Brett Ashton - Vengeance - Hatred and Honor

“But just between you and me, sir, I think I shot the pilot just before the twenty-millimeters took the plane apart.”

“Let me guess, Jake; you got him right between the eyes, huh?”

“Well, very close to that, sir; he was turned the wrong way,” I answered with a grin, which I think the XO took as a joke.

“Very well then, maybe someday you can have one all to yourself so you can take the bragging rights.” There was a little bit of a tone in his voice which told me the commander wasn’t sure whether to believe me or not.

“I hope so, sir, but more to the point, I wish to convey my thanks to you and Captain Fort for letting me have the opportunity to shoot back at the Nips. In the big picture, it doesn’t make a difference because the ship’s gunners tore that plane up, but I just feel better knowing I killed a Nip today myself.”

“Very well, Jake, I know what this means to you, and I’ll be sure to convey your thanks to the Old Man.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Just one more thing, Commander,” he said.

“What would that be, sir?”

“I appreciate your passion for your work, Jake, but in the future could you do me a favor?”

“Anything, sir.”

Then he said with a big grin “Please try to keep your empty brass from falling on me in Batt 2 while you are shooting at the Japs,” and he rolled two spent rounds of forty-five caliber brass across his desk to me.

The crew of the North Carolina had their trial by fire and passed it with flying colors. However, we weren’t unscathed: one of us had died, and the rest of us counted ourselves lucky. The men had realized that the war was for real and not some weekend game. This was not some petty endeavor that could easily be passed off. And what they had witnessed while watching Enterprise struggle for her life impressed upon them that the next time, we might not be as lucky.

The Japanese, once they knew we were in the area, came out to greet us on a far more regular basis. The crew became more alert and began to take the continuous drilling more seriously. Different sections of the anti-aircraft gunnery crew began to beat their old records for rate and readiness of fire on a regular basis and even began to compete against each other. It was not only a matter of pride then, but a matter of life and death.

It wasn’t too long after the Battle of the Eastern Solomons that we had another close call. A submarine was spotted by an aircraft from the Hornet . They were able to drop a bomb in the path of the first torpedo and cause it to detonate, but another was still inbound. The skillful maneuvering of the ship kept us from being struck by it, but it passed the port side a little too close for my comfort. The Saratoga wasn’t as lucky; she had been hit several days before and had to be towed home for repairs.

With all of the drilling on a regular basis and the Japanese taking pot shots at us from submarines, I took to hanging out at my battle station in Sky Control. It had the advantage of giving me the ability to see what was going on around us at all times.

I had set myself to the business of trying to figure out where to move the smaller caliber automatic guns that were located between the five-inch turrets. There were some fairly severe injuries to the crews of those guns from the noise of the five-inchers going off during the attack on the Enterprise . Several of the crews reported bleeding from the ears and nose, so the guns had to be moved. Apparently the “mortal frame” was not designed to have a five-inch gun going off several feet from it.

I was also working on suggestions about where to place the new forty-millimeter guns when we got those. I wasn’t sure when the Showboat would get her next upgrades, but I wanted them fairly bad. The twenty-millimeter and fifty-caliber guns didn’t have nearly enough range to make me happy, but the specifications on the new forties showed some real promise.

We were in formation, screening for the Hornet . Several miles off was the Wasp and her formation. Together, we were providing cover for some transports filled with marines to reinforce Guadalcanal. That particular area of ocean was appropriately nicknamed “Torpedo Junction.”

The first inkling something was wrong came when one of the watches reported to me that there was smoke coming from the Wasp . This was not extremely unusual for an aircraft carrier in those days, as they had occasional crashes on the flight deck that resulted in fires. I dutifully reported it to the bridge because it was something to keep an eye on, even though it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence.

We continued to watch for a short time when we noticed the crew of the Wasp begin to push aircraft over the side. That, as well, was still typical procedure for a flight deck fire, but the amount of smoke rising from the ship was beginning to grow rather rapidly. Once the volume of smoke got past a certain point, the crew of the Showboat began to sense this was no ordinary fire. Many of the crew began to report to their battle stations.

The several explosions over the next minute or two reinforced our suspicions. Some of the explosions looked, even given the distance between the ships, to be quite bad.

I listened in on my sound-powered phones to the “chatter” from the bridge and radio room. There was a lot of questioning about what was going on because it was unusual to not receive communication from a ship that was obviously in distress for this long of a time. They were obviously busy fighting something far more dangerous than any ordinary flight deck fire.

I noticed the expressions change on the faces of the crew that were up there in Sky Control with me as I pulled out my forty-five and checked it to be sure it was ready. They had come to learn that when I checked my gun, it was a signal to prepare for a fight.

As I put my Colt back in its holster I heard the word “torpedo” on my phones, then “Right full rudder – emergency flank speed!”

“ Bong, bong, bong, bong, bong. Battle stations! All hands to your battle stations! ”

“All watches, torpedo alert” the bridge talker’s voice said, followed by “Sky do you see anything?” Because of our being up so high above the ship, we could see everything; we had become used to being asked questions like this first.

The ocean that day was pretty rough; it would be difficult to spot anything in the water. “Negative,” I replied while keeping my eyes on the water between us and the Wasp , which by then had become a raging inferno.

All of a sudden, one of the small destroyers on the outside perimeter of our own formation exploded. The suddenness as well as the relative closeness of the sound startled those of us in Sky as well as, I’m sure, the rest of the ship. The impact of the explosion even over the distance was stunning. The Japs had obviously been working on beefing up their torpedoes.

It’s difficult to describe the emotion when you realize you are in unfriendly water and ships in your fleet begin to explode and burst into flames around you, especially after you’ve had a ship blown right out from under you. The two distressed ships were pretty far apart, and it would have been long odds indeed to expect only one submarine had fired both torpedoes that struck the Wasp and the O’Brien . Suddenly, in my mind, the entire ocean was suspect of being filled with Jap submarines using the “Wolf Pack” tactics, which the Germans were using in the Atlantic.

“Heads up, men,” I said. “We are definitely a prize target to the Nips, and it will be hard to see anything coming in these waves.”