Books: The Small Boys

U.S. DESTROYER OPERATIONS IN WORLD WAR II (581 pp.)—Theodore Roscoe—U.S. Naval Institute ($10).

The East China Sea over hundreds of miles was plowed into moving, triangular furrows as the great U.S. amphibious force bore toward Okinawa. In the center of the mighty array were 1,213 vessels carrying 182,000 assault troops and their gear of war. Supporting the transport and LSTs was the largest fleet concentration in naval history—nearly 1,500 war vessels, more than 40 aircraft carriers, 18 battleships, scores of cruisers. On the outer ring of the armada, far beyond the men on the bridges of the lordly carriers, rode the destroyers, the “small boys” of the fleet, charged with forming a bristling picket fence around the other ships.

Japanese submarines, surface vessels and planes, desperate survivors of a deadly war of attrition, swept in. But before they could hit the transports, they had to get past the destroyer pickets and the planes the destroyers whistled up from the carriers. Day after day, week after week, as men and supplies poured onto the Okinawa beaches, the small boys performed their man-sized jobs. In desperation, fleets of Kamikazes plunged out of the sky, their suicidal pilots aiming their bomb loads at the destroyers. A barrage of fire stopped most, but not all. By the time the shooting stopped, 13 U.S. destroyers had been sunk, 118 destroyers and destroyer-escorts damaged. But the picket fence had held. It was the greatest destroyer action in history.

Naval Cavalry. Okinawa was also a good example of the way U.S. destroyers had to meet duties and challenges far different from those foreseen by the old conception of destroyers as naval cavalry. This concept assumed decisive battles between surface fleets and saw the destroyers plunging ahead to close range, firing their torpedoes at enemy battleships and wheeling away, their thin sides throbbing, under protective smoke screens. The destroyers learned to deal with submarine wolf packs, planes and a host of unpredictables, including even the need to fight in the old cavalry fashion.

What they did during the war and how they did it is the story Theodore Roscoe tells in U.S. Destroyer Operations in World War II. Based on action reports, official records and personal accounts, Author Roscoe’s 581 double-sized, double-column pages give the most vivid and exhaustive description of U.S. destroyer accomplishments likely to be written in years. It is too detailed to become a popular success, but those who like to go down to the sea in books will find its pages packed with action.

Wolf Packs & Traps. The destroyer was a sound fighting ship; the question was how to use it. At first, mistakes were made. While the destroyers went out futilely chasing U-boats in the Atlantic, the U-boats had a field day sinking unescorted Allied ships. The picture changed with improved technique (e.g., the improved use of radar, coordination of air and surface weapons) and the firm policy of destroyer-escorted convoys. Soon, hunter-killer teams of destroyers, destroyer-escorts and carrier-based aircraft had turned the tables on the U-boat wolf packs. By 1945, two U-boats were being sunk for every torpedoed Allied ship. Destroyers were an indispensable factor in winning the Battle of the Atlantic, an indispensable condition to the Allied landing in Europe. Their laconic action reports sometimes suggested the grim human drama they played on the high seas: “Debris in area of attack included cork slabs, wood, diesel oil, and human entrails.”

In the Pacific, the destroyers struck with all their weapons—depth charges, torpedoes, guns—and realized all their manifold possibilities as warships. In the night Battle of Surigao Strait, they even had a chance of fighting in the old textbook fashion. Rear Admiral Jesse B. Oldendorf, cruising at the northern end of the strait with the U.S.’s older battleships, learned that a big Japanese force, including two battleships, was headed for the strait from the west to turn the tide in the battle for Leyte. Oldendorf corked up the mouth of the strait with his old battlewagons, sent destroyers up ahead. The Japanese came pouring up through the strait in the darkness, the destroyers raced in to point-blank range, fired their torpedoes and wheeled away, and Oldendorf opened up with his big guns. The small boys sank two enemy battleships and several destroyers, and crippled two cruisers that night; not a U.S. destroyer was lost. Oldendorf’s big ships finished the job, and Vice Admiral Shima turned back, his fleet shattered.

At war’s end about 514 destroyers and 414 destroyer-escorts had seen duty, and 82 of them had been sunk. No statistician will ever be able to calculate all they accomplished.