ALTHOUGH JAPANESE TORPEDOES SLASHED IN AROUND . . .

ALTHOUGH JAPANESE TORPEDOES SLASHED IN AROUND their flaming target, all of them missed.  However, Moran’s doughty command was now definitely out of action.  

    Now let us look back at the other American warships.  When the battle opened, Task Force 64’s favorite target was Goto’s unsuspecting flagship, Aoba, which was promptly inundated with forty large-caliper shells.  The Japanese admiral was mortally wounded and Captain Kijuma, the flagship’s commanding officer, took over.  Meanwhile, destroyers Furutaka and Fubuki were holed and sunk, while Duncan (soon to be abandoned) was caught in a crossfire: shells ripped into the chart house, bridge and gun director, killing everyone there, while others battered her communications center and radar plotting rooms; the forward third of the ship became a glut of flames.  More shells landed below in her forward engine room, and all power was lost.  At the same time American destroyer Fahrenholt, victim of a communication failure, was caught in a crossfire.  Shells ripped through her thin-skinned hull, flooded her gun plot, and wrecked her fire control wiring; others struck below, causing a loss of power and releasing a murderous jet of steam.  Salt Lake City absorbed a few hits while engaging an enemy cruiser, and San Francisco, leader of the group which had pumped heavy fire into Kinugasa and Aoba, came away relatively unscathed.

    While the battle was a clear-cut American victory, removing some of the sting of Savo, the Japanese reinforcement groups did manage to land their troops and supplies on the island.  Nevertheless, the Navy’s fortunes were in the ascendancy.

    Only two nights after Scott’s victory, Japan sent down a mighty bombardment group formed around the battleships Haruna and Kongo to maul the defenders of Henderson Field.  While the Marines cowered in their foxholes, some nine hundred 14-inch shells pummeled the airstrip in the worst assault of the campaign.  For eighty uninterrupted minutes the Japanese ranged with impunity along the coast hurling their explosives, until a squadron of newly arrived PT boats sneaked out of Tulagi to give battle, much as a mosquito tangling with a whale.  However, Admiral Takeo Kurita was so annoyed that he broke off his bombardment.  In his wake he left a burning, chewed-up airstrip and a good number of thoroughly shaken Marines.

    So desperate was the situation that Nimitz in Pearl Harbor observed: “It now appears that we are unable to control the area in the sea around the Guadalcanal area.  Thus our control of the positions will only be done at great expense to us.  The situation is not hopeless, but it is certainly critical.”

    Scarcely a fortnight after Cape Esperance another major confrontation appeared imminent as Yamamoto’s forces, numbering four carriers, five battleships, fourteen cruisers and forty-four destroyers, were poised for the capture of Henderson Field.  Opposing the Japanese armada were two carriers, two battleships, nine cruisers, and twenty-four destroyers divided into three groups.  On 23 October United States forces were off the Santa Cruz Islands, east of the Solomons, when a PBY flying boat “snooped” an enemy carrier and reported her position.  Task Force 16, under Rear Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid in battle-scarred Enterprise, launched a combined search and strike.  Heavy weather, however, prevented accurate reconnaissance and the battle did not break out until the morning of 26 October.  Although in the ensuing engagement the United States lost carrier Hornet and suffered damage to several other warships, enemy carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku were so heavily damaged that they were out of the war for months.  But, most important, the battle was a tactical American victory, for the thrust on Guadalcanal was decisively turned back and we gained precious time to reinforce and prepare.

    Commander Edward P. Stafford, biographer of Enterprise, narrates the event of Santa Cruz.

From: The United States Navy in World War II
Compiled and edited by: S. E. Smith

Pick Out the Biggest! (14-18 Sept., 1942)

     . . . The night was moonless and the solid blackness offered the Japs a perfect opportunity for sneaking in their ships and troop reinforcements.  The same black cloak covered the movements of the Boise’s task group and, as the men topside stood at their battle stations, they could barely make out the silhouettes of the other ships.  Men coming on deck from below stepped into what at first seemed an impenetrable pool of darkness, bumping blindly into shipmates, but as eyes became adjusted details began to emerge from the soft, warm gloom.  First the familiar outlines of the deck; gradually, the masts ahead of and behind the Boise; and finally, after long minutes, the blurred and deceptive shapes of the other ships of the task force.  There was no sound in all the blackness except for the sharp hiss and wash of the water split by the Boise’s sharp prow, and the hum of her powerful machinery far below.

USS Boise (CL-47)(1938)

     Earlier in the evening, that blackness had been sundered by an accident that, for a time, threatened to spoil the whole whole surprise party.  An observation plane, on being capitulated from one of the other cruisers, had crashed into the sea and caught fire.  The plane didn’t sink immediately, but stayed afloat for what seemed like hours.  A tall column of flame, fed by high-octane gas, lit up the sky for miles around.  For a while it seemed almost certain that this fiery, revealing beacon would be detected by the enemy ships the Boise group were hoping to intercept, giving them a chance to get away.  But nothing happened.
     Seven bells.  Eleven-thirty.  The Boise men had been at General Quarters for hours now.  Captian Moran stood in the center of the flying bridge, looking straight ahead.  Behind him, wearing a phone headset under his dishpan-shaped steel helmet, stood Mr. Laffan, the gunnery officer.  At Mike’s right was Bill Butler, the anti-aircraft boss, also wired for sound.  On the Skiper’s other side, Ensign Davis, the Boise’s signal officer, waited for orders.

     In a lofty perch just a aft the bridge, Sam Forster, a young lieutenant just two years out of Annapolis, presided over the forward director of the main battery.  His director crew was crowded around him in the tiny space allotted them.  Most of the room was taken up by the range-finder and other instruments and their accessories, with occasional niches just big enough for the men themselves.
     Lieutenant Forter was a kid with dark hair, brushed straight back, and narrow, piercing eyes.  As director officer he held a strategic job—to locate enemy targets and set in motion the wheels that would establish almost instantly the direction and distance of those targets.  In a recent night battle practice, Sam had distinguished himself by his remarkable proficiency in locating targets with a minimum of error.  And aboard the Boise he had another distinction—his home town was Boise, Idaho.
     In a director station just below and forward of the forward director were the ‘eyes’ of the five-inch guns of the Boise’s secondary battery.  An assistant gunnery officer, Lieutenant Dave Edwards, of Piedmont, California, was in charge here.  These directors, plus two similar directors aft, did the actual ‘seeing’ for the Boise’s gunners.  The subsequent brainwork, after the target had been sighted, was done in the plotting room below decks.  Here mammoth, intricate calculators waited with gaping maws for a lot of figures to be thrown in—estimated range, direction of target, speed of both ships, windage, etc.  With Buck Rogers efficiency and speed this jumble of figures was mechanically translated into a precise solution to be punctuated a few seconds later by the roar of the Boise’s guns.  The whole system of directors, ‘plot’ and spotting (checking up on hits or misses after the first rounds are fired), is called fire control.
     The Boise’sfire-control men were on edge tonight.  They instinctively sensed that another night battle practice was imminent, only this time it wouldn’t be practice.  The men in the turrets and at the broadside batteries also had a hunch.  They were responsible for keeping in shape the steel muscles that did the actual punching.  Now, in the dim light of the turrets, standing by the deck mounts, they waited impatiently for the punching to begin.
     William Garfield Thomas, turret officer of Turret One, sat up in his tiny cubical waiting for a phone call.  The words he wanted to hear were “Commence firing.”  Bill had been in the service a little more than two years and was now a junior-grade lieutenant.  He was one of the most popular J. L.’s aboard ship.  His disposition was famous in the wardroom; no one could ever ruffle him.  The boys called him ‘Beaverhead’ because he wore his hair close-cropped.
     ‘Beaverhead’ was proud of his turret and of the crew he had trained to man it so well that it had become one of the Boise’s E turrets.  Tonight he wanted to add a couple of J’s—for Jap’s—to that honor.  Hours before, he had reported, ‘Turret One manned and ready.’ Now he was waiting for further orders.
     The men stationed at the five-inch guns on the open deck were all in the same expectant mood.  At Gun One on the starboard side forward, Gun Captain King tested his primer for the fifteenth time and the resulting ‘ping’ was satisfactory.  Over his phone, King heard a soft chant, repeated several times: “Pass the word from gun to gun.  This won’t be a dummy run.”  Around him the first and second loaders and ammunition-passers shifted their weight from one foot to the other as they talked in low tones.  “Boy, this looks like our chance to get in some real licks.  Come on, Yamamoto, bring on those ships!”  The invitation, directed to Admiralty Headquarters, was sincere.
     About twenty minutes before midnight that invitation was answered.  The task force had scouted the waters in the vicinity of Cape Esperance, where enemy ships would be most likely to be encountered, and had approached to within a couple of miles of Savo Island before putting about on a west-northwest bearing to intercept any Jap ships that might be coming down from their bases to the northeast.  Lieutenant Forter, up in his director, was still staring into black space when suddenly he blinked at a distant group of objects barely visible on the Boise’s starboard bow.
     “On the target!” Sam spoke into his headset phone.
     “How many ships?”  Iron Mike’s question was relayed through the gunnery officer, now standing beside him.
     “Seems to be five, sir.”
     “Pick out the biggest and commence firing!”
     Down in the turrets there was an instant tautening of nerves and muscle and Mike Moran’s order was relayed to the pointers and trainers seated behind their guns.  The turret shook as fifteen guns fired in a single tremendous blast, lunging backwards in swift recoil before sliding forward again.  Breeches flew open, the next shells were out of the hoists and rammed home with beautiful precision, and again the turrets shook: this was the rhythm of fire for which these men had trained so long.
     Other cruisers in the Boise’s column had opened their searchlight shutters.  The beams, clear and pulsating, sliced through the darkness and found their targets.  Then the five-inch guns crackled and star shells shot out into the sky, to burst and hang like fiery flowers behind the Jap ships, silhouette games them clearly.
     The first salvo was a direct hit.  Iron Mike knew that the follow-up salvos were just as well aimed when he saw the target start blazing amidships and, in the brilliant light of that blaze, young Sam Forter’s choice was justified.  The victim was a Japanese cruiser of either the Nachi or Kako class, mounting eight-inch guns against the Boise’s six-inchers.  The middle-weight Boise had climbed into the ring with a light-heavy and had scored a knockout in the first round.
     For four solid minutes the Boise’s main battery poured hot steel into the blazing Jap.  The pointers and trainers saw their shells go out in flat arcs, their ends reddened from the heat of the explosion that had started them on their way, seemingly moving slowly across the night through the searchlight beams before dropping on the target.  Other ships in the task group were also pounding away at the Jap.  Most of the hits were amidships and the explosions and resultant damage gradually cut her in two like a blowtorch slicing an iron bar.  A series of fires was blazing away on the heavy cruiser now, her guns were silenced, and her internal explosions were popping like firecrackers in a tin can.  She broke in two.  Her bow slid under the waves, and the screws were still turning on her up-ended stern as it sank separately.  As she went under, the Boise men saw the smoke of her destruction form a wreath over her grave.
     “Cease firing!” Mike rang the bell ending Round One.
     The Boise—the erstwhile Reluctant Dragon—had drawn first blood—Jap blood.  The men on deck were jubilant.  Below, an announcement over the ship’’s loudspeaker system broke the news to those who couldn’t se the show.  There were cheers and yells of glee.  The Hollywood sailors pounded each other on the back and shouted for more.
     “Shift target and resume firing!”  Again Iron Mike barked an order to his gunnery officer.  That order, passed on to Lieutenant Forster, was hardly necessary, for that gentleman instantly had his director trained on a second target, a Jap destroyer, and the Boise’s task group had been concentrating their fire on a cruiser, which now was ablaze and was exposing the destroyer target beautifully.  The range was closing rapidly now as the two opposing columns of ships approached each other and started swapping short jabs.
     Again the first shells fired by the Boise’s guns hit true and hard.  There were occasional splashes in the water on either side of the Jap can, but in between those splashes were direct hits as the four secondary-battery guns on the Boise’s starboard side spat out their five-inch parcels of destruction.  Ammunition was coming up from below in a steady stream, and neither Gun Captain King nor the other gun captains were wasting it.  They ended that round very quickly.  The deluge of fire was too much for the Jap and in less than a minute she broke in two and disappeared.  It probably had taken the Japs well over a year to build this ship.  The Boise had disposed of her in less than sixty seconds.
     Iron Ike and the other officers on the bridge were fascinated.  Signal Officer Davis had never seen a more thrilling sight in his twenty-three years in the Navy.  “She looking just like an automobile going over the brow of a hill,”. He said happily.  “She just slid under and went out of sight.”
     To the gun crews and the men on the directors this was getting pleasantly monotonous.  “Sighted Jap.  Sank Jap.””  They were in the groove.  The months of fairly gun drills under Mike Moran’s relentless rule were understandable now.  As soon as one target became a shattered clay pigeon, another loomed up in their sights waiting to be hit.
     The Boise was no longer feeling her way along in the dark.  Blazes on the other ships in the Jap force had been started by the accurate shelling of the cruisers and destroyers of the task group.  There were several inviting targets displayed in this glare and now, between rounds, Mike crouched down in a huddle on the flying bridge with Gunnery Officer Laffan and Bill Butler.
     “Which one shall we get next?”  The grin on Mike’s face didn’t conceal his excitement.
     “How about that destroyer over there—she’s nearest.”  Laffan pointed at another Jap destroyer.  The can was silhouetted against the blazing ships around her.
     “Let’s get her!”  Mike reached for his binoculars and trained them on the Boise’s next victim.  “Shift target and resume firing.”
     Both main and secondary batteries opened up on the Jap destroyer and both were on the beam.  Before many rounds had been fired, a chain of explosions and fires aboard her vividly showed the Boise gunners where their shells had landed.  The heavy blast of gunfire form Mike Moran’s men was too much for her thin sides.  The destroyer slid behind a curtain of smoke pouring from other destroyers in her force and she never came out of it.  When the smoke had lifted, she was no more.
     There was plenty of illumination over the Japs then.  Three of their ships were ablaze, one of them with two fires burning brightly.  These were all that was left of the original force of six.  Lieutenant Foster had missed one in his initial report.  The remaining ships had been hit, but some of their guns were still firing and inflicting damage.
     The Boise herself wasn’t shellproof.  About this time the signal bridge reported splashes on both port and starboard sides, close aboard.  These were salvos from an enemy heavy cruiser some distance ahead on the Boise’s starboard bow.  And as Mike Moran’s men  fired on her, the Jap cruiser returned fire with gusto.  Splashes from her salvos came nearer and nearer, throwing salt water over the Boise’s decks, superstructure, and anti-aircraft guns.
     Finally one of these shells, an eight-in her, smacked into the Boise’s starboard side, forward, just above the water line.  It exploded in the crew’s mess hall.  Two lighter shells, probably five-inch, hit the starboard side of the superstructure, and another pair pierced the side of the ship and let go in the Captain’s cabin, wrecking the interior and setting it afire.  “Tell the gentlemen I’m sorry I wasn’t at home,”  Iron Mike murmured when news of what had happened to his cabin was relayed to him.
     Topside the Boise’s deck gunners were bearing the brunt of the enemy’s return fire.  Gun Captain King and his entire crew were hurled to the deck when Gun One, the instant five-inch gun on the starboard side, was struck by a Jap shell and put out of action.  Shell fragments and hot empty shell cases from their own expelled ammunition showered around them as they struggled to their feet.  Joe Vignali, a “hot-case” man, had just yanked one of these empty powder cartridges from the gun when the explosion knocked the case out of his hand.  It bounced up, struck the overhead, and started to fall back.  Vignali was an agile cuss—although he had been knocked down by the same hit, he was up on his knees in an instant and actually caught the hot case in his arms as it descended.  “Never dropped one yet,” he yelled above the din. “Ain’t goin’ to start now!”
     Another member of the gun crew, First Class Seaman Pitzer, wasn’t so lucky.  A large shell fragment struck his knee, mangling it badly.  When he tried to get up, he found he couldn’t, and he was subsequently carried off to a battle dress station.
     Sight setter Lowry, on Gun Three near-by, felt a sharp spray against his leg, but he stuck to his post during the remainder of the action.  After he finally collapsed and was carried off, one of the Boise’s doctors dug thirty-two pieces of shell out of this leg and showed him the tin hat he had been wearing.  In it was a jagged hole two inches across—a souvenir of that shell blast.
     Mike Moran’s men had been so occupied in their job of knocking off the three Jap ships that it hadn’t occurred to them that the Boise herself might be hit.  One of them, a chief named Schermerhorn who acted as a trainer on Sam Fortner’s director, was surprised and indignant when that barrage of Jap shells found their mark.  “What the hell!”  He bellowed.  “The sons of bitches are shooting back at us!”
     Below decks, the results of the shooting were keeping many people busy.  Where the Boise had been hit, solid bulkheads split wide open, paint was burning \, and gas from the exploding shells swept aft, choking everyone it encountered.
     From Central Station, Tom Wolverton was dispatching fire-fighting and repair parties to damaged areas  of the ship.  Telephone circuits connected him with his’ branch offices’–separate repair parties stationed forward, aft, and amidships.  His job now was comparable to that of a prize-fighter’s second.  His men did their work between rounds, moving quickly and surely to get the champ ready for the next bell.

    Commander Wolverton had also taken upon himself another job.  Most of the ship’s personnel were closed off below decks in sealed compartments behind dogged hatches, and, naturally, were missing most of the real excitement.  They could hear the muffled roar of the Boise’s guns and the occasional sound of enemy shells bursting ominously close, and that didn’t help much.  So the Damage Control Officer volunteered to man a microphone on the ship’s loudspeaker system and broadcast a running account of the battle from reports relayed to him by phone from observers on deck.

    When Mr. Wolverton had first passed the word that the enemy had been engaged, he noticed that most of the men around him in the Central Stationhad suddenly gone tense.  Grim expressions were frozen on their faces and hardly a word had been said.

    He recognized the symptoms immediately.  These men, as brave as any aboard, were facing an enemy they couldn’t see and their nervousness was natural.  Their reaction reminded him of a remark his four-year-old son had made, the first time Wolverton had taken him for a ride on a roller-coaster, when the car was approaching the top of the first steep dip.  The men with set faces stationed around him had heard this story and had chuckled over it.  Now, Wolverton decided, was a good time to remind them of it.  In the stillness of that crowded Central Station, deep in the Boise’s interior, a voice boomed out ridiculously in baby talk: “Daddy–I want to go home now!”

    The effect was magical.  Grins spread over a dozen faces as men sepptled back and relaxed.  Psychology Professor Wolverton then resumed his other jobs as Damage COntrol Officer and radio announcer.

    There were no sealed envelopes this time,  no prearranged plot.  This damage control problem was real.  

    “Carpenter Thomas–Carpenter Thomas.  Fire in the Captain’s cabin.  Lay aft with your repair party and report!”

    When Thomas and his men reached Iron Mike’s living quarters, they found a flaming shambles.  Apparently the shells had landed squarely in the center of the room before they exploded.  As they dragged their fire hoses through the five-by-three foot hole the explosion had made, the repair-party men saw a twisted mass of metal furniture on the deck.  Everything inflammable in there was ablaze.  The deck and bulkhead had been punctured and gouged as the shells burst into a thousand flying fragments.  Over in one corner, Mike’s bunk was going up in smoke, and the place was a mess.  A ship’s clock had been knocked from its position on top of Mike’s desk and now was lying broken on the deck, face up.  The blast had stopped it at five minutes before midnight.

    Trying to put out a raging fire in a ship still being rocked by enemy shells is no choice assignment, but within five minutes Carpenter Thomas reported to Mr. Wolverton that the blaze was under control.  Meanwhile, a second fire farther aft in the mess hall had been doused even more quickly and another repair party.

    The Jap cruiser responsible for all this damage was now paying the price.  Her heavier eight-inch guns were still throwing steel haymakers at the light cruiser, but most of the Boise’s guns–plus those of the other ships in her group–were answering in kind.  As he watched them hammer this fourth target, Iron Mike had reason to be proud of the marksmanship of his gun crews.  First he saw a series of fires spring up on the Jap’s deck, then there were several violent explosions.  That was the beginning of a very quick end for Target Number Four.

    The crews of the starboard deck guns had borne the brunt of the hits in the Captain’s cabin.  They had carried away the electrical leads on Gun One, putting it temporarily out of action, but the crews of the other three five-inch guns, although tossed around by the blast, were back on the job almost immediately.  At the most, they missed only one salvo.  A stand-by man jumped into Pitzer’s place at Gun Three, and everything continued to function as smoothly as though there had been no interruption. 

    Dan Brand, a young reserve lieutenant–Brown, ‘40–who was a secondary battery officer, had been standing twenty feet away from the spot where that shell had landed.  As he was getting to his feet, he saw Frank Hurst, a chief boatswain’s mate and battery officer of Gun One, trying to unscramble himself from a pile of empty shell cases.  The hit that had disabled his gun had thrown him against a bulkhead, and the empty cases showered around him as they hit the overhead and bounced back to the deck.

    Chief Hurst, a plank-owner, had been in gunnery for thirteen years.  He sized up the situation immediately.  A fire had started on the hoist of all live shells while two other men in his crew played a hose on the blaze.  Luckily the ammunition-passers had just completed a round trip from hoist to gun, so there was no live ammunition exposed at the time of the hit.

    Gun Captain King checked his mount.  The damage to the electrical leads meant there would be no more director control.  King spent all of two minutes testing and inspecting the rest of the mount and went into a quick huddle with Brand and Hurst.

    “I think we can fire it manually.  I’m going to try kicking them out,” he told them.

    Lieutenant Brand watched anxiously as the first shell was loaded and rammed by hand.  He knew what can happen to a gun when you try to fire it after it had been disabled.  Injury to the barrel or breech mechanism might cause the gun to blow up and kill everyone in the vicinity.  But he and Chief Hurst also had complete confidence in King’s gunnery ability, which was backed by five years of experience.  He, too, had been aboard the Boise since her commissioning and he was as familiar with each of her guns as a mother hen with her chicks.  He gave the order to fire.

    The five-inch gun spoke sharply and the message it carried was a direct hit on the enemy heavy cruiser–not bad for a cripple.  And as round after round was “kicked out” by King, Brand and Hurst had the satisfaction of seeing the manually operated weapon score a total of three punishing hits on the Jap before the “Cease firing” order came.  King himself didn’t see these hits.  He was too busy trying to get more.

    It was now almost midnight.   The not so Reluctant Dragon had been in action less than a quarter of an hour and, with the other ships in her task group, had disposed of four enemy ships.  Two of these had had guns heavier than the Boise’s.  Iron Mike stood on the flying deck bridge and watched the tracers from the secondary as they plowed their way toward the Jap ships.  The range was almost point-blank now.  Both forces were now steaming on ‘collision’ courses that ultimately would bring them together at the apex of a huge V.

    Signal Officer Davis realized then it was for this moment he had joined the Navy twenty-three years before.  To him it was just like a skeet shoot.  Fix your sight on the ‘pigeon’ just released and–bang!–it disappeared, shattered.  Turn half-around and there was another pigeon.  Bang!–no more pigeon.  Turn and shoot!  Turn and shoot!

    One of Lieutenant Forter’s assistants in the main battery director had quit his job as butcher in an A. & P. store to join the Navy.  Ronald Eagle  was now a fire-control man, third class, and tonight’s fireworks display reminded him suddenly of the mine feuds and accompanying gunplay he’d seen down in his home town in ‘Bloody Harlan’ County in Kentucky.  NOw Ronald was complaining to his boss. 

    “Gee, Mr. Forster, they keep yelling for ranges.  How the hell can we give ‘em ranges when the damned targets disappear so fast?”

    “That’s easy, Eagle.  Just find another target.”

    Eagle was watching the second Jap heavy cruiser disintergrate under the shell-fire the Boise and her accompanying ships were pouring on its decks and sides. Most of the Jap ship’s length looked like a mass of white-hot steel and, in sharp contrast, the bow, still untouched by the bombardment, was a dark gray.  Eagle could even see her two anchors jutting from their hawsepipes.  Amidships, her twin stacks and two plane catapults were outlined against a flaming background.

    The fourth round was ended in as many minutes.  When Iron Mike saw several explosions break the Jap cruiser into pieces, he gave the order to cease firing.  Then he went into another arms-around-the-shoulder huddle with his gunnery officers.  Leaf fan and Butler.  The Boise still had tons of ammunition left.  She had been lugging it around with her all these months for just such a party.  There were more Jap ships out there, Mike reasoned: let’s send them a few shipments of steel.

    For two full minutes the Boise had immediately available targets.  The deck gun crews spent the time cleaning up around their mounts.  Dozens of empty cartridge cases, cluttering the deck around each gun were heaved over the ship’s side and the debris caused by the hits on the cruiser’s starboard side was cleared away.  The gunners would need plenty of operating room when they resumed firing.  A heavy, sweetish odor blanketed the ship–cordite fumes from the hundreds of rounds of ammunition fired.

    “Well, what’ll we get next?”  Iron Mike put it up to his assistant coaches huddled with him on the flying bridge.  

    “There’s one burning over there.  How about him?”  Gunnery Officer Laffan pointed toward a Jap destroyer that had just burst into flames, evidently the result of a hit by one of the Boise’s companions. 

    “Okay,” Mike replied.  “Let’s get him.  Shift targets and resume firing.”

    Mr. Laffan had Sam Forter high in the forward director, on the wire and was indicating the ship on which the Boise was now to train her main battery.  Forter had also seen her blaze up and in no time at all he had the range.  A very few seconds later, the Boise’s six- and five-inch guns were whamming away at the Jap destroyer,  and very few whams were wasted.  Two minutes after Mike Moran’s men had opened fire on their latest target, there was one less Japanese destroyer for the editors of Jane’s Fighting Ships, the Bible of the world’s navies, to record.

    Even Gun One was still in there punching.  She was operating on local control with Gun Captain King kicking them out.

    “Gun One.  Sky Forward testing.  Gun One.  Sky Forward testing.”  It was Lieutenant Edwards calling from his director.

    “King speaking.”

    “How are you making out?”

    “We’re doing all right, sir.  The gun’s a little wobbly, but she’s still firing.”

    “Nice work . . . but be careful.”

    Carpenter Thomas and his repair party were still mopping up the fire in Iron Mike’s cabin.  Some of his men had been sent to douse the deck of the radio shack, directly above, when it was threatened to catch fire.  Others were busy stopping up the hole in the Boise’s side just above the waterline.  Mattresses backed by bedsprings were jammed into the opening as a temporary patch to prevent flooding of the compartment by the bow wave the galloping Boise was kicking up.  The wheel that made this hole had completely demolished the quarters of a half-dozen of the cruiser’s junior officers, and the repair party men working in that section had to fight their way through the wreckage.

    “Enemy destroyer contacted . . . The Boise had opened fire on the destroyer . . . She is blazing in several places . . . Enemy destroyer sunk by gunfire.”  Tom Wolverton’s blow-by-blow narrative over the loudspeaker system was getting hotter than a Joe Louis fight broadcast.  It was a godsend to the men cooped up below.  Down in the engine and fire rooms there was comparative quiet and calm.  The men stationed there were interested primarily in keeping up the steam pressure so that the Boise could maintain her speed.  Extra boilers had been lit off to provide for power for possible emergency speed increases.  There was little excitement here.  One man walked around the steel catwalks, taking bearing temperatures and reporting them to the officer on watch.  All through the action he continued this prosaic assignment as placidly as though he were making a regular run on the Staten Island ferry.

    Midnight had passed and Mike Moran, with Laffan and Butler, was looking  about for another Japanese target.  For the moment there was none handy, and Sam Forter was training his director on a ‘searching’ course, trying to make it six in a row for the Boise.  Down in the magazines and handling rooms the men who had been shipping ammunition topside in wholesale quantities were having a much-needed rest.  Gunner’s Mate Paul Kunkel had been feeding an ammunition hoist in the forward handling room and was still standing by, but the hoist had been shut down.  His powder-handling crew consisted of a half dozen Guamanians and several colored mess attendants.  They stood there now, immobile, their bodies glistening with sweat from their recent exertion and the heat of the below-decks space that by now reeked with powder fumes.

    At fiver minutes after midnight, Iron Mike was started by a cry from the signal bridge:  “Torpedo approaching ship on starboard bow!” 

    A signalman with eagle eyes had sighted the white foam of the torpedo track.