Also by John J. Gobbell:
A Call To Colors –
A Novel of the Battle of Leyte Gulf:
* * * * *
The Todd Ingram series:
The Last Lieutenant
A Code For Tomorrow
When Duty Whispers Low
The Neptune Strategy
Edge Of Valor
* * * * *
The Brutus lie
WHEN DUTY WHISPERS LOW
A TODD INGRAM NOVEL BY
JOHN J. GOBBELL
WHEN DUTY WHISPERS LOW
Copyright 2010 by John J. Gobbell, All Rights Reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address: John”JohnJGobbell.Com.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001048646
Printed in the United States of America.
St. Martin’s Press hardcover edition / March 2002, ISBN 0-312-27492-2
St. Martin’s Press Paperbacks edition / April 2004, ISBN 0-312-98675-0
StarboardSide Productions ISBN / September 2014 978-0-9839138-4-9
To the allied forces who courageously
defeated the enemy in the solomon islands
campaign of World War II
CAST OF CHARACTERS
USS Howell (DD 482) (RICOCHET)
Alton C. Ingram, Lieutenant Commander, USN, “Todd,” Executive Officer
Jeremiah T. Landa, Commander, USN, “Boom Boom,” Captain
Leonard P. Seltzer, USN, “Leo,” Boatswain’s Mate 2nd Class
Luther T. Dutton, Lieutenant, USN, Gunnery Officer
Louis B. Delmonico, Lieutenant, USN, Replaced Luther Dutton as Gunnery Officer
Henry E. Kelly, Lieutenant, USN, “Hank,” Chief Engineer
Jack W. Wilson, Lieutenant (j.g), USN, “Jack,” Fire Control Officer
Carl Offenbach, Lieutenant, USN, Operations Officer
Ensign Walter Edgerton, Ensign USN, “Hot Lips,” First Lieutenant
Early, Stephen W., Yeoman 2nd class, USN and bridge talker
Katsikas, Dmitriy, Signalman 1st Class, USN
Eric Monaghan, Pharmacist’s Mate 1st Class, USN, “Bucky”
L. A. Briley, Quartermaster 2nd Class, USN
PT 72
Elton P. White, Lieutenant (j.g.), USN, “Tubby,” Commanding Officer
Winston Fuller, Ensign, USN, “Sir Winston,” Executive Officer
Tommy Kellogg, Lieutenant (j.g.), USN, original skipper of PT 72
PT 94
Oscar K. Bollinger, Lieutenant (j.g.) USN, Commanding Officer
Ralph Thomas, Ensign, USN, Executive Officer
Dominic Gambino, Radarman 2nd class, USN, “Bambino”
PT-88
Tommy Madison, Lieutenant (j.g) USN, Skipper
USS Hitchcock (DD 357)
Roland De Reuter, Commander, USN, Commanding Officer
USS Pence (DD 452)
Ralph Druckman, Commander, USN, Commanding Officer
HMNZS Kiwi
Gordon Bridson, Lieutenant Commander, Commanding Officer
Guadalcanal (CACTUS)
Marc Mitscher, Rear Admiral, USN, “Pete,” Commander, Air, Solomons, under Halsey.
Field Harris, Brigadier General, USMC, Mitscher’s Chief of Staff
John Mitchell, Major USAAF, Commanding Officer, 339th Fighter Squadron, P-38 pilot
Tom Lanphier, Capt. USAAF, P-38 pilot
Other USN
Theodore R. Myszynski, Captain USN, “Rocko” Commodore DESRON 12, aboard USS Whitney (AD 4) “Fishbait.”
Dexter A. Sands, Rear Admiral, USN, Commander battle group aboard light cruiser USS Santa Monica
Otto Deveraux, Captain, USN, Commander DESDIV 11 aboard U.S.S. Barber
Lieutenant (j.g) Oliver P. Toliver III, USN, “Ollie,” Ingram’s friend, ordnance l iaison officer for the 14th naval district in San Francisco
Pacific Fleet Headquarters, Pearl Harbor, T.H.
Chester W. Nimitz, Admiral, USN, Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, CinCPac.
Commander Edwin T. Layton, USN, Pacific Fleet Intelligence Officer to Admiral Nimitz
Michael T. Novak, Commander, USN, Head Combat Intelligence Unit (CIU) of Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Area (ICPOA),
Robert L. St. Clair, Major, USMC, head of base brig, Pearl Harbor.
Augustine Rivera, Chief Warrant Officer, USN, Criminal Investigation Division, Works for St. Clair
San Pedro, California
Helen Ingram, Captain, USA, Todd Ingram’s wife
Mrs. Peabody, Helen’s next door neighbor
Laura West (Dutton), Luther’s wife. pianist NBC Symphony Orchestra
Steve Bullard, Motorcycle Officer, San Pedro Police Department
Roberta Thatcher, NBC Orchestra Manager
Rutherford T. Moore, M.D., Colonel, USA, Helen’s superior officer at Fort MacArthur Dispensary, San Pedro, California
Robert L, Thorpe, Sergeant, USA, Moore’s secretary
Washington, D.C.
Dr. Joshua Landa, Jerry Landa’s younger brother at Department of Terrestrial Magnetism in Washington, D.C.
Frank Ashton, Captain, USN, Joshua Landa’s Boss; Liaison to subsection of Section T of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism
Long Beach, California
Larry Dunnigan, Admiral, USN, COMCARDIV 15
Bruce Klosterman, Lieutenant, USN, Dunnigan’s aide.
Imperial Japanese Navy
Isoroku Yamamoto, Admiral, Commander in chief of the Combined fleet
Watanabe, Yasuji, Captain, Yamamoto’s aide and one of his closest friends
Kanji Sugiyama, Lieutenant, Torpedo Officer, I-1
Omi Heijiro, Yamamoto’s orderly
Jisaburo Ozawa, Admiral, Commander, Third Fleet
Matamome Ugaki, Vice Admiral, Yamamoto’s chief of Staff
Tomoshiga Sajejima, Vice Admiral, Commander, Eighth Air Fleet, Rabaul
Kanji Takano, Captain, Fleet Ordnance Officer under Vice Admiral Tomoshiga Sajejima
Ryunosuke Kusaka, Admiral Commanding Officer, Southeast Area Fleet, Rabaul
Takeo Kotani, Flight Warrant Officer, Pilot G4M2 Bomber no. 323
Ryozo Enomoto, Commander, Captain, Destroyer Matukaze
FOREWORD
The period of February, 1943 to June, 1943 was a relative ‘quiet time’ in the Pacific War. Both American and Japanese forces were reeling, in a manner of speaking, from the massive expenditures of ships and manpower in the lower Solomons campaign, the Japanese suffering the worst end of the bargain. Japan’s loss of Guadalcanal was not just a tactical set-back, but a major strategic one as well.
At this time, thirteen Essex class carriers, quickly followed by another block of eleven, were rapidly coming off the ways and preparing to steam for the war zone. Eventually, they would become the major weapon for Admiral Chester W. Nimitz’s drive across the Central Pacific. But for the time being, Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., Commander of the South Pacific Area and South Pacific Force, was down to just one carrier, the others having been either sunk or damaged in the bloody battles in the Lower Solomons from mid-1942 to early 1943. Thus, Halsey instructed his surface forces in the Solomon Islands to “...keep pushing the Japs around,” a stalling tactic until new carriers, capital ships, and auxillaries arrived.
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander in Chief of the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy, realized the same thing. His headquarters weren�
�t aboard the monstrous battleship Musashi in the remote Truk Lagoon by accident. Presumably, the Gensui was there to be close to the front. But another reality for Yamamoto was that he’d come under close scrutiny by the General Staff in Tokyo because of the Battle of Midway debacle. Thus, Truk was a good excuse for escape when the Allies invaded Guadalcanal in August. 1942. But things did not go well for Yamamoto’s forces. The Japanese were forced to give up Guadalcanal with a great loss of men and material. The pressure from Tokyo became greater, the outrage more pointed. Yamamoto needed to do something. Quickly. Something that would throw the U.S. Navy off-balance; something that would allow him to re-group, to re-capture Guadalcanal and press on with Japan’s grand strategy of cutting off the American supply lines to Australia; a critical element for the ultimate success of Nippon’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Accordingly, Yamamoto developed “Operation I,” a series of massive, Pearl-Harbor-sized air raids designed to cripple Allied bases in the lower Solomons and New Guinea. Temporarily shifting his headquarters from Truk to Rabaul, Yamamoto ‘borrowed’ hundreds of aircraft from commands all over the Pacific in order to carry out the attacks. Himself a Navy flier, Yamamoto helped brief his aircrews and, wearing dress whites with sword, waved to his pilots as they lumbered off the runway and headed southeast.
About the same time, the Allies added a new element to the Pacific War – the proximity fused anti-aircraft projectile. It was a weapon developed in the strictest secrecy that had a devastating effect upon the enemy. When introduced to the fleet, the proximity or VT (variable time) fuse had a predicted kill probability of about fifty percent. At the war’s end, the probability had advanced to eighty percent, an amazing achievement for a device that was only conceived in 1940.
These elements, all seemingly disconnected, are what Todd Ingram met when he returned to the South Pacific in February 1943. His story follows.
One’s very essence is a product of continual involvement with family, friends, and God. As in the past, this book benefits mightily from those relationships. Two friends weren’t aware of my existence during World War II; I was far too young and they were busy putting it all on the line, fighting the enemy. I was privileged to know Alvin P. Cluster who served aboard PT boats in the Solomons and Gordon Curtis who flew Wildcats at the Battle of Midway. Sadly, both have since passed but were of enormous assistance in developing the original background for this story. Dick Bertea, a Marine fighter pilot of the Korean era, also helped with aviation scenes. Dr. Fred Milford once again filled in on historical and technical details. Two more Marines, my brother Bill Gobbell and Gordon Hanscom, filled me in on things that the Marine Corps does, while Dr. Russell J. Striff, a glutton for punishment over four books once again provided medical details. Retired Navy commander George A. Wallace, was very helpful in Naval affairs and Keiko Hallop lent fantastic advice in areas of music. I must also thank the Historical Societies of Hollywood, Long Beach, and San Pedro for their willingness to provide details about their respective cities in 1943.
Please don’t hesitate to visit my website at www.JohnJGobbell.com to see photos of actual ships, locations, people, and equipment portrayed herein. Simply click on the book cover on the main page to find material for this particular work. There, you’ll even find a photo of the venerated proximity fuze.
As before, my wife, Janine, carried me through this project with not just strong editorial comment, but with love, understanding and compassion.
John J. Gobbell
Newport Beach, California
September, 23. 2014
[email protected]
WHEN DUTY WHISPERS LOW
PROLOGUE
So nigh is grandeur to our dust
So near is God to man
When Duty whispers low
Thou must.
The youth replies, I can!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
PROLOGUE
28 January, 1943
IJN Musashi
Truk Atoll, Caroline Islands
His quarters were two levels below the Musashi's bridge. Wearing only a loin cloth, he sat near an open port hole, fanning himself and writing in his impeccable calligraphy. In spite of the giant battleship's air conditioning, he enjoyed the evening's sea breeze, for it gently carried the aroma of beach, dying kelp, and vegetation from the nearby islands. His pen strokes were those of a piano player-- precise, bold, his poetry exact and expressive.
But, for a moment, his hand shook as he bent to his task. He sat up and held his hands out, fingers splayed. With a grunt of satisfaction, he noted his right hand wasn't shaking as much as before. Lately, he'd been feeling tired, so the fleet medical officer had injected him with a combination of vitamins B and C, which seemed to help. He rubbed his right arm and, for a moment, listened to a gull squawk out on the lagoon. A ship's whistle blasted in the distance; then the gull brayed again, perhaps a protest, he thought, perhaps a mate stealing its food.
Born in 1884, the future Admiral of the Imperial Japanese Navy's Combined Fleet grew up in the Niigata prefecture on the Sea of Japan. Yamamoto was the family name, and the child was given the name Isoroku, which means fifty-six in Japanese, because that was his father's age at the time Yamamoto was born. Yamamoto grew to become a slight man: five feet three inches tall, weighing 130 pounds at most, having a rather delicate bone structure to his face, and the sensitive fingers of a pianist. He graduated from the Etajima Naval Academy in 1904. A year later, he lost the middle and index fingers of his left hand as a result of a turret explosion aboard the battleship Nisshin in the battle against the Czarist Navy at Tsushima Straits. As a young officer ashore, Yamamoto was known in Shimbashi's geisha district as Eighty Sen. normally, the geishas charged one full yen for a manicure. Because of his missing
Fingers, Yamamoto demanded a break. His charge: eight tenths of a yen.
He spent six years in America, the most recent period from 1926 to 1928, as a Naval Attaché, assigned to Japan's embassy in Washington D.C... During that time, he took an English language class at Harvard. Extra curricular activities included a taste for gambling. American poker, which he played well, was his specialty and he had an even stronger taste for Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch. He'd been a gymnast in his younger days and, still the athlete, took up bowling in the United States, beating many a local hustler. He took particular delight in trouncing those who thought they were fleecing a little Jap.
Later in his career, Yamamoto learned to fly, working his way to senior command in aviation billets, ultimately commanding the aircraft carrier Akagi. Then he became head of the Navy's Aeronautics Department.
In 1939, Isoroku Yamamoto was promoted to his Navy's highest office, Commander In Chief of the Combined Fleet. Comparable to Field Marshal, this office carried the honorific, gensui. In 1940, he began planning Operation Z, the Imperial Japanese Navy's attack on Pearl Harbor. As with Admiral Heihahiro Togo's attack against the Czarist Navy at Tsushima Straits, (the original Operation Z) Yamamoto's assault on Pearl Harbor was similarly structured: With both nations in a state of undeclared war, Operation Z was a surprise attack on a harbored fleet. Both Operations Zturned out as designed: bold assaults, wildly successfulB decisive victories...
...his brow was knit. Since last May, things had gone badly: The Coral Sea, Midway, and now, the Solomon Islands, 1,300 miles to the southeast. Over 50,000 men had been committed to Guadalcanal. The campaign went poorly, and now he was obliged to evacuate the tiny fraction that remained. The rest had all been killed on land or at sea. Worse was the loss of face. He needed to work up something that would smash the Americans once and for all.
But...he needed relaxation. Simple relaxation away from this ship and even away from this job. He'd been out here since last August, and it was beginning to wear on him.
....breath in ...breath out...
Golden evenings like this on the lagoon calmed him. He'd had a good dinner: raw sea bream and broiled sea bream, rice cake soaked in ozo
ni, a holiday soupB each complimented by chilled beer. And the talk at the table had been lively.
And yet, the gensui felt empty...his thoughts drifted...there has to be a way to get back at the United States Navy before they gain too much momentum. But what?
...Chiyoko... With his self-imposed exile, he'd hadn't seen Chiyoko Kawaii, his mistress of nine years, since last August, six long months. He missed her and thought of her daily. During that time it seemed everything was going wrong with this war. His comrades were dying by the dozens; and the Americans kept coming, no matter how many of their ships were sunk, how many planes were knocked from the sky. As at Tsushima Straits or Pearl Harbor, we need a decisive victory. How can I make that happen?
A last shaft of golden sunlight burst into his stateroom, shining on his admiral’s's uniform. Yamamoto gazed at it for a moment, then realized his hand was once again steady. Drawing a deep breath, he returned to his meticulous calligraphy. He dipped his pen and bent over the paper. For ten minutes he painstakingly wrote:
Looking back over the year
I feel myself grow tense
At the number of comrades
Who are no more
PART ONE
Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always just a lack of ability to suspend the function of the imagination. Learning to suspend your imagination and live completely in the very second of the present minute with no before and no after is the greatest gift a soldier can acquire.
WHEN DUTY WHISPERS LOW (The Todd Ingram Series Book 3) Page 1