone, and then, after a blast of static, he went silent. Cogswell called him but got no reply.

  “Multiple contacts, headed northwest,” Cogswell muttered. “That’s the evacuation force. They didn’t come down the Slot. They came down west of the Russell Islands, and now they’re headed back the same goddamned way.”

  “Commodore,” I said, finally. “Could this northern group be our guys coming back?”

  “Range is twelve thousand, two hundred.”

  That was six miles, well within even a destroyer’s gun range. If these were our ships, we were already sitting in someone’s gunfire-control computer solution.

  “Range is ten thousand, two,” the operator said. “Still constant bearing.”

  Cogswell grabbed the radio. “All units, break off, I say again, break off. Turn around and head away from the approaching contacts. Maximum speed.”

  He put down the radio and yelled up the hatch to the deck gang. “Fire six flares, right now, rapid succession. Bearing north, max range.”

  “Are we gonna run?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “If these are our guys, I want their radars to see all those boats headed for them turn around. If this is a Jap cruiser formation, there’s no point in our running. We’re right in front of them.”