Текст книги "The Sea Hunters II: More True Adventures with Famous Shipwrecks"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Craig Dirgo
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“Set a course east to Philadelphia,” McCord instructed the navigator. “The weather report indicates they have only scattered clouds.”

“Aye, Captain,” the navigator said.

Less than an hour later, Akron passed over Philadelphia, finding the visibility fair to good. In the control car, McCord stared at the latest weather report. A thunderstorm was being reported in Washington, D.C., and was said to be moving north and east toward them. McCord decided on a course east by southeast to skirt the storm. If all worked according to plan, he would miss the storm’s fury and arrive off Newport, Rhode Island, for a test scheduled for seven the next morning.

The test would never happen.

* * *

Saint Elmo’s fire. The brush discharge of electricity was dancing from the flagstaff of Phoebus.A flaming phenomenon that never signaled calm or comfort, a sign of disturbances in the heavens, a beacon of foul weather as sure as a snowball in the face.

Captain Carl Dalldorf burped as his ship rocked, tasting the sour tang of a dill pickle. Phoebus,a motor tanker registered in Danzig, Germany, was crewed by Germans. Dalldorf and his crew had spent a fine weekend in upper Manhattan, mingling with the German population and frequenting the Bierstubes. Casting off from Pier 6 at 2 P.M., Phoebuswas bound for Tampico, Mexico. The ship had spent most of the afternoon and evening in a pea-soup fog. Now, just before 11 P.M., lightning began to strike the water around the vessel, while thunder reverberated loudly from the heavens.

Dalldorf stared at his barometer. There had been a sharp drop.

He knew the signs – this was a storm that bore watching.

* * *

Up the Delaware River, starboard back across New Jersey, hit the water near Asbury Park – that was the course. But the storm kept advancing.

“Get me the latest weather map,” McCord said, just after 11 P.M.

Wiley headed for the aerological office above the control car and consulted with Lieutenant Herb Wescoat. Wiley liked Wescoat, who, unlike some of the meteorological officers Wiley had served with, had at least an inkling of a sense of humor.

“What have you got?” Wiley asked.

“We received about two-thirds of the map – it came in code,” Wescoat replied, handing Wiley the copy.

“This doesn’t look too promising,” Wiley noted.

“No,” Wescoat said, “it doesn’t.”

“Do you have any recommendations for the captain?” Wiley asked.

“I’d ask him to land as soon as possible,” Wescoat said logically.

“I doubt he’ll do that with Admiral Moffett aboard,” Wiley said.

“Hmm,” Wescoat said slowly. “Then I’d recommend we all pray.”

* * *

Captain Dalldorf was due to remain on watch until midnight. By the look of the storm, he might stay on duty a while longer. A rogue wave had just rolled over Phoebus’sbow, a most rare occurrence. In addition, not five minutes before, his second in command had come across a sailor lying in the rain on the walkway outside the pilothouse. After he was revived, the man explained that when he’d gone to grip a handrail, an electrical charge had shocked him and thrown him back six feet, where he’d struck his head. That was just bizarre. Lightning usually passes through ships, leaving no damage. Dalldorf guessed that because Phoebuswas carrying a load of truck batteries to Mexico, maybe the pooled energy had somehow created the shock.

Whatever the case, the storm and the general feeling in the air were disturbing.

“Bring me some more coffee,” Dalldorf ordered a crewman. Then he lit an American-made cigarette and took a puff.

* * *

They were minutes from death and miles from safety, as April 3 became April 4.

A lightning bolt streaked through the sky, and Akronwas lit as though it were in the beam of a spotlight. At just that instant, the control car lurched from side to side.

“Drop ballast,” Commander McCord ordered.

A second later, the helmsman lost control of the rudder as the wires parted. The wheel began to spin wildly. Five squawks rang out over the telephone system, signaling landing positions. Akroncontinued to lose altitude.

“Drop more ballast,” McCord ordered.

Just then, a horrible shrieking was heard from the hull of Akron.The ship’s structure was breaking apart. The upper fin had been lost to the violence of the storm, and the strain from the loss of the fin broke frame girders. Some of the broken girders punctured the helium bags. Akronbegan to leak like a water-filled balloon poked by a pin. The airship continued to descend.

Wiley stared from a small window in the control car, as the blimp lowered through the thick fog. At about two hundred feet, he first caught sight of the waves below.

“I see the water approaching,” he said ominously.

No one in the control car replied.

Throughout Akron,the seventy-plus men made preparations for a water landing. Those with time fastened their coats firmly; a few managed to grab some light personal items. One scribbled a note to loved ones and stuffed it into the pipe forming one end of his hammock, never to be recovered. Many simply awaited the inevitable.

Akron sagged lower, her bones broken and her lungs punctured.

Then, at a distance of less than fifty feet above the waves, she stopped and hung in the air for a moment. There was no doubt she was a beautiful ship. A second later, a final lightning bolt lit her gleaming silver hull and surrounded the ship with a glow of electrical energy.

Then, like a rock dropped from a bridge, Akronplunged down into the ocean.

* * *

“The lights have disappeared,” the lookout declared.

“Are you certain?” Dalldorf asked.

“Yes, sir,” the lookout noted, “they dropped below the horizon a minute ago.”

“It’s probably an aircraft,” Dalldorf said. “Fix our position.”

The navigator took a minute to make notes on a sheet of paper. “Latitude 39 degrees, 40 minutes north; longitude 73 degrees, 40 minutes west,” he said.

Just then his second in command burst through the door of the pilothouse.

“The smell of gasoline is very heavy,” he said. “It’s all around us in the water.”

“Prepare to lower lifeboat number one,” Dalldorf said, “and stand by to rescue survivors.”

Phoebusremained until first light, when the Coast Guard arrived. Three men were taken aboard the German vessel. They were the only survivors of the crash of Akron.

II
No Surfing in New Jersey 1986

Once I began researching early airships and their often tragic endings, I became hooked on their fascinating stories. The stories of Akron and her sister rigid airships Maconand Shenandoahtell of a bright future turned dark when all three fell out of the sky and crashed. I wondered if any of their wreckage had gone undiscovered.

Shenandoah’scrash site in Noble County, Ohio, is well known and marked in a farmer’s field by a memorial. Maconwent down in deep water off Point Sur, California, in 1937. A search was launched for her resting site because of a desire to find the Curtiss aircraft that she’d taken into the sea with her. An expensive deepwater project was successful in finding her remains and a few of her aircraft, but none was salvaged. Video pictures of the wreckage revealed that the planes were too damaged and corroded by the sea to be restored, so they were left to rest on the bottom of the Pacific.

That left Akron.

I wish I could write an electrifying tale of adventure about finding Akronthat would fire the imagination and leave a lasting impression. But the search was nothing but a struggle against a violent and unrelenting world. A search of the archives at the Washington Library put me on the track of the salvage vessels that recovered pieces of Akron’swreckage and brought it to shore on a barge. An examination of the log of the Falcon, the famous navy salvage boat that had raised the submarine S-51under the leadership of Commander Edward Ellsburg in 1925, and worked as a dive and survey boat for thirty years, put me on the track leading to the Akron’s grave. The logbook gave the coordinates where Falcon moored. Her position was reasonably close to the main debris field that was twenty-seven miles offshore from Beach Haven, New Jersey.

The volunteer NUMA team assembled in Beach Haven in July of 1986. Most came from Long Island, New York. A1 and Laura Ecke came with their thirty-four-foot boat. Dr. Ken Kamler acted as team physician and diver, along with Mike Duffy, a seasoned oceanographer. Zeff and Peggy Loria also came along to lend a hand, set up logistics, and run things when I had to go home a day early to begin a book tour. My good old pal, dependable Bill Shea, who suffered the seasickness of the damned on our voyages around the North Sea, also came along.

We gathered at a motel on the beach, a short drive from the marina where the Eckes’ boat was docked. The lady at the desk stood nearly six feet tall, her blond hair pulled back into a tight bun. She stared at me through steely piercing eyes that I swore were focusing on a calendar hanging on the wall directly behind my head.

“Ja, vas du you vant?”

I should have known I was in for it. She had the face of the town rat catcher.

“I have a reservation. My name is Cussler.”

She snapped open a ledgerlike book with razor precision and perused the names. “Ja,Cussler, a good German name. You willfill out the register.”

I signed.

“Your credit card.” It was a demand, not a request.

She made an imprint and handed back the card, but not before biting one corner as if it were a counterfeit coin. “Now the orders.”

I looked at her. “Orders?”

“You willnot drink alcohol in your room. You will have no parties in your room. You willnot bring animals into your room. You willnot smoke in your room. You will not make loud sounds or play loud music in your room. You willnot eat in your room.”

“Can I watch TV in my room?”

“Twenty-five cents for ten minutes. There is a slot next to the power button.”

“Can I use the bathroom?” I said, in a pathetic attempt to beleaguer her.

“If you are hygienically neat.”

“But can I sleep in the bed?”

A dark scowl crossed her face as she caught on. “If you do not adhere to the orders, you will have to stay somewhere else.”

“My friends are here.”

“That’s your problem.”

I couldn’t resist one more. “What time do we fall out in formation for roll call?”

“Here is your key. Room 27.”

“That’s upstairs,” I complained. “I’d prefer a room on ground level.”

“We do not play musical chairs,” she said, her hostility rising.

I could see it was a lost cause, so I picked up my luggage and hiked up the stairs. The room was dark when I entered. Hanging over the bed was a print of a man standing behind a desk. I walked closer, thinking he might have a spit curl over one eye and a clipped broom mustache.

But, no, it was Elvis Presley. I’d never seen a picture of him standing behind a desk before.

I unpacked and met the rest of the gang at dinner. We met several local divers, but none were familiar with Akron. The first three days we encountered miserable weather and stayed ashore. I might have risked the rough seas. I had certainly run search lanes dragging detection gear through much worse in the North Sea, but except for Bill, who would go despite his suffering, this was not a crew who relished eight– to ten-foot waves.

An unforeseen problem was Ecke’s boat. Though a nice and comfortable craft for short day trips, it had only one engine. If it faltered in a gale, forget it.

Stormy weather or not, since I was a California beach bum and enjoyed body surfing, I put on my swim trunks and headed to the beach, thinking the storm might kick up some good waves. Never having surfed the East Coast, I was stunned to find that the waves didn’t come up much above my knees, a condition that ranges from the Florida Keys until Long Island, New York. I went back to the motel, sat under an umbrella by the postage stamp-sized pool, and read the New York Times.

At last, after we enjoyed the preeminent lifestyle of Beach Haven in the rain for three days, the sun appeared, and our jolly band of sea hunters set sail from the dock at Little Egg Harbor and cruised out to sea. With only one engine, the boat drove through the waves with the sensation of a hacksaw cutting marble. It took us four hours to run the twenty-seven miles to our search grid.

The instant we arrived, Captain Ecke peered at some dark clouds on the eastern horizon and proclaimed, “We have to return to port. There’s a storm coming.”

“Storm, hell!” I protested. “We just got here.”

I argued, pleaded, and begged, finally cajoling him into remaining on station. The storm, as I predicted, continued north and we had calm seas for the search. The sidescan sonar went out and we began running lines. After four hours, not so much as a beer bottle could be seen protruding from the surface. Then the sonar recorded a strange anomaly, and I sent Mike Duffy and Dr. Kamler over the side to investigate. Ten minutes later, they surfaced and said the anomaly was nothing but a grotesque rock. Could the sands have buried Akron?I didn’t think so. The divers said the bottom had the consistency of gravel and seemed quite firm.

With a four-hour trip back to port staring us in the face, I called it quits for the day. We pulled up anchor and chugged home. Later, before we all headed out to a seafood restaurant for dinner, Ecke and I sat at a patio table and studied the charts to see if there was a discrepancy in the positions given by the navy salvage ships. No gleam of joy could have pierced the dismal gloom when I realized Harold had mistakenly converted the Falcon’s logbook coordinates to the wrong LORAN coordinates. We had searched over a mile away from where we were supposed to be.

When I called Harold on the error, he became indignant and shrugged his shoulders, as if the entire wasted day were a voyage down the lazy river in the noonday sun. Since he was supplying the boat, I bit my tongue and slinked off to the restaurant, wondering about the meaning of life.

The weather looked good the next morning, so we tried again. Déjà vu. We had no sooner arrived at the search grid than Harold swept his hand toward another front of storm clouds and turned the boat back to shore. These flights of fancy were beginning to get to me, but this time Harold had a point. The Coast Guard hailed us over the radio and urged us to find a safe harbor.

We sailed into the Beach Haven Channel just as the squall struck with fifty-mile-an-hour winds. Harold was in Nirvana. I’ve never seen a man in the throes of ecstasy before. He seemed to experience an unrestrained joy from motoring four hours out and four hours back without accomplishing anything. Still, I had to hand it to him. Being a fireman, he was as hardy as they come.

The third day was the charm. Clear sky and calm seas. We arrived at the proper coordinates and began searching. We quickly began to record debris scattered around the seafloor eighty feet under our keel. The divers went down and found a galley stove from the dirigible, as well as twisted duraluminum beams. No more were we broken and saddened souls.

I had to fly out the next morning to begin a tour for my latest book. The crew, bless them, then went out again with Zeff Loria running the sidescan, and found the aircraft’s lower fin lying on the bottom. Divers searched a small part of the seven-hundred-foot debris field and found piles of twisted beams and support frames half-buried in the seafloor. No aircraft were visible, since none were aboard when Akroncrashed into the sea. There were few intact artifacts left from the great zeppelin, whose hull was only a hundred feet shorter than Titanic.Her career was short, but she and her sisters had made a lasting impression on the history of lighter-than-air aircraft. It was sad and unfortunate that the great airships could not have been a major stepping-stone into air transportation, but most all met with tragic fates. Now the graves of Akron, Macon,and Shenandoahare all accounted for. I wish that someday professional archaeologists would return to Akron,retrieve her artifacts, and put them on display in the museum at Lakehurst, New Jersey.

One final note on a very strange story related to Akron.Not long after she was launched, the dirigible was scheduled to fly over a football game in Huntington, West Virginia. The date was October 10,1931. As thousands watched, a huge zeppelin cruised over the Ohio River and approached the stadium at only three hundred feet. Then, to the spectators’ horror, it suddenly crumpled and crashed to the ground. Several men were seen to escape in parachutes. After a thorough search, however, rescuers were stunned to find no sign of the Akron.No victims or wreckage could be found. Later investigation revealed that the flight by the navy dirigible over the stadium had been canceled. Not only had Akronnot crashed in full view of a horde of sworn witnesses, but she had been over a hundred miles away at the time, and no other lighter-than-air craft were reported missing.

The eerie apparition has never been explained.

PART THIRTEEN
PT-109

I
PT-109 1943

It was another day of tropical heat and humidity, the type of smothering air that brings on a festering malaise of listlessness and diminished expectations. Even the fact that the crew of PT 109was due a night in port was doing little to add enthusiasm to what had become an endless war against sweat and insects. The crew was battle-weary and dulled by exhaustion.

They dreamed of home fires and cool breezes.

“Maybe we can scrounge up some bread,” said Raymond Albert.

Albert was from Akron, Ohio, twenty years old and always hungry.

“To make some Spam sandwiches?” radioman John Maguire said dubiously.

“No more Spam,” Albert said. “Perhaps we can shoot a few fish and have fish sandwiches.”

Just then the sounds of an approaching shore launch filtered into the cove where PT-109was moored. Seated behind the bosun’s mate was a slim, sandy-haired man who usually sported a broad smile. This afternoon, however, no smile was visible.

“Maybe Kennedy’s brought some fresh rations” Maguire said hopefully.

“If he had fresh food,” Albert said, “he’d look happy. He doesn’t look happy.”

* * *

PT-109 looked used and abused, but it was not the result of a long life. The trim eighty-foot vessel had first met water in July 1942, just over a year before, in the polluted waters near her factory in Bayonne, New Jersey. Constructed of plywood by ELCO, the Electric Boat Company, she had first been assigned to the PT Boat Training Center in Melville, Rhode Island, before traveling through the Panama Canal on a transport ship. Eventually reaching Noumea in the South Pacific, she had been towed to the Solomon Islands and joined the fighting near Guadalcanal. Powered by three twelve-cylinder Packard engines and sporting a total of four torpedo tubes, she was finished in a dark-green paint scheme that allowed her to hide under a canopy of foliage when not on patrol.

After training at Melville, John F. Kennedy assumed command in April of 1943.

* * *

The base for PT-109was named Todd City in honor of Leon E. Todd, the first PT-boat crewman based at Lumberi to die. The island where Lumberi was located was named Rendova. To the east of Rendova was the Solomon Sea; to the west, New Georgia Island. To the north lay Gizo Island and the Japanese base at Gizo Town, which fronted Blackett Strait. West of Gizo was the tall, tree-covered mountain named Kolombangara that formed the opposite edge of the strait. Rendova was almost uninhabited until the navy base was established, and the jungles nearby were still wild. Brightly colored parrots flitted from one coconut palm to another, while lizards climbed atop the rotting coconuts at their bases. Flies and winged beetles took to the air. When the sun was setting, bats and night birds could be seen taking Hight. The waters near Rendova were warm and teeming with life. Coral reefs poked up through the crystal-clear water, and tropical fish abounded.

It could be considered paradise, save for the war raging nearby.

* * *

Lieutenant (Jg) John Fitzgerald Kennedy climbed from the shore launch, clutching a folder holding orders and operational information. A handsome man at twenty-six years old, he had been raised with privilege. After a childhood in Massachusetts, he had attended boarding school at Choate, followed by graduation from Harvard University. Son of the former ambassador to the Court of St. James, Joseph Kennedy, he had little in common with the men who served under him.

Still, his crew had found their well-heeled skipper both friendly and approachable.

A stem taskmaster when that was warranted, he also showed leniency with regulations he found arbitrary or unsound. And while he was tasked with maintaining at least a reasonable sense of navy decorum, he was more concerned with matters that pertained to crew readiness and operations. There was one other thing that endeared him to his men – there was no job he would not do himself. When cargo needed to be loaded, he helped. When the boat needed scraping or painting, he reached for a tool.

Those who had served under other PT-boat skippers rated Kennedy a favorite.

* * *

“Gather ‘round,” Kennedy said as he climbed the gangplank. “I have our orders.”

Ensign Leonard Thorn from Sandusky, Ohio, the second in command, shouted down to the sailors in their bunks. Thorn was a large man with light hair and a blond beard. Built like a football player, he had an eternally positive attitude that flowed forth like waves of warmth. Once the crew filtered abovedecks and stood milling on the stern, he turned to Kennedy.

“Men are assembled, sir.”

Kennedy glanced around and nodded.

“We’ve been ordered to go out tonight,” Kennedy said, staring at his men.

“Damn,” someone said under his breath.

Grumbling could be heard as the men scattered, but all in all they took the news surprisingly well. There was a war in progress, and war demanded unusual measures. Personal desires gave way to sacrifice, weariness to preparation, fear to duty. They had a job to do – and they’d do it.

Still, not a single man could envision the horror they were about to face.

* * *

“Wind it up,” Lieutenant Kennedy said, a few minutes before half past four the afternoon of August 1.

A rumble filled the air as the first of the trio of Packard engines was started. Down in the engine room, Motor Machinist First Class Gerald Zinser waited for the word to engage the drive.

Behind the helm, Lieutenant Kennedy revved the Packard, then adjusted it back to an idle. Satisfied with the sound, he called down for the drive to be engaged. Then he carefully steered PT-109away from shore. Slowly the boat made way up the channel. The sun was low in the sky, and the light through the haze cast a pale orange glow over the heights of Rendova Peak.

Seaman Second Class Raymond Albert was on the stem deck. He could see sand crabs scurry from the water’s edge as the noisy PT boat idled past. Overhead a small flock of green parrots flitted past, changing directions in midair before heading across Lumberi to find refuge in the tall palms. The wake angled toward shore and washed against the mangrove roots lining the rim of the water.

Ensign George Ross was a friend of Kennedy’s who had hitched a ride on PT-109for the night. Formerly the executive officer of PT-166, a vessel sunk by friendly fire on July 20, Ross was without a boat and wanted to take part in the action. Kennedy offered to let him operate the aged thirty-seven-millimeter army antitank gun that PT-109had been tasked with testing. The gun was crudely lashed with planks onto the foredeck, and Ross was staring at the placement and wondering if it would remain on board after it was fired. There was little Ross could do about it now, so he raised his eyes and stared off the bow.

Fifty yards ahead, several bottlenose dolphins leapt in the air, looking for all the world like a flowing arc of wet gray paint. Staring to port, Ross watched the water a hundred yards ahead boil as a school of baitfish danced across the top of the water. To starboard, Ross thought he caught the glimpse of a shark’s fin piercing the surface, but when he looked more carefully, he could see nothing.

* * *

“Ensign Thom,” Kennedy shouted above the noise of the engines.

“Sir,” Thom said, approaching from the stairs leading belowdecks.

“Go below and tell Zinser that engine three feels sluggish.”

“Yes, sir,” Thom said as he went belowdecks.

* * *

“Skipper reports number three feels sluggish,” Thom shouted over the din.

Zinser was wiping his hands with a rag. He pointed at a round glass bowl attached to an engine.

“Seems to be okay now,” Zinser said. “There was some gunk in the fuel.”

“I’ll let him know,” Thom said, as he started to leave.

“Mr. Thom?” Zinser said.

Thom turned around and smiled at Zinser. “Yes, Zinser?”

“We’re going to see action tonight, aren’t we?”

The enlisted men respected Thom. One reason was because he was as open and honest with the crew as the rules allowed. “Word is the Express is running. We are going to try to sink a few.”

Zinser nodded. “What’s the chance we get tomorrow night off?”

“Hard to say,” Thom said. “I guess that depends on tonight.

Thom had never spoken truer works, but neither he nor Zinser knew that yet.

* * *

Thom went to the helm station and touched Kennedy’s shoulder. “Zinny had some bad fuel.”

“Yeah,” Kennedy said, “she’s smoothed out now.”

Thom stared at the sky. The last flicker of light was washing down the side of the distant peak. In the Solomon Islands, it grows dark quickly. One moment there is waning sunlight, and within half an hour the first stars can be seen. It was as if a switch had been flipped off.

“It’ll be clear tonight, sir,” Thom noted.

“All the better for hunting,” Kennedy said easily.

ON THE JAPANESE destroyer Amagiri,there was a level of tension that came from knowing they were being stalked. Somewhere in the night were the pesky American mosquito boats. The fast plywood attack crafts came quickly and disappeared just as fast. This was a strange and new type of marine warfare. The Japanese sailors were not trained for this. Historical rules dictated that ships fired on other ships when they were in sight. Sneaking and hiding in the dark was a little unnerving.

Truth be told, the PT boats had not caused much damage – their torpedoes were notoriously inaccurate, and to use their deck guns, they needed to be close enough to the ships of the Express to be in harm’s way themselves. Still, they were out there in the blackness, came quickly without warning, and sped away as if on the wings of eagles.

Gunner Hikeo Nisimura adjusted the chin strap on his helmet and stared to port. From his vantage point in the bow gun, he had an unusually broad view of the areas Amagiri steamed past. This evening, the top of the peak on Kolombangara Island was shrouded in clouds. As he watched, the last remnants of the setting sun dropped below the horizon, and the peak began to grow purple from top to bottom, as if a giant had poured on a ladle of plum sauce.

And then, although the temperature was nearly seventy degrees, Nisimura felt a chill.

* * *

In Amagiri’spilothouse, Commander Kohei Hanami stared at the chart, then ordered the speed increased to thirty-five knots. Hanami was both a stem taskmaster and one who believed in rigid schedules. In the holds of his command were 912 soldiers and nearly a hundred tons of supplies that were bound for Munda Airfield, where the Japanese army was fighting a losing battle against the American marines. Amagiri’s part in this plan was to arrive at the base at Vila on Kolombangara Island, off-load the soldiers and supplies, then steam back to her base before daylight.

ENSIGN Ross WALKED back from the bow to the helm. The flotilla was cruising north through Ferguson Passage. To starboard, barely visible in the black of night, was the outline of Vonavona Island. Ross stood for a moment, hands on his hips, and smelled the air. Salt and seawater, mildew and fungus. From over the water on land came the scent of night-blooming jasmine and limes mixing with the musty smell of mangrove roots at low tide. He sniffed again.

A smell of home.

The scent of baked beans wafted through a hatch. Then the smell of meat being fried in lard. Beans and Spam was the order of the night. Ross just hoped the cook had some powdered lemonade to add to their chlorinated water for flavor.

Reaching Kennedy behind the helm, he smiled. “Smells like dinner’s almost ready, Jack.”

Kennedy adjusted his orange kapok life vest. “I can hardly wait, Henry,” he said, smiling.

“I checked out the thirty-seven millimeter,” Ross said. “She’s ready for firing.”

“Mamey’s in the forward turret?” Kennedy asked.

“Yes,” Ross said.

“He’s a good Massachusetts man,” Kennedy said, “from Chicopee.”

“I talked to him,” Ross said. “He mentioned he’s new to your crew.”

“Yes,” Kennedy said. “Starkey, Marney, and Zinser down in the engine room – all new to 109.”

“How do you feel about them?” Ross asked.

“All good men,” Kennedy noted. “Ready to fight.”

“That’s good,” Ross said, “because I have a feeling they’ll soon have a chance.”

Kennedy nodded and stared into the black night. “I do, too, Henry,” he said easily. “I do, too.”

The time was half past 9 P.M.

* * *

There were a total of fifteen PT boats on patrol, as the Japanese flotilla consisting of the destroyers Amagiri, Arashi, Hagikaze,and Shiguresteamed south. The boats worked in small groups, with PT-109patrolling with PT-157, PT-159,and PT-162of Division B.

Radar was a recent addition to the PT boats, and only a few of the vessels had been equipped. The radar sets were finicky, unreliable, and subject to interpretation by the operator. Still, they were better than nothing – and when they did work, they added a margin of safety and success to what were for the most part random search-and-destroy missions.

On PT-159, the operator stared at the glowing green screen intently. A second later, he shouted to the captain. “Radar contact, four possible barges, three miles distant, along Kolombangara.”

The skipper climbed down to look at the radar screen, then back up to stare into the blackness. After repeating the maneuver a few more times, he ordered the deck guns set to fire low. With the crude radar, he was still certain the blips were barges.