Down to the Sea Read online

  “Are you hit?” an anxious Burke radioed.

  Told by Spence they had been spared by near misses, Burke came back with a classic naval repartee: “Sorry, but you’ll have to excuse the next four salvos. They’re already on their way.”

  The destroyer zigzagged to avoid the shells raining down.

  When the Battle of Empress Augusta Bay ended shortly before sunrise, the bloodied Japanese force was limping its way back to Rabaul in disarray without having fired a shot at the troop transports or the Marines ashore.*

  At 8:00 A.M., two formations of Japanese bombers and torpedo planes appeared overhead. A total of sixty enemy planes from Rabaul carried out a coordinated attack, some bombing from high altitude while others dropped low to release torpedoes and strafe the decks of the American ships, which put up a thick blanket of antiaircraft fire and downed twenty planes while taking no serious hits. Spence—nearly out of ammunition after expending some 2,000 rounds of 5-inch shells in the battle—was credited with three shoot-downs.

  Strand and his shipmates had been “scared plenty for a while” that morning, but they “overcame fear, and the encouraging results gave strength, courage and high spirits to the crew. A good deep breath was drawn by all.”

  A week later, a Spence lookout sighted a life raft with men aboard. As they approached, seven Japanese who appeared to be downed aviators could be seen lying “sprawled over…in grotesque positions.” As Spence closed on the raft with the intention of snagging it with a grapnel and bringing the bodies aboard, the Japanese “suddenly came to life.” One man who seemed to be the officer in charge stood up and yelled something. Making it clear they would not be taken prisoner, he pulled out a machine gun and pointed it at Spence. All hands on deck scurried for cover as a 5-inch deck gun swung into position and was trained on the raft. Before the disbelieving eyes of Spence crewmen, the officer turned toward a raft companion, who put the muzzle of the weapon in his mouth. The officer pulled the trigger, blowing off the back of the man’s skull. Two others followed suit until one man balked. He was held down while the officer did the brutish deed. When the officer was the last one left, he made a brief “fanatical speech” in Japanese directed at the officers on Spence’s bridge, then shot himself, toppling into the bloodstained sea, which by then was “swarming with sharks.” Those who witnessed the bizarre incident came away realizing they faced an enemy capable of “the most weird things.” A search of the raft revealed that the airmen had left classified publications and maps. While Spence had no prisoners to turn over for interrogation, a “very good intelligence haul [was] made just the same.”

  On the afternoon of November 24, the Little Beavers got under way from New Georgia Island for a high-speed sortie after receiving urgent orders from the headquarters of Admiral Halsey, who in October 1942 had been placed in charge of the South Pacific command based at New Caledonia.* Naval Intelligence, which had broken the Japanese code and was reading intercepted radio dispatches, had learned of a planned evacuation of 1,500 military personnel off Buka, an island north of Bougainville. Burke’s mission was to get his destroyers quickly into position off Buka to intercept the enemy naval force of unknown size and composition.

  Only five ships in Burke’s squadron were operational; Foote and Thatcher were on their way stateside for major repairs, and Stanley was alongside a tender undergoing needed work. That left Charles Ausburne, Dyson, Claxton, Converse, and Spence—and Burke hadn’t been sure about Spence due to problems with one of her four boilers, which was unable to generate steam. Burke’s point-blank question to Armstrong before departing was whether Spence’s skipper wanted to come along on the mission or stay behind and have the boiler fixed. “Please, Arleigh, we want to go!” Armstrong had pleaded, promising that by cross-connecting his propulsion plant Spence would lose no more than 3 or 4 knots of speed.

  Burke well knew that Armstrong was suggesting a violation of regulations, which specified that a ship in combat should have her propulsion system “split” so that if one half was knocked out, the other half could still power the ship. But with the squadron already shorthanded, Burke agreed.

  En route to Bougainville, Burke was asked by Halsey’s headquarters for his location and speed. In his answering radio message, Burke reported a speed of 31 knots, which seemed odd to Halsey’s staff since Fletcher-class destroyers were capable of reaching 35 knots. The next message from Halsey’s command—written by Halsey’s operations officer, Captain Harry R. Thurber—was addressed to “31-Knot Burke,” which was a “gentle reproach” to Burke from his old friend (and onetime squadron mate) for proceeding on an urgent mission at something less than top speed. For better or worse, “31-Knot Burke” was a sobriquet that would famously stick with Arleigh Burke all his life, and one that the press and public would long and erroneously assume was a tribute to his blazing speed rather than a “sardonic rib” for his slowness.

  Arriving 55 miles off the west coast of Bougainville two hours before midnight, Burke, “with true instinct for the chase,” decided there was a better chance of intercepting the Japanese ships if he patrolled farther to the northwest. Under overcast skies and frequent showers, Burke proceeded with his destroyers into hostile waters and airspace nearer Rabaul than “any Allied surface craft had penetrated since the Japanese had seized that port.”

  At 1:42 A.M., approximately 50 miles southeast of New Ireland’s Cape St. George, Spence reported a surface radar contact ahead at 22,000 yards. It was the initial contact with what would turn out to be a column of five enemy destroyers en route from Buka to Rabaul on the evacuation mission. Betting that the enemy was not yet aware of his presence—most Japanese warships did not yet have radar, and although their crews were experts in nighttime gunnery, they faced “a foe with long-range vision”—Burke allowed the distance to close over the next fifteen minutes. He then ordered his ships into position for a torpedo attack and launched fifteen deadly “fish.” The torpedoes had an estimated run time of nearly five minutes to target—“a wait that stretched suspense to the limit of endurance.” Right on cue, “detonations boomed” and “orange flame spouted against the sky.” The destroyers Onami and Makinami, screening for a column of three other destroyers astern, were caught completely by surprise and set afire. Burke sent Spence and Converse to finish off Onami and Makinami while he went “in hot pursuit” with the rest of the Little Beavers for the other column, now running desperately for the sanctuary of Rabaul.

  In a stern chase, the pursuers normally can bring only their forward guns into play, as the rear guns cannot fire past a ship’s superstructure at a target off the bow. Burke, however, fishtailed his ships several times—sacrificing forward speed for firepower—in order to open up from one side or the other with both forward and aft guns. In this manner, hits were scored on Yugiri that caused violent, fiery explosions. The blazing ship began circling out of control in a kind of slow death dance before sinking.

  Meanwhile, Spence and Converse had carried out their mission. At 2:54 A.M., they radioed Burke: “One more rising sun has set.” Gunners from Spence and Converse had committed to the deep both Onami and Makinami.*

  Shortly past 4:00 A.M., Burke reluctantly ended the chase, knowing he could not continue after the remaining two enemy ships unless the Japanese would be willing to refuel his ships at Rabaul—where, he deadpanned to another officer, he doubted the “fuel line connections” would fit the U.S. destroyers. There was also the real threat of a vengeful air strike launched from Rabaul—now not much more than a hundred miles away—after sunrise.

  Battle-fatigued crews prepared for the inevitable onslaught from the sky. First light brought the ominous drone of aircraft overhead. However, they turned out to be a swarm of P-38s from the U.S. airfield at Munda, sent to fly cover for the returning destroyers. “Never had the white star on a wing meant so much to tired sailors,” observed Burke, who within months, as word spread in the press of the exploits of the Little Beavers, would be labeled “King of the Cans” b
y Time magazine.

  Three Japanese ships were destroyed and another damaged with “not even a hit” on a U.S. ship in the Battle of Cape St. George, which would be deemed by the Naval War College—where the tactics of the battle would be taught for years—“an almost perfect action that may be considered a classic.”

  Burke, however, knew how favored they had been by the “fortune of war.” A fifteen-minute delay “would have prevented the battle from being fought.” Even such a short interval would have allowed the enemy ships to be out of range. Because of their reduced speed due to Spence’s boiler problem, “we reached the enemy by the narrowest of margins.”

  Pulling into Purvis Bay in the Florida Islands north of Guadalcanal at 10:00 P.M. on Thursday, November 25, the Little Beavers found themselves “hoisted into the celebrity class.” The ships in the harbor had stayed abreast of the battle with piped-in radio reports their crews eagerly followed with something akin to the drama of a World Series game. The illuminated decks and rails of those same ships were manned by waving and cheering sailors. Ship whistles tooted and horns blared in salute to the little band of destroyers.

  They had missed Thanksgiving dinner, but no one complained. As Strand, aboard Spence—mindful of the censorship rules against being specific regarding locations and activities since one of his letters had been returned by the ship’s censor—wrote (in part) to his parents the next day:

  Yesterday was Thanksgiving, but we didn’t celebrate…We were not in a position to eat a big chow and everyone was thankful just to be O.K. Today is the day!!! You can see by the menu I am sending just how much we had to eat.

  I’m feeling swell, and hope every one is the same at home.

  As always,

  Your Loving Son,

  Bob

  Five

  Built by Brown Shipbuilding of Houston, Texas, the destroyer escort Tabberer (DE-418)—a new breed of ship designed primarily to protect convoys—was named for one of the Navy’s first heroes of the war in the Pacific.

  Shortly before the U.S. Marines hit the beach at Guadalcanal on August 7, 1942, the aircraft carrier Saratoga (CV-3), steaming offshore, turned into the wind to launch a combat air patrol. Among the planes airborne that morning was an F4F Wildcat—the Navy’s best carrier-based fighter at the time but inferior to Japan’s top fighter, the Zero, in speed, maneuverability, and range—piloted by Lieutenant ( j.g.) Charles Arthur Tabberer, twenty-six, of Kansas City, Kansas. As Tabberer and his VF-5 squadron mates climbed for altitude to be in position to dive on enemy aircraft, a flotilla of invasion ships took up positions below.* When the aerial attack came an hour after the landings began, the initial wave consisted of twenty-seven twin-engine bombers escorted by seventeen Zero fighters, both types of aircraft built by Mitsubishi. They were pounced on by eighteen Wildcats swooping through the clouds like shrieking birds of prey. Leading a two-plane section, Tabberer, although “viciously intercepted” by Zeros, “gallantly pressed home his attacks” against the bombers. Last seen “dogfighting a Zero,” Tabberer was reported missing in action; neither his body nor his aircraft was found. He was awarded the Distinguish Flying Cross posthumously for his “courageous fighting spirit and resolute devotion to duty,” which resulted in the destruction of at least five enemy bombers and “played a major role in disrupting the Japanese attack.”†

  During christening ceremonies on February 18, 1944, an overcast day on the Houston Ship Channel, 50 miles up from Galveston Bay, a bottle of champagne was broken against Tabberer’s bow by Mary M. Tabberer, the brunette widow of the war hero, with his mother, Mrs. S. W. Tabberer, serving as matron of honor and cradling a dozen red roses. Their husband and son had been gone for a year and a half, but for the two women the pain of their loss, not camouflaged by the ceremony, lingered on unsmiling faces.

  Early in the war, the Allies were in short supply of armed escort vessels, and enemy submarines in both oceans exacted a heavy toll on merchant shipping. With full-size destroyers desperately needed to operate with the fast-attack fleets, not enough could be allocated for convoy duty. The solution to the escort shortage came from a new design: a ship that was easier and less costly to construct, and while smaller and slower than a destroyer, it was an equal in antisubmarine warfare capabilities. A destroyer escort needed to be able to maneuver only relative to a slow convoy—merchant marine or Navy supply vessels—which generally traveled at 10 to 12 knots, and defend itself against enemy aircraft while detecting and destroying submarines, which averaged less than 10 knots submerged and about 20 knots on the surface. The first destroyer escort was commissioned in April 1943; nearly 500 were built during the war, with 78 of them going to the British Royal Navy, which designated them captain-class frigates. There were six destroyer-escort classes in all, with the main differences being the power plants (diesel or steam) and armament. The Navy’s smallest major combat vessel, destroyer escorts ranged in size from 1,140 to 1,450 tons displacement. The destroyer escorts—with a much tighter turning radius—were more maneuverable than conventional destroyers and carried all the latest antisubmarine warfare equipment. In heavy weather, however, it was always a rough-and-tumble ride aboard a destroyer escort, rolling one minute and plunging the next, with often either the bow or the fantail rising out of the water and the foredeck swamped. Destroyer escort sailors joked that they should be receiving both flight and submarine pay since they were in the air or underwater much of the time.

  It had taken less than five weeks to build the 1,350-ton Tabberer, which at 306 feet in length was markedly shorter than a destroyer but similar in beam with a width of 38 feet.* Tabberer’s two steam turbines produced 12,000 horsepower for a flank speed of 24 knots, slightly faster than the submarines she was designed to hunt and kill but at least 10 knots slower than full-size destroyers. Tabberer was one of the new so-called 5-inch destroyer escorts (John C. Butler class), so named because she was fitted with the bigger gun mounts (forward and aft) instead of the 3-inch guns of earlier classes. Additional armament included four 40 mm and ten 20 mm antiaircraft “flak guns,” and three torpedo-launching tubes amidships. Tabberer carried a full complement of new Mark XI depth charges, equipped with electric-powered fins to give the “ashcan” rotation in the water, allowing it to drop quicker and straighter with less chance of drifting off target. Located near the bow were new British-developed Hedgehog launchers capable of throwing a pattern of 35-pound torpex-filled charges about 250 yards directly ahead of the ship in order to bracket a submerged target.

  In May 1944, three months after her christening, Tabberer was commissioned with Lieutenant Commander Henry L. Plage, of Atlanta, Georgia, commanding. Plage, twenty-nine, had an athletic frame that stretched to six feet one inch. Oklahoma-born and Georgia-raised, he had the southern drawl to prove it. Easygoing, with a prominent jaw and high cheekbones, Plage had received his commission through the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) at the Georgia School of Technology, where he was captain of the swimming team for two years and a member of Omicron Delta Kappa, a national honor society. Upon graduating in 1937 with a B.S. in industrial management (his highest NROTC marks were in seamanship and navigation), he stayed in the naval reserve on inactive status and went to work in sales and later accounting for a national retail credit company with headquarters in Atlanta. In January 1941, believing war was inevitable and desiring to get a head start on his naval career before a flood of new officers inundated the service, Plage volunteered for “immediate active duty,” asking to be an “assistant athletic officer” at one of three naval air stations in Florida or Texas. Ordered to report in March 1941, he was instead anchored to a desk job at the Navy Yard in Charleston, South Carolina, for a year before finagling sea duty three months after Pearl Harbor. When it came time to list three types of ships he wished to serve on, his order of preference was “cruiser, battleship, destroyer.” After two months of Sub Chaser Training School in Miami, he received orders to a substantially smaller vessel: the diesel-powered 280-ton,
175-foot-long patrol craft PC-464, which carried a crew of five officers and fifty enlisted men. There were, however, consolations for Plage: the submarine chaser, in navy lingo, was “new construction,” and he would be the commanding officer, an unusual billet for a young officer’s first sea duty. After escorting convoys along the East Coast and in the Caribbean, Plage was transferred in May 1943 to the destroyer escort LeHardy (DE-20), also new construction, as second in command. A short five months later, he was ordered to put into commission the destroyer escort Donaldson (DE-44) as commanding officer. During these early and varied assignments, Plage’s learning curve was a steep one, and he came to rely on chief petty officers—the seniormost enlisted rank—almost all of whom had extensive sea duty, finding truth in the axiom that chiefs run the Navy.* He also, in the seclusion of his stateroom, “engulfed himself in books,” learning more about navigation, seamanship, and gunnery in an effort to stay “one step ahead of the crew.” Donaldson arrived at Pearl Harbor in February 1944 and soon took part in the invasion of the Marshall Islands. Detached from Donaldson in March after earning an “above average” evaluation on his fitness report, Plage spent a month at Fleet Sound School in Key West, Florida, taking an advanced course in sonar before traveling to Houston to meet Tabberer.

  By now accustomed to commissioning new ships and training novice crews, Plage, who had shown not only a natural aptitude for command but also inspiring leadership qualities, was nonetheless surprised by what he found when he took command of Tabberer. While all the spaces and equipment were new and sparkling clean from the bridge down to the engine room, the crew was younger and less experienced than any he had seen. Most of the more than 200 enlisted men were “boots,” just out of recruit training; only some fifty were rated petty officers (3rd, 2nd, or 1st class), and of those a scant twenty had served on ships. The manpower requirements for the large number of new ships being launched had stretched thin the Navy’s ranks of experienced officers and enlisted men. Of Tabberer’s fifteen officers (all were naval reservists), only four had been to sea. Plage found the others to be “90 Day Wonders at sea for the first time,” including one nineteen-year-old ensign who “couldn’t get a drink in a civilian bar.” As a result, Plage again relied on his chiefs—usually eight or nine were assigned to Tabberer—to “run the ship because they had the knowhow.” He also counted on the chiefs to help turn into seagoing sailors the preponderance of young landlubbers in the crew—so many were teenagers, some of whom did not even have to shave on a daily basis yet.