Ship of Ghosts - James D. Hornfischer [22]
Admiral Hart’s position within ABDA was nearly as tenuous as that of the British stronghold. On February 5 he received a telegram from Adm. Ernest J. King, the commander in chief of the United States Fleet, informing him that an “awkward situation” had arisen in Washington. Wavell, thinking that Hart’s pessimism was sapping the vigor of the naval campaign, urged Churchill to find a “younger more energetic man” for the job. Churchill in turn cultivated Franklin Roosevelt’s doubts, already seeded by General MacArthur. As a result, when King contacted Hart it was to suggest that Hart request detachment for health reasons and yield his command to Admiral Helfrich. Anguished that he might depart under a pall, Hart complied, and the Dutchman was promptly named his successor. Hart confided to his diary on February 5, “It’s all on the laps of the gods.” Two days later, the U.S. Asiatic Fleet was officially dissolved and renamed U.S. Naval Forces, Southwest Pacific, nominally under Admiral Glassford. The American flotilla took its place as a component of the Combined Striking Force, under the overall command of Helfrich, who in turn delegated its tactical control to Rear Admiral Doorman.
Doorman was aggressive, but even the boldest deployment of cruisers faced dim prospects under enemy-controlled skies. The Combined Striking Force’s February 3 sortie, abandoned after the Houston took that terrible bomb hit on Turret Three, revealed the difficulties that even the most powerful surface squadron would have in a theater dominated by enemy planes. As his damaged ship docked at Tjilatjap in the first week of February, Captain Rooks might well have seen the evolving Allied predicament as similar to Spain’s doomed attempt in 1898 to hold Cuba and Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War as an American invasion loomed. He had studied it at the War College. The commander of Spain’s Caribbean Squadron, Adm. Pasqual Cervera, had seen the futility of defending “an island which was ours, but belongs to us no more, because even if we should not lose it by right in the war we have lost it in fact, and with it all our wealth and an enormous number of young men, victims of the climate and bullets, in the defense of what is now no more than a romantic ideal.”
CHAPTER 6
Romantic ideals dissolved quickly in the Pacific war’s early days. As the last Allied base in the Sunda chain beyond the reach of Japanese bombers, located in the center part of the island’s south coast, away from the pincers of Japanese airpower encroaching from east and west, Tjilatjap had drawn a multinational crowd of ships, naval and merchant alike, seeking to elude the onslaught. It was clear that nothing could be done for the grievous wound to the Houston’s after turret. Although support ships were on hand to service destroyers and submarines short on ordnance, stores, and parts, the Houston’s after turret was a permanent ruin, its internal circuitry burned out, breechblocks and firing locks frozen into place. The crew used a dockside crane to hoist the turret assembly back onto its roller bearings. Shipfitters patched the roof of the gun house with a big steel plate, draped a canvas shield over the turret’s side, and trained it aft, creating the appearance of combat readiness. Two fractured longitudinal support beams under the main deck were replaced with rails from the train yard near the docks. The Houston’s forward antiaircraft director was jury-rigged back into service, and stocks of antiquated five-inch projectiles were replaced with five hundred live rounds taken from the Boise. The most modern ship in the theater, the Boise had been forced to Ceylon after running aground off Timor. Her last contribution was leaving her valuable ordnance behind.
The most important service was rendered to the Houston’s deceased. The crew stood at attention in their dress whites as the dead followed the wounded ashore. As they were loaded onto Dutch Army flatbed trucks, the ship’s band performed Chopin’s funeral dirge. The solemn procession marked the turning of a page. Among