Ship of Ghosts - James D. Hornfischer [54]
The Houston and the Perth, had they been alerted to the presence of an enemy fleet, might have sought a way around it, even despite their weeks-long effort to grapple with it. Sufficiently forewarned, the Japanese invasion force might well have chosen to let the two cruisers slip by. There was great risk in exposing the important operation they were undertaking that night in a gun battle with two cruisers, even if their destruction would have eliminated Allied naval strength in the area.
The Fubuki’s early warning brought a prompt reaction from Rear Adm. Kenzaburo Hara, commander of the screening force accompanying the Western Attack Group. Immediately he ordered the light cruiser Natori and the six destroyers of the 5th and 11th Destroyer Divisions into action, and requested the help of two heavier hitters, the Mikuma and Mogami of Cruiser Division Seven, providing cover about fourteen nautical miles to the north. The two heavy cruisers hustled south, accompanied by the destroyer Shikinami. The Japanese warships fired illumination rounds. They rose in swift arcs and dropped white contrails that glowed in the blaze of drifting chemical suns.
In the officer’s booth in Turret One, Lieutenant Hamlin got one last chance to peek through his periscope before the careening rush of strobe-lit events absorbed him completely in the management of his rocking main battery. He saw the Perth turning north and felt his own ship turning in behind her. The long shadows of enemy ships lurked at almost every compass point, flashes of gunfire blinking out all around. In the Perth’s plotting room, through the voice tube, Schoolmaster N. E. Lyons heard someone on the bridge say, “There are four to starboard.” Then, “There are five on our port side.” Then, “By God, they’re all round us.”
Marine private Jim Gee ran below to his general quarters station in the five-inch magazine. “You could see the ships just all over because we immediately turned on searchlights. And the Japanese turned on searchlights…. The place was like Fifth Avenue, you know. And I guess for the first time, I myself felt some apprehension but I went down in the magazine and things were moving so fast that you really didn’t have time to think about the situation.”
The Perth led the Houston in a tight circle, engaging targets as they revealed themselves with their searchlights, silhouettes, or flash of guns. While the Japanese searchlights reached them easily, those of the Allied ships lacked the reach to be effective in turn. “We were firing at any target that [we] saw, point blank—pick your target, fire at will,” said Gee, part of the eight-man team of sailors and Marines in his magazine. The volume of fire coming back on them was heavy. Gee said, “We knew they were having hell upstairs.”
Set up as a medical triage at general quarters, the Houston’s wardroom was full of corpsmen and stretcher-bearers waiting for something to do. Walter Winslow asked them what they knew about the enemy they were fighting. No one seemed to have much information. He started climbing a steel ladder toward the bridge, holding tight to the rail as the main battery’s concussion jarred his grip. He ran across the communications deck, passing one of the ship’s four quad-mounted 1.1-inch machine guns along the way. “Momentarily,” Winslow recalled, “I caught a glimpse of tracers hustling out into the night. They were beautiful.” By the time he reached the bridge, it seemed every mount on the Houston