Sentinels of Fire

by P. T. Deutermann

  “The main task force know this is coming?”

  “Yes, sir, as soon as we first saw ’em. Extra CAP are being launched, and our own guys are ten miles from first intercept.”

  “Watch the surface search for low-fliers,” I said. “Don’t fixate on that big gaggle unless it turns our way.”

  Jimmy nodded. “Already on it,” he said. He looked around briefly and then asked me, “Didn’t happen, did it?”

  I sighed and shook my head. “Talk later” was all I could muster.

  Jimmy grunted and moved away toward his GQ station next to the dead-reckoning tracer table.

  “Combat, Bridge. LSMR is away to starboard. Coming to fifteen knots.”

  I nodded at Jimmy, who acknowledged the message on the bitch-box. Then I went back out to the bridge. As I stepped out, the bitch-box came up with a big surprise.

  “Bridge, Sonar. We have a possible sonar contact, bearing three four zero true, range fifteen hundred yards.”

  What?

  I moved swiftly to the bitch-box. “Echo quality?” I asked.

  “Sharp, slight up-Doppler, XO. Looks good.”

  “Bridge, Combat. Intermittent radar contact, three four three true, eighteen hundred yards.”

  “Low-flier?”

  “No, sir, surface—it’s gone now.”

  Periscope, I thought. Move!

  “Left full rudder, all ahead flank, emergency!” I yelled, startling the helmsman and lee helmsman, but not so much that they didn’t respond. The helmsman almost torqued the brass helm off its axle. The lee helmsman grabbed the two brass engine-order telegraph handles and pushed them all the way forward to flank ahead, then all the way back to full astern, and then again all the way to flank ahead in a shower of bells. The engineers down below understood that sudden flank speed command and spun the big steam admission valves. Malloy’s hull shook with a rumble from astern as the screws dug in and our one and one-half stacks spat out plumes of smoke.

  By issuing conning orders, I had automatically assumed the conn. “Steady three four zero,” I ordered. “Combat, tell Sonar to prepare for urgent depth-charge attack. Set depth two hundred fifty feet.”

  “Two five oh feet, Combat, aye!”

  We waited for a very long sixty seconds as Malloy accelerated. Then the report I’d been expecting came, “Bridge, Sonar, torpedo noise spokes, two niner zero relative.”

  The ship was deep into a left turn, which should mean those torpedoes would miss astern. Having fired, the Jap sub would be diving hard by now and also turning away. He knew exactly what we would do next. Our sudden maneuver would save us, but the hull and propeller noise of the flank bell would make the sonar useless. We’d have to wing it.

  “Slow to fifteen knots. Combat, take us in on your best EP and drop. Tell the boss what we’ve got.”

  “Drop on best estimated position, Combat, aye,” Jimmy replied.

  “Torpedo noise spokes are null-Doppler,” Sonar reported. Then, “Torpedo noise spokes are down Doppler.” Good news: Down-Doppler meant they were going away. Our maneuver had worked. A moment later, two lookouts reported seeing wakes passing behind us. I, along with the rest of the bridge crew, blew out a long breath. Then I remembered that LSMR. Where exactly was—

  A thunderous explosion ripped the afternoon air from about a half-mile on our starboard quarter. I ran out to the starboard bridge wing in time to see the fireball that had been the LSMR, loaded to the gills as she was with five-inch rockets—and Malloy’s casualties—turn into a red and black ball of fire and smoke from which a few dozen shore-bombardment rockets ripple-fired in all directions. As the huge cloud expanded, there was nothing to be seen of the LSMR. We all stared in awe, shocked by the suddenness of it and the realization that we’d just lost more shipmates.

  “Bridge, Combat. Rolling the pattern.”

  I shook myself out of my dry-mouthed trance and back to the present menace. Malloy ran over the best estimated position of the Jap sub and began to roll multiple depth charges off our fantail. The chances of getting the sub were minimal, but it was worth a try, if only to make the bastards go deep and stay deep now that we were hurling five-hundred-pound depth bombs into the sea. I ordered CIC and sonar control to go back into search mode. As long as there were no kamis coming, we’d work this problem instead. The familiar eruptions began astern, each one kicking the ship in the keel, even at two hundred fifty feet.

  A sub, I thought. A goddamned sub. We’d all been so focused on the terror from the skies that we’d forgotten all about Jap subs. I told Combat again to get a report out that we had a Jap sub in the picket area, and that the LSMR was gone. As CIC and the sonar team worked together, the OOD followed course and speed recommendations from Combat, while the sonarmen in the back corner of CIC searched the scope for their elusive prey through all the underwater chaos created by our own depth-charge attack and sudden maneuvers.

  “No echoes,” Sonar reported. As expected.

  I called Combat. “Expanding square search around the datum, but stay within three miles of our picket station.” As much as I would have loved to kill a Jap sub, the bosses had made it clear: You’re an early warning radar picket ship; remain on station. Period.

  We settled into the antisubmarine search routine. I kept the ship doing an expanding square sonar search at a relatively quiet speed: going east for a thousand yards, then north for fifteen hundred yards, then west for two thousand yards, and so on. At six thousand yards from datum, we’d reverse it and collapse the square back to our picket station. On a radar screen looking out fifty miles, three miles of ship’s motion were inconsequential. Plus, the search meant we were never on a straight course for more than a few minutes.

  I stayed on the bridge for the first hour. If we picked the sub up on sonar, we’d drive in and conduct a second depth-charge attack. Chances were, however, that the sub, having scored a kill, would go deep and then creep the hell out of there, lie low for a while, and then try his luck against another one of the picket ships. Just to keep him interested, however, I had the fantail crew roll two or three depth charges at random points and depth settings along the search pattern.

  I decided this would be a good time to talk to the captain. The guns were silent, and there was no immediate threat that we knew about, or could find. I told Jimmy Enright I was going below. He didn’t ask why, and I didn’t say why.

  I tried for some coffee as I went through the wardroom, but the pot was empty. I stepped into the forward passageway and knocked on the skipper’s door.

  “XO,” he said as I stepped into his cabin. “Quite a day, wasn’t it. Just when you think the Jap navy can’t do that, they appear. Like at Pearl.”

  “We lost the LSMR,” I said, “and more of our people, too.”

  He paled at that news. I wondered if he’d been in here for the whole submarine incident or if he’d gone walkabout topside again.

  “I didn’t know that,” he said. “I heard the depth charges, listened to the 1JS circuit, but no, I didn’t know that.” He hung his head for a minute. I suspected he had just realized that he could have been aboard that LSMR. “What happened to the air raid?” he asked.

  “Went to Okinawa,” I said. “We haven’t heard what happened yet.”

  “Well, besides eavesdropping on the 1JS, I went up to Combat for a while. Gave ’em the shush signal and just sat in a corner. Looked like an effective piece of teamwork to me.”

  “We probably scared that sub with the urgent attack, but I don’t think we did any more than that. The water conditions are lousy out here for sonar.”

  There was a knock on the door, and then Doc Walker came in.

  “XO,” he said. “You sent for me, sir?”

  I looked at the captain. He looked back at me and then at the doc. “We both did,” he said. I gave a sigh of relief and told Doc to come in.

  * * *

  By sundown, there had been no more air raids or sub contacts. We’d run through the best estimated po
sition of the LSMR and found nothing but a small diesel oil slick and a few shattered wooden pallets. No bodies, no survivors. Jap torpedoes were still the most lethal weapons in the war at sea. One full ton of high explosive, running at over fifty miles an hour. They didn’t just hit a ship—they punched into her hull, then went off, breaking her back.

  What had they been thinking down there in the AOA, I wondered, sending up a fully loaded LSMR to the picket line? Then I remembered—the LSMRs down in the amphibious objective area ran around fully loaded as a matter of ready routine. That was why they were there. When the Marines or Army ground-pounders needed precision artillery support, they called their artillery battalion. If they weren’t available, they called a destroyer, which could fire with pinpoint accuracy as long as there was a spotter out there in the weeds to correct the fall of shot. When they got themselves backed into deep shit and needed a barrage covering everything in front of them, they called an LSMR. They didn’t want to hear Wait one, I need to go rearm.

  Face it, I thought: Nowhere out here was safe until all the kamis had been destroyed. The initial fleet intel reports had estimated a few hundred operational Jap planes left on Formosa and Kyushu, the southernmost home island. Someone had failed to tell the Japs. There seemed to be an endless supply of the damned things. Everyone had talked of Okinawa as the last stepping-stone before the big invasion. It was turning out to be more like a tombstone.

  We set the modified GQ watches and fed the crew as full darkness fell. I got the word out that I wanted the department heads in the wardroom right after eight o’clock reports. Then I went to find the captain. He was still in his inport cabin, actually looking rested and just finishing up his evening meal.

  “XO,” he said, “I’ve just taken a handful of little blue pills the doc gave me. From what he told me, I’m going to go night-night for a while.”

  You’re going night-night for about twenty-four hours, I thought, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “It’s full dark outside, so there shouldn’t be any kamikazes.”

  “What’s our fuel?” he asked.

  I didn’t know. Once again, he’d come up with a question that I should have had the answer to at all times. Destroyers burned oil at a prodigious rate. It was our responsibility to tell our bosses when we got to 50 percent fuel onboard. They’d either send an oiler to us or call us down to the AOA to refuel by barge.

  “I’ll find out, sir,” I had to admit. That was the old Naval Academy response for situations where a plebe had no idea of what the correct answer was.

  “Fifty-two percent,” he said with a weary smile, “but I cheated. I just called the snipe.”

  I sighed. “I should have known that,” I said.

  “You will, XO,” he said. “Once I’m gone.”

  “You’re going to rest for a day or so,” I said. “Then you’re coming back topside to run this show.”

  He gave me a strange look. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not. In the meantime, get some black oil lined up.” He yawned, then smiled again. “That’s an order, by the way.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” I said, bracing up like a plebe and putting a little drama into it. He smiled again, but there was also some sadness there. He knew.

  “You’ve got to get word to Commodore Van Arnhem,” he said. “CO incapacitated, XO assuming temporary command. Something like that.”

  “How will he react to that?” I asked.

  “Dutch Van Arnhem is one of the good guys,” the captain said. “Longtime tin can sailor, comes across as really stern and gruff, but he’s a kind man at heart and smarter than most people realize. Might explain why he’s a commodore, what?”

  “Why isn’t he up here with his squadron?”

  “Because Spruance’s staff thought he’d be more useful at KR, coordinating logistical support for his destroyers. Besides, what would he do up here that individual COs aren’t already doing?”

  I wouldn’t mind having him here right now, I thought. The captain yawned again, and I took my leave.

  I met with the department heads in the wardroom at 1945. The ship was still conducting the expanding square search, but more for the purpose of giving the Combat team something to do. The Freddies maintained their long-range air search around the clock, but the rest of the troops in Combat didn’t have much to do because we all knew the kamis didn’t come at night. Not yet, anyway. Two of the big-decks down near Okinawa had some of the new, radar-equipped night-fighters on board, but so far they hadn’t been launched. If the Japs surprised us with night missions, we’d surprise them back.

  I briefed the department heads on the captain’s status and the fact that he’d been given some sedatives. I asked Jimmy Enright if he’d seen the skipper in CIC during the antisubmarine action. He looked surprised. “No, sir. Absolutely not.”

  “He said he went up there.”

  “XO, that space is twenty by thirty-six, without all the gear and the whole GQ team. I can guarantee that he did not come into Combat this afternoon.”

  Which meant that either he thought he had gone up there, or he was trying to fool me into thinking he wasn’t that far out of whack. Either way … I didn’t have to say any of that out loud—they all understood.

  “XO,” Jimmy said, “it’s time, especially if he’s been sedated by the doc. I recommend you formally relieve him. I recommend we get a message off to the commodore, ask to go down to the anchorage at Kerama Retto for fuel, and—”

  “You recommend?” I snapped. “If we’d put him on the LSMR today, like you recommended, he’d be dead like the rest of them.”

  The wardroom went quiet. The four department heads began to study the green felt tablecloth in front of them. I hadn’t meant to let fly like that. These four officers were my only allies. Two of them wanted me to become captain, two of them wanted to wait and see what happened, but they were all still fully supporting my efforts to grapple with the problem. It didn’t help that the first two were probably right. Even the captain had told me to do that.

  “I apologize for that, Jimmy,” I said. “I was out of line.”

  “Hard to argue your point, though, XO,” he said ruefully, “but I understand your frustration. So what the hell are we gonna do?”

  “Mario,” I said, “are we at or close to fifty percent fuel?”

  “Close as dammit, XO.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Jimmy, get a fuel request off to CTF 58. Let’s secure from anti-submarine stations. It’s dark as a well-digger’s ass out there tonight, so I doubt we still have a sub problem. You reported both the sub contact and what happened to the LSMR?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Any reaction?”

  “Roger, out.”

  Roger, out meant message received, nothing more, nothing less. Thank you for your interest in fleet defense. Now go away. They must have had a busy day down around Okinawa today, I thought. I was beginning to wonder if we were ever going to take that bloody island. And then Japan itself? Would this goddamned war ever end? What was wrong with these people? Had the whole war been all about just killing Americans?

  “Don’t request to leave station,” I said. “Just send a fuel request. If they send a tanker up here, then they can refuel all the rest of the pickets, too.”

  “If we have to go down there, then…?”

  “I’ll deal with that when the time comes. Right now, I need a cigarette and some fresh air. I’m going topside.”

  “You don’t smoke, XO,” Marty said, ignoring the incongruity of a cigarette and fresh air.

  “Doesn’t mean I couldn’t use one right about now. Find the doc; tell him to find me.”

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later I was standing next to the captain’s chair on the bridge. This night was seriously dark. We’d stopped pretending to look for the Jap sub and had resumed a broad weave through the still calm waters north of Okinawa. The bedspring radar array ground away into the night, looking for Japs. The ship
was semi-buttoned-up, with enough hatches open to let air get below. Despite that relaxation, we still had two of the three five-inch mounts fully manned up with sleeping gun crews, and the same for the two quad forty-millimeter mounts aft. The galley had put the word out that there would be soup and horsecock sandwiches—the crew’s quaint sobriquet for bologna—available all night. The Chop knew that right now, coffee and food were his main responsibilities up here on the picket line.

  I wanted to climb into the captain’s chair, but naval etiquette was quite firm about that: only the captain got to sit on the bridge. Everyone else stood. That’s why they were called watch standers. Besides, I would have been asleep in about thirty seconds. Still, it was tempting.

  “XO?” The chief corpsman had materialized beside me.

  “Doc,” I said. “How are our wounded?”

  “Hurting,” he said. “The four most serious—” He stopped. There was nothing more to be said. The four most serious were communing with the fishes. I motioned that we needed to go out onto the bridge wing to talk privately.

  “You saw him,” I said. “What’s your take?”

  “Not qualified to give one, XO,” he said. “I’m a hospital corpsman, not a doctor.”

  “Don’t go all sea-lawyerish on me, Chief,” I said.

  He smiled in the darkness. “Okay,” he said. “He’s gone around the bend. You left, and we talked for a while after I gave him the injection.”

  “The injection? He said pills.”

  “See?” the chief asked. “You know his record?”

  “The Quincy at Savo, then Juneau. Yeah, I know it.”

  “He should never have been sent to command. I’ve been a CPO for eight years. As the ship’s doc, I work for the XO, but I talk to the CO. Two different animals, with two very different jobs. You trying to make a decision here, XO?”

  “I surely am, Doc.”

  “Make it, then. I’ll back you up. He’s lost it. I love the guy, but he’s lost it, and sunrise is only seven hours away.”