’s action report, the first abandon ship order went over the PA, and the second was blown by the bugler. Since Winslow personally recalls standing next to Captain Rooks when Rooks ordered the bugler to sound abandon ship, and since it seems Rooks was deceased when the second abandon ship order was passed, he must have used the bugler on the first abandon ship order too. “He never missed one beat on that bugle…”: Lloyd Willey, UNT interview, 35. “If widely dispersed over the Far East…”: Rooks, “Estimate of the Situation.” Wounding of Captain Rooks: Charles D. Smith, “USS Houston (CA-30) and Experiences in Jap Prison Camp,” 12; see also Winslow, 141. “He died within a minute”: Charles D. Smith, “Casualty Affidavit No. 5”; see also Smith, “USS Houston,” 12. “Rocking slowly back and forth, he held Captain Rooks…”: Winslow, “The ‘Galloping Ghost,’” 162. “We were really roaring along”: Robert B. Fulton, interview with Joe Kollmyer. The Houston’s Sunda Strait action report, at p. 8, notes that the inert inboard screws were making about 210 rpm; the standard ratio for rpm to speed was 10 to 1. Well, that’s more like it: Melfred L. Forsman, UNT interview, 34. Captain Rooks’s reported intention to ground the Houston: Quentin C. Madson, diary, 26; Weissinger to Robert J. Cressman, Sept. 8, 1977, p. 9; see also Weissinger, interview with Samuel Milner, 7; Seldon Reese, UNT interview, 25. The report was disputed by: Otto C. Schwarz, letter to the author, March 11, 2005, and Robert B. Fulton II, letter to the author, Jan. 2, 2005. “We were really getting the devil knocked out of us…”: James Gee, UNT interview, 35. “No one in the magazine ever said…”: James Gee, UNT interview, 35. “I have never seen eight men face the absolute end so calmly”: Marvin Robinson, quoted in Winslow, 158. “Y’all come on out, and hurry!”: Gee, Ibid. “I told the boys, ‘We’ve had it…”: Robinson, UNT interview, 20. “We were going to go up…”: Gee, 37. “It looked like high noon on the boat deck…”: Weissinger to Cressman, Sept. 8, 1977. “When I got there it was just like the Fourth of July…” and “All of a sudden this guy jumped on top of me…”: Otto C. Schwarz, interview with the author. “Better go, Charlie. It’s all over. Finished” and other quotes between Charles and Standish: Charles, Last Man Out, 34. Is this the way it is?: Charles, UNT interview, 32–33. “I nearly fell through a hole…”: Hamlin, “Statement,” 8. “There were dead fish floating all around…”: Seldon D. Reese, UNT interview, 27. “I thought of her as she was when I joined her…”: Hamlin, “The Houston’s Last Battles,” 27. “She was full of holes all through the side…”: Hamlin, “Narrative,” 8. “She righted herself like a dog shaking water off its back…”: Wisecup to Randall Sutherland, undated ca. February 1989, p. 4. “Perhaps I only imagined it…”: Winslow, Proceedings, 163. Standish, “living up to Marine Corps legend…”: John Wisecup to Randall Sutherland, undated, ca. Feb. 1989, 4. “Not a word was uttered by anyone…”: Wisecup to Sutherland, Feb. 10, 1989, 3. “The Nation’s safest insurance…”: Bernrieder, address, 7.
Part 3: The Emperor’s Guests
CHAPTER 21 (pp. 149 to 152)
The location of the Houston’s wreck: USS Houston (SSN-713), April 1993 track chart; see also navigation chart provided by Don Kehn Jr. “I saw hundreds of unwounded men…”: Harold S. Hamlin, “Statement,” 8. “There is an adage at war colleges…”: Albert H. Rooks, “Estimate of the Situation,” Section V, Paragraph (b). “Evertsen reports sea battle in progress…”: Rear Adm. William A. Glassford to Houston, sent 28/2328. Reaching Fremantle were the gunboats USS Tulsa, Lanakai, and Isabel, and the minesweepers Whippoorwill and Lark. See Morison, History of United States Naval Operations, Vol. 3, 379. The best treatment of the loss of USS Edsall and the mystery of her crew’s fate is Don Kehn’s article “History and Mystery…” and his work in progress, Upon a Blue Sea of Blood. USS Stewart’s fate: Morison, History, Vol. 3, 378. “A magnificent display of very bad strategy”: Admiral King as quoted in Morison, History, Vol. 3, 380. “It drank the