Down to the Sea Page 4

  Now, eight months after that near miss and with a new skipper in command, Lieutenant Commander Peter H. Horn, all hands aboard Monaghan knew the torpedo run on the enemy cruisers was a suicide mission. In all likelihood, they would be blown out of the water before reaching torpedo range. At best, they would provide a diversion, their deaths serving as a delaying action.

  In the engine room, the chief engineer went down the line of men who worked under him, shaking their hands. “I should have sent you to diesel school,” the chief told Machinist’s Mate 1st Class Ernest Stahlberg. Had he done so, they both knew, Stahlberg would have been “in the States right now.”

  The chief and others aboard ship—from mess cooks to gun crews—were saying their goodbyes. They all figured they were about to die one way or the other, either after Monaghan received a hit from an enemy cruiser or when they abandoned ship in freezing seas, where they would last only minutes before hypothermia set in. “We were goners,” Candelaria remembered.

  As the destroyers bore in, the Japanese ships fired nonstop at them, “smothering them with splashes” from near misses. To observers on the other U.S. ships, it “seemed impossible” that the three destroyers would survive.

  Topside on Monaghan, Seaman 1st Class Joseph Guio Jr., of Holliday’s Cove, West Virginia—25 miles west of Pittsburgh—would not have disagreed with the prevailing pessimism. Having turned twenty-five a week earlier, Guio was older than many of his shipmates. A husky six-footer, Guio had worked in the steel industry since high school. Although defense industry deferments were available to steelworkers, Guio had walked into a Navy recruiting office three months after Pearl Harbor and signed up. After boot camp, he went to gunnery school in Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Illinois, graduating with a final mark of 93.2 (out of 100). His battle station was a forward 5-inch deck gun. It was from there Guio and the other dozen men in his gun crew were slinging everything they had at the charging enemy ships—fifteen 55-pound rounds per minute—and “boy, what a sight” Guio had as the opposing forces took dead aim on each other like Dodge City gunslingers.

  The Japanese flagship, the heavy cruiser Nachi, received several direct hits from the “outstandingly valiant” American destroyers, one of which, Bailey, received two hits that killed several men and cut all electrical power. The destroyers still had some distance to cover under the blistering enemy fire before moving into optimal range to release their torpedoes. Then there occurred “what seemed almost a miracle.” In the face of the onrushing destroyers, the Japanese force turned to a new course, breaking off the action.* Soon after, Salt Lake City had her boilers back on line, and the U.S. ships headed for the safety of Dutch Harbor, midway up the Aleutians.

  That morning’s four-hour engagement would be the last surface battle of the war between naval forces without the use of air power or submarines.

  More noteworthy to the crew of Monaghan was the beer party at Dutch Harbor hosted by Salt Lake City for the men of the three destroyers who had bravely put everything on the line to protect the damaged cruiser. It lasted all day and well into the night, providing a break in the war they would all remember. There were “no fights, nothing” like the brawls that the sailors often engaged in when they drank. “Just having a good time,” Candelaria recalled, “because we’d been goners but didn’t die.”

  Three

  On August 7, 1942, the First Marine Division landed at Guadalcanal, a little-known island in the Solomons that would be in the news for the next six months as the scene of a fierce fight to keep the Japanese from building an air base that could threaten shipping between the United States and Australia.

  The early morning landings went surprisingly smoothly given that they were “the first amphibious operation undertaken by the United States since 1898.” The only opposition came from labor troops and engineers engaged in airfield construction. Although initially “surprised and overwhelmed” by the invasion, the Japanese would not take long to send in reinforcements and counterattack, beginning the long campaign for Guadalcanal that would eventually be considered one of the turning points of the war in the Pacific.*

  On D-Day of the first U.S. offensive against the Japanese, Hull was part of a protective screen of warships covering fifteen transports as they disgorged troops into landing craft. An hour into the operation, a large formation of enemy planes appeared at 10,000 feet and began bombing the invasion force. As U.S. carrier-based fighters ferociously engaged the Japanese aircraft overhead, Hull and other warships joined the fray with guns blazing. An hour and a half later, another swarm of enemy bombers attacked, hitting the destroyer Mugford (DD-389), killing eighteen men and wounding seventeen. Numerous enemy planes were shot down by fierce antiaircraft fire. At 7:15 P.M., Hull’s crew finally was allowed to secure from battle stations, which they had been at for a numbing eighteen hours.

  Offshore, the night passed quietly, but everyone expected an all-out enemy air strike the next day. Shortly after sunrise, Hull’s sailors heard the amplified oooga-oooga-oooga of the general alarm reverberate throughout the ship, calling them to battle, followed by “All hands man your battle stations!” Men ran from wherever they were—in their bunks, taking showers, eating breakfast—some dressing along the way. What could have been chaotic with 200 men scrambling to different parts of the ship was made manageable by a rule to ensure they did not all run into each other: those going forward and up took the starboard side, and those heading aft and down went on the port side.

  At 10:40 A.M., a radio dispatch warned that many aircraft were en route from Rabaul in New Guinea, the major Japanese stronghold in the region. As Hull’s helmeted gun crews waited for targets to appear overhead, the destroyer crisscrossed the harbor at varying speeds. Shortly before noon, a swarm of enemy aircraft swooped down in a coordinated assault on the invasion force, utilizing bombs, torpedoes, and cannon fire. One low-flying plane lined up on Hull and released its torpedo, which became hung up at one end. The torpedo dangled precariously as the plane zoomed past. Hull’s gunners pumped a salvo of shells into the plane as it went by, and the torpedo fell away. Both plane and torpedo careened into the transport George F. Elliott (AP-13), exploding in a fireball.

  In quick order Hull’s well-trained gunners splashed two more aircraft. A strafing run by an enemy plane landed hits on the destroyer’s bridge and upper decks, and falling shrapnel made “various holes topside.” Six men were wounded during the air strike, two seriously; one sailor lost an arm at the elbow in a “traumatic amputation,” and another lost part of one hand.

  A piece of shrapnel found deck gun captain Ray Schultz, who since Pearl Harbor had ceased his one-man campaign to get kicked out of the Navy, accepting that he was “in for the duration.” He squeezed a shard of red-hot metal from the lump it had raised in his arm, and kept his crew firing away. (Later, he would drill a hole in the shrapnel and put it on a key chain as a souvenir.)

  When the attack ended, Hull went alongside George F. Elliott to assist. Schultz was among the damage-control party that boarded the transport and helped put out a fire in the engine room. Topside, Schultz told Elliott’s commanding officer that there appeared to be a fire in the number two hole.

  “What makes you think so?” asked the officer.

  “There’s smoke coming out of your ventilators,” Schultz said.

  The CO decided that smoke from the old fire must still be circulating through the ship’s ventilation system.

  Hull’s men departed. Thirty minutes after the destroyer pulled away, a distress call came from Elliott asking for assistance in extinguishing a fire in the number two hole. Hull quickly returned and provided extra hoses, water, and men to the effort, but it was too late. The transport had to be abandoned, and her crew was received aboard Hull.

  As midnight approached, Hull was ordered to sink the gutted transport lying close in to shore. Over the span of an hour the destroyer fired four torpedoes, but all missed their target. On Hull’s bridge there had been an ongoing spat bet
ween the torpedo officer and his chief about how to operate the new torpedo directional system. The officer kept winning the argument, but the torpedoes kept missing. Shortly after one torpedo passed under the transport, a truck parked on the beach behind Elliott blew sky-high. Word spread among Hull’s crew that their torpedomen had “sunk a truck.” (So unsatisfactory was their performance against the stationary target, the torpedo officer and chief were soon transferred off Hull.) At sunrise, deck gunners had their turn and punched several holes in Elliott at the waterline. The gunners had another opportunity to prove their prowess that afternoon when they plummeted a schooner believed to be a liaison vessel for Japanese ground forces, although much to their surprise they were soon to discover that the small craft was already sitting on the shallow bottom of a lagoon, having been sunk earlier.

  Thereafter forming up with a group of empty transports, Hull departed Guadalcanal waters early evening, although her crew had not seen the last of the Solomons. In September Hull returned thrice to the waters off Guadalcanal, escorting supply ships and conducting patrols to interdict the flow of reinforcements and supplies to the enemy garrison. Once, after other U.S. ships departed, Hull was ordered to stay behind and provide daytime bombardment for the Marines ashore, and several times “ran Japs off the hills” overlooking contested Henderson Field. For a week, Hull sat alone in the harbor—keeping a “short chain” on the anchor for a quick getaway if necessary. When a major Japanese naval force—consisting of two battleships, several cruisers, and a dozen destroyers—approached offshore to shell Henderson Field, Hull, “no match” for the enemy fleet, found deep water only 50 feet from shore and allowed “the trees to hide her mast.” After a week, with “nothing to eat but rice and beans,” Hull was relieved of her “artillery duty.”

  During a layover in Pearl Harbor, Hull picked up a handful of new crew members, including Seaman 1st Class Michael Franchak, twenty-three, of Jermyn, Pennsylvania, a small ethnic community where daily life centered around the local coal mines and the Russian Orthodox Church. Just shy of six feet and solidly built, Franchak was one of nine children born to immigrants from Galicia, Spain. He had quit high school after his second year and worked locally to help support his family. He eventually moved to New York City, where several of his siblings and friends had relocated, and found work behind a soda fountain and as a dishwasher. When war broke out, he followed two brothers into the Navy instead of waiting to be drafted into the Army.

  Before being assigned to Hull—where his shipmates soon shortened his name to “Frenchy”—Franchak attended fire-control school upon graduation from boot camp, both at Great Lakes Naval Training Station. Fire-control men operated the primitive computer that targeted a ship’s guns, and it was from this group of technically trained personnel that the Navy helped fill the ranks of a new technical rating to operate a new piece of equipment being installed on more ships in the fleet: radar.* Franchak eventually became a radarman after the high school dropout worked hard to pass the training course alongside classmates with more education, including some with college degrees.

  The day after Franchak reported aboard, Hull went to sea. Several days later—after day and night maneuvers and gunnery practice—they put in at picturesque Lautoka in the Fiji chain. Most of the excitement surrounding Franchak’s first liberty in the tropics involved watching gaming cocks fighting to the death in the street while locals cheered. That, and natives scaling trees and tossing down fruit to the sailors. Much to the disappointment of Franchak and his shipmates, the only available beer was “British and warm.”

  Hull joined the battleship Colorado (BB-45) in the vicinity of Fiji and the New Hebrides, helping protect the sea routes to Australia and New Zealand used by Allied shipping. In January 1943, Hull escorted a convoy to San Francisco and then entered Mare Island Navy Yard for repairs and alterations, including removing the plate-glass bridge windows and replacing them with portholes (reduced visibility in exchange for increased protection) as well as the installation of radar and sonar gear.

  Although Hull’s crew had anticipated a return to the South Pacific, it wasn’t long before they got the impression they were headed elsewhere. One piece at a time, they were issued foul-weather gear: heavy peacoats, wool-lined gloves, fur-lined boots, and watch caps. Destroyer duty in the balmy Pacific was considered part of the “dungaree Navy”—smaller ships that did away with much of the ceremony of larger ships, such as wearing white (summer) or blue (winter) uniforms, inspections, and constant saluting.* On and off duty, Hull’s men were accustomed to spending their days dressed casually in denim trousers and white T-shirts or blue chambray shirts.

  Sonarman 2nd Class Pat Douhan, twenty, of Fresno, California, a recent addition to Hull’s crew, conjectured with his shipmates that the new issues meant they were “headed up north somewhere.” To their amazement, they were even given permission to grow beards as further protection from the cold. Guys who joked about going to the North Pole were closer to the truth than they knew.

  Most members of Douhan’s October 1942 boot camp company in San Diego went directly to the fleet to help ease the Navy’s shipboard manpower shortage. Tall and thin, Douhan, who showed the world the twinkling eyes of an Irishman with the gift of good humor, was one of only a few in his company to be sent to two advanced schools before receiving a fleet assignment. A review of his records showed that Douhan, who had attended Salinas Junior College for two years, was working on a seismographic crew for Shell Oil when he enlisted. “You’re going to sound school,” he was told. During fifteen weeks of training, he had learned how to operate and maintain shipboard sonar.*

  The retaking of Attu and Kiska (less than 200 miles apart)—anticipated since the day in June 1942 when the Japanese invaded the sparsely populated Aleutians, where there had been no U.S. military presence—was finally at hand after giving way to higher-priority operations elsewhere in the sprawling Pacific. Attu would come first, it was decided, because it lay on the westward side of the Aleutians and would put U.S. forces in position to block any reinforcements from Japan headed for Kiska. As March “thawed into April” (1943), the attack fleet assembled in aptly named Cold Bay at the tip of the Alaskan Peninsula—three battleships, an escort carrier, five minesweepers, four transports carrying 3,000 troops of the Army’s Seventh Infantry Division (which, incomprehensibly, had trained in the Nevada desert and on sandy stretches of California coastline under conditions “as unlike those at Attu as could well be”), and twelve destroyers, including Hull and Monaghan. There the task force waited out inclement subarctic weather; mountainous seas, and high surf that made amphibious landings impossible. By nightfall on May 10, the ships had groped their way into position a short distance off Attu “in a fog as opaque as cotton batting.”

  Hull was assigned to antisubmarine screening duty for the battleship Nevada (BB-36), which would be providing bombardment support with her ten 14-inch deck guns, as directed by Army Rangers ashore.

  As the landings got under way—much like Guadalcanal, there was little opposition at the beachhead, with Japanese defenders dug in farther inland, where they waited to make a defensive stand—Hull received an urgent “man overboard” flashing-light (blinker) signal from Nevada. Lookouts on Hull, which had been following Nevada, soon spotted a man bobbing in the water.

  The destroyer came around to make the rescue but in the choppy seas missed on the first pass. By the time Hull was in position for another try, the man in the water was unable to grab hold of the lifeline thrown to him. A boatswain’s mate tied a line around his waist and jumped into the freezing sea. Both men were hauled aboard, but for Nevada’s crewman it was too late. He was already “frozen stiff” and not breathing. Extensive artificial respiration elicited no response. The body of the sailor, “about twenty-one and redheaded,” was stored in Hull’s meat locker until given an at-sea burial the next day.

  For a week after the invasion, Hull stood by Nevada as the battleship provided devastating fire support. At
one point, when U.S. troops were stalled by stiff opposition from an entrenched enemy on higher ground, the Rangers ashore radioed quadrants to Nevada, whose big guns soon found the range and “wiped out an entire mountainside” filled with Japanese troops.

  After intense fighting during which the Japanese attacked in one of the largest banzai charges of the Pacific campaign—ultimately it became necessary to land 12,000 U.S. troops—Attu was secured by the first of June. With the exception of twenty-eight prisoners, the entire Japanese garrison of some 2,600 troops was wiped out (hundreds committed suicide with hand grenades rather than surrender). American casualties were 600 dead and 1,200 wounded.

  Following the fall of Attu, Hull joined a destroyer blockade around Kiska, a narrow, 22-mile-long island with an east-facing harbor midway down its length. Hull steamed several miles off the harbor, where most of the Japanese installations were located. Each night around midnight, the destroyer moved closer to shore and fired at least a hundred rounds of 5-inch shells, outbursts which were often met by return artillery fire from ashore. With all deck-gun batteries firing simultaneously, the noise was deafening and “the whole ship vibrated, with dust and debris flying everywhere.” Then Hull turned and steamed out of range, resuming her patrol. This went on until they ran out of ammunition and stores and were relieved by another destroyer, at which point they headed for Dutch Harbor to take on more ammo and supplies before going back out. For weeks, as “fog hung over the island like a shroud of mystery,” Kiska was shelled by the patrolling destroyers, which regularly faced blinding snowstorms and pea-soup fog that obscured rocks, barrier reefs, and treacherous shallows and made maneuvering hazardous even for ships equipped with radar and sonar.*