Ship of Ghosts - James D. Hornfischer [59]
Charles lost track of how many belts he and his loader had ripped through the gun chamber of his .50. Each time a new one was in place, the loader would tap him on the shoulder and he would pull the cocking lever twice and seize down on the handle bar trigger, showering red tracers at any Japanese ship that dared to brandish her beams. It might have seemed like a county fair target gallery, except that the Japanese ships sliding into view out of the night returned fire all too vigorously. The day before, during the Battle of the Java Sea, the ship’s machine gunners had stood by uselessly as the main batteries traded salvos at a range of a dozen miles or more. Now even the smallest guns played a part in the main event.
The men of the Houston’s engineering department had all the work they could handle keeping their complex machinery from yielding to the violent shakedown the cruiser’s helmsman and gunners were giving it. Changes in speed, sudden course adjustments, the impact of hits delivered and received—all conspired against the orderly operation of a steam-driven power plant. Heavy and powerful though the 107,000-horsepower geared-turbine power plant was, its operation was a delicate business that required experience up and down the chain of command, and an intuitive understanding between men at different stations. A radical maneuver such as a crashback, designed to pull a sharp emergency turn by putting the shafts on the inside of the turn suddenly into reverse, requires the entire black gang to work together flawlessly. The throttleman watching the engine order telegraph responds to the bridge’s order by spinning the large handwheels to cut the flow of steam through the “ahead” throttle and simultaneously cracks the “astern” throttle to slow down and stop the turbine wheels. As he opens wide the astern throttle, he risks much: Too much steam can strip the turbine blades; too little risks a slow response to a vital order—equally sinful in the snap-to-it world of a shipboard engineering department, and more so under fire.
Only an experienced fireroom watch can contend with the sudden reduction to zero of the system’s demand for their steam. Trained intensively to observe the spray of vaporized bunker oil from the burners and monitor the efficiency of the nozzles and their combustion cones, they cut in or shut off burners to keep steady pressure in the main and auxiliary steam lines. Water tenders watch the boiler water level—too high a level sends water into the turbines with the steam, wrecking the turbines; too low and the boilers can burn out. Machinist’s mates stay busy working thirty-odd pumps to meet the plant’s rapidly fluctuating water demands. Meanwhile, the system’s efficiency is subject to any number of external variables, from the temperature of the water outside the hull, which influences the effectiveness of the condenser that returns boiler water to the system, to the viscosity of the bunker oil sprayed through the burners.
“We were making full power,” Lt. Robert Fulton recalled. “The throttle was wide open. We were rolling along and the machinery in this one engine room was working just fine.” Around 12:15 a.m., the ship took a grievous hit aft on the starboard side. Fulton felt a slight tremor, and no more. Others felt it more heavily, though no one could ever quite tell whether it was a torpedo hit or a salvo of heavy projectiles. Whatever it was shattered the after engine room.
A shower of giant sparks cascaded through the bulkhead separating the number-four fireroom from the after engine room. Paint chips flew off the bulkhead and tore into exposed flesh like little blades. With the destruction of the main feedwater pumps in the