Ship of Ghosts - James D. Hornfischer [53]
From his cinematic vantage point on the Perth’s flag bridge, Bill Bee was optimistic about the gunfire’s results. “Our first salvos appeared to strike home on the leading DD’s and I was expecting another burst from the forward turrets when flashes of gunfire from a number of directions diverted my attention. Houston too had now joined in the fray.” The blast of the Houston’s first salvos nearly knocked Ens. Charles D. Smith clean overboard as he raced from his stateroom to his battle station in the officer’s booth of Turret Two. In short order Smith’s guns joined the fight. Exactly how many ships they faced, and of what type, was as yet unclear. The Houston had just fifty rounds left per eight-inch gun after the marathon engagement in the Java Sea. “We were desperately short of those eight-inch bricks,” wrote Lieutenant Winslow, “and I knew the boys weren’t wasting them on mirages.”
Run for the strait or attack into the bay? For Captains Rooks and Waller, there was no real choice at all. With a full moon rising, the night offered only a thin cloak to movement. The long silhouettes slipping through the narrow waters around Sunda Strait could not fail to find them. Of course, cruiser commanders only ever go to sea with one purpose in mind: the destruction by gun salvo of every enemy ship they can bring within reach.
When the Houston was preparing to depart Tanjung Priok, seaman first class William J. Stewart had overheard an officer in the communications department tell Captain Rooks that the ship’s stash of confidential publications was gathered and ready in case it became necessary to dispose of them by throwing them overboard. Stewart knew enough about security procedures to appreciate the implication that danger lay ahead. “I figured we were in for trouble that night.”
Around 11:30 p.m., the Houston’s communications department transmitted the message that would be the last clue to the ship’s fate the world would have for more than three years. For the ship whose death had already been announced gleefully and repeatedly by Japanese propagandists, that had avoided one trap after another, that was now steaming at flank speed toward the engagement the best minds of the Allied navies had sought, entering battle again was no cause to wax dramatic.
The last that anyone would ever hear from the USS Houston, the HMAS Perth, their remarkable commanders, or so many of their superb crews was a final radio transmission that Captain Rooks sent before the approaching cataclysm swallowed him forever. To Admiral Glassford, to the commander of the Sixteenth Naval District, to Radio Corregidor, and to the chief of naval operations, he reported: “Enemy forces engaged.”
CHAPTER 16
Howard Brooks dared to hope they might make it through Sunda Strait. But when the star shells started bursting, illuminating the ship so terrifically as to render academic the setting of the sun, he despaired of it entirely. He could hear the drone of a single-engine plane. The damn thing was dropping flares all around them from up on high, tracking them just as the bobbing phosphorous pots had marked their night run after the Java Sea battle. The planes seemed to have lights for every occasion. The Japanese were professional sea warriors, no question about that. The Houston had all she could handle.
The first Japanese ship to respond to the surprising intrusion by the Houston and Perth into Bantam Bay was the destroyer Fubuki. Her commander was as startled by the encounter as his two counterparts were. Cdr. Yasuo Yamashita, spotting them about eleven thousand yards east