Tin Can Sailor

by Charles R. Calhoun

  Moosbrugger’s division had operated as a unit since May 1941 and had made night torpedo attacks (using radar control) its specialty. Simpson’s ships were very well acquainted with each other and had often worked together in peacetime and in the Atlantic, but for the most part they had pursued independent assignments in the Pacific. Moosbrugger informed his skippers that he intended to steam up the gulf with his two divisions in separate columns four thousand yards apart, Destroyer Division 12 slightly in the lead, and that his three ships would open fire first using only torpedoes. If they encountered personnel barges, Destroyer Division 15 was to train its guns on them. Aboard the Sterett J. D. explained the battle plan to his officers, the director crew, and the gun captains. It was understood that, if all went well, they would open fire once the torpedoes of their companion division exploded. If by some quirk of fate Destroyer Division 12 failed to hit anything, then the Sterett and her cohorts would let loose with all their weapons.

  I asked Comdr. J. D. Jeffrey (now retired and living in Chevy Chase, Maryland) to write about the Battle of Vella Gulf so as to include a firsthand account of the engagement in this book. I have edited his narrative only slightly and consider it one of the best chronicles ever written about this particular action.

  With little trepidation I told Captain Gould that the gunnery department was as ready as it ever would be. He looked at me knowingly; training drills never gave one practice at dodging enemy shells. Half our crew had only the haziest notion of what went on in a night engagement.

  The ship took position on the left flank of the close formation as it headed west past Savo. It always gave me a queasy feeling to pass Savo going west. In November 1942 the waters between Savo and Guadalcanal marked the gateway to hell, and even to get within sight of them could mean a shooting match like the one the Sterett encountered on 13 November 1942. Referring to the ship after that engagement, one of our sailors told an anonymous reporter, “She’s some baby.” And with wartime censorship, her name became the “Baby.” As we steamed past Savo nine months later, everyone on the “Baby” felt akin to Columbus starting west on an unknown ocean with uncharted dangers waiting to strike.

  The six ships were a beautiful sight in their high-speed formation. The bow waves leaped up and out like bleached streamers on a blue background, while astern the frothy wakes were gradually disintegrating threads that separated us from the safety of well-established bases. To the north we could see the Russel Islands, over which floated lazy, golden cream-puff clouds set in a bright blue sky. Ahead to the west and low on the horizon was an ominous line of storm clouds.

  Dinner was served at 6:00 as usual in the wardroom on 6 August. Very little uneasiness could be felt, but anticipation ran high. The new officers fervently hoped we would run into the whole Japanese Navy; the older and more experienced quietly prayed that any engagement would be short, with a minimum of casualties to our forces.

  After dinner, a shower, and a change into clean clothes, Doc Harry Nyce and I sat in our room talking about everything except what might happen during the coming night. Harry always had a knack for expressing pleasant thoughts at crucial times, a gift that stood him in good stead. Destroyer doctors had an unenviable position. They either died a thousand deaths from the boredom of professional disuse or had so much business that one medico could cope with it only through superhuman effort. Come to think of it, Harry’s middle name was Cope. Aptly named, he was well acquainted with both extremes and handled them with near perfection.

  After Doc left to inspect sick bay and first-aid equipment around the ship for the hundredth time since noon, I picked up a book with the vague feeling that something remained to be done. Naturally, an all-night session meant that food on station would be in order along toward midnight. Varner, the wardroom steward’s mate who was always ready, willing, and able to provide a short-notice snack, soon produced a cheese sandwich and an apple, which with my one remaining candy bar would take care of that need.

  At 8:30 (2030 Navy time) the general alarm startled me right out of my chair. To me, and I suspect to most of the crew as well, it was the most fearfully respected sound in the Navy: an angry tocsin reaching every remote corner of the ship, an incessant and ominous clanging announcing that anything (or maybe everything) was about to happen. All men were being summoned to come forth and do battle. Strapping on my .45 and my life jacket, I stepped out on deck and into the blackest night I ever saw. Through the opaque void I groped upward—more by familiarity than by sight—to the gun director, the highest battle station on the ship, located directly over the bridge. The director was a metal shell, a cube of perhaps fifteen feet, that swiveled in a complete circle and housed the computers, radar, optical rangefinder, communication circuits, and controls that were the electrical-mechanical brain directing the fire of the 5-inch main battery.

  It took perhaps thirty minutes for our eyes to adapt to that gloom—there was no way of marking precisely the passage of time. After thirty minutes it was just as black as when we had first come out. The feeling of claustrophobia that settled on us became understandable when we realized the clouds were not much higher than the mast.

  On schedule at about 10 o’clock, we cleared Gizo Strait (the narrow opening between Vella Lavella and Kolombangara islands) and entered Vella Gulf on a northeasterly course. The charts showed that the gulf did not provide much more operating room than its restrictive entrances. The director crew settled down to the indeterminate wait with which they were so familiar. I speculated for a brief moment, as I had many times before, on the ship’s good fortune in having this crew. There was not one man I would have wanted to replace.

  Chapman, chief fire controlman, was the mainstay in the director. His fire control gear generated the many computations that automatically aimed the guns with precisely the right amount of lead space to compensate for the target’s motion. Chapman alone could spell the difference between defeat and victory. Gibson was Chapman’s first assistant, a highly competent technician in his own right. He operated the radar, which on a night like this would make a target as obvious as if it were in noonday sunlight.

  The optical rangefinder operator waited as a standby. Even though radar served as our eyes at night, the optical operator asked for no more than a candle anywhere on our side of the horizon to get a distance. Our previous operator, Shelton, had phenomenal eye-ranging abilities, proven in battle. When radar first arrived aboard ship, there were serious discussions in the gunnery department about whether unproven radar or proven optics would be the primary ranging device.

  Lt. Max Dolson, assistant gunnery officer (who had reported aboard less than a month before), wore the headphones connected to the intership TBS radio to keep us current on the tactical situation and orders from the flagship. He was prepared to step into any job in the event of a casualty or to lend a hand to any of the men operating special equipment.

  Crouched underneath my feet sat Conn, the inscrutable. As the phone talker between bridge and director, all information and orders from the captain to the gunnery officer passed over his circuit. Tucked away in his corner, he had sat through every engagement the ship had had. I don’t think he had ever seen the enemy or, for that matter, any target we had ever fired at. After many months of observation I decided that Conn was the least curious and most fatalistic man on the ship—but the personification of quiet capability in battle.

  As gunnery officer, with my head stuck through a hole in the top of the metal cube that housed the director, I had the best view on the ship in all directions. My telephone headset connected me to the four gun captains. To correct the gunfire calculations, I shouted instructions to Dolson or Chapman below. To my left (with his head also poked through the top of the director cage) sat Byers, a chief bos’n’s mate and for two and a half years the director trainer. He had trained the director sights (as well as the whole director housing) left or right onto the target through every antiaircraft action as well as the night surface engagement at Savo Islan
d. There could not have been a better man for the job in the entire U.S. Navy. Starr was stationed next to Byers, and with his head also stuck through the top of the director cage (irreverently referred to by some as our three-holer). As director pointer, he had been through the same battles as Byers and was equally expert in his job. Tonight he would ensure that the sights remained on target in the vertical plane.

  These were the men within my immediate sight and hearing. I could hear the voices and the occasional laughs of the other men whose secondary positions made them no less important to the crew. Everyone had his job, and one man’s failure to perform his well could render useless the efforts of all. This crew had worked together for so long that its teamwork was flawless.

  After an hour, talk became very desultory. Chapman, usually quiet, chose to remain so. Max and Conn were waiting for information over their headphones and could not risk missing it the first time it was sent. Gibson figured that if he kept his attention riveted on the radar it would not act up. Starr eyeballed the surrounding gloom, ever on the alert. Only Byers seemed to be in a talkative mood, and his endless supply of sea stories helped to keep down our rising apprehension.

  Once we cleared the strait the three destroyers of the first division (the Dunlap, Craven, and Maury) pulled ahead. They were poised to deliver a torpedo attack as soon as they spotted their quarry. The second division (the Lang, Sterett, and Stack) was on the starboard quarter of Moosbrugger’s division. Of course, all ships were at general quarters, with guns manned and ready. A heavy mist started to fall. I was barely able to make out the phosphorescent wakes of the first division before; now they were swallowed up by that wall of nothingness into which they had disappeared.

  Shortly after 2330, the thought of the cheese sandwich became overpowering. What was the sense of waiting? I carefully unwrapped it and bit into it—once. That must have been the signal. The news that came over all the phone circuits almost simultaneously made food extraneous: “Four targets appearing around point of land. Range twenty-two thousand yards.” I tossed the remainder of the sandwich over the side.

  All eyes strained into the night. The rain and mist made binoculars useless, but without them the wind and moisture lashed our eyes with just as detrimental an effect. We were blind in that inky blackness—blind physically but not electronically, thanks to radar. With our guns trained out, we could open fire with every assurance of hitting our target as soon as Chapman reported, “Ready.”

  The rapidity with which two groups of ships can close on each other head-on at 30 knots is phenomenal. “First division preparing to fire torpedoes,” Dolson reported. And then in the next breath, “First division has fired torpedoes.”

  No one could describe how slowly time elapsed after those fish were fired. How much longer must it have seemed to the men who fired them? After what was probably only a minute I was sure they had missed. But still we waited. Why didn’t the captain give the word to open fire? Finally, our guns ready and locked on target, I requested permission to open fire. The request was not answered—it did not have to be. After what we later learned was only four minutes, the torpedoes struck home. Two simultaneous red flashes tore into the night. The lead enemy ship, a destroyer, sank almost immediately. The second was a cruiser that burst into brilliant flame.

  How to describe the feeling? It was not a feeling at all, but rather a lack of feeling. I stood there paralyzed, unable to move or speak or even to think. My eyes were hypnotized by the sight. Time had lost all meaning. How many seconds the paralysis lasted made no difference. Everyone was affected in the same way. Then reality asserted itself, and we awoke completely. It seemed as if we had all been injected with some stimulant that gave us unlimited energy and confidence. Our guns roared.

  At fairly close range, we poured perhaps fifteen salvos into the hulk of that second ship. Each salvo caused further damage and started new fires. When it seemed that the target could no longer stay afloat, we checked fire to catch our breath. Two targets were accounted for. Byers and I spotted the third at the same time, but he coupled perception with action and swung the director sights around. It was a destroyer, very foolishly hugging the flames of the burning target. Obviously, there was never a more bewildered or confused destroyer in any navy at any time. She was traveling at about 5 knots with all guns still trained in and no signs of damage. She was not just silhouetted: she was lit up like a Christmas tree under a dozen spotlights.

  Our first ranging salvo, fired in seconds, fell slightly ahead of the target, but the second caught her squarely amidships. I gasped. The ship virtually disintegrated before our eyes as a gigantic column of flame rose into the air. There was only one explosion. A part of her stern, the last visible trace of the ship, went under as a subsequent salvo exploded above it.

  We checked fire. An exultant feeling pervaded the ship. In not more than fifteen seconds the remotest snipe buried in the depths of the engine spaces heard about “our destroyer.” The engineers went through hell submerged in their small hot spaces, hearing the reverberation of guns high above but never seeing where the shots landed, never watching the shots aimed at us, and never knowing when a shell would burst upon them and scatter its steel fragments, break deadly steam pipes, or let in a rush of seawater that might trap them inescapably. Now it all seemed worthwhile.

  Dolson started to chuckle—obviously some amusing messages were coming in over the intership radio. He relayed them in snatches. “The division commander (Commander Simpson, aboard the Lang) compliments us on the shooting. . . . Now he’s telling the Stack to get hot and start shooting at something. . . . The Stack says that they were getting ready to shoot at that can, but before they could get their sights on it we’d sunk it!” Even Chapman loosened up after that one.

  Throughout the action the ship had been making high-speed turns. “How’s the water on gun four?” I asked, knowing that every turn resulted in waves that practically washed the number four gun crew over the side. Number four was the gun closest to the water and unprotected by any shield. “Not bad on the gun,” replied Keefe, the gun captain, “but the boys in the lower handling room report no bottom at twenty-five.” His absurdity, couched in the phraseology of the leadsman, brought a laugh but was also high praise for his men below, who battled cascades of water while continuing to send up ammunition.

  The lull in the battle stretched on. The information coming over the intership radio was vague, but we gathered that the first division had accounted for the fourth ship, another destroyer. [The fourth ship, the Japanese destroyer Shigure, turned tail and outran her pursuers to Bougainville.] Standing precariously on an exposed exterior ladder, Chief Gunner’s Mate Hodge stuck his head over the side of the gun director to report that the number one gun had jammed and would be out of action indefinitely. The number three gun had also jammed during the shooting, but it was now operable.

  Scarcely had Hodge disappeared down the ladder when an unrecognizable target appeared. Silhouetted against the burning oil, it looked like a barge with a barn-like structure on it. This target was never explained or identified, but it was clearly an enemy craft. We opened fire, and it exploded almost instantly; perhaps it had carried ammunition.

  Burning oil floated on the water and cast a flickering orange glow through the drizzle onto our companion ships. As we edged toward the flames, an uneasy feeling slowly invaded my consciousness. Almost inaudible at first, there came a sound that soon grew louder. The cries of what must have been hundreds of men in the water will always haunt me and everyone who heard them. We passed through a large group before we were ordered to stop. But as we cautiously backed down to where they were, silence prevailed. Undoubtedly they had recognized our ships as enemies. Their silence may have been an act of fanatical hara-kiri or just common sense, but clearly they had no wish to be picked up.

  The division commander issued orders to take prisoners no matter how long it might take. Not one was taken. We were all uncomfortable about lying dead in the water, an ea
sy target for any lurking sub. After about twenty minutes he realized the futility of attempting to take prisoners, and we rejoined the first division. The story ran rampant that while we were dead in the water some men had thrown over lines to which they attached flashlights for luring the Japanese. After subsequent research, I was able to discount completely the rumor that any such atrocities were committed.

  The six ships retired in column at 30 knots. Turning southward after we rounded the northern tip of Kolombangara Island, we secured from general quarters. For seven hours we had been at battle stations, but no one seemed tired. Smiles of jubilation lit the faces of all—men slapped each other on the back. I descended to the bridge, where Captain Gould and I congratulated each other briefly. It was surely one of the most satisfying moments of his naval career.

  A few minutes later I sat in the wardroom with the best-tasting cup of coffee ever poured when Harry Nyce came in, wearing the original mile-wide grin. “Well, Jay, you did it!” Anytime he congratulated the gunnery department it was high praise indeed. I laughed, remembering a less than successful target-practice session the previous spring when Harry, with great tact, referred to our inability “to hit the side of a barn.”

  The next morning under gray skies six destroyers entered Tulagi harbor. They seemed a little wet and bedraggled, but on every masthead was two-blocked a broom—symbol of a clean sweep of Vella Gulf.

  Thus ended the Sterett’s second nighttime surface battle—but what a difference there was between the two. At the Third Battle of Savo Island, the ship was hit by eleven shells (including three 14-inch projectiles) and suffered fifty-five casualties: twenty-eight crew members were killed, four were reported missing, thirteen were critically wounded, and ten received minor injuries. At Vella Gulf, the Sterett was not even scratched. In the first engagement, the U.S. force lost four destroyers and two cruisers, and another three destroyers and two cruisers took severe punishment. In the second, no harm came to any U.S. ship. In both cases, significant damage was inflicted on the enemy, and the main objectives of our forces were achieved. While the two battles took place in radically different military contexts, the single factor that appears to have played a critical role in the Vella Gulf victory was the existence of a well-conceived plan of action—one that, according to E. B. Potter’s excellent biography, Admiral Arleigh Burke, was drawn up days in advance and made available to Commander Moosbrugger. Like Rear Admiral Callaghan in the Third Battle of Savo Island, Moosbrugger had just arrived and assumed command on the eve of the action. If there was a plan at Savo, it certainly was not apparent to us in the critical opening stages of the battle—and I have seen no evidence in the fifty years since to indicate that one did in fact exist. On the other hand, at Vella Gulf Capt. Arleigh Burke was the commander of Destroyer Division 12 until 3 August, when he was relieved by Commander Moosbrugger and departed by air to take the helm of Destroyer Squadron 12. Burke developed the two-pronged attack plan and left it behind for the new commander to use when the appropriate time came. Moosbrugger used it, and it worked brilliantly—how unfortunate that no one thought to prepare for the night action of 13 November 1942 in a similar fashion.