Down to the Sea by Bruce Henderson Read Free Book Online

speeds. Shortly before noon, a swarm of enemy aircraft swooped down in acoordinated assault on the invasion force, utilizing bombs, torpedoes, and cannon fire. One low-flying plane lined up on Hull and released its torpedo, which became hung up at one end. The torpedo dangled precariously as the plane zoomed past. Hull ’s gunners pumped a salvo of shells into the plane as it went by, and the torpedo fell away. Both plane and torpedo careened into the transport George F. Elliott (AP-13), exploding in a fireball.
    In quick order Hull ’s well-trained gunners splashed two more aircraft. A strafing run by an enemy plane landed hits on the destroyer’s bridge and upper decks, and falling shrapnel made “various holes topside.” Six men were wounded during the air strike, two seriously; one sailor lost an arm at the elbow in a “traumatic amputation,” and another lost part of one hand.
    A piece of shrapnel found deck gun captain Ray Schultz, who since Pearl Harbor had ceased his one-man campaign to get kicked out of the Navy, accepting that he was “in for the duration.” He squeezed a shard of red-hot metal from the lump it had raised in his arm, and kept his crew firing away. (Later, he would drill a hole in the shrapnel and put it on a key chain as a souvenir.)
    When the attack ended, Hull went alongside George F. Elliott to assist. Schultz was among the damage-control party that boarded the transport and helped put out a fire in the engine room. Topside, Schultz told Elliott ’s commanding officer that there appeared to be a fire in the number two hole.
    â€œWhat makes you think so?” asked the officer.
    â€œThere’s smoke coming out of your ventilators,” Schultz said.
    The CO decided that smoke from the old fire must still be circulating through the ship’s ventilation system.
    Hull ’s men departed. Thirty minutes after the destroyer pulled away, a distress call came from Elliott asking for assistance in extinguishing a fire in the number two hole. Hull quickly returned and provided extra hoses, water, and men to the effort, but it was too late. The transport had to be abandoned, and her crew was received aboard Hull .
    As midnight approached, Hull was ordered to sink the gutted transport lying close in to shore. Over the span of an hour the destroyer fired four torpedoes, but all missed their target. On Hull ’s bridge there had been an ongoing spat between the torpedo officer and his chief about how to operate the new torpedo directional system. The officer kept winning the argument, but the torpedoes kept missing. Shortly after one torpedo passed under the transport, a truck parked on the beach behind Elliott blew sky-high. Word spread among Hull ’s crew that their torpedomen had “sunk a truck.” (So unsatisfactory was their performance against the stationary target, the torpedo officer and chief were soon transferred off Hull .) At sunrise, deck gunners had their turn and punched several holes in Elliott at the waterline. The gunners had another opportunity to prove their prowess that afternoon when they plummeted a schooner believed to be a liaison vessel for Japanese ground forces, although much to their surprise they were soon to discover that the small craft was already sitting on the shallow bottom of a lagoon, having been sunk earlier.
    Thereafter forming up with a group of empty transports, Hull departed Guadalcanal waters early evening, although her crew had not seen the last of the Solomons. In September Hull returned thrice to the waters off Guadalcanal, escorting supply ships and conducting patrols to interdict the flow of reinforcements and supplies to the enemy garrison. Once, after other U.S. ships departed, Hull was ordered to stay behind and provide daytime bombardment for the Marines ashore, and several times “ran Japs off the hills” overlooking contested Henderson Field. For a week, Hull sat alone in the