Down to the Sea

by Bruce Henderson

  Schultz had now been on Hull nearly seven years—an uncommonly long stretch on one ship and testament to previous commanding officers’ desire to keep him aboard. Schultz had seen all types of skippers come and go and had learned to assess their strengths and weaknesses. In Consolvo, he believed they were being led by not only a “regular guy” who didn’t put on airs like many commanding officers but also the “best ship handler” Schultz had known. At the conn, this skipper could “make the ship do tricks.” Schultz particularly liked the way Consolvo brought Hull into a buoy—always on his first try, which was appreciated by Schultz’s deck force, standing by with lines to secure the ship. Consolvo let out either the port or starboard anchor chain until the anchor was swinging just above the height of the buoy, then aimed that side of the bow for the buoy. At the right moment, he’d drop anchor and hook the buoy like a marlin, reverse engines, “take the rear buoy, and that’s it.”

  When it came to handling characteristics, Hull tended to be top-heavy, as were all the six surviving Farragut-class destroyers (put into service in 1934–35). First and foremost, it had to do with their narrowness of beam: 34 feet 3 inches. In comparison, the newer Fletcher-class ships (commissioned 1942–44) were 39 feet 6 inches abeam and the Sumner-class destroyers (1941–44) had 40-foot beams. Nearly 6 feet less in the beam made a distinct difference in handling, seaworthiness, and ride.

  Soon after coming aboard in 1938, Schultz found that “40-degree rolls” were common, and Hull’s side-to-side swaying even in moderate seas could be “terrific.” He was told by some of the original crew who had put Hull into commission back in 1935 that upon returning from their shakedown cruise—during which Hull visited ports in the British Isles, Portugal, and the Azores—all the chief petty officers except one put in for a transfer, even though in those prewar days such voyages tended to be “rather relaxed affairs” designed to give the new crew time to “get acquainted” and start “developing teamwork.” The chiefs were unanimous that Hull, although at the time one of the Navy’s most modern destroyers, was “too top-heavy” and would “never make it in the China Sea,” known by mariners for high, turbulent seas.

  Farragut-class ships had other basic design flaws, particularly the “fashionable broken-deck design of the hull,” which gave the vessels a low, sleek look in the water, but also less freeboard—the distance from the waterline to the main deck level—than the older four-stack destroyers that sat higher in the water. This meant the low-slung main deck amidships was often swamped in heavy seas, and it was at this critical point where the access hatches to engineering spaces were located. At such times, fire room watches could not be relieved without taking water down opened hatches. Another problem was the absence of a safe, covered way to move between the forward and after sections. With the cavernous spaces for the boilers and engines taking up the middle of the ship, the only way to go from one end to the other was by coming topside and crossing an open deck—a potentially dangerous passage in stormy seas.

  Now a decade old, the Farragut-class ships “were not up to the newer and more glamorous Fletchers and Sumners in their armament, communications or appearance,” although the aging destroyers were still “dependable performers” and their “services were needed” by the Navy in the two-ocean war. Every time a Farragut-class vessel went into the shipyard for a scheduled overhaul the ship was fitted with newer and additional equipment—such as the latest in radar, radio, antiaircraft weapons, and automated fire-control systems—much of it topside on the superstructure and 50-foot mast. While it was anticipated that such additions and modifications would be offset by weight reductions in other areas, such alterations in busy shipyards crowded with battle-damaged vessels were considered a low priority and often did not get done. This extra weight only exacerbated the built-in top-heaviness of the Farragut-class ships. Designated as 1,500-tonners at the time they were built, by 1944 the ships of this class were “well over [their] designed tonnage” and being operated at weights “greatly in excess of those for which the ships were built.” In fact, in May 1944, the Navy’s Bureau of Ships set a new maximum loading limit of 2,255 tons for the Farraguts.

  Earlier in the war—during Hull’s first trip to the South Pacific after the Aleutians campaign—the destroyer was bombarding enemy fortifications on Wake Island, and the Japanese were firing back. Enemy shells came so close that Sonarman Pat Douhan swore they were dropping “between our stacks.” Zigzagging to avoid incoming fire, Hull crossed the wake of a cruiser and rolled over so far—“probably 65 degrees”—the crew was “climbing the bulkheads,” certain the ship was going to cap-size in “perfectly calm” seas. Since then, even more topside equipment and weight had been added.

  En route to Seattle, Schultz found out he had made chief petty officer, which meant he would be trading his blue dungarees for the khakis worn by chiefs and officers. It also meant Hull had one too many leading boatswain’s mates given the size of the ship. One of them had to go.

  “I’m leaving the ship when we get to Seattle,” longtime Chief Boatswain’s Mate E. M. “Doc” Toland told Schultz.

  Schultz saw an opportunity. “You’ve been on here nine years, Doc,” he said. “It’s your home. Why don’t you let me go and you stay?”

  Toland wouldn’t bite. “No, I’ll be glad to get off. You’re taking over. What’s the first order you want to give?”

  Schultz shook his head. “I don’t know. Let me think about that.” He admitted there was one thing Toland had always taken care of that he wasn’t sure he could handle. “Ordering supplies for the ship. Never done that.”

  “You won’t have no trouble with that,” Toland promised. “It’s just like ordering out of the Sears catalog. I’ll go over it with you before I leave.”

  Not long after, Toland did as promised, showing Schultz the book and forms for ordering winches, lines, parts, tools, and other supplies for the deck force specifically and for the crew at large. Schultz now told Toland that he had thought it over and wanted his first order to be getting everyone in the crew kapok-filled canvas life jackets to replace the old inflatable rubber belts that were worn around the waist whenever the crew went to general quarters. The old belts were creased and cracked from being folded and were badly worn out, and Schultz suspected that many had developed leaks.

  “Half the belts leak,” Schultz said. “That means half the guys think they have a life jacket that will keep them up in the water but they don’t.”

  Toland doubted so many of the rubber belts leaked, and said he was concerned the full-chest kapok life jackets were “too bulky” and would “get in the way when passing ammo.”

  Schultz, captain of the number four gun crew, disagreed about the life jackets interfering with ammo passing. “When the Japs are coming at us,” he said, “nothing slows down my guys.” He did grant that men who worked in some jobs—like in the engine and fire rooms—wouldn’t be able to wear the jackets. But he added that “they can keep them close by” and have them when needed.

  Toland proposed a test. They would select a number of rubber belts at random, inflate them, and check for leaks.

  “Let’s do it right now,” Schultz said.

  Nearly half of the twenty-five belts they tested had leaks. Schultz was soon filling out his first requisition—promptly approved by Consolvo—for more than 200 kapok life jackets, along with whistles and small one-cell battery-powered lights to be affixed to each one.*

  Hull arrived in Seattle on August 25, 1944, and moored portside to the destroyer Wilson (DD-408) in berth number one at Todd Pacific Shipyard. A storage barge moved into place alongside Hull’s starboard side, and the ship began receiving electricity, water, steam, and telephone service from the dock. The extensive overhaul, which would cost $10 million, commenced immediately. In the eyes of Schultz, who knew the ship as well as anyone, Hull was “pretty well beat up and run down.” They had even “wore out the guns,” and all four of the 5-inch deck guns were scheduled to be replaced in the ya
rd.

  Over the next three days, more than a hundred officers and enlisted men departed the ship to begin twenty days’ leave. Most would be heading home by bus or train to visit parents, grandparents, wives, girlfriends, and hometown friends. For others, such as Greil Gerstley, promoted to full lieutenant the previous month, his entire family would be coming from Philadelphia for his San Francisco wedding—an event he and his fiancée, Eleanore Hyman, had planned through letters over the past eight months since having to part soon after their not-so-blind first date. Gerstley invited several Hull officers to the wedding, and also asked Signalman 2nd Class Robert Coyne, whom he had come to know during long watches together on the bridge. Coyne, who had been on Hull since before Pearl Harbor and would be transferred off in a month’s time to attend a Navy school, explained that he would rather not attend because he would be “the only enlisted man there with all that brass.” Gerstley, nicknamed “Gabby” by the crew and well-liked by officers and enlisted men alike, said disappointedly, “I understand.”

  As half the crew left, hordes of civilian workers—welders, electricians, pipe fitters, and a host of other trades—crowded aboard with boxes of tools, welding torches, metal saws, and drills. Tangles of rubber hoses and electrical cords soon stretched across the decks and passageways.

  Not far from where Hull was moored, Tom Stealey, the civilian worker who had been at Pearl Harbor awaiting transport to Wake Island at the time of the Japanese attack and ended up swimming out to the burning destroyer Shaw to help extinguish the raging fire, was searching the waterfront for his own ship. Stealey was finally in the Navy, although it had been a long and circuitous route. He had attempted to enlist in Honolulu within days of the attack but was told he would have to find his way back to the States in order to do so. He was still trying to get back in February when he hired on as a gun guard manning a .50-caliber machine gun on a luxury liner (soon to be converted to a troop ship) heading for San Francisco. He had “never fired a machine gun in my life,” but of course he didn’t tell anyone. Once home, he went to his draft board and again tried to enlist in the Navy but was told the quota was filled, “without enough training barracks built for those we’ve got.” When they found out he was a sheet-metal worker, he was advised to get a defense job. He and his fiancée, Ida May Bryant, soon married, and a year later they had a baby boy. Then in June 1944, when Stealey “didn’t want to leave” his young family, his defense-industry deferment was cancelled and he was told to report to his draft board. After the group physical examination, he did not step forward when they asked for volunteers for the Marines, but when a Navy guy asked for volunteers Stealey “stepped right out.” After boot camp in Idaho, he was assigned to a destroyer—by luck or happenstance, the ship type he had requested. He was soon on his way to meet the ship in Seattle.

  By now Fireman 2nd Class Stealey had several times sought directions to find the ship. He had taken the ferry across Puget Sound to Bremerton only to be directed back to the Seattle side. Carrying his loaded seabag balanced on one shoulder, he spotted a destroyer moored at a long pier. Oh, what a beauty, he thought. Looking at the hull number, however, he saw this was not his ship. When he reached the next ship he was pleased to see another “beautiful destroyer”—but also not his ship. Third in line was “an old, beat-up, battle-scarred, dirty thing.” Checking his orders, he confirmed the hull number: 350. Sure enough, this “messed-up ship,” the destroyer Hull, was his new home.

  When Stealey crossed the gangplank, he found the ship dotted with alternating patches of old blue-gray paint, rust, sanded spots, fresh green primer, and splotches of newly applied multicolored camouflage paint. The place was so cluttered with lines and hoses that he walked along certain the soles of his shoes “never touched the deck.” The noises, filth, and acrid smells were overpowering. It took Stealey some time to find anyone official with whom to check in. He was then dispatched ashore to a nearby barracks, where crew members were being housed during the yard overhaul.

  The next day, Stealy reported back to the ship and went to work on rusty decks and railings with a metal scraper and wire brush. Before long, he was asked by a petty officer what kind of work he’d done before. He proudly answered, “Sheet metal,” thinking there might be similar work aboard ship.

  “You’re an oil tender now,” the petty officer said.

  “What will I be doing?”

  “Feeding the boilers down in the fire room.”

  Stealey didn’t like the sound of that. “Is it hot down there?”

  “Yeah, but you’ll survive.”

  Stealey could not possibly know all that would entail.

  Eight

  After fighting “the nearest thing to a perfect naval battle produced by World War II” in the “utterly one-sided” Battle of Cape St. George in November 1943—in which three Japanese vessels were destroyed and upward of 1,500 enemy died, with no U.S. losses—Spence and the Little Beavers under Captain Arleigh “31-Knot” Burke had stayed exceedingly busy.

  To Torpedoman 3rd Class Albert “Al” Rosley, nineteen, of Frostburg, Maryland, who had worked in a sawmill before joining the Navy six days before his eighteenth birthday in November 1942 and who had been aboard Spence since her commissioning, it seemed as if “we were into something every night.”

  The turn of the calendar year to 1944 marked Spence’s first anniversary. In the year since her commissioning, the destroyer had steamed 67,050 miles. Although still a “young ship and a young crew,” they were now wily veterans of the Pacific campaign, with battle stars to show for it. “We have proved our worth more than once and will do it again when necessary,” wrote Chief Yeoman Harold L. Bryant in the ship’s monthly newsletter, Ye Olde Dis-Spence-er, which included features such as “Man of the Week” and “Captain’s Corner.” “We have a name now, let’s enlarge it until it fairly rings on everyone’s lips.”

  For the Little Beavers, the new year began with escort duties and antisubmarine patrols, followed by operations in the Bismarck Sea, ringed with formidable enemy bases such as Rabaul and Kavieng. On February 18 the destroyer squadron undertook the first bombardment of the Kavieng airfield on the northern tip of New Ireland, “plastering” a supply dump and a fuel dump and hitting aircraft and runways. Enemy shore batteries opened up, and salvos landed “uncomfortably close on both sides and astern” of Spence. “By radical maneuvering the ship escaped damage,” reported Spence commanding officer Henry Armstrong, “though she used up a few of her lives.”

  Four days later, the Little Beavers came upon Nagaura, a Japanese merchant vessel of 5,000 tons “engaged in evacuating aviation personnel” from the Bismarcks. As they approached bow on bow—making visual identification difficult—the enemy captain evidently assumed the destroyers were friendly because Allied shipping had “not dared penetrate these waters.” Burke fanned out his five destroyers in echelon formation and closed before hoisting the international signal flag demanding surrender. The merchant ship’s reply was the chattering of deck-mounted machine guns. On Burke’s command, the destroyers turned “their full broadsides simultaneously” on the ship. Spence shot eight booming salvos from her 5-inch guns in a minute, then ceased firing as the “target listed to starboard smoking heavily from many hits.” Four minutes later, the ship sank.

  Assigning two ships to screen against submarines, Burke directed the other destroyers to search for survivors, many of whom swam away rather than be picked up by U.S. ships. Nevertheless, seventy-three survivors were boarded. Burke then gave a curious command for warships operating in enemy waters: in an “act of respect the rescued Japanese appreciated,” the U.S. sailors held a one-minute prayer service for the “gallant enemy captain” who had “opened ineffective fire against overwhelming odds.”

  The day’s fighting was not over. Burke’s destroyers moved in for another strike on Kavieng, again finding the return fire withering. To avoid the incoming shells, Spence started “salvo chasing”—steering for where the last splash hit the wa
ter on the theory that the next salvo would land elsewhere—and “thanks to judicious fishtailing and changes of speed” was able to avoid several “straddling salvos.” Without continuous efforts to “keep clear,” reported Armstrong, Spence would have “quite possibly been hit repeatedly.” At dusk, the marauding destroyers overtook and sent to the bottom a minelayer, and after nightfall they sank a small freighter and several barges—all filled with Japanese reinforcements and supplies.

  By the end of their Bismarcks operations, the Little Beavers had added to their “remarkable record” as a group of destroyers that often worked independently. By March 1944, however, opportunities for such small-scale naval operations by destroyers and cruisers would be limited, with the war spearheaded by the mighty force of U.S. aircraft carriers as it “conquered its way across the Pacific.” Through no choice of his own, Burke would be part of it—unexpectedly transferred (even though he was not an aviator) from destroyers to chief of staff for one of the Navy’s top carrier commanders, Admiral Marc A. Mitscher, in charge of a fast-attack carrier division that was to take part in nearly every major battle remaining to be fought in the Pacific. Upon first learning the news, Burke was “devastated” and said angrily: “Somebody’s trying to railroad me out of these lovely destroyers.” But he had no choice in the matter, and with the transfer would soon come a promotion to rear admiral. On March 27 Burke climbed into a high-line chair to be transferred at sea to the carrier Lexington. Trying to “conceal the emotion that his moist eyes betrayed,” Burke told those around him he would “always keep track” of the squadron. “Tell the boys if any of them ever is in Washington where I live to look me up. They’ll be welcome. Goodbye now—and for God’s sake don’t drop me in the drink.”