Dark Nights, Deadly Waters
by Keith Warren Lloyd 4 Nov 2023 22:54 PST
The crew of the PT-109 (Commanded by one Lieutenant, Junior Grade, J.F. Kennedy) © National Archives
Eighty feet long, built of layered mahogany and powered by three monstrous 1500-horsepower V-12 engines, the US Navy’s Patrol Torpedo (PT) boats screamed across the water at over forty knots. They were not only fast, but also armed to the teeth, bristling with a deadly array of machine guns, automatic cannons, torpedoes, and depth charges.
Duty aboard the boats was often reserved for the spirited, the aggressive, and the very young, the average age of a PT sailor being twenty-four years of age. The “mosquito boats” carried out a variety of missions during the war, including scouting and reconnaissance, attacking enemy shipping, search and rescue, interdiction of supply routes, strafing of enemy shore installations, supporting coast watchers and special operations forces, and even putting armed crew members ashore to perform commando-style raids on far-flung enemy outposts.
The boats were used in every theater of the Second World War, but they are most famous for their daring exploits in the South Pacific, where they were the US Navy’s first line of defense against the “Tokyo Express,” the nightly attacks of Japanese destroyers against American forces on Guadalcanal. Dark Nights, Deadly Waters tells the story of the first PT boats deployed to the fetid and malarial island of Tulagi, in the desperate early days of America’s “island hopping” campaign across the Pacific. Using a gritty and evocative narrative style—citing first-hand accounts, after-action reports, and official navy documents—author Keith Warren Lloyd describes in vivid detail the austere conditions under which the sailors lived and worked, and the highly dangerous nocturnal missions they performed.
Excerpt from Dark Nights, Deadly Waters
Rear Admiral Raizo Tanaka and his “Tokyo Express” attempted to resupply the beleaguered Japanese garrison on Guadalcanal on the night of December 3, 1942. The squadron of eight destroyers was spotted by an Australian coastwatcher in the early afternoon and attacked by American planes 160 miles northwest of Guadalcanal, resulting in only minor damage to the Makinami. The destroyers continued on to Guadalcanal’s Tassafaronga Point, evaded the patrolling PT boats, and pushed overboard 1,500 tethered oil drums filled with food and medical supplies before making a clean getaway.
Only 310 of the drums would make it onto the beaches of “Starvation Island,” as Japanese soldiers had begun to call Guadalcanal. An insufficient number of men had been assigned to retrieve the supplies, and most of them were already weak from hunger and sickness. Many clusters of floating barrels simply drifted away with the current before they could be recovered, or the ropes that connected them parted under tension. All were sunk by strafing Wildcat fighters after they were discovered bobbing in the swells of Ironbottom Sound the following morning.
“The loss of four-fifths of this precious material was intolerable when it had been transported at such great risk and cost, and when it was so badly needed by the starving troops on the island,” wrote the highly frustrated Tanaka.
Three days later, on December 6, Admiral William F. Halsey ordered Rear Admiral Willis A. “Ching” Lee’s Task Force 64, consisting of the battleships Indiana and Washington, to rendezvous with the Enterprise task force in the Coral Sea south of Rennell Island. Halsey, who on Thanksgiving Day had received the fourth star of a full admiral, wanted the aircraft carrier and fast battleships to be in a position to block the next attempt by the Japanese fleet to reinforce Guadalcanal. At dusk on December 7, one year to the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, an Allied search plane spotted a group of eleven Japanese destroyers speeding down the Slot on a course for Tassafaronga.
This latest effort to keep the Japanese 17th Army alive was being led by Captain Torajiro Sato aboard the Oyashio. Eight of Sato’s destroyers were heavily laden with supply drums, which under Tanaka’s orders were lashed together in clusters of no more than one hundred, a measure intended to ease the burden on the undernourished and depleted men who would have to haul them through the surf. The remaining three ships were stripped for action and carrying their full load of torpedoes, in the event another force of American cruisers should suddenly appear out of the darkness. Halsey might have relished the thought of obtaining retribution for the trouncing received at the Battle of Tassafaronga on November 30, but his heavy forces were still steaming westward from Nouméa and Espiritu Santo and were too distant to intervene. Once again, it would be up to the pilots of the “Cactus Air Force” and the PT sailors of Tulagi to stop the Tokyo Express.
A squadron of Marine Corps SBD Dauntless dive bombers located Sato’s destroyers in the Slot just before dusk, landing a half-ton bomb close aboard the Nowaki, which killed seventeen sailors, dished several hull plates, and flooded her fire rooms. Another near miss damaged the Arashi, the very same destroyer that had unwittingly led American dive bombers to Nagumo’s carriers at Midway. Sato ordered Naganami to take the powerless and drifting Nowaki under tow and return to the Shortlands, followed by Arashi with a fourth destroyer acting as escort. His task force now cut down to just seven ships, Sato pressed on for Guadalcanal.
As darkness fell, eight PT boats sortied from their base on Tulagi under the tactical command of Rollin Westholm aboard PT-109. Message traffic between the Japanese destroyer base in the Shortlands and General Hyakutake’s headquarters on Guadalcanal, along with the presence of so many supply drums adrift in the sound after the failed supply mission of December 3, had served to tip the enemy’s hand. Westholm had a clear idea of Sato’s destination and intentions, and was able to deploy his boats accordingly.
The squadron commander assigned himself the “bitch patrol” between Cape Esperance and Kokumbona, along with the PT-43 skippered by Charles Tilden. Bob Searles in PT-48 and Stilly Taylor in PT-40 were ordered to take up scouting positions in the Slot to the northwest of Guadalcanal. A designated striking force of four boats roamed the waters of Ironbottom Sound east of Savo Island, led by Bob’s brother Jack Searles and made up of PTs 36, 37, 44, and 59.
Before departing the Solomons for rear area bases following the naval battles of Guadalcanal and Tassafaronga, several heavily damaged cruisers like San Francisco, Portland, and New Orleans had left their Curtiss SOC Seagull reconnaissance seaplanes and their aircrews behind in Tulagi with orders to assist the PT boats. On the night of December 7–8, the Seagulls were tasked with maintaining a constant vigil over Ironbottom Sound between the hours of 11:00 p.m. and 2:45 a.m., on the lookout for Japanese destroyers and standing ready to drop parachute flares as directed. This would be the first of many nights the Seagulls were partnered with PT boats to hunt for the Tokyo Express. It was dangerous work for the men flying these underpowered and lightly armed biplanes, who were forced to brave pitch darkness and often-foul weather in addition to prowling Japanese aircraft.
At 11:20 p.m. both Bob Searles and Stilly Taylor spotted the Japanese formation. The Oyashio was in the van, steaming directly for the two scouting PT boats at 34 knots with a glowing “bone in her teeth.” George Bockemuehl, the 48 boat’s radio operator, began transmitting a contact report by TCS radio, alerting the striking force to the presence of at least five enemy ships roughly 3 miles north-northwest of Savo Island, on a course of 130 degrees southeast for Guadalcanal. Just as the two boats were motoring into a position to flank the Japanese destroyers and launch torpedoes, the tired portside motor aboard PT-48 sputtered, coughed, and then finally died. Despite the frantic efforts of Chief Otis Cline and Motor Machinist’s Mate Bill Nelson, the obstinate Packard steadfastly refused to start. Searles cranked the wheel and gunned the two remaining motors in a desperate bid to get clear of the onrushing destroyers.
“Get that smoke going!” Searles roared. Bockemuehl was still in the midst of transmitting his contact report, and his skipper’s urgent order could be heard in the background. This caught the attention of Stilly Taylor, who quickly shot a glance across the water. Five-inch shells were tearing into the sea all around the plodding PT-48, showering the men topside with salt water.
Taylor ordered his own smoke generator opened and then put the wheel of the PT-40 hard over, reversing course to trace a tight circle directly in the path of Sato’s destroyers. Japanese searchlights swept forward, attempting to locate the new threat through the billowing smoke and glistening spray. Seeming to forget all about the crippled PT-48, the first two Japanese ships swerved away from the main column in pursuit of the PT-40 as she sprinted away to the southeast at full throttle. The five remaining destroyers, their decks jammed with supply drums and their captains evidently hell-bent on completing their mission, steamed past the wallowing 48 boat at over 30 knots. Deciding to seek cover in the black shadow of Savo Island, Searles nosed the crippled PT-48 close to shore before dropping anchor just 2 yards from the beach. Then the young skipper and his crew, still somewhat rattled after what had been an exceedingly close brush with death, settled in to watch and wait for what came next.
“Visibility was excellent, and I could see the Japanese heading in three columns from Savo to Cape Esperance,” Jack Searles remembered. Alerted by the PT-48’s sighting report, the four boats of the striking force were roaring in from the northeast in attack formation. Selecting the leading destroyer Oyashio as his target, Searles began maneuvering the PT-59 for a torpedo shot.
“I soon realized that we were on head-on collision courses, and rather than run away from him behind smoke, I thought we would give it to him with our guns,” Searles later wrote. “All hands were alerted to get ready to shoot everything they had at the bridge, all gun positions, and all searchlights, and to sweep their deck. We continued on at 28 knots, estimating his speed at 30. I fired our two torpedoes across his bow, hoping he would see us and swerve to his starboard right into our fish, but he never altered his course. I had forgotten our depth charges, but that’s all I forgot. Once the torpedoes were on the way, we opened fire, passing him port-to-port at about 30 to 50 yards. I was proud of my crew. They really let that ‘can’ have it.”
A violent hailstorm of .50-caliber slugs and 20-millimeter cannon shells swept through the bridge of the Oyashio, killing or wounding ten men and sending Captain Sato scrambling for cover. Standing in the open hatchway of the PT-59’s engine room, even Motor Machinist’s Mate George Ebersberger was plugging away with a Springfield rifle. The two vessels passed so close to each other that the Oyashio was unable to depress her 5-inch guns low enough to get a clean shot at the PT-59, but one of her machine gunners was still able to rake the “devil boat’s” topside. A pair of Japanese bullets punctured the 59’s portside gun turret, narrowly missing Gunner’s Mate Third Class Cletus Osborne and striking an ammunition belt, which “started a lively blaze,” in the words of one official account. Quickly grabbing a delinking tool, Osborne snapped the belt in two and tossed the flaming portion from the turret before resuming fire on the destroyer. The sizzling band of bullets landed on the deck at the feet of Quartermaster Harold Johnson, who stopped firing his Tommy gun long enough to kick it over the side.
Within three minutes of Searles making his brazen strafing run on the flagship, the Japanese destroyer skippers suddenly found themselves in “torpedo water.” Lookouts spotted the tracks of eight steel fish streaking toward the Japanese column, fired by Marvin Pettit’s PT-36 and Frank Freeland’s PT-44. More than a few supply drums toppled or skittered wildly across the weather decks as the destroyers heeled over into high-speed turns to avoid the inbound torpedoes.
Apart from ten small-caliber holes and a number of fish blown onto her deck by near misses, the PT-59 and her crew came through their close encounter with the Oyashio unscathed. Spending those few seconds on the business end of a PT boat had apparently taken the fight out of Captain Sato. A radio message was sent to Tanaka’s new flagship, the big 2,500-ton antiaircraft destroyer Teruzuki. Sato informed the admiral that he was ordering his ships to return to base without pausing to drop their supply drums.
“On the way I learned that the rest of the force which had continued toward Guadalcanal had fought off six torpedo boats west of Savo Island,” Tanaka later wrote.“It was prevented from conducting unloading operations, however, by the presence of enemy planes and more torpedo boats. Accordingly it was on its way back to base without having made delivery. Under the circumstances I was forced to agree with the decision. Another attempt had failed.”
While the four boats of the striking force retired toward Tulagi behind a cloud of white chemical smoke, the 109 and 43 were racing toward Cape Esperance from Kokumbona, hoping to catch the retreating Japanese in the narrow confines of the Savo-Esperance channel. Westholm broke off the chase at 12:25 a.m. on December 8, after receiving a radio report from the Seagull scout plane orbiting overhead. Sato’s destroyers had already put 15 miles behind them, and were high-tailing it northwest for the Shortlands.
About the Author
Keith Warren Lloyd is an author and historian, a U.S. Navy veteran, and a professional firefighter. Lloyd graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in Liberal Studies with an emphasis on history and political science. He is also the author of The Great Desert Escape: How the Flight of 25 German Prisoners of War Sparked One of the Largest Manhunts in American History and Avenging Pearl Harbor: The Saga of America's Battleships in the Pacific War. He lives in Arizona.