He would sail into one last battle, and he would die with honor.
CHAPTER XXVII
Two weeks later…
The morning sun broke through the sporadic patches of cumulus to bathe Hibuson Island and the waters surrounding it in a shimmering haze. The roar of engines at full throttle broke the stillness of the dawn. Soon after, the planing bow of a PT boat came into view, heading toward the waterway between Hibuson and the coast. It came from the west, from Surigao Strait. Atop the craft’s short radio mast, the Stars and Stripes whipped wildly in the wind. As it neared the passage, the PT boat banked sharply to the right and headed south, toward the burnt-out wreck resting on the shoals.
The men manning the boat’s machine guns, spun around slowly, scanning the sky and the shore, but there was a procedural nature to their vigilance that indicated they did not expect to encounter the enemy. For the strait had been the scene of a tremendous battle in the night. The enemy fleet had been soundly defeated and driven from these waters. The waters were still littered with debris from the battle, and the PT boat was forced to swerve several times to avoid the larger objects. White-uniformed bodies of dead Japanese sailors also dotted the sea, some mangled, some half-eaten by the swirling sharks.
But the blackened wreck that now lay before the PT boat’s bows had not been a part of last night’s action. She had been destroyed two weeks ago, while this patch of ocean was still in enemy hands.
As the boat drew closer, the young navy lieutenant commanding her eased back on the throttles, wary of the enemy minefield that had not yet been fully cleared. Even now, two Australian minesweepers crept through the waters a few miles to the east, finding and removing the deadly objects. The lieutenant was fairly certain that the mines were too deep to be a danger to his shallow-draft vessel, and that his boat’s wooden hull would not trip any magnetic detonators, but he had placed lookouts on the bow, all the same.
As the boat entered the turquoise waters shaded by the tilted hull of the wreck, the lieutenant drew back on the 1,500 horsepower Packard engines until they puttered like three restrained racehorses. He allowed the boat to coast the rest of the way.
“This close enough for you, Admiral?” the lieutenant asked the gray-haired man standing next to him who wore a khaki uniform and green ball cap.
“Take me closer, lieutenant,” the admiral replied. “Over to that ladder. I wish to go aboard her.”
The lieutenant was surprised to hear that. The freighter was completely ruined. The fire had completely consumed the superstructure, and the hull was riddled with holes of every size. He could not imagine why a flag officer would wish to go sightseeing on that piece of scrap metal, but he had been instructed by his superiors to do everything the admiral requested of him. “As you wish, sir.” The lieutenant then called to one of the men on the bow. “Simmons! You and Eddie grab a couple Tommie guns and go with the admiral.”
“No,” the admiral said quickly. “Thank you, but I must go alone.”
The lieutenant shrugged. “Suit yourself, Admiral. Just holler if you need us. Simmons, give the admiral your Thompson.”
But Rear Admiral Giles politely refused that, too. Armed only with a Colt .45 pistol, which he kept holstered on his belt, Admiral Giles pulled himself up the rusty ladder rungs the moment the PT boat touched the freighter’s side and climbed as carefully as he could, making sure the olive-green satchel slung over his shoulder did not strike against the steel hull, as he scaled the bulwark and gained the main deck.
Giles was certain the big Kenan Maru was abandoned, and that he would find no one aboard her. The devastation was thorough. The submarine – what was its name, now? Ah, yes, the Wolffish. The Wolffish had done its job well. Even now, two weeks later, the smell of smoke hung thickly in the air.
As often as he was accused of being cold and unfeeling, he was glad that the Wolffish had made it back to port safely, albeit only by the skin of its teeth. Giles had seen the report. The captain and many of the crew wounded. Eleven men killed. The submarine destined for weeks in dry-dock. The cost had been high, but the mission had been accomplished, and if the disgruntled staff at ComSubPac only knew how crucial a role their boat had played, they would have gladly parted with a hundred boats and crews. All the same, the usual complaints had been lodged to Giles’ superiors in Washington, and, as usual, the complaints had been summarily ignored.
But Giles was not an unappreciative cuss. He had sent letters to ComSubPac and CINCPOA, recommending bronze stars and navy crosses for many of the sub’s crew, both alive and dead. He smiled at the thought that the recipients of the prestigious awards would never truly know what they had received them for. They would never know the critical part they had played in saving the world from destruction.
Giles made along the freighter’s tilted deck and reached a ladder well that was relatively intact. He climbed down into the soot-filled air and flicked on his flashlight, carefully ensuring that each deck plate was sturdy enough to support his weight. He knew exactly where he was going, for he had studied the drawings of this ship for the past several days. He reached the first hold, a vast cavity of ash and melted steel. Everything in the cargo space had clearly been destroyed, and great gaps in the hull let in both natural light and the lapping surf. He could hear the idling engines of the PT boat outside, and even the casual conversations of her crew as they waited for him.
Though the hold appeared to contain only scrap, Giles had to be sure. He removed the metallic, box-like device from the satchel and followed the procedure for turning it on exactly as he had read in the instructions that had accompanied the device. A small wand was attached to the device by a cord, and Giles held this at arm’s length as he walked around, checking every dark corner of the large room. He found nothing.
He did the same routine in the next two holds aft, and was met with the same results. But as he was leaving the third hold, a deck plate gave way beneath his foot and he nearly fell to his death, had he not caught himself on the ash-coated railing.
Retreating back to the main deck, Giles took a few moments to collect his bearings and to allow his lungs to fill with fresh air. He had to remind himself that he had not gotten much sleep the night before. How could he have, with the air of anxiety hanging over the fleet, and every gun in the fleet blasting away for most of the night? Giles had spent the night in the operations center aboard Admiral Jesse Oldendorf’s flagship, the battleship West Virginia, and what he had witnessed had been nothing short of extraordinary.
In a classic naval gun battle, the likes of which Giles had thought a notion of the past, Oldendorf’s task group had engaged a substantial Japanese force in surface combat and had defeated them.
Giles’ own intelligence reports had confirmed that the Japanese fleet, consisting of two battleships, one heavy cruiser, and four destroyers, and under the command of Vice Admiral Shoji Nishimura had attempted to drive north, up Surigao Strait, under cover of darkness. The target of this ill-fated sortie was, presumably, the mass of transports and supply craft just over the horizon to the north, which had been landing the troops, tanks, and equipment of two American army corps on Leyte for the last five days. The day of General MacArthur’s long-awaited return had come, and he had brought with him the American Sixth Army and two hundred thousand men.
Nishimura’s fleet had intended to wreak havoc among the poorly armed amphibious ships, but they had instead driven boldly and bravely into a trap – and that trap had quickly turned into a massacre.
The Japanese warships were picked up on radar the moment they entered the strait, and had been tracked like targets in a shooting gallery. When the order came to spring the trap, wave after wave of torpedoes were loosed from dozens of PT boats and destroyers lining either side of the strait. The Japanese column absorbed many of the underwater missiles, but pressed on, only to be met by a Oldendorf’s heavy ships drawn across the strait’s exit. The massive guns of six American battleships, four heavy cruisers, and four light c
ruisers launched great fireballs into the night sky, full broadsides to meet the lead ships in the Japanese formation. Hundreds of sixteen-inch shells, each weighing more than a ton, fell into the enemy column, plunging through decks and armor plating, smashing everything in their paths to explode deep within the hulls of the Japanese ships. Hundreds more eight-inch and five-inch shells added to the carnage, igniting magazines, and starting fires that consumed men and steel.
When the guns finally fell silent, only burning hulks remained, all of which were quickly singled out and sunk by the American destroyers. The message circuits had been buzzing all morning, some saying Nishimura’s column had been a feint, and the real attack would come from the north side of Leyte. Some said a large enemy carrier force was operating somewhere to the northeast. Sense had not yet been made of the enemy’s movements, but the intercepted Japanese radio transmissions clearly told the results of the Battle of Surigao Strait. The Japanese had lost the battleships Yamashiro and Fuso and their entire two thousand-man crews, including Vice Admiral Nishimura. Two destroyers had also been sunk. One cruiser was listed as heavily damaged, but it would be caught by American dive bombers before it could reach safe waters.
As the light of dawn touched the strait, a spirit of elation had run through the flag quarters aboard the West Virginia. For, despite the uncertainties, the victory was without question one of the greatest in the history of the U. S. Navy. In the battleship’s great wardroom, Giles had eaten his breakfast amidst a commotion of excited officers celebrating and congratulating each other. The excitement had proven so distracting that Giles had been forced to pull the chief of staff aside to remind him that he had been promised a PT boat today.
Now, out here on the broken freighter, where the shoal water lapped with flotsam, bodies, and giant sheens of oil, a hush seemed to have descended on the strait. There were few gulls squawking about, much fewer than Giles would have expected, and the waters seemed smooth as glass. Perhaps the sea wept for the thousands whose lives had come to an abrupt, violent, and terrible end only a few miles away, and only a few hours ago.
Pressing on to the fourth and last hold of the Kenan Maru, Giles entered the great darkened cavity, and saw a large pile of ash and debris in one corner. As he had done in the other holds, he ran the wand past the indiscernible mass and was rewarded with the crackle and pop of the device’s audio speaker. The needle indicator on the faceplate became active as well, deflecting in sharp pulses.
Giles breathed a little easier. He had found what he was looking for, and now he was certain that no Japanese salvage crew had bothered to remove the waste from the broken vessel. The cargo had probably been as much of a secret from them as it had been from Packard, Oldendorf, the pilots of the Antietam, the crew of the Wolffish, the guerillas on Mindanao, and many others who had unknowingly played a part in preventing the most powerful weapon ever devised by man from falling into the hands of the Japanese – or the Soviets, when Japan eventually fell.
Giles would see to it that the Kenan Maru was cut into pieces and every piece shipped back to the States, for the scientists and engineers working on the secret of all secrets to use as they wished.
Emerging back onto the main deck, Giles waved for the PT boat to come take him off. He felt the sun on his face and enjoyed a small sense of satisfaction that he would never be able to share with anyone.
Another mission was over, but there would certainly be more, before this savage war finally came to an end.
THE END
Dive Beneath the Sun Page 23