A couple of hours later, he got the response. The Shark was to stay and observe, but not attack, at least for the time being. The message didn’t quite say it, but Torelli felt that something nasty was being planned for the Japanese. He fervently hoped he could help out.
Japanese ships on patrol off the American coast could not see through the persistent fog, and they could not get too close to the hostile shoreline when the gray shapes of American ships slipped out of Puget Sound and headed north a week earlier. Hugging the shore, they’d made it to Yakutat Bay, south of Anchorage, where Alaska became a finger of land running alongside the border with Canada. The bay was dominated by Mount Hood and Mount Hubbard, and, if the weather was right, they could see the mountains and glaciers farther up where Yakutat Bay changed its name to what the sailors of the American force thought was the wonderfully appropriately named Disenchantment Bay.
There was a town called Yakutat, but none of the crew showed any inclination for shore leave in such a dismal-looking place, even if liberty would be permitted.
Admiral Jesse Oldendorf had recently arrived from a command in the Atlantic. It was rumored that he would take over from Admiral Pye, who was under severe criticism for his handling of his part of the fleet after Pearl Harbor. The criticism might not be deserved, but scapegoats were needed, and Pye had pulled his ships back from reinforcing Wake Island. Wake had subsequently fallen after heroic fighting and Pye had been blamed for not making a strong enough effort to help. Cooler heads said Pye’s efforts would have been doomed, but Pye would still be sacrificed.
Oldendorf’s command consisted of two of Pye’s old battleships, the Mississippi and the Colorado, along with four destroyers. The admiral flew his flag in the Colorado, in part because her eight sixteen-inch guns mounted in four turrets were larger than the Mississippi’s twelve fourteen-inch guns. Bigger is always better, the admiral had said with a smile.
Their presence in Yakutat Bay was in the hope that the Japanese would do exactly what the Shark had reported, make a reinforcement run to Anchorage, and they had been waiting anxiously for several days. The two battleships, however old, were much more powerful than three Japanese cruisers and a handful of destroyers. Better, both the Colorado and Mississippi had recently been equipped with radar. The Japanese were supposed to be superior at night fighting, but how well could they fight in a fog? Truth be told, Oldendorf wanted very much to see the enemy face to face, but it would be just as nice, he thought, to be able to sneak up on the sons of bitches before they had a chance to react. “Never give a sucker an even break” was his motto, adopted after hearing the line in a movie.
In single file, with the two radar-equipped battleships leading, Oldendorf’s ships slipped out of Yakutat Bay and said farewell to the thoroughly disenchanting Disenchantment Bay. They headed north, again hugging the coastline.
Naval intelligence insisted that there were no other major Japanese warships in the area. All carrier and battleship units were well to the south, they said, and concentrated in two roughly equivalent forces, one off San Francisco and one off San Diego.
On the flag bridge behind Oldendorf, Tim Dane shivered, and not just from the cold. He hadn’t had time to draw cold-weather gear before being sent up north, and the jacket he wore was too thin.
“Tell me again how I got here,” Dane asked.
Lieutenant Commander Mickey Greene smiled benignly. His face was a mass of red and healing scars and, like Tim’s, his head had been shaved, but he was upbeat. Perhaps the thought of striking back at the Japanese helped.
“Because Oldendorf asked for you after I told him you could speak Japanese. Nobody else in the squadron can perform that trick.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“He was also impressed that you’d saved Spruance and had led that raid on Anchorage, which means you know a little about the area.”
“Damn little and I didn’t lead any raid. I just flew along as a spectator and was as useless as when I was on the Enterprise. We flew over the Jap base at a hundred miles an hour and at a height of only a few feet. It was just a blur of trees and people shooting at us.”
Greene chuckled. “Well, that still puts you miles ahead of anybody else.”
As with his impression of the Enterprise, Dane was overwhelmed by the size of the Colorado and her monstrous sixteen-inch guns. At just under forty thousand tons, the battleship was much larger than any carrier in the U.S. Navy, including the Enterprise. More than two thousand men were on her and they all seemed to have a job and know what they were doing, which, once again, was more than Dane could say.
Dane had to admit that battleships, however obsolescent they might be, looked more like warships than carriers. Greene concurred.
“Oldendorf’s a big-gun man,” Greene said, “but he ain’t no fool. The days of the battleship are numbered and he knows it. It’s just that we have a chance to strike back at the Japs and we don’t have any carriers to play with anyhow. I guess the Sara’s too valuable to risk right now, wherever the hell she is.”
Greene reminded Dane that the U.S. Navy hadn’t won a surface battle since the Spanish-American War, and that the only time they’d tried it in this war, it had met with defeat in the Java Sea. Dane wondered if this coming fight would be the last naval battle that didn’t involve carriers.
Greene continued. “Don’t forget that these are old ships, at least two decades old. Yeah, they’ve been updated, but they are still at least a generation behind the newer battleships in technology and, most important, in fuel efficiency. These two battleships are real pigs when it comes to guzzling fuel and they have to provide fuel for short-legged ships like destroyers. New battlewagons like the Washington are not only far more fuel-efficient, but a helluva lot faster and better armed. It’s too bad, but this is likely the last ride for these old warriors. Oldendorff wants to make it a ride to remember.”
Dane had briefly met Oldendorf, who asked him to confirm that he indeed spoke Japanese and then told him to stick close to Greene. Dane’s job would be to listen to Japanese radio transmissions and try to figure out if they had any idea what was going to hit them. The admiral was in his mid-fifties and this was his first combat command. He had a craggy face that made him look tougher than he was, but Greene had told Dane that this was probably Oldendorf’s last hurrah as well as his first.
“But two battleships against four heavy cruisers and one light? Isn’t that overkill?” Dane said.
Greene smiled and rubbed the scars on his cheeks. He’d said he was glad to go to sea so he wouldn’t scare little kids until he got better. Dane wondered if he would be so calm about life and his future if he’d been burned like that.
“The admiral said it would be wonderful if a couple of arthritic old battleships could give the Japs a bloody nose. Besides, my friend, the odds aren’t so well stacked in our favor. Heavy cruisers still pack a helluva kick.”
Dane thought about the bloated and mangled bodies he’d seen floating around the dying Enterprise. “I’d like to give them more than a bloody nose.”
Oldendorf planned the attack for four AM, a time when it was believed that people were drowsiest and least on their guard. The American force moved in single file, again with the two radar-equipped battleships slowly leading the way up Cook Inlet.