by Mike Carlton
In the roiling smoke that lay thick across the sea and shrouded the setting sun itself, the Combined Striking Force was in disarray. Lieutenant-Commander Hara, in Amatsukaze, seeing the Allied cruisers head to the south, assumed he was watching some clever tactical manoeuvre, but in reality it was just a mess. Two factors that would multiply the scale of the ABDA disaster in the Java Sea now came into play.
First, Doorman’s ships, hastily thrown together, had never exercised with each other. They were like a team of footballers who had never met, picked at random to play on the eve of a grand final in a game whose rules they barely knew.
The second factor, weighing even more heavily against them, was the communications barrier. Doorman spoke good English but gave his orders in Dutch. These were then translated by an American officer and a signalman assigned to De Ruyter, with the delays that entailed. Signals then had to be transmitted to the ships of four different navies, whose codes and methods varied widely and were largely incomprehensible to each other. The Dutch had one system; the United States Navy had another. Perth and the British ships operated yet a third system and could communicate perfectly easily together, but not so well with Doorman or the Americans. The International Code of Signals was also unusable, because the Japanese could read its flags just as well. In the end, they settled on an obscure Anglo-French Tactical Code – a system the British themselves rarely employed and which might have been Swahili to everybody else. For the men on the flag decks – and Hec Waller was himself a trained signalman and proud of it – it was an unending muddle.12
Compounding these handicaps was Doorman’s inexperience, which became only more apparent as the hours wore on. The Dutch Admiral was out of his depth. In a sane world, Waller, the most experienced officer present, should have commanded the Striking Force, but the politics of the ABDA agreement and the iron hierarchy of naval rank relegated him to a subordinate role.
The Japanese suffered no such problems. Speaking the one language, well trained in strategy and tactics, with morale high from three months of stirring victories won in the Emperor’s godly name, they held the whip hand. And they had another priceless advantage: aerial reconnaissance. Their two heavy cruisers each carried two seaplanes, and the light cruisers one. They were constantly aloft, poking through the smoke to track the Allied ships and to spot the Japanese fall of shot. In the ABDA force, Perth’s Walrus had been damaged beyond repair at Tanjung Priok, and of Houston’s two Seagull Scout Observation aircraft – SOC floatplanes, as they called them – one had been flown to Western Australia and the other had been put out of action by blast from the ship’s big guns. The Dutch cruisers had none. Exeter had radar – she was the only ship on either side equipped with it – and that might have tilted the balance a little, but she was now limping back to Surabaya, escorted by the remaining Dutch destroyer Witte de With, which had been damaged by one of her own depth charges exploding close beneath her stern.
Gradually, some order returned to the Striking Force. Flying his ‘All ships follow me’ signal yet again – to some of the English-speaking officers, it appeared to be the only thought he had – Doorman headed back to the north-east, still hoping to penetrate the Japanese screen and get at the convoy. At 5.25 pm, he ordered the three British destroyers to launch a torpedo attack. This was another mistake. Left without orders, they had scattered in the earlier melee and were now too widely separated to make a concerted rush at the enemy.
Electra would be the next to die. Bow wave creaming, she raced out of the smoke into a patch of late sunlight to find herself confronting a light cruiser, probably Jintsu, and six destroyers. She got away the first shot from one of her 4.7-inch guns and had the satisfaction of seeing a rose of fire blossom from the upperworks of the leading enemy destroyer, Asagumo. After that, though, she had no chance. The Japanese battered her with shell after shell until, finally, one in the boiler room stopped her in her tracks. Even then, she kept shooting with what she had left. Her Torpedo Gunner fired a salvo to starboard, but it was only a gallant gesture and there were no hits.
With her upper decks a shambles of wreckage, corpses and the wounded, her captain, Commander Cecil May, gave the order to abandon ship. Electra had fought in the Norwegian fjords; she had rescued the three sole survivors from HMS Hood and more from Repulse and Prince of Wales. Now it was her turn to go. She slid below the surface at 6 pm, White Ensign still flying. From the water, against a rising moon, her survivors could see the tall figure of May waving to them from his shattered bridge as he went down with her. They gave him a rousing British cheer. Some of them were rescued the next day by an American submarine.
With dusk deepening, Doorman now apparently attempted to disengage from the enemy, with a flurry of confusing orders to the American destroyers. Commander Henry Eccles, Captain of the four-piper John D. Edwards, seethed at the Admiral’s indecision, releasing his frustration in his report after the battle:
The crystal ball was our only method of anticipating the intention of Commander Combined Striking Force. Then came the orders ‘Counter-attack’, ‘Cancel Counter-attack’, ‘Make smoke’, ‘Cover my retirement’. It appeared that the Striking Force had suffered heavy damage and that the enemy was pushing home an attack to drive us East. We headed in to make smoke and then saw the enemy advancing at a range of about 15,000 yards – torpedoes were fired at long range to force him to turn away and we withdrew following Commander Combined Strike Force signal ‘Follow me’. Darkness set in and we followed the Main Body endeavoring to regain station, and having not the slightest idea as to his plans and still only a vague idea as to what the enemy was doing, we reported the expenditure of torpedoes.13
They hit nothing. It had been a defiant gesture but that was all. With their torpedoes gone, the destroyers were now effectively useless, but they steamed on with the cruiser force into the lowering night. At this time, De Ruyter, Houston and Java had sustained some minor damage from enemy hits and near misses. Perth, still blessed with Hec’s Luck, was unscathed, although her guns were hot and scorched and, with brass shell casings littering the decks around her turrets, her ammunition was running low. On the plus side, Waller and Hancox believed they had scored hits on a Japanese cruiser, possibly Haguro. Below decks was a junkyard of broken furniture, glass and crockery and anything else that had come loose. The ship’s company, red-eyed with fatigue, wringing wet with stale sweat, hoped the gathering night would bring them some relief.
For a brief period, it did. For all their successes, the Japanese were growing nervous. Admiral Takagi feared he was being lured towards minefields on the Java coast, and at around 6.30 pm he retired north to more closely protect the troop convoy. Doorman groped about in the dark, first to the north-east, then the north-west, at one point sending off a plaintive signal to Helfrich: ‘Enemy retreating to the west. Contact broken. Where is the convoy?’ Helfrich had no answer. Nor did the fortunes of war, for, unknown to Doorman, he had actually come within 35 kilometres of the troop transports – the goal he had been seeking all day and now into a wanly moonlit night.
The Japanese, though, knew exactly where he was. Takagi’s aircraft had been shadowing the Striking Force with almost contemptuous ease. Just before 7.30 pm, Waller sighted four ships emerging from the dark on his port beam – apparently cruisers and destroyers:
The range was about 9000 yards, and at about the same time, what I thought was a star shell but which was an aircraft flare, burst on our disengaged side and I opened fire at 1933 with main armament first, then tried star shell; but these fell short. Houston also opened fire; I saw a row of explosions in one ship, but thinking these might be torpedo fire, I turned away, and all ships followed motions.14
At around this time, the four American destroyers turned it in. There was no point in going on. With no torpedoes left, running low on fuel and – more startling still – with no further orders from the Admiral, the old four-pipers had no more part to play in the battle. They, too, withdrew to Surabaya.
> Now it was Doorman’s turn to fear a trap. He decided to turn south once more, back towards the Java coast, hoping to encounter the invasion transports as they landed. It was not an illogical decision but again it had lethal consequences. He led the Striking Force into shallow water and a newly laid minefield. The shallow water was his mistake, for this was his coast and he, or De Ruyter’s Captain or Navigator, should have known it. But the minefield was not his fault. In the ABDA three-ring circus ashore, where nobody ever seemed to talk to anybody else, he had not been told it was there. Waller in Perth and Captain Albert Rooks on the bridge of Houston were alarmed to notice muddy brown water brewing up in a stern wave beneath them – a sure sign they might run aground at any minute. Houston actually began to vibrate and lose speed as the bottom shoaled. Both captains immediately turned seawards, anxiously seeking more depth beneath their keels.
The destroyer HMS Jupiter, slightly inshore from the cruisers, was not so lucky. She hit a mine. It was 9.25 pm. Her starboard side was blown in, the sea rushed through the yawning wound and flooded her engine room, and she was soon on fire and listing heavily. The Striking Force steamed on; like the others before her, Jupiter was left on her own. Her captain, Lieutenant-Commander Norman Thew, battled to keep her afloat for four hours – a remarkable piece of seamanship by night that bought time to get 78 of her survivors into boats and away to the Java shore.
Again, the cruisers fell into line, De Ruyter leading to the north once more on shifting courses as Doorman, like a blind man, fumbled for the transports. The enemy added insult to injury. In a scene that must have been almost surreal, an aircraft flare burst above the Striking Force and six flaming white lights drifted down to float gently on the water. Some people suspected a new and infernal form of aerial mine, but Hec Waller correctly deduced that Japanese floatplanes were dropping calcium flares, beacons to reveal their every move:
This happened every time we steered a new course and it was soon obvious that our every move … was being reported, not only by W/T but also by this excellent visual means. The enemy’s dispositions of his forces must have been ridiculously easy.15
The minutes, then the quarter-hours, ticked by in a pregnant silence broken only by the occasional helm order until, like the final act of a Shakespearean tragedy, a new twist of the plot inserted itself. Bridge lookouts in Perth and Houston heard voices calling from nearby and whistles blowing. Peering into the night, they saw small figures bobbing in the water and life rafts crowded with men waving and shouting. Dutch survivors from the Kortenaer were still afloat, five hours after they had been torpedoed. This time, they were rescued, although whether Doorman relented at last and ordered their recovery is not clear. At considerable risk to his ship, Lieutenant-Commander Eric St John Morgan, Captain of Encounter, the last of the British destroyers, stopped to lower boats and took 113 Dutchmen on board. Then he, too, returned to Surabaya.
Layer by layer, the Combined Striking Force had been stripped to a forlorn core. Of the 14 Allied cruisers and destroyers that had begun that day, there were but four of the cruisers left: De Ruyter, Perth, Houston and Java. They steamed on in that order, their path lit every so often by another eruption of the ghastly calcium flares before each Japanese aircraft returned to its mother ship. Perth and Houston were by now running critically low on ammunition, so much so in the American cruiser that her crew had to manhandle shells from the inoperable after turret along the upper deck to the for’ard guns – a back-breaking task even in harbour. By night, at sea, under fire, it was heroic.
In yet another of ABDA’s tragic ironies, unknown to the men at sea, they had a friend above in the moonlight. A Catalina PBY reconnaissance aircraft of the US Navy’s Patrol Wing 10, flown by Ensign Duncan ‘Duke’ Campbell, had headed north from Surabaya at sunset. Campbell located the Striking Force at 8 pm and, an hour and a half later, flew over the invasion convoy itself, counting an endless armada arrayed below him. But he had no way of contacting Doorman to inform him, so he radioed his report back to Surabaya. His message was lost in the bottomless incompetence of the command ashore, and it did not reach Doorman for another 90 minutes. By then, it was too late. Far too late.
At 10.30 pm, each side sighted the other again. They were on nearly parallel but opposing courses, the Striking Force heading slightly north-east, Admiral Takagi and his heavy cruisers Nachi and Haguro running in the opposite direction some 15,000 metres to port, or to the west, of the Allied cruisers. They opened fire simultaneously but more slowly now, the crews on either side close to exhaustion. Takagi then turned to head north again, closing the range to keep touch with Doorman on his starboard side. Fred Skeels, on the 4-inch gun deck, had a grandstand view:
Although there was little time to even think, every time I had a chance I looked over ‘the wall’ to see most of the night sky being lit up with explosions. In other circumstances it would have been even pretty to see the array of lights and colours but a pungent smell of war, of cordite from the shells and from the smoke screen hanging around the air and coming up from the ocean soon reminded me of the seriousness of the display. The sounds were too incredible, both in intensity and constancy. Our own guns were going off continuously, 6-inch and 4-inch, and they made a hell of a noise as they shuddered through the ship. I was definitely conscious of all the facets of battle, but I wasn’t able to concentrate on any of them to give thought to a particular one. I just carried on loading shells when I had to and focused on my task. Meanwhile I heard a lot, could smell a lot, and when I did have a moment, or a second or two, I’d look out at the carnage of metal and men to try to get some perspective.16
This time, the Long Lance torpedoes did their work. It was the fifth Japanese torpedo attack of the battle. Nachi launched eight of them and Haguro four. First, Java was struck, then De Ruyter. Java’s entire after part exploded in a monstrous ball of fire; her back broke and her bow reared into the air. Fred Skeels could see ‘men jumping for their lives into the inky unknown’, but the agony was brief, for the elderly Dutch cruiser went down within minutes.
De Ruyter struggled on a little longer but then she too blew up, an eruption that set fire to her pyrotechnics locker. Flares and rockets shot into the sky in a macabre fireworks display before a sheet of flame swept her from stem to stern. Perth, next in line, swerved on full helm with one engine stopped to miss her – Hard Over Hec was at it again – and Houston had to do the same, lunging sharply to starboard to avoid Perth. It was a near-run thing. Perth shaved so closely by De Ruyter’s flaming hulk that Tag Wallace could hear the agonised screams of trapped men and, he thought, ‘smell the unmistakable odour of burning flesh’.17
Karel Doorman went down with his flagship. He had survived the torpedo hit and the fire and could have left with his men, but he chose not to do so. A 1995 Dutch documentary film of the battle, De Slag in de Javazee,18 interviewed a De Ruyter survivor who believed he was the last to see the Admiral alive. He recalled Doorman and the ship’s Captain, Eugène Lacomblé, making their way along a passageway filled with flame and smoke. The two went into Lacomblé’s cabin, he said, and there they shot themselves.
Perhaps it is best for Doorman’s reputation that he did not survive. His bravery was magnificent but his inexperience in command at sea – and the incompetence of the ABDA organisation – brought him and the Combined Striking Force to a tragic end. The Battle of the Java Sea was an Allied catastrophe. And, once again, air superiority had played a crucial role. No bombers or fighters had been involved, but the floatplanes from the Japanese cruisers had given Admiral Takagi a cutting advantage. For all the sound and fury, the Japanese did not lose a single ship, warship or transport, and their invasion of Java was delayed by just 24 hours. To this day, Doorman is a naval hero in the Netherlands, with three ships of the Royal Netherlands Navy bearing his name in post-war decades, but the verdict of history might be left to one who was there, Commander Eccles of the American destroyer Edwards:
The Dutch fought with unfaltering c
ourage and dogged determination. Admiral Doorman in the De Ruyter returning to the attack time after time in a literal obedience to the signal from ABDA Fleet on 26 February ‘You must continue attacks till enemy is destroyed’. However, they had little else with which to fight. Java though badly outranged and with her speed reduced by old boilers endeavored to maintain her position throughout, firing steadily whenever her guns would range. The battle itself was a tragic commentary on the futility of attempting to oppose a powerful, determined, well equipped and organized enemy by the makeshift improvisations that were used. It was evident that the Dutch had little tactical experience, their knowledge of communications was rudimentary and they went on the assumption that a hastily organized, uncoordinated force of ships from three navies could be assembled and taken into a major action after a one-hour conference. It is impossible for anyone who did not go to sea in the Striking Force to comprehend the utter lack, in the Dutch, of any knowledge of tactical organization and employment of a force as a unit. They were individual ship men and went to their deaths with grim foreknowledge. The Allied Force was little more than a column of strange task groups which entered the battle with a vague general directive and no specific missions.19
Hec Waller was now the senior surviving officer of the Striking Force, although only just. He had been promoted to the rank of captain on 30 June 1940, exactly one day before Albert Rooks of the Houston received his US Navy silver eagles and fourth gold stripe.