Ship of Ghosts - James D. Hornfischer [65]
Escaping from Central Station was among the most harrowing gauntlets to run. With the watertight doors sealed for battle, the only way out was straight up through the hollow trunk of the foremast, which reached down through all the Houston’s decks like a taproot into Sidney Smith’s netherworld. Studded inside with steel rungs, it provided a direct route to the main deck and superstructure. Traversing that vertical chute for the first time, in pitch blackness and in the midst of combat, was an ordeal that radioman second class David Flynn would not soon forget. “You didn’t know where the hell you were,” he said. “I had never used this escape route in my life before.” He began climbing, estimating his progress by triangulating to the frightening cacophony of battle outside.
Clarence “Skip” Schilperoort, an electrician’s mate assigned to the main battery battle telephone switchboard in Plot, was the second man up the trunk. He found the hatch to the officers’ stateroom, exited and walked aft toward the quarterdeck, came to another hatch, and unscrewed the peephole that enabled a cautionary glance through. All he could see were flames. On the intercom he had heard the hue and cry as spotters called out sightings for the fire controlmen and gun crews. Now, moving forward through a passageway and looking for the hatch to the main deck between Turrets One and Two, Schilperoort reached open air and saw enemy destroyers driving in close and peeling away. “I thought I was looking at a moving picture,” he said. Deciding that standing there and gawking was a sure way to get himself killed, he retreated behind Turret One, leeward of the gunfire.
David Flynn kept climbing up the foremast’s trunk. He must have missed the hatch, because he emerged three levels above the main deck, behind the conning tower in the flag plotting station. A hatch to the outside was open, and he exited just in time to see the flash of an explosion that blew shrapnel into his left leg. Shortly thereafter he got the word that Captain Rooks had been hit too.
*Imamura’s flagship is called the Ryujo Maru in some accounts.
CHAPTER 19
In the choking confines of Turret Two, the ripe air heavy with heat, Red Huffman was head down on the indicator dial, listening for the gun captain’s signal to fire. The enemy ships were so close now that the guns were elevated downward, below zero degrees. Having rammed and fired twenty-seven salvos, the turret crew was hoisting and loading the twenty-eighth when there came a sharp metallic shock and an intense spray of sparks. The gun house had taken a direct hit square on the faceplate by a shell from a Japanese cruiser lying off somewhere in the dark.
The projectile failed to explode, but because the turret’s powder flaps had been opened to enable the men in the powder circle to pass powder bags into the gun chamber, the sparks alone were deadly. They splashed into the gun house and flowed all around the bags, igniting them. A flash fire engulfed the entire gun mount and roared down into the powder circle and shell deck.
The only men inside who were fully shielded from the inferno were Ens. Charles D. Smith, his talker, and two rangefinder operators stationed in the flameproof turret officer’s booth. Smith pulled the lever that activated the turret’s sprinkler system and peered through the booth’s glass port to assess the damage. All he could see was “a red haze as if on a foggy night.” The smoke from the fires was tinted scarlet by all the burning particles of powder flying around as if seeking an exit from the blazing enclosure.
“Everything lit up,” Huffman said. “Oh God, it was all flames.” Seated above and forward of the triple mount’s gun breeches, he was lashed by a long tongue of flame that came reaching up around the turret’s split-level deck. Because the pointer’s station was severely cramped for headroom, he wasn’t able to don his battle helmet. The fire burned away the hair on the back of his head and roasted his back.
“I’m telling you what I did when I had my