J. E. MacDonnell - 028 Read online

  J E MacDonnell - 028 - Fleet Destroyer

  AUTHOR'S PREFACE

  I wrote this book during the time the Eastern Fleet took to steam from its base in Ceylon, lambast Sourabaya, and steam back again (the obvious rejoinder won't get you anywhere); the final chapter dealing with that raid being written on a filched signal pad at "B" gun, waiting for our planes, and theirs, to return.

  The captain once said to me that as soon as this destroyer flotilla, of which our ship forms a unit, left Australia, it became the "forgotten" flotilla. I'm inclined to agree. Then, too, the work of a Fleet destroyer is interesting, even to me; I thought you might feel the same. Hence the earnest scribbling en route Java.

  Few people know there is a flotilla of Australian destroyers, manned and officered by Australians, serving with Admiral Mountbatten's Eastern Battle Fleet. This is their story, really, for on the big jobs, and most of the small ones, we've all worked together.

  There is, of necessity, much left out of what our Fleet destroyer's done-particularly ashore in the "Pearls of the Indian Ocean!"- and, with Admiral Somerville's promise in mind, much more to come.

  Here, then, is her story; and the story of a thousand men of the Royal Australian Navy, men who have fought from Murmansk to Moresby, and most places in between, and who, positioned between Jap-occupied East Indies and the land of their birth, are even now seeking the main obstacle to their return there-the Japanese Fleet.

  J.E.M. At, sea, May, 1944.

  FOREWORD

  Some three years ago it was my pleasurable duty to read in manuscript a short story by J.E. Macdonnell. The manuscript had been submitted, in accordance with Service regulations, for Naval approval before being offered for publication. A few weeks later it was a source of satisfaction to see it in print, a discerning magazine editor having seized the opportunity to publish it.

  That was, I understand, his initial essay as a writer. Since then he has written, and published, many short stories and articles, and has amply fulfilled the promise which that first manuscript held.

  J.E. Macdonnell writes of the Navy life he knows with a vivid and convincing pen. That life is the life of the Royal Australian Navy under active service conditions in wartime. Under such conditions the author has served in cruisers, destroyers, sloops and corvettes in various theatres.

  In this present volume he tells something of the story of one of the "N" Class destroyers of the R.A.N. But his book is more than a mere record of events. Most of us who can guide a pen have it in us to make such a record. Macdonnell goes beyond that. His sensitivity makes him an interpreter. His vivid touch gives life and colour to his writing.

  This is his first book, a milestone in the career of an Author. It holds within itself the justification of the hope that it is, as was that earlier manuscript, the precursor of more to follow.

  HERMON GILL,

  Lieutenant-Commander, R.A.N.V.R.

  (Now Official Naval War Historian.)

  Melbourne, January, 1945.

  PREFACE TO POCKET BOOK EDITION

  The last book I read-or opened-which carried three prefaces went under the sonorous title of The Palingenesis or Great Geological Changes In The Mesozoic Formations Of The Midlands. These days prefaces, at least in a book which deals merely with the structural changes in a torpedoed ship, are a bit old hat. But I was so pleased when the publishers suggested that they should reprint Fleet Destroyer that I couldn't quite resist adding another to the pages of "I" stuff.

  Via this preface-page, I would like to tell Commander Gill-to whom much is owed-that between "his first book" of the final paragraph of his foreword, and this present page, there now stand 43 novels. And that is the real justification for this third prefacing insertion-because the central character in Fleet Destroyer, H.M.A.S. Nepal, deserves published credit for serving as the inspiration for most of those novels. She actually is the fictional vehicle in which Commander Bentley and Lieutenant Randall and Hooky Walker pursue Germans and Japs and their own eventual fate.

  As well, it must be admitted that Fleet Destroyer is really a composite of experiences which happened to the Australian destroyers screening with her. So I hope for no condemning broadsides from Able-seaman Ginger Wakeenshaw when I claim Nepal's B-gun got that Zero when in fact it owes its demise to Quiberon's X-gun. In those days no ship's name could be mentioned, and today I have forgotten which ship got what. But it matters little- all we were concerned with then was that some b... got the b... Nepal was the finest ship in which I served: she was all grace and guts. She was modern and powerful and heavily-gunned, rating forty thousand horsepower and thirty-six knots, and she was manned in my time by a crew of officers and men to be remembered. Also to be remembered is the fact that she was so new to most of us who joined her in Sydney that it was a very shaky unit indeed of the R.A.N. which sailed that day in 1944 to do battle with the foe. A few months later... but you'll see about that.

  I don't dare filch another page, so the dedication will have to lie here: This book for a fine fighting ship, Davy Jones rest her bones, and for a captain who should have turned pale with nervous terror in face of his responsibilities, and who did not.

  J.E.M. Ashore, 1961.

  CHAPTER ONE

  DRAFT NOTE

  SHE IS LONG and lean. All destroyers are. Her high bow falls away from the bullring of the foc's'le at an angle of thirty degrees. The graceful line of her deck stretches aft for three hundred and fifty feet. Her squat bridge, streamlined funnel and long twin guns enhance the impression of speed and guts.

  Our ship has probably been seen by more people than have seen all the rest of the British Fleet put together. We can't claim this distinction as a result of some stupendous action-though, of course we do claim that no other ship in any other Navy is worked half as hard-but because she is the destroyer on which the sea sequences of Noel Coward's picture. In Which We Serve, were actually filmed.

  So, having seen that rakish hull spuming across the screen, you will, I hope, feel a closer kinship with her real story, and having seen her go, if the Commander-in-Chief Eastern Fleet's information about the presence of a powerful Jap fleet in these waters is correct, you may know what she looked like. But talk of this operation when it's over.

  I suppose there's no other machine packed so chock-a-block with power and destructive force as a modern Fleet destroyer. From her sharp, sloping stem to the deep-seated screws under her stern, she is a steel hull packed tight with lethal machinery and a multitude of instruments whose sole purpose is to ensure its maximum amount of destruction in the shortest possible time. She's no "greyhound of the seas," nor a "maid of all work." Her speed is put to more dramatic purpose than catching hares or rabbits, and no female with teeth and claws like she mounts would come into the maid category.

  From my corvette I watched her slide into her berth in the dockyard, three hundred and fifty feet of her, lean, and low in the water. She had come back from twelve months' overseas service for a refit, and in a month would be back over there again, with a practically new crew.

  We sailed that day in the corvette for a week's convoying, and on return the signal was waiting, as I half-expected it would be. The first-lieutenant handed it to me on the quarterdeck.

  "Petty-office J.E. Macdonnell, from Townsville to Nepal, on relief joining." Less than a dozen words, manufactured by some writer way down in the drafting-office in Flinders, a bloke who probably had never heard of me, but whose eyes lighting on my official number was about to send me halfway round the world. And, luckily, back again. In a ship which, in over fourteen years at sea, was to become the first one I had really loved.

  But all that was in the future. Three present words were all that mattered now-"on relief j
oining." That wasn't so bad; if my relief arrived in the corvette in time I looked like landing some long leave, and as it would be the first for fourteen months the idea was not unattractive.

  But no relief joined, and while the destroyer lay quietly alongside, we sailed again. At the end of three weeks I was desperate, and approached the captain. He was dubious at first, as I was the only permanent-service petty-officer on board; but reflecting, no doubt, that I'd be away for the better part of two years, and that the destroyer would be sailing in a week, he let me go-bless him.

  That afternoon I stepped aboard. I'd been in most classes of ships, from heavy cruises to sloops, and this was my second destroyer draft. But what a difference! The first boat-she lies off Ceylon now- had been laid down in 1918; this one, with all the modifications gained through four years war experience incorporated in the slim hull, was comparatively brand new.

  Her squat bridge and funnel, with the two forrard twin guns advancing their grey barrels before it, reminded me forcibly of a hammerhead, drawn back to strike. The impression was enlarged by the cut of her flared foc's'le, running smoothly aft to the low stern. She was heavily-gunned, and fast, and lovely to look at-the sort of ship sailors stop work to watch as she slips through the lines down-harbour.

  I met the first-lieutenant, and recognised in the authoritative young lieutenant a midshipman I'd kept watches with as quartermaster in a cruiser years before. Then, more important, I met the coxswain, and found an old friend; and stepped ashore on leave almost at once...

  Things aboard were in a shambles, a rude denial of her trim outer lines. Only a few of the older hands knew each other, and I had 40 men in my division, none of whose faces or names I knew. The chief bosun's mate, a man who'd been in the Service almost my lifetime, gave me a sailor to get my gear inboard on return from leave.

  As we walked through the dockyard I questioned him, for he'd been in the ship since commissioning. The first, of course, was: "When do we sail?"

  He was a native of Goulburn, and was not encouraging.

  "Sooner the bloody better! This flamin' joint gives me a pain in the old dulackey. With a bit of luck we should get clear of it in a day or two."

  I reserved further questions for a Sydney native who, if not well informed, would at least be optimistic. In a destroyer the upper-deck is divided into three parts, foc's'le, iron deck, and quarterdeck, for purposes of cleaning and manning guns. I was made captain of the iron deck, which meant I would be given a third of the seamen complement with which to clean, and be responsible for the efficiency of that part of the ship extending from the bridge aft to the quarterdeck, both sides.

  Everything included therein was mine, all mine, as I should very soon find out if the motorcutter or whaler weren't slipped smoothly when coming up to a buoy opposite the commodore's flagship, or if on all that spreading expanse of light grey there was one spot of alien matter.

  But although a man is supposed to be seaman first, with all else running well astern, it was my guns I first inspected. The twin mounting squatted directly below the bridge, a long barrelled quick-firing 4.7-inch, housed in an armoured shield which left only the rear, round the two breeches, open.

  My last destroyer's guns had been single four inch breech loaders, trained and laid by hand. These two, at the flick of a switch, could be trained with your little finger on the wheel, at a speed-well, fast enough to follow a Jap fighter crossing your bows. With their long snouts, bores glistening with oil, the thick sliding breeches set side by side, and above them, heavy recoil cylinders to receive the shock of discharge, they looked vicious, and comfortingly deadly. They were the absolute latest in destroyer guns, and she carried six of them. With a lifting pride in my heart I walked aft to begin the more prosaic inspection of the funnel.

  We were, at first a heterogeneous lot. The ship had retained a backbone of staid permanent service hands. The rest were reserves, or "Rockies." One had been a grocer's assistant, another a railway porter; there was a tram conductor and a car sprayer, a public schoolboy, a shoemaker and a lad from Brisbane who put patterns on silk for ladies' dresses.

  However, that was 12 months ago. Men of the Navy are trained to fight by possibly the finest disciplinary organisation in existence; by means of complicated and ingenious instruments these lads, only a few years ago being thrilled by the futuristic adventures of the Sunday comic strip heroes, were now actually performing feats of gunnery magic quite compatible with the imaginings of the story writers.

  The gunlayer of my gun is a seventeen-year-old youth, a former student in accountancy at a Melbourne night school before, believing that "every bloke should have a go," he left a dim-eyed mother to come away to war.

  Now at the alarm he jumps on his gun, twirls his laying-wheel with an expert hand and shouting "On by director!" with an elan that took me the better part of four years to master.

  Those twin guns, immensely costly, have been put into his young hands by the exhaustive research of Britain's best scientists and the productivity of a war-geared industry, and the gunlayer, aged seventeen, throws their long bellowing barrels about the sky with the assurance of a man master of his tools.

  Sometimes a flotilla of destroyers carries out what is called a concentration shoot. For purposes of effective gunnery it is imperative that all guns fire at once, possibly fifty or more of them, and here is where a former young bank clerk, now telegraphist, enters the organisation.

  In the Navy sixteen months, yet highly trained, he works the W/ T key in the transmitting station which despatches the firing signal to all those ships astern.

  On his say-so the concentrated effort of a thousand men working a million pounds' worth of machinery is brought to a successful conclusion.

  But all this took time, and on that blustering, rainy day we left Sydney for overseas the young gentlemen mentioned were in all probability flaked out in the messdecks, wondering what in hell they'd let themselves in for-Nepal possessing all of the rolling and stomach-churning propensities of destroyers in general. We were standing by to slip that night, shivering in wintry rain, and I'd told a young able seaman to cast loose the racking on the forrard spring. A keen and eager young face was thrust up before mine through the murk and a well-modulated voice enquired:

  "I beg pardon, sir? I didn't quite catch your order."

  "Cast off spring racking." Casually, mind busy elsewhere. "The racking? Ah, yes. Right you are." He went away.

  I leaned over the guardrail near the torpedo tubes until I could see the first-lieutenant on the lower bridge. In a minute or two he waved his arms in the peculiar gesture common to seaman, which means "Let go everything," and then retired from the edge of the bridge, presumably to report to the captain.

  I shouted to the blurred shape in the waist:

  "Right! Slip that spring!"

  I waited. Nothing happened. Again the shout:

  "Slip that bloody spring!"

  An anxious voice reached me from the shadows.

  "Are you speaking to me, sir?"

  I rushed forward to the bollards round which the wire was made fast, and heard a faint singing whine as the whole weight of the moving ship came on it.

  "Stevenson, where the hell are you?"

  "Here, sir."

  "Don't `sir' me! Why haven't you cast this bloody wire off? What! The racking's still on! Didn't I tell you..."

  And while I cut and hacked frantically at the bar taut on the wire, whipped the turns off, cleared my leg from the snaking coils round my shin, and let the greasy steel slip out through the fairleads, just in time, the well-modulated voice went on:

  "I'm afraid I must confess I haven't the remotest idea of what a racking really is, but one must pretend, mustn't one, and do something, even if one's knowledge is hardly up to scratch."

  So we sailed. It took hour piled on hour of heartache, but by the time we made Fremantle en route to the Indian Ocean, we had shaken down pretty well, parts of ship organised, guns' crews detailed and drilled unc
easingly by the gunner's mate (old "gate and gaiters"), seaboats exercised at sea, fire-drill, collision stations, repel aircraft stations and a multitude of other stations carried out every afternoon in the dog-watches. The captain, on whose adequate shoulders devolved the whole responsibility for the fighting efficiency of the ship, had a heavy task. He discharged it with an experienced zeal that was both exemplary and catching.

  He is not a big man-more husky and broad. His face is richly laid over with the patina of wind and sun and sea, a deep permanent bronze, and his eyes are wrinkled at the corners, narrowed from long practice at staring over vast reaches of sun-reflecting water.

  We call him-not in earshot-"Dad." I'm not sure why. Certainly there's nothing paternal about him, unless it's because he fathered us newchums through the novel gunnery and seamanship requirements of this powered new ship.

  Power of command? He was born with it. Here's the scene, and it happens every morning at eight. All watches fallen-in near the tubes, ready for the day's work. Dad comes walking from his sea-cabin forrard to the bathroom down aft near the wardroom. Dressed? Yes-in a great toga of a white bath-robe, sandals on his feet, towel over one shoulder, toothbrush in his hand, soap in the other. The first-lieutenant roars and all hands snap to attention-and not a single smile as the Roman senator strides past, nodding his bare head in acknowledgment of our salute. That's power of command. Not from three rings on his shoulder: from the force of his personality, and the respect he's engendered.