Mercer was not questioned about failing to join Tabberer, seemingly the one ship in the fleet that put a top priority on rescue, in the search for survivors in the water—men who happened to be from his own squadron.*
THE THIRD DAY of the court of inquiry began with admirals.
Rear Admiral Frederick C. Sherman, Annapolis class of 1910 and a former submarine commander during World War I who later became a naval aviator, was one of the Third Fleet’s most experienced seamen and now served as one of Halsey’s carrier division commanders. Like other admirals called to the stand, his questioning was conducted by the admirals on the court rather than handed over to the judge advocate, a mere captain.
Q: “Did you have timely warning or know that a severe storm was approaching?”
A: “I wouldn’t say that I did, no. The aerologist on my staff kept reporting a typhoon 500 miles to the northeast. That was on the 17th. The wind was about 060 and increasing, the barometer was falling, which according to my experience, indicated a storm. I put it to the southeast and much closer than 500 miles.”
Q: “You were the northern task group of [Third Fleet], therefore probably the storm went as close to you as any of the others.”
A: “I think it went closer except for some of the tankers and destroyer escorts that were northeast of us right in the path of the storm.”
Q: “There were three fueling rendezvous set for the morning of the 18th. In view of the fueling rendezvous set for the morning of the 18th, did you feel that the storm would strike your task group?”
A: “I was not particularly happy over the last rendezvous.”
Q: “Did you make your ideas on this matter known to any higher authority?”
A: “No, sir.”
Sherman described his group’s unsuccessful attempts to fuel two destroyers low on fuel the morning of the 18th. The refuelings were “called off by higher authority” after an hour due to the “line of weather getting worse.”
Asked if he had any further observations he would like to make about the storm, Sherman did not hesitate to speak a piece of his mind. “Without meaning any particular criticism of our present day aerologists, I’m inclined to think that they have been brought up to depend on a lot of readings they get from other stations. I think they are much weaker than older officers in judging the weather by what they actually see. Whether anything can be done along these lines to either encourage or instruct them to watch weather that is then existing without waiting for reports from Pearl Harbor or other stations, I don’t know. I think they should be taught to judge the weather by what they actually see.”
Another of Halsey’s carrier group commanders, Rear Admiral Gerald Bogan, testified to being told early on the afternoon of the 17th by the aerology officer of the carrier Lexington, his flagship, about a “cyclonic storm forming to the northeast of us.”
Bogan gave testimony similar to Sherman’s regarding his uneasiness over the setting of the final fueling rendezvous on the morning of the eighteenth. This time when the question was asked as to whether he had so informed “high authority,” the response was quite different: “Yes, sir.”
“Please tell the court what it was.”
“I sent a signal to [Halsey] stating that the Lexington weather estimate indicated that improved conditions would be found further to the southward.”
Instead, the fleet had plowed northward into the path of the typhoon that morning in an unsuccessful attempt to fuel.
Vice Admiral John S. McCain (Annapolis 1906), Halsey’s task force commander, came to the witness stand next. Even though he was Halsey’s highest-ranking subordinate, McCain claimed not to have been involved in any of the fleet’s decisions to set fueling rendezvous. He could “only venture a guess” as to why certain decisions were made by Halsey, but no one on the court was much interested in having McCain provide such speculation.
Q: “At what time did storm considerations begin to govern the disposition and movement of your task force, if at all?”
A: “The morning of the 18th, I believe.”
Q: “You had no cause for alarm until the weather markedly deteriorated the morning of the 18th?”
A: “That’s true as far as I was individually concerned, yes.”
An admiral on the court now told McCain something he might not have known, given that all testimony had been behind closed doors and after the first witness had been “classified as secret.”
“There has been testimony that indications were plain to certain commanders that the storm was approaching and increasing in violence during the 17th and that perhaps aerographers in the fleet did not estimate on local conditions sufficiently, but relied mostly on reports from outside stations. What is your opinion of this?”
McCain sounded surprised. “I have no opinion of value on that.” When it came to providing illumination to the subject of the inquiry, McCain had been of no value, either.
The next witness was the one man who would be unable to claim that he was not part of the decision-making process involving the Third Fleet or otherwise not responsible for any of its actions or movements. When the name was called by the judge advocate, an orderly hurried from the room to summon the witness, who was waiting in the passageway. Everyone watched the door. Soon it opened, and a barrel-chested admiral, tieless and in pressed khakis like the other officers in the wardroom, strode forward. Once seated, the witness was asked by the judge advocate to state his name, rank, and present station. It would be the last question asked by Gates, as all further questioning would be handled by the court’s own admirals: “William F. Halsey, admiral, U.S. Navy, commander Third Fleet, U.S. Pacific Fleet.”
Q: “Admiral, did you consider that you had timely warning or did you know that a severe storm was approaching around the 16th and 17th of December?”
A: “I did not have timely warning. I’ll put it another way. I had no warning.”
Q: “There has been testimony from other commanders that the local conditions indicated the approach of the storm. Was that evident to you?”
A: “The local conditions commencing on the 17th were very bad. So bad that I ordered the destroyers that were alongside tankers and heavy ships [for fueling] to clear. A disturbance was indicated, but whether it was a severe storm or merely a local disturbance, there was no way of determining. We still thought it was a storm that had curved away to the northward and eastward and we determined to get away from it.”
Q: “When fueling had to be stopped on the 17th of December due to increasing bad weather, what were your considerations?”
A: “The general picture was sour. I had numerous destroyers that were very short of fuel. I was under obligation to make a strike on Luzon, but of course a strike could not be made until the fleet was fueled. I was also obligated to avoid by that time what I considered a storm the magnitude of which I did not know…. Up to the forenoon of the 18th December, when an unsuccessful attempt had been made to fuel, I was still under the impression that the tropical disturbance would curve to the northward and the eastward and its severity was not indicated.”
Q: “At what time did the storm considerations begin to govern the disposition and movement of the fleet, if at all?”
A: “On the forenoon of the 18th it was very definitely apparent that we were very close to a violent disturbance which I believed was a typhoon. We were completely cornered and in the dangerous semicircle. The consideration then was [to find] the fastest way to get out of the dangerous semicircle and get to a position where our destroyers could be fueled.”
When asked what was “wrong with the weather service,” Halsey characterized it as “nonexistent” and went on to describe late and missing weather reports from outside sources. “As I recollect, there was only one report of a disturbance that came in…. It is the first time in the four months that I’ve been operating in this area that I haven’t had reports to enable me to track a storm.”
“Had you any idea there were any vessels in your force t
hat were very low in stability when low on fuel?”
“Having spent a great many years in destroyers and having been in some very severe weather in ships ranging from 160 tons to 1200 tons, I knew there had been grave doubts as to their stability from time to time, particularly when in a light condition,” Halsey answered. “I believe that some time before we got into the worst of this storm we sent out a general signal advising everybody to ballast down.”
Halsey had stated something not mentioned by any other witness during the course of the proceedings. The suggestion that the Third Fleet sent out a “general signal” recommending ships take on seawater ballast “before we got into the worst” of the typhoon was offered by Halsey alone. No copy of such a communiqué from Halsey or his Third Fleet staff was ever produced.
Q: “Comparing the conditions of the 17th fueling with those of the early morning of the 18th, what is your estimate of the weather conditions?”
A: “On the morning of the 17th I was under the impression that we were on the fringes of a disturbance. On the morning of the 18th there was no doubt in my mind that we were approaching a storm of major proportions and that it was almost too late to do anything.”
One question now begged to be asked: if Halsey had thought his fleet was approaching a “storm of major proportions” and that it was “almost too late to do anything” on the morning of the 18th, why had he ordered one final, disastrous attempt to fuel, which turned his fleet into the wind and in the direct path of the typhoon? Any veteran mariner would know that a safer course at that point would have been away from the storm, to the south. A southerly run of several hours by his ships might well have taken them all—including Hull, Spence, and Monaghan—out of harm’s way.
Unfortunately, that question was not asked.
Rather, Halsey was dismissed as a witness. Before leaving, he told the court he had “an interest in the subject matter of the inquiry” and wished to be named as an interested person. He regretted, however, that he would be unable to appear at future sessions due to an upcoming fleet movement. Therefore, he wished to waive his right to be present at the inquiry, and asked that he be represented by counsel. Halsey’s request was granted.
On its fourth day in session, the court of inquiry met briefly in Cascade’s wardroom, then adjourned to the larger pilothouse, where there was room to set up chairs for the survivors.
As he had walked along the pier that morning, Don Watkins was surprised to see a fellow officer who looked familiar heading up the gangway to Cascade’s quarterdeck. My God, that looks like Ed Brooks, thought Watkins, who then dismissed the notion, believing that his fellow officer and friend—the proper “southern gentleman” from Virginia—had not survived. Watkins knew only about his Hull shipmates who, like him, had been picked up by Tabberer: a total of forty-one, five officers and thirty-six enlisted men. He did not yet know about his twenty-one shipmates picked up by other ships, including Brooks, who had been rescued off the raft with a dozen other men by the destroyer Brown.* When they finally faced each other in the crowded pilothouse, a smiling Watkins shook his friend’s hand and said, “Glad you made it, Ed.” Other Hull men had similar reunions that morning with shipmates.
The session in the wheelhouse had no sooner begun when the court directed Hull’s commanding officer, James Marks, to read his official “narrative statement concerning the capsizing and sinking” of his ship. For those who had seen Marks on the bridge the morning of the typhoon, it was a remarkable transformation. What had been a stooped figure in soaked khakis and life jacket clinging to the navigation equipment, his face pale and contorted with fear, had turned into an erect, confident, and even handsome young officer looking like one of the Navy’s finest, even though the uniform in which Marks stood before the court was borrowed—including skivvies—from the taller Henry Plage.
Marks had been in the Navy long enough to know what it meant when a captain loses his ship. Had they lived, Bruce Garrett and Jim Andrea would have been standing here, too. They would, in fact, now be there in absentia, with their actions and decisions documented and judged to the best of the court’s ability. But because they hadn’t survived, Marks alone would face what he called “the question and answer business.” With the lid on any news of the typhoon losses as next of kin were still being notified, Marks had not yet been able to tell even his brother, Arthur, an Annapolis graduate (1927) and Navy officer serving in Washington, D.C. He had, however, come up with a way to send word home. Prior to his taking command of Hull, his fiancée, Virginia Fritchman, a Connecticut coed ten years his junior to whom he had become engaged on his last leave home, had convinced him to take his clarinet with him, as “he might have a chance to play it.” The former Naval Academy swing band leader had not had time to do so, of course, and bringing the instrument along probably had been a mistake. But a few days earlier, he had written to Virginia from Ulithi: “I lost my clarinet.” Upon reading those words, Virginia “knew right away Jim had lost his ship,” and the first thing she did was call her brother-in-law, Arthur.
Sitting in the same gray metal chair used by the previous witnesses, Marks read the statement that came strictly from his own memory of events, as all of Hull’s “records, papers [and] publications” had gone down with the ship. Everyone from the highest-ranking admiral to the lowliest seaman listened, with the only sound other than Marks’ courteous and firm voice coming from the soft hum of Cascade’s generators. Marks began with routine matters, such as the nature of the screening duties assigned to Hull on December 17 and the ship’s movements that day. Then he came to the day all hands were waiting to hear about.
“The next morning the sea remained quite rough. The sky was heavily overcast. From time to time the course of the fueling group was changed and the screening units maneuvered to attain new screening stations each time. During the forenoon the sea increased steadily in roughness and the barometer readings were dropping.”
Marks said that to his “best recollection” the fueling unit’s course was changed to a southeasterly course about 11:00 A.M. Marks told how the heavy rain and sea spray caused difficulties with electrical equipment, including the radio and radar. “It was during [this] period,” he went on, “while the ship was proceeding to her new screening station that her capsizing and sinking occurred.”
Marks claimed he had the ship inspected that morning for “security of stowages and watertightness.” He also explained that he had received a report from the engineering officer that morning that the ship was “well above the required ballasting point,” having between “125 and 120 thousand gallons of fuel aboard,” which represented “a little over 70%” capacity. “In view of the fact that the ship was riding the seas satisfactorily at the time and that I estimated that we would be fueled on short notice as soon as the heavy weather abated I did not consider ballasting advisable.”
So far, Marks had said nothing that might serve as a red flag.
“Roughly about 1130 the seas became mountainous and the wind increased to hurricane proportions. At this point I wish to state that there had at no time been any storm warnings received from any source whatsoever, although we had been keeping careful watch for same. In endeavoring to alleviate the heavy rolling of the ship, I tried every possible combination of rudder and engines, with little avail. An attempt was made to bring the ship’s head into the sea but she would not respond. Then an attempt was made to turn away from the wind and bring it as far on the port quarter as possible, but again the ship would not answer. It was apparent that no matter what was done with the rudder and engines, the ship was being blown bodily before the wind and sea.
“Shortly before twelve o’clock the ship withstood what I estimated to be the worst punishment any storm could offer. She had rolled about 70 degrees and righted herself just as soon as the wind gust reduced a bit. I have served in destroyers in some of the worst storms in the North Atlantic and believed that no wind could be worse than that I had just witnessed. Just at this point t
he wind velocity increased to an unbelievable high point which I estimated at 110 knots. The force of this wind laid the ship steadily over on her starboard side and held her down in the water until the seas came flowing into the pilothouse itself. The ship remained over on her starboard side at an angle of 80 degrees or more as the water flooded into her upper structures. I remained on the port wing of the bridge until the water flooded up to me, and I stepped off into the water as the ship rolled over on her way down. The suction effect was felt but it was not very strong. Shortly after I felt the concussion of the boilers exploding under water. The effect was not very strong and caused me no ill effects. I concentrated my efforts thereafter to trying to keep alive in the mountainous seas which pounded us. I could only see a few feet while in the water as the sea was whipped to a froth and the air full of spray.”
When he was finished, Marks was asked by one of the admirals if the statement he had just read was a “true statement of the loss” of Hull.
“It is, sir.”
“Have you any complaint to make against any of the surviving officers and crew of the said ship on that occasion?”
Among the survivors, Chief Quartermaster Archie DeRyckere wondered what would come next. Certainly there were men Marks might now name: those who had been insolent on the bridge, those who had spoken of mutiny that morning. DeRyckere had seen and heard much.
“I do not, sir.”
Marks had waived any possibility of his pointing a finger at anyone.
Now it was time to ask the same question of the crew.
Addressing the surviving officers and enlisted men seated in the pilothouse, the admiral asked, “Have you any objection to make in regard to the narrative just read to the court, or anything to lay to the charge of any officers or man with regard to the loss of the United States Ship Hull?”
Five survivors spoke up, all briefly and none critical of Marks.
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