Sunday in Hell, page 17
The next day, 23 September, Bob Border and Tennessee’s crew exercised their big guns firing at a surface target. Life is hard work and never dull aboard a Navy combatant. Repeated drills and exercises, nearly always timed, measured, and graded, keep crews battle-ready, and prepared for emergencies.
At midnight Tennessee steamed third in the column, astern of West Virginia and California on a south southwesterly course of 210 degrees true, at a formation speed of 10 knots. At 0034 hours, still following in column, she turned port 90 degrees, to course 120, and held that course for one hour before coming port another 90 degrees, to course 030. Exactly one hour later, at 0234, she changed course again, further port to true north, 000 degrees. The column was pointed toward Oahu and rendezvous with the target tow ship, the destroyer Dorsey.
At 0522 Tennessee lighted the oil-fed fires under boiler #3, and eight minutes later cut in boiler #3 to be ready to change speed. Twelve minutes later, at 0542, the foretop lookout called the sighting of Dorsey, bearing 042 degrees, towing the target for surface engagement. At 0600 hours, on signal from the Combat Force commander aboard West Virginia, Tennessee was ordered to proceed independently, turned starboard to a northeasterly course, 045 degrees, and accelerated to 15 knots, preparing to launch her scout planes.
She catapulted planes 202 and 203 at 0630 hours, with Lieutenant Staley, the pilot, and his observer, Radioman First Class Salter, manning 202; and Ensign Hogan, pilot, with Boatswain Mate Second Class Herbert, flying in 203. Five minutes later, the catapult successfully fired plane 201 airborne, piloted by Lieutenant Commander Claude W. Haman, with observer Radioman First Class Maloof aboard. At 0639 the ship began maneuvering on various courses and speeds to take position for short range firing of main and secondary batteries. At 0647 orders were passed from the bridge to cut in boiler #2, and at 0719 the bridge shifted control to the conning tower. All was ready to commence firing.
At 0735 hours Tennessee began her first run for short range battery practice, at the normal range of 1,200 to 1,500 yards from the target, with officers ordering string firing of the starboard 5-inch broadside battery. Gun #3 fired the first shot at 0741, and spotting and scoring began. Nine minutes later the big ship began another run, preparing, at officers’ commands, to fire turret #3 (top turret, aft) in string. While turret #3 string firing was in progress the ship’s crew mustered on station at 0800, followed one minute later with the thunderous roar and belch of smoke as turret #3 fired Tennessee’s first salvo of the exercise - all three 14-inch guns firing to starboard simultaneously. At 0805 the order came to cease fire and the ship maneuvered to begin the next run, at 0825, preparing to fire 5th Division’s starboard forward group, 5-inch, broadside battery. The Division’s four 5-inch guns and one 3-inch gun was under Bob Border’s command.
They opened fire in string, the first shot at 0836, and kept a steady pace of fire - approximately four rounds per minute from each gun, until 0839, when, from the bridge, came the order “Cease fire!” One minute later another firing run began, with turret #3 again firing in string, followed eleven minutes later with #3’s first salvo, then cease fire at 0855. Twenty-six minutes later, at 0921, the next run began, with 7th Division’s two guns of the aft starboard 5-inch battery firing in string, with the first shot at 0927 hours, and the cease fire order coming two minutes later. Another run started at 0935, with turret #4 (lower turret aft) firing to starboard, followed by #4’s first salvo at 0944, and a cease fire four minutes later.
Still maneuvering independently, Tennessee and the target, towed by Dorsey, began turning to port approximately 180 degrees, while the battleship’s port side gun crews and turrets #1 and 2, prepared to open fire on command.
The next run started at 1051 for the port aft group of the two-gun, 5-inch battery of the 8th Division. The first shot was fired at 1056 and cease fire came two minutes later. Three minutes later, at 1102, Tennessee started another run with turret #2 firing in string followed by its first salvo at 1115 hours and cease fire at 1119. Eleven minutes later, following confirmation, the announcement came, “Target destroyed.” Steering control was shifted from the conning tower to the bridge, and the remaining firing runs delayed.
Turret #1 and the port forward (6th Division’s) 5-inch guns would not be able to fire short range practice until early Saturday morning, 27 September, shortly before Tennessee completed additional independent steaming and rejoined the remainder of the Battle Force to enter Pearl Harbor. The destroyer Elliot was the target tow ship.
At 1311 hours on Saturday, as Tennessee was easing toward berth F-6 in Pearl Harbor, and mooring an hour later, the ship’s crew hoisted out motor launch #3 with the mail clerk and a working party aboard, proceeding at all deliberate speed to the Fleet Post Office. One of the first orders of business in home port - mail call.
This nine-day Battle Force exercise was memorable for Bob and Joey Border for more than one reason. Joey had been awaiting Bob’s return to Oahu for three days after her arrival on Lurline. More important, the newlyweds were reunited in their new apartment and temporary home after being apart for forty long days and nights, all but two of those days coming after Joey’s harrowing automobile accident south of Eugene, Oregon. To a delighted happy-to-be-in-port Bob Border had come his 5th Division’s scoring E across the board in their gunnery exercises, a major reason Tennessee had the best overall score of all the ships in the Battle Force. News of the 5th Division’s performance was good to bring to Joey, a point of professional pride for Bob, though he wouldn't learn of Tennessee’s standing first in the Battle Force for some time. It was a joyful reunion and a wonderful night Joey remembered in her diary. “God, it’s wonderful to be with him!” she told her diary.27
Nevertheless, not evident to either Bob or Joey in the happiness of the moment, was an undercurrent of activity proceeding at a sometimes frustrating pace, preparations taken at the civil populace’s deliberate, steady pace - and behind them, the military’s relentless, more intense quest and urgings for contingency planning and preparations for a possible “orange attack,” the military planners’ terminology describing a possible Japanese attack on the islands.
The Gathering Storm
The day before Bob and Joey were reunited, the world’s harsh realities of rising tensions and war in both Europe and Asia, pressed ever-closer to them and the people of Hawaii. The Navy ordered protection of all ships engaged in commerce in United States defensive waters - by patrolling, covering, escorting, and by reporting and destroying German and Italian naval forces encountered. Japanese naval forces weren’t mentioned in the order because American Naval forces weren’t nearly as active in the Far East as they were in aiding Great Britain in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Further, since the sinking of the gunboat Panay in China’s Yangtze River four years earlier, the Japanese had studiously avoided attacks on American shipping. And on Saturday, 27 September, the same day the Battle Force returned to Pearl Harbor, America launched its first Liberty Ship, the SS Patrick Henry, the beginning of a massive building program intended to supply the nation's emerging, desperately struggling allies, while strengthening its own sparse Merchant Marine Service.28
While the evacuation of American civilians and military dependents from the Far East, Southeast Asia, and the Philippines continued, as did defense preparations in Hawaii, to most Americans, including those in Hawaii, the war in the Far East remained distant, not an urgent matter. What’s more Americans believed their west coast well-protected against a possible Japanese attack. They believed Hawaii to be an impregnable Pacific bastion, with a ring of defended islands extending outward much further. Midway Island was 1,380 miles to the northwest of Oahu, Wake about another 1,260 miles west, southwest; Johnston Island a white spear of land barely crested the waves 700 miles southwest, with Palmyra 1,000 miles due south.
On Oahu, long before 1 October, defense preparations by local Territorial Guard units had been in progress, training with regular Army units in the Hawaiian Division, while units of the Pacific Fleet repeatedly left port on exercises. The Army’s Hawaiian Air Force, activated 1 November 1940 and commanded by Major General Frederick L. Martin, continued to lay the foundation for the island’s air defense system, with its primary mission being defense of the fleet based at Pearl Harbor. That same November, responding to the German air campaign against Great Britain and the well-known and growing threat of Japanese sea power, particularly carrier-based aviation and Japan’s ability to conduct amphibious landings, the Army deployed the federalized California National Guard's 251st Coast Artillery Regiment to Hawaii, to bolster the land and air defense of Oahu.29
The Army was proud of its preparations to defend Hawaii. The Hawaiian Department was the Army's largest overseas department. For more than three decades the Department had constructed elaborate coastal defenses on Oahu. Beginning mid-1940, with arrival of the Pacific Fleet, increasing war scares, the start of selective service, numerous troop exercises, the mobilization of the National Guard, the growth of Army strength, including the Army Air Force, had been steady, toward an impressive strength of 43,000 soldiers by December 1941. The previous April, the Army staff had already assured President Roosevelt: “The Island of Oahu, due to its fortification, its location, and its physical characteristics, is believed to be the strongest fortress in the world.”
On 1 October 1941, in the Army's Hawaiian Department, commanded by Lieutenant General Walter C. Short, the Army prepared to further strengthen its island base by activating the 24th and 25th Divisions from the old “foursquare” Hawaiian Division. The Department assigned the two divisions areas of responsibility for defense of the island, with the 24th defending the northern half and the 25th defending the southern half. However, behind the scenes, all was not well.
Despite the continuing push to strengthen the islands’ defenses, there were a number of deficiencies, the most glaring of which was the same deficiency plaguing the continental United States’ Western Defense Command - the lack of long range patrol planes. Hawaii needed 360 degrees of long range patrol coverage to ensure against a surprise carrier based air attack, which had been the most likely scenario emerging from military planners’ studies and inserted into war game exercises. The necessary planes and crews weren’t available to ensure a surprise carrier-based attack could be prevented.
Additionally, the Army and Navy in Hawaii had had a long history of divisive inter service rivalry, which General Marshall and Admiral Stark had previously recognized and vowed to improve. Marshall had given marching orders to improve the climate of cooperation to both Air Corps’ Major General Martin, before he arrived in November 1940, and Lieutenant General Short, before he arrived to take command of the Department in February. For his part, Admiral Stark had been taking similar action with the Navy’s Pacific Command. Though there had been definite improvements, not all the damage had been repaired, resulting in considerably less than the ideal in integrating the substantial defense capabilities the two services possessed on Oahu.30
On 7 October a letter came to Karl Border - Maximus - from Joey, the primary letter-writer in the newest of the Border families. In his diary he wrote, “Received a letter from Joey saying that the 5th division had gotten all E’s. Swell work for Minimus and the boys!...”31 Three months hence, early on a Sunday morning, the boys of Tennessee's gun divisions 5, 6, 7, and 8, would fire at far more difficult targets under far different circumstances.
Two days later, at 2006 hours, Tennessee, with Bob Border on board, was under way once more, bound for the Hawaiian operating area northeast of Oahu, and ten more days of Battle Force exercises with various units of the Pacific Fleet. Harbor pilot #4, with Tennessee’s commander, executive officer and navigator on the bridge, steered her clear of Pearl Harbor’s entrance, then the pilot left the ship forty-two minutes after she pulled away from her berth. Though the nation was still at peace, as was typical for reasons of operational security and training, the ship was darkened and her running lights dimmed as soon as she left the harbor. Designated Task Force One, the fleet guide was the minelayer Oglala (CM-4) leading the formation at a speed of 12 knots on an initial easterly course of 090 degrees true. After clearing the southeast end of Oahu, Task Force One turned further port to 030 degrees at fifteen minutes after midnight.
Aboard Tennessee, at 0115 hours, lookouts in the foretop sighted a vessel bearing 040 degrees True (10 degrees off the starboard bow). At 0128 Molakai Light came in view, bearing 096 degrees (66 degrees off the starboard bow), at a distance of twenty-five miles. Two minutes later the order was given to turn on the ship’s running lights to warn the vessel, identified as the SS Makaweli, a Matson Line freighter. In ten minutes Tennessee was well clear of Makaweli and the running lights were turned off.
As was also typical in fleet exercises, command guidance and operational security necessitated radio silence - except for emergencies. Messages were passed visually by signal flags, lights using Morse code, night and day, and as daytime back-up messengers. Classified intelligence information and Pacific Command guidance came shore to ship, to all independently operating ships and task forces, via encrypted messages. Again, unless there was an emergency, or specific command guidance requiring a reply, ships in this circumstance were operating in the “passive mode” as listeners and receivers only, and not radiating signals that could be picked up by an enemy, who could then triangulate and fix the transmitters’ positions. Receivers of encrypted messages carried highly classified decoding “boxes” similar to the British enigma machines, with communications operators qualified to operate them.
In the ten days that Task Force One was at sea, Tennessee conducted numerous exercises in formations with West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Oklahoma (BB-37); fueled the destroyer Hull (DD-350) on Tennessee’s starboard side; did more anti-aircraft firing; released a box-type kite for anti-aircraft firing by her .50-caliber machine guns and 5-inch/25 caliber anti-aircraft guns; conducted night and short range battle practices; periodically led the battleship column in exercises; and launched and recovered her scout planes in daylight exercises when weather and sea conditions permitted.
In all her days at sea, the crew’s duty hours were long and demanding. When Tennessee moored at berth F-5 in Pearl Harbor at 1126 in the morning, Saturday, 18 October, liberty was on the mind of every sailor and many junior officers. There would be time for liberty, sixteen days, and, like other married junior officers whose wives had come to Hawaii, Bob was anxious to get home to Joey. As Tennessee slowed to enter the harbor and ease into her berth, he confirmed a ride home and packed a small bag to take with him. He left ship on a motor launch within minutes. When he arrived at their apartment at 1:00 p.m., he found Joey in bed, ill, and spent the afternoon looking to her needs and comfort.32
Though more than two weeks elapsed following Tennessee’s return to port on 18 October, that didn’t mean sixteen days of liberty. The standard command policy was to keep at least 50 percent of the crew on board when ships were in port, which meant Bob would spend at least eight of those days on duty. If there were required training courses to attend ashore, such as qualifying in pistol firing, or he was assigned Officer of the Deck duties, they would eat into the time he and Joey could spend together. Life was never easy.
While Bob continued his duties during the ship’s exercises at sea and in port, as well as his studies, training and tests as a junior officer intent on improving his professional skills and capabilities, Joey Border was becoming slowly accustomed to the life of a Navy officer’s wife. Life in Honolulu and at Pearl Harbor was not unlike life at The Yard in Bremerton, except she was now fulfilling the role her mother fulfilled as the wife of a Marine officer.
She managed the household, keeping it orderly, neat, and clean; shopped at the market and department stores; and easily moved into the social circle of officers’ wives who enjoyed one another’s company, games of bridge and acey ducey, and cared for one another and their children while their husbands were on duty aboard their ships. Then there were the dinners and movies on board Tennessee with Bob; the officers’ club at Pearl Harbor; drinks and dancing at the well-appointed, inviting Honolulu vacation hotels like the Royal Hawaiian. There were noticeable differences however. He was the one man in her life now, no collection of beaus, and she told her diary frequently how she missed him when he was at sea or on duty when Tennessee was in port.
Having settled into the routine of a young Navy officer’s wife, which included Bob’s intervening absences while on duty aboard Tennessee, with Christmas less than two months in the future, and since she had worked as a reporter in Bremerton, she decided a job would break up both the household routine, the separations from Bob, and provide some extra cash for the holidays. While Bob was at sea in October, she began the job hunt and succeeded in finding full time employment as a receptionist and administrative assistant at the Canada Dry Bottling Company in Honolulu, for 80 cents an hour. Her first day of work was Monday, 27 October, the morning before Bob had four hours of duty as Officer of the Deck beginning at midnight.33
On 31 October, in Washington, DC, as relations between Japan and the United States continued to deteriorate, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox signed a directive to the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO). Not made public, the directive’s subject, “Evacuation Plan for Dependents of Navy Personnel from the Outlying Bases” would soon affect the entire populace in the Hawaiian Islands, and particularly on Oahu. Forwarded from the CNO, Admiral Stark, on 6 November, to the First, Fifth, Tenth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Naval Districts, and the Governor of Samoa, the directive was brief and clear.
