Ship of Ghosts - James D. Hornfischer [46]
CHAPTER 13
As the growl of naval gunfire washed ashore on Java, only the most naive of the battle’s proximate witnesses could fail to appreciate its sinister meaning. An American B-17 pilot stationed there recalled, “Walking to the telephone building I could hear a dull rumble in the hot midnight air coming from far over the water. The few people in the blacked-out streets assumed it was distant thunder. I knew it was the little Dutch Navy in its final agony out there in the dark.” The men of the U.S. Nineteenth Bomb Group at Malang were closely acquainted with the mounting disaster. The sound of the naval battle out to sea seemed to herald the end. A pilot recalled, “Java died that night in the gunfire which came rolling in over the water.”
But two ships yet lived. By night the Houston and the Perth raced westward, bound for refuge and replenishment. For a time, the Japanese pursued them. Admiral Takagi, whose cruisers had ranged miles to the northwest by the time their torpedoes hit the two Dutch cruisers, had wanted to finish them off. As crewmen on the decks of the Nachi and Haguro leaped and danced and shouted “Banzai!” as fires raged on the waters to their southeast, Takagi approached the Java and the De Ruyter in their death throes and instructed his gunners not to waste precious ammunition on them. “They are done for,” he said coolly.
At midnight the Nachi and Haguro spotted silhouettes to the south-southeast. As Takagi’s destroyers sought in vain to locate and engage them, his cruisers opened fire on “four cruisers.” But whatever they were shooting at slipped away. Puzzled by the disappearance of the surviving Allied ships, Takagi called off his search around three a.m. Commander Hara would call the admiral’s inability to finish off the survivors “the last Japanese mistake of the battle,” though it would become clear soon enough that mistakes had been predominantly the domain of the Allies.
The Houston and the Perth formed a short column and chased rainsqualls to elude their pursuers. Standing orders were for all ships to sail to Batavia if the squadron got scattered. They were to make the three-hundred-mile run to refuel, then pass through Sunda Strait, head down to Tjilatjap to evacuate Allied soldiers and airmen gathering on Java’s south coast, then continue on to Australia. At 8:40 p.m. on the night of February 27, the Houston sent a dispatch labeled “Urgent” to Admiral Glassford: “HOUSTON and PERTH retiring to Batavia Arrive about 1000 tomorrow X Request pilots and air protection if available.” Whoever could manage it found a place to sack out on deck. The heat and smell in the lower decks were simply too much. Hatches were thrown open, letting the hot ferment of battle vent into the night.
Though the ship’s stocks of ammunition and fuel were low, the crew’s morale, as ever, was improbably high. It had been high when they were spending day after day at general quarters at Surabaya, helpless against the droning assault of Japanese bombers. It had been high when they finally entered battle against the Japanese Navy, and high still as their enemy routed them. Now, more understandably, morale was high because at last, against all odds, they were about to see sunrise on February 28. When one Allied ship after another was bursting into flames all around them, no one would have put much money on it.
The terror they had experienced was a frightening preview of the trials the U.S. Navy would face after dark against their well-practiced enemy. Before the war, plenty of reasons were found—compelling enough in peacetime—to neglect difficult and dangerous night exercises. Adm. James O. Richardson, commander in chief of the United States Fleet, wrote, “In the era before radar, close-in night exercises brought great risk of collision, loss of life, and expensive ship repairs.” In other words, they were very much like actual night battles. He might have endorsed them by