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Home , Badung Strait, Battle of Sunda Strait, Light cruiser, USS Houston (CL-81)

N a v a l O r d e r o f t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s – S a n F r a n c i s c o C o m m a n d e r y Mission: History Studiorum Historiam Praemium Est

Volume 1, Issue 1 HHHHHH 1 February 1999

What’s this all about? 1942: Battles of the Sea - The Constitution of the Naval Order of the tells us “The purpose Japs M ore than Allies Thought of this organization shall be to transmit to posterity the The word on American street corners was ity of naval doctrine and no time for training glorious names and memo- “we’ll whip the Japs in six months.” The bad together. The Japanese had fought and trained ries of our great naval com- news from the Philippines was shrugged off as together for a decade. manders, their companion a matter of unpreparedness. “We were caught officers, & subordinates in napping,” was the complaint. “It won’t happen The two fleets came together in four battles: the wars of the United again,” we promised ourselves. what we call the Battle of the on the States; to encourage re- last two days of February, 1942, preceded by search and publication of If we needed any proof that we were in a the Battle of on February 4 and literature pertaining to naval fight that would last more than six months, the the Battle of Badung Strait on February 19 and history & science; to ensure Battles of the Java Sea provided it. 20 and followed by the Battle of the preservation of relics, on February 28. portraits, mementos, docu- On paper, the Allied surface fleet, called ments, rolls & books relating ABDA for its American, British, Dutch, Aus- At Makassar Strait, ABDA, with a heavy to the Naval Services & its tralian makeup, was a formidable force when , a and 6 , at- (sic) heroes at all times; & in compared with that of the Japanese. On paper. tempted to block a Japanese invasion force general to support the well- headed for Makassar. It was faced by one light being of the present officers ABDA comprised two heavy , six and enlisted personnel of cruiser, 16 destroyers and one light carrier. Air light cruisers, 23 destroyers and more than 30 attacks drove off the ABDA forces before they the Naval Services, & all . The Japanese, split into Western, other military maritime ser- could fire a shot. The two heavy were Central and Eastern Forces, countered with five vices. damaged, one of them badly. The Japanese lost heavy cruisers, five light cruisers, 54 destroy- one airplane. With Mission: History, the ers, no submarines … and two light carriers. San Francisco Commandery The Japanese successfully invaded on is fulfilling its obligation un- Airpower, some were to say, was decisive. February 19. As the empty cargo ships were der the Constitution of the What was decisive was ABDA was the first being escorted home by four destroyers, they Naval Order of the United attempt at a unified command of four nations were attacked first by two light cruisers es- States. speaking two languages, having no commonal- corted by two destroyers and again by one light cruiser and four destroyers. The two trailing Jap destroyers drove off both attacks, sustain- 1898: USS Maine 1944: M itscher Force ing light damage. ABDA lost one Sunk at Havana Destroys Truk Bastion sunk and one cruiser was moderately damaged. The began as the The lagoon at Truk, a 40-square-mile island Japanese mounted an invasion of western Java. group in the eastern Caroline islands, had been ABDA countered with everything it had—two the base of the Japanese Combined Fleet since heavy cruisers, three light cruisers and nine the beginning of the war. destroyers. They should have been the equal of the Japs’ two heavy cruisers, two light cruisers In what Morison called the coming of age of and 14 destroyers. But ABDA suffered from its carrier warfare, swooped down inborn lack of cohesiveness and training. The on Truk on February 17 with eight carriers and Japanese saw them coming and, with torpedoes six . Though the Jap main force was and accurate long-range gunfire sank one de- absent, the remaining surface combatants and stroyer and severely damaged the transports—and the base—were destroyed. (Continued on page 4) PAGE 2 MISSION: HISTORY VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1

1945: Iwo Jima – Add This to the Halls Of Montezuma and Shores of Tripoli

Marines on their way to their bloodiest encounter in World War II, with naval bom bardm ent still stirring up the volcanic ash that substituted for dirt on Iwo Jim a. At right, the second rais- ing of the Stars and Stripes on Mount Suribachi on 23 Feb, photographed by Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press. The story of the two flag raisings needs no retelling here.

Som e m ore of the 75,000 Marines to land at Iwo Jim a pass an LCS (L) on their way to the beach. The three Ma- rine divisions—3rd, 4th and 5th—would take nearly 26,000 casual- ties in the m onth ahead. Rifle regim ents in the 4th and 5th divi- sions suffered 75 per- cent casualties, requir- ing support personnel to take replacem ent com bat positions. That “Every Marine is a rifle- m an” was proved at Iwo Jim a. These tracked am - phibious craft would soon be bogged down in Iwo’s volcanic ash, where they would be destroyed piecem eal by Japanese anti-tank weapons. VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1 MISSION: HISTORY PAGE 3 An Infantrym an’s Nightm are: There’s Nowhere to Hide

You hit the dirt and look around. You feel bare-ass naked and realize that all you are is a flat, stationary target. You m ight as well be an erect m oving target, so you get up and push forward. Everybody does.

BELO W: Junk at Beach 3. It could be re- paired, but probably won’t be. The pipe- line is full. Full enough to last the war.

The expert riflem an wasn’t m uch needed at Iwo Jim a. The Japanese were so dug in that the only plan possible was a frontal assault with grenades, rocket launchers and flam ethrowers. H ere, a few Marines in the foreground are helped out by a flam e-throwing tank. It took astonishing heroism to knock out som e em placem ents, and 27 Congressional Medals of H onor were awarded for actions on Iwo Jim a. Thirteen posthum ously. PAGE 4 MISSION: HISTORY VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1 End of ABDA 1915: Churchill Pushes Asquith Proves a Point To Attem pt Forcing Dardanelles (Continued from page 1) HMS Exeter. And four American de- The young First Lord of the Admi- In the eastern Mediterranean, the stroyers had to be detached for want of ralty, Winston Churchill, had in the British Vice Admiral Carden had an fuel. (They didn’t return—after filling early days of stampeded armada at his disposal in early 1915, their bunkers at Surabaja, they headed the government of Liberal Prime Min- including no fewer than eighteen bat- for .) ister H. H. Asquith into a plan to get at tleships or battle cruisers, ranging from Germany through the back door, by the most modern to very ancient. Ham- The ABDA force, under Rear Admi- attacking the Kaiser’s Turkish allies. ilton and his army were not yet on the ral K.W.F.M. Doorman, made repeated But Churchill wasn’t the only reason scene and might never be. Perhaps the attempts to attack but was driven off military thoughts turned to the Darda- Dardanelles could be won with naval each time, losing another destroyer in nelles. forces alone. the process. At nightfall, the Japanese On January 2, 1915, the British am- Thus began on February 19, 1915, a cruisers attacked with torpedoes, sink- bassador at Petrograd, recently re- naval venture that turned into a com- ing both Dutch light cruisers, Java and named from St. Petersburg, had arrived bined forces effort, ending in failure de Ruyter. Doorman perished with his at Whitehall with a plea from Russian with about 250,000 British, Australian, . The two remaining ABDA cruis- Grand Duke Nicholas that military ac- New Zealand and French casualties. ers, USS Houston and HMAS Perth, tion against the C h u r c h i l l wa s fled toward Batavia. Turks should be driven from office On the 28th, the damaged HMS Exe- undertaken to in- and Asquith was ter and four destroyers tried to exit duce them to with- forced to form a Surabaja but were fallen upon, and draw troops from coalition govern- summarily dispatched, by patrolling the Caucasus. If the ment. Japanese ships. Black Sea were re- At first, things opened, so much the went well for Off western Java, also on the 28th, better. Secretary of Carden. The forts the fleeing Houston and Perth at- State for War Lord near the entry to tempted to escape the carnage through Ki t c h e n e r , t o o , the Dardanelles Sunda Strait, and stumbled on a Japa- thought of the Dar- were effectively nese landing force covered by a widely danelles. National Geographic, July, 1915 pounded by the dispersed force of cruisers and de- The straits were ships’ fire and stroyers. The ABDA ships attacked the dominated by the heights of the Gal- sailors and marines went ashore to landing force, which appeared to be lipoli peninsula, an almost trackless spike the Turkish guns. Farther in, protected by a sole destroyer. The waste. Shore batteries covered the things began well at the narrows when other Jap came to the rescue, navigable waters, with the most dan- the ships’ fire, including that from the firing some 87 torpedoes. They sank gerous point 14 miles in from the Ae- 15-inch guns of the Queen Elizabeth, Houston and Perth along with a mine- gean. If the straits could be forced, the silenced the shore batteries, but then sweeper and transport of their own, Sea of Marmara lay beyond and be- disaster struck. Three battleships were and holed three more of their trans- yond that Constantinople and the sunk in quick succession on a mine ports. Hellespont, the door to the Black Sea. field that had been overlooked and the The Battles of the Java Sea ended Much of Turkey would lay open to new battle cruiser Inflexible was se- allied naval presence in the Southwest conquest, if the Dardanelles were verely damaged, as were the Suffern Pacific until the forced. and the French Gaulois. Carden had returned later in the war. The action Kitchener would not take one soldier broken down under the strain and was was under-reported at the time and is from France to mount an assault on replaced by Vice Admiral de Robeck, under-remembered today because de- Gallipoli, though, and all that were not who was unwilling to risk further dam- bacles are not cherished moments in in France was a single of age. history. And debacle it was. The sacri- troops recently arrived from the Em- The naval action at the Dardanelles fice of the ABDA fleet delayed the pire and raw troops in training. He did, lasted for a month. Hamilton was even- Japanese invasions in for however, have a commanding general tually given 13 British and Common- only 24 hours. in mind, Sir Ian Hamilton, a writer of wealth divisions and a French Corps, a elegant prose and less distinguished total that reached about 490,000 men. For the past year, the Proceedings of poetry, but a man of vacillating enthu- The land effort on the Gallipoli penin- the United States Naval Institute has siasm. Hamilton’s soldierly instincts, it sula eventually turned into a stalemate carried discussions of combined force was said, were of ardor proportionate and the British withdrew on January exercises—without mention of Java to the forces under his command—and 10, 1916. Sea. estimates of those were changing daily.