Ship of Ghosts - James D. Hornfischer [20]
Word was relayed to the other ships of Task Force Five, awaiting orders in Kupang Bay in eastern Timor. With the Houston busy far to the east, escorting a convoy from Torres Strait back to Surabaya, Admiral Glassford had at his disposal the Boise and the Marblehead and the destroyers John D. Ford, Pope, Parrott, and Paul Jones. He was excited about the approach of a Japanese surface force in a place where his ships might finally be able to do something about it. What followed was the U.S. Navy’s first offensive operation of World War II and its first major surface action since the Spanish-American War. And the Asiatic Fleet’s largest ships would miss out on it.
On the morning of January 23, Glassford’s flotilla set out to strike at the Japanese landings at Balikpapan. The Boise, Glassford’s flagship, hit an uncharted pinnacle rock, tearing a long gash near her keel and forcing her to Tjilatjap for repairs. No sooner had Glassford transferred his flag to the Marblehead than trouble struck that ship too. Mechanical problems with a turbine limited her to a speed of fifteen knots. The John D. Ford, Pope, Parrott, and Paul Jones sortied alone to ambush the Japanese landing force off Balikpapan that night.
Approaching the big Dutch oil center near midnight, Commodore Paul Talbot, in the John D. Ford, discerned a dozen transports anchored in rows outside the harbor, neatly silhouetted against the fires consuming Balikpapan’s refining and storage facilities, set ablaze by the Dutch in retreat. The destroyers accelerated to twenty-seven knots.
The Japanese marus never saw them coming. On the first run, the Parrott sent three torpedoes bubbling toward a row of transports anchored about five miles outside the harbor entrance. The other American ships followed suit, and as Talbot reversed course back to the south, explosions began to rend the night. The 3,500-ton transport Sumanoura Maru threw a tower of flame five hundred feet high. Rear Adm. Shoji Nishimura, in the light cruiser Naka, took his ships away from the action in search of his presumed assailant, a U.S. submarine. But his impulsiveness left Talbot’s squadron alone with its quarry. Another transport, the Tatsukami Maru, erupted and sank, as did an old destroyer. The Kuretake Maru actually got up steam, not unlike the Nevada at Pearl Harbor. But the Paul Jones got her, putting a torpedo into the five-thousand-tonner’s starboard bow and leaving her sinking, stern high out of the water. A last torpedo, from the John D. Ford, damaged still another transport. Their lethal work done, Talbot’s ships joined up and headed for Surabaya as Nishimura’s destroyers chased phantoms.
Given the totality of the surprise, their success in the Battle of Balikpapan was only middling: four of twelve transports sunk and one torpedo boat. The Japanese seized the valuable oil port anyway. But in the context of disastrous circumstances, the attack was a lift to the spirits.
Admiral Hart never got word from Washington about when, if ever, more combat ships would arrive to help him against the onrushing enemy. Nor was he told when the main Pacific Fleet would finally go on the attack and relieve the pressure he was facing from the Japanese. Though Vice Adm. William F. Halsey’s aircraft carriers struck the Marshall and Gilbert Islands on February 1, the Japanese were making bolder strides to seize control of the western Pacific.
Life would have been easier for Hart if the Japanese military were his only foe. Internecine squabbles hampered him—but more threatening still were the daggers being sharpened