This book is a largely contemporary perspective of the events, decisions, and outcomes in the history of the Cold War — Korea, Vietnam, and the Soviet confrontation — that shaped today’s Navy and its principal ships-of-the-line, the large-deck nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, the unique trademark of this country’s sea power, now and into the future.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to acknowledge the following individuals whose support and assistance were invaluable to me in the preparation of this book: John Tucker, who convinced me I should undertake the project; Beau Puryear, who got me started on my oral history; Frank Arre, who transcribed the hours of dictation and disciplined my handwritten edits; Capt. Todd Creekman, who brought order to the process; Dr. Dave Winkler, whose understanding of the history of the Cold War years kept me on track; John Reilly, whose research and proofreading made the first drafts respectable; Vice Adm. Bob Dunn and Capt. Tim Wooldridge, whose knowledge of aircraft carriers and their operations lent credibility to the details; and my faithful wife Dabney, who, having endured the experience of a Navy wife throughout the Cold War, stood by me as I tried to derive some meaning and order from those decades.
1
The End of an Era
Shortly after 0300 on 25 October 1944, the USS Bennion (DD-662) made its first visual contact with the Japanese heavies. I was standing up through the hatch in the Mark 37 gun director, scanning the horizon with binoculars. The rumble of heavy gunfire was now continuous, and the lower quadrant of the southern sky was aglow from the muzzle flashes. The patrol torpedo (PT) boats in the strait had sprung their ambush on the Japanese column and triggered a fierce firefight.
There was a tug on my trouser leg. The sailor at the pointer’s station next to me motioned to my eyepiece, and I lowered myself into the director control seat. I looked through the magnification of the director’s optics and the scene to the south became clearer: The crosshairs were fixed at the base of the jumbo “pagoda” superstructure of a Japanese battleship. The flashes from her main turret salvos and the rapid fire of the secondary battery were lighting up the entire ship. Judging by her clearly visible bow wake, she was making at least twenty-five knots.
The radar operator sitting behind me tersely reported that he had picked up the target out of the land mass return and was getting good ranges. I pushed down the bridge switch on the intercom, called that we were tracking a Japanese battleship, and locked on with the fire-control radar. The captain, Cdr. Joshua Cooper, replied that the “Martinis”—the radio call for the PT boats — were reporting that two enemy battleships, a cruiser, and at least three destroyers had passed through Surigao Strait, the narrows between Leyte and Mindanao in the southern Philippines. Our target was to be the second battleship. “Let me know when you have a fire-control solution on the Big Boy,” the captain said. “Have the gun battery ready, but don’t shoot unless I specifically tell you to. We have been directed to make a torpedo attack with five fish.” His voice was clear and businesslike. In the background noise of the intercom I could hear on the TBS (talk-between-ships) radio the excited chatter of the Martinis as they maneuvered to launch their torpedoes. Going back to the optics, I could now see the two battleships in column. I moved the crosshairs to the second Big Boy, got a confirmation from the radar operator that he was locked on, and called the plotting room, telling them to let me know when they had a firing solution on the new target.
Now that the battleship had emerged from the strait, the image on the radarscope was clear of ground clutter and the fire-control radar was ranging consistently. In minutes, the plotting room talker reported, “Tracking in automatic.” I passed this to the bridge, and the captain acknowledged, “Very well. Train out the tubes but don’t launch or shoot until I give the order.” I switched the 5-inch guns and both quintuple torpedo mounts to director control and again, standing up in the hatch, looked aft to see the torpedo mounts trained out on the beam.
The ship was running in and out of rain squalls and it was very dark. The gunfire was still well to our south. I could barely make out the other two destroyers in our division; both were, like the Bennion, Fletcher- class ships. We were keeping a three-hundred-foot interval between ships in a loose column. The division was loitering at five knots, close to the western coastline of Leyte Gulf, using land clutter to hide from enemy radars. The only sounds were the popping of safeties as the engineers kept up a full head of steam for the run into the target. It was quiet in the gun director as each member of the crew was absorbed in his particular duties. Our small talk had been used up long ago. For the past seven months the five of us had been together eight hours a day in this hot, cramped steel box, standing watches or at general quarters (GQ), shooting at the Japanese. We had fought together at Saipan, Tinian, Guam, and Palau, and at Peleliu, we had emptied the magazines three times in a single week. We considered ourselves experienced veterans. There was one new member of the director crew this night. The regular pointer had been hit by shrapnel from a Japanese shore battery on Leyte. This young fire controlman, and the assistant gunnery officer standing by my side, had been wounded the day before. The assistant, Lieutenant (j.g.) Robertson, had been terribly torn up and was now wrapped in a blanket, strapped to the dining room table in the officers’ wardroom (at GQ this becomes the ship’s main battle dressing station). The war was over for him, but he didn’t know it. He was full of morphine. Easing the pain and stopping the bleeding was about all that could be done for him. Robbie survived, but he lost an arm at the shoulder.
I had been momentarily diverted while checking the readiness of the gun mounts and torpedo stations over the sound-powered battle phones, and I was startled when I looked through the director optics again and saw how much larger the image of the Japanese battleship had grown. The enemy column was headed in our direction at twenty-five knots, and the range was closing fast.
The soft purr of the idling fire-room blowers suddenly rose to a high-pitched whine. The bridge had rung up full power. The director began to tremble, and the deck plates vibrated from the propellers’ cavitation as the ship accelerated, our column of destroyers swinging southward. Suddenly, and almost simultaneously, the Bennion’s general announcing system and a sound-powered phone talker announced, “Starting the run-in for the attack.”
Tactics had been planned to take advantage of the geography of Leyte Gulf. Our nine-ship destroyer squadron was organized into a trio of three-ship divisions that would operate individually but in coordination. From our initial positions lying in wait along the coastline of the northern gulf, the divisions would initiate a simultaneous attack on the order of the commodore, Capt. Roland Smoot, with destroyers running at twenty-five knots for the ten-mile approach to the torpedo launch point. Meanwhile, the Japanese column continued its own attack, rushing north at twenty-seven knots. It was the commodore’s intention that we would meet the Japanese head on before they got within torpedo range of our own cruisers and battleships.
With the signal to commence the attack, the division turned in column to a southerly course to intercept the enemy, maintaining the three-hundred-foot interval between the ships. As we increased speed, the fire rooms were ordered to make black smoke to screen our force. At darken ship (a security measure that reduces visibility of the ship by extinguishing all types of light) there was only the dim blue light from the battle lanterns for illumination. Standing in the hatch of the director, I could watch the entire panorama of the two converging fleets. Through the high-powered lenses of the Mark 37 director, the enemy could be seen in detail. As our destroyers broke out of the shadow of the shoreline, we were immediately taken under fire by the Japanese battleships and cruisers. It was strange to be rushing through the dark, closing on the enemy at a relative speed of more than fifty knots, not firing our own guns but seeing the steady gunfire of the Japanese ships and observing the explosions of their shots falling around us. The towering splashes of their 14-inch shells were close enough to wet our weather decks. Both sides were firing star shells for illumination, which added to the eerie character of the scene.