The Moon Olympics passed into history, and no world records were broken. The Sterett came in second. (I think the Wilson finished first; we accused them of having recruited a bunch of “ringers” before leaving Pearl Harbor.) Once more a heavy load of visual traffic descended on the shoulders of our signalmen, but by this time nothing could faze them. They were the best, and I am willing to admit the possibility that Don Moon’s work load had improved their skills.
The second subject pursued by the commodore was a ship-handling exercise. What rendered it unique was the manner in which it was to be executed. We would soon enter “Turtle Country,” that area along the California-Mexico coast where for several hundred square miles we would find hundreds of large sea turtles on the surface, basking in the warm sun. Each ship was to rig out its boat boom and stream from the end a steel hoop ten feet in diameter (held in a vertical position, with only a small portion of its circumference submerged) to which was fastened a pouch made out of cargo netting. The idea was to rig out essentially a big turtle net and then, by maneuvering carefully, scoop a turtle into it. In his messages the commodore described in great detail how, when a turtle was first sighted, the officer-of-the-deck was to hoist a special flag to alert all ships to the fact that his vessel was engaged in a turtle capture and would be maneuvering radically as needed to capture her target. The message warned that these creatures had to be approached with deliberate speed and stealth lest they become alarmed, for then they would certainly submerge.
For several days the destroyers of Division 15 could be seen zigzagging all over the ocean. The problem was not finding a target but rather deciding which one to pursue. Nonetheless, the turtles’ early warning systems proved absolutely infallible. We did not catch a single one. Commodore Moon was not pleased. His critique of the exercise made that point clear, and his opinion of our ship-handling skills was not enhanced by our performance.
All of us were aware of the additions to our inventory of professional skills that resulted from Don Moon’s ingenious schemes; it was just that sometimes his creativity seemed to border on the bizarre. The Moon Olympics certainly made every member of our ship’s company more aware of his own physical condition and the need to improve it. Yet I think most of us agreed with Jim Clute’s comment about the commodore’s efforts to provide a little recreation: “Well, he didn’t just tell us to recreate, he recreated our asses off!”
WE FINALLY ARRIVED AT THE CANAL ENTRANCE after dark on 2 June 1941. The Army’s coastal batteries were not at all happy about allowing these darkened and unidentified ships to enter; but somehow the Navy managed to explain our presence, and we made the transit in six hours. By morning on the third we were steaming toward Guantánamo Bay, where our arrival had been anticipated and stirred little if any interest. There we awaited the arrival of the battleship Idaho, the cruiser Brooklyn, and the destroyers Stack, Wainwright, and Winslow, all of whom had followed us from the Pacific. Then the whole group moved north—two battleships, two cruisers, and six destroyers. Southeast of Delaware Bay, the Mississippi pointed her signal light in our direction. “DD 407, you are detached. Proceed to Philadelphia Navy Yard and await further orders.” To me this was a welcome message. I would be going home.
The Sterett remained in Philadelphia for only a few days before moving down the coast to Charleston. Her navy yard overhaul was badly needed. The technicians there fixed a number of mechanical problems that were beyond the abilities of the ship’s personnel and also updated our weapons. We received improved sonar gear, new Y- and K-gun depth charge launchers, and 20-mm machine guns; two of our four torpedo tube mounts were removed to compensate for the additional weight of our new ASW/AAW armament. In the meantime the situation in Europe continued to worsen. Hitler invaded Russia, and the Germans appeared to be almost invincible in their conquests. Their U-boats took an increasingly heavy toll on Allied shipping on the other side of the Atlantic. Tom McWhorter was sent off for a month of instruction at the Torpedo School at Newport, and Dr. McGinnis reported aboard as our first ship’s doctor. Previously only one medical officer had been assigned to each squadron, but the events of the early convoy escort days, when it became apparent that submarine warfare would inflict heavy personnel casualties, demonstrated that each escort needed her own doctor. Instead of sharing him with seven other ships, we had one to ourselves.
When the Sterett arrived in Casco Bay in mid-August 1941, Tom McWhorter returned aboard to learn that his Naval Academy roommate, Craig Spowers, was in port aboard the Reuben James, an old four-stack destroyer of World War I vintage. Although the Sterett was on four-hour readiness status, Jess Coward seemed pleased to allow Tom to visit the Reuben James as Craig’s guest and to remain aboard for dinner. Tom returned in a pensive but cheerful mood. He was appalled at the condition of the old ship, which was rusting away and, in Tom’s words, “held together with bailing wire and chewing gum.” His obvious concern for his friend’s safety was a measure of Tom’s deep sense of compassion.
For the next few months we performed escort duties in the cold North Atlantic, where the sea and the weather are always the “other” enemies. The U.S. Navy had just transferred fifty old four-stack destroyers to the Royal Navy and in return acquired base rights to Argentia, Newfoundland (and to British facilities in Bermuda and Trinidad), for escort of convoy operations. The Sterett became a frequent visitor to that northern anchorage, and most of us came to believe that there was no such thing as fair weather in Argentia. By October, the tempo of convoy operations had accelerated considerably. Eastbound ships were formed into convoy units in Argentia and escorted by a mixture of Canadian and U.S. destroyers and corvettes for the first several hundred miles of their eastward journey until they arrived at a predesignated midocean meeting point, where they were turned over to British escorts. In a move intended to release the British garrison there for deployment to the Mediterranean, our Marines had occupied Iceland on 8 July 1941; that rugged outpost then served as a haven for U.S. naval forces. But in October a large east-bound convoy, escorted by Canadian corvettes, was attacked by submarines about four hundred miles south of Iceland. A group of five U.S. destroyers, including the USS Kearny, which had departed Iceland a few days earlier on another assignment, was ordered to the aid of the ships under attack. In the ensuing melee, the Kearny was torpedoed, and seven men were lost. Aboard the Sterett we heard about the Kearny’s fate and realized more keenly than ever that we were at war. This was no game but rather a life-and-death struggle that the people of the United States did not even realize was in progress. The Kearny incident was broadcast to the world, and President Roosevelt took the opportunity to remind everyone that we had resolved to help our British friends by delivering the supplies they needed to defend themselves. German attacks were not about to stop us. The American people took the news in stride, and aboard the Sterett we accepted it as an inevitable development.
The Kearny was hit on 17 October. In the early hours of the twenty-ninth, the Reuben James was sunk. Like the Kearny, she had been engaged in escorting a convoy, doing her best despite inadequate and antiquated armament and detection equipment to protect her charges against a wily enemy equipped with the most devastating naval weapon system then known. For the German U-boat commanders, attacks on the convoys represented a low-risk, high-profit exercise. To Tom McWhorter, the Reuben James was a great personal loss. Ens. Craig Spowers had gone down with his ship. Tom’s grief touched all of us and strengthened our determination to make the Sterett the best, most pugnacious destroyer in the U.S. Navy.
The Sterett’s operational luck had been remarkably good compared to that of other escort ships. We had not been assigned to any of the really slow convoys; they were the ones who took it on the chin. Our assignments had involved the faster troop convoys as well as carrier operations, in which speed was essential. U-boats simply were not fast enough to maneuver into attack positions at high speeds of advance. It was always possible that a German sub might accidentally find herself in just
the right spot for an attack; but we always zigzagged, and whenever possible we were routed away from areas where submarines were known or suspected to be operating. None of us was foolish enough to wish to experience a U-boat attack, but we did wish for action and the chance to even the score for the Kearny and the Reuben James. Tom McWhorter drilled his torpedo gang daily. We had no doubt that if the chance came, the Sterett would give a good account of herself. Meanwhile, the North Atlantic winter was a bruising, pervasive foe, and we knew we were lucky just to be alive.
Felix Gebert, once a mainstay of the Sterett’s electrical gang and now a resident of Coal City, Illinois, wrote recently of his impressions of the Sterett’s Atlantic convoy duties:
I remember walls of mountainous waves on all sides, and they posed a real problem for those of us who had to come topside and cross over the main deck to relieve the watch in the forward engine room. More than once I got caught on the catwalk (an elevated steel-mesh walkway mounted on stilts about six feet above the main deck) when a huge wave of green water crashed over my head. There was nothing to do but hang onto the lifelines, holding my breath, with my feet and legs hanging free, while I waited for it to pass. Then came the challenge of making a mad dash for the engine room hatch. If you had the roll and pitch calculated correctly, you could jump down from the catwalk, dash across about fifteen feet of main deck, spin open the wheel on the hatch cover, jump over the hatch combing, and land with your feet on the rung of the ladder, then grab the underside hatch wheel and spin it shut as you were descending the ladder. It was a neat trick. Of course, it was always a little bit harder leaving the engine room. There was no chance to observe and time the seas, and more often than not I got caught in the open hatch with a big green sea pouring down over my head and shoulders into the engine room.
We earned a respite from the worst of the North Atlantic weather when we were assigned to operate out of Bermuda. We were to screen and act as plane guard for the USS Long Island during her initial training and flight operations. The first of the CVEs, the Long Island was a converted Moore-McCormick freighter, and her class of vessel offered a quick and inexpensive solution to the problem of providing close ASW air cover for convoy escorts. Working with her was a definite change of pace from fast carrier operations and would not have been our preference as a permanent assignment, but it gave us a welcome breather. We arrived at Port Royal Bay, Bermuda, on 21 November 1941, and I still recall the pleasant panorama we saw as we pulled into our anchorage: all of the houses were white or pastel with terra-cotta roofs, and they looked delightfully clean in the bright sunlight. Red Everett was ill during most of our Bermuda duty, so Frank Luongo filled in as navigator. Red was soon detached for hospitalization, and Frank became our new executive officer. Hugh Sanders moved up to become chief engineer.
The Sterett’s deck log for 7 December 1941 reads: “0-4—Moored starboard side to USS Wilson, port side to USS Stack, in division nest less USS Lang, alongside USS Altair; order of ships: USS Altair, USS Lang, USS Sterett, USS Stack in Port Royal Bay, Bermuda Islands. No. 3 boiler in use for auxiliary purposes. Ships present: various units of U.S. Atlantic Fleet, district craft, and local British craft.—/s/ P. G. Hayden, Ensign, U.S. Naval Reserve.” It started out as a lovely day, with clear skies and bright sunshine. Not until sometime in the early afternoon did we receive that famous message: “Pearl Harbor under attack by enemy aircraft. This is not a drill.” It was hard to believe, but as radio reports began to pour in we realized with sinking hearts that we had been caught completely by surprise and had absorbed devastating losses. At first we did not want to believe that either—surely when the official damage reports came in we would learn that we had hurt the attackers as much as they had hurt us. But this was not the case. As the gravity of our losses became apparent, we wondered where the enemy would strike next. My thoughts turned to my former shipmates on the Tennessee, for she was among those that had been caught. Hugh Sanders had similar concerns for his friends on the West Virginia. We all wondered how it could have happened and were shocked by the apparent failure of our ships to defend themselves adequately. Above all else came the realization that we were at war. Our lives and our country’s survival were now in constant jeopardy.
The flow of radio traffic during the next twenty-four hours was overwhelming, and I was up all night decoding urgent and priority messages. Some were addressed to us, but most were not. We “broke” many of the latter out of curiosity about what was happening. Classmate Charlie Pond, the communicator on the USS Wilson, helped to supplement the Sterett’s radio surveillance, and between us we were able to piece together a good summary. Of course, Commodore Moon expected to be kept as well informed as any fleet commander, and to the extent that it was possible I believe he was.
Now all of us wished to be back in the Pacific. We were outraged—at the deliberate deception of the Japanese, at the manner in which they had attacked without warning when we were supposedly at peace with them, and at the attitude of the American media, who clamored for full disclosure of the damage done to our ships. Did they not understand that disclosing the extent of our losses would serve the enemy’s interests? We were sad, disgusted, and angry. More than anything else, we wanted to fight.
By 10 December we were on the way to carry out our first wartime mission. Several major units of the French fleet had been bottled up in the harbor of Martinique. The carrier Beam, the light cruiser Emile Bertin, and the training cruiser Jeanne d’Arc had been at Guadeloupe since mid-1940. Concerned that the French might turn these ships over to their German conquerors, Admiral Greenslade had convinced Admiral Roberts of the French fleet to give the United States ninety-six hours notice of any intended ship movement and to allow U.S. Navy surface and air patrols to maintain surveillance within French territorial limits. But amid the confusion resulting from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, reports were received that a French cruiser (the Barfleur) had eluded our patrols and left Martinique. In the afternoon of 10 December the carrier Wasp, the cruisers Brooklyn, Nashville, and Savannah, and the destroyers Lang, Stack, Sterett, and Wilson (Destroyer Division 15) got under way and headed south at high speed for Martinique. The entire ship’s company was keyed up. We knew that the French ships were no match for our task group, but they could give us a pretty fair scrap—and we looked forward to the chance to retaliate. We would rather have fought the Japanese, but since they were not at hand we were perfectly happy to tangle with any available foe. We stripped the Sterett of practically every comfort and heaved overboard anything that could conceivably become a fire hazard. We worked over our guns and fire control equipment, checked our ammunition, positioned it for easy access, prepared the wardroom as a dressing station for the wounded, and briefed our damage control parties one last time. Then we waited.
The night before our arrival we were told to prepare to intercept a breakout by the French ships in the morning. Long before dawn we stood at our battle stations, ready for anything. But daylight brought only serenity. There was no thundering gunfire, no sign of the French ships—just the splendid beauty of Martinique, a lush, green island in a turquoise sea. We waited. We steamed in a giant square. We patrolled the coast, blocking all exits. Finally a message from the Wasp reported that her planes had spotted our quarry, still safe and sound at anchor. I wondered if they had all had a good night’s sleep while we scurried across the Caribbean.
We remained near Martinique for a couple of days, and very little information filtered down to our level. We concluded that our authorities were at work negotiating some kind of deal with the French. At last an agreement was reached: they would demilitarize their ships and hold them at Martinique for the duration of the war. I thought of those French sailors who would be stuck there away from home for all that time. Then it occurred to me that at least they were still alive, and that was a hell of a lot better than the fate of the more than two thousand bluejackets who had been killed at Pearl Harbor. I wasted no more sympathy on the French. More than
ever, we lamented the fact that we were not in the Pacific, where our comrades needed us and where we had a better chance of seeing surface action.
On 21 December we were ordered to accompany a couple of cruisers and an escort carrier back to the States. The flattop was to go into Norfolk, and the other ships were bound for Portland, Maine. We griped about having to continue on to Casco Bay after going all the way to the entrance buoys at Norfolk; but on the morning of the twenty-fourth, just as we were about to turn around and leave the Virginia capes in the distance to spend our Christmas at sea, we received a message from the officer in tactical command (OTC): he wanted us to proceed to Norfolk with him and remain until 26 December. It was the most wonderful Christmas present possible.
We left Norfolk on the twenty-sixth for Casco Bay and Argentia. On 10 January 1942 we departed again in company with the carrier Wasp, the old battleship Texas, the cruisers Tuscaloosa and Wichita, and our division mates Lang, Stack, and Wilson to escort four transports carrying the first contingent of American troops to the United Kingdom. The OTC in this case was Rear Adm. “Ike” Giffen, one of our scrappiest flag officers and the father of “Skip” Giffen, an immensely popular and highly respected classmate. We fully expected that the U-boats would be deployed to ambush such a critical convoy, because the potential propaganda value of a successful attack on our first attempt to send troops to England was tremendous. But we had a quiet trip—either because we had been routed around German sub concentrations or because the enemy simply could not find us. We met our Royal Navy relief escort at a midocean meeting point some three or four hundred miles south of Iceland on 23 January. When our British friends appeared and signaled, “May I have my ships now?” we realized that the Royal Navy escort consisted of two of the old four-stack destroyers we had just given them. We were annoyed: two escorts, even modern ones, were clearly inadequate. The remainder of their trip took them through the most hazardous waters of all—the western approaches to the British Isles. It seemed to us aboard the Sterett that either they were desperately short of escorts or they were not as concerned about our soldiers as we were. In retrospect, I am sure the former was the case. Fortunately, the transports arrived at Londonderry, Ireland, safe and sound a few days later.
Tin Can Sailor Page 4