• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1635 0

into the breech, met ferocious gunfire from the Japanese. In quick succession, three shells struck her. The first, below the bridge, severed internal communications and the gun director’s signals to the mounts. Another hit the forward switchboard, shutting down power in the forward part of the ship. The third destroyed the after boiler room, and with that the Electra shuddered to a stop. When a fusillade of projectiles tore away the ship’s forward gun mount, the searchlight platform, and then one of the rear guns, the captain, Commander May, ordered the ship abandoned. The two other British destroyers in Doorman’s force, the Encounter and the Jupiter, arrived in time to see the Electra burning and dead in the water. The Encounter fired her torpedoes through an opening in the smoke. Attacking separately, the Jupiter was unable to get a torpedo solution on the enemy, and so she stood close by the Exeter, driving off with her gunfire two Japanese destroyers probing the smoke for the wounded cruiser.

The Perth was doing her own probing, firing her six-inch main battery at mastheads visible above the smoke. Once Doorman’s cruisers dialed in the range, the Japanese ships withdrew, and the Exeter, now making fifteen knots, was finally spared. Five miles to his east, through dusk’s failing light, Captain Gordon spied a shaded signal lamp on the Witte de With instructing him to follow the Dutch destroyer back to Surabaya immediately. The two ships would peel away and head south. Leaving the battle scene, they reached port without further drama.

All throughout the engagement, the American destroyers had little clue what was expected of them. The commander of the John D. Edwards, Lt. Cdr. Henry E. Eccles, would remark acidly, “The crystal ball was our only method of anticipating the intention of Commander, Combined Striking Force.” When orders finally did come, they did little to dispel the need for wizardry. As his cruisers retired south, Doorman signaled the destroyers to turn north and make a torpedo attack. Then he canceled the order. Shortly he issued a new one: “Cover my retirement.” At that point, low on fuel, the destroyers had little else to contribute to the battle. Their swimming torpedoes didn’t contribute much either. From long range, as could be expected, they all missed.

The fog of war was billowing out thicker than any smoke screen. One question loomed large: At 6:30 Admiral Doorman radioed Helfrich at Bandung, “Enemy retreating west. Where is convoy?” In the De Ruyter, Doorman curled sharply back toward the northwest, leading the Perth, Houston, Java, and four U.S. destroyers, perhaps in search of an opening through which to locate and attack the Japanese troopships. Clearing some smoke around 7:30, they again ran into the ubiquitous Nachi and Haguro.

As Captain Hara related it, the two heavy cruisers were unprepared for the encounter, having stopped to retrieve floatplanes they had launched at the battle’s outset. As the Allies approached, the Nachi’s boatswains were busy with the amidships crane. When they finished hooking up and bringing the last plane on board, the Nachi’s engines roared to life. The Japanese ships laid smoke to cover their withdrawal and within a few minutes were at eighteen knots. Though Admiral Takagi refrained from using his searchlights because he knew he was vulnerable, his ships opened fire with their main batteries at thirteen thousand yards. The cruisers traded salvos for about ten minutes until the Perth’s Captain Waller, spotting flashes along the length of the silhouetted enemy ships and suspecting a torpedo launch, turned sharply away. Evidently wishing to spare his cruiser’s faltering ammunition stocks, and perhaps despairing of his chances of blazing a path to the invasion convoy through the gunfire of its most powerful escorts, Doorman broke off the engagement. He swung his squadron away to the south.

The Nachi and Haguro, both of which would go on to post gaudy combat records through the Pacific war, had escaped a most dangerous trap. In Doorman’s failure to see the plight