The US Navy's On-the-Roof Gang: Volume 2 - War in the Pacific

By Matt Zullo

THE US NAVY'S ON-THE-ROOF GANG: VOLUME 2 - WAR IN THE PACIFIC is an historical novel based on the unknown true-life story of the "On-The-Roof Gang." It is a sequel to THE US NAVY'S ON-THE-ROOF GANG: VOLUME 1 - PRELUDE TO WAR.This second volume begins with the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and documents the contributions of the On-the-

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matt Zullo
• Release date: Oct 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781735152738

Matt Zullo

Matt Zullo is a retired U.S. Navy Master Chief Petty Officer who worked in the US Intelligence Community. He has more than 35 years' experience in Radio Intelligence, now more commonly known as Communications Intelligence. He holds a Master's degree in Strategic Intelligence from the National Intelligence University, where he researched and wrote his master's thesis on the On-The-Roof Gang. He has published numerous articles on the On-the-Roof Gang on internal work websites, in the Naval Cryptologic Veterans Association's Cryptolog magazine, and on his social media platforms. As a quantifiable expert on the On-the-Roof Gang, he has spoken at the 2009, 2011, and 2013 Cryptologic History Symposia, as well as at several Navy events around the world. He nominated Harry Kidder for the National Security Agency's Cryptologic Hall of Honor and was a guest at the induction ceremony. Learn more at www.ontheroofgang.com and www.mattzulloauthor.com.

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Prologue

A military man can scarcely pride himself on having smitten a sleeping enemy; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten. I would rather you made your appraisal after seeing what the enemy does, since it is certain that, angered and outraged, he will soon launch a determined counterattack.

—Imperial Japanese Navy Fleet Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

Loose lips sink ships.

—American wartime slogan

The On-the-Roof Gang was a group of radio operators (150 from the U.S. Navy and 26 from the U.S. Marine Corps) who were trained to copy Japanese katakana telegraphic code and intercept and analyze radio messages from the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). The intelligence value of the information they collected was recognized, and, under the auspices of the Department of Naval Communications, formal training was developed and implemented in 1928. Through 1941, twenty-five of the katakana intercept training classes took place in a specially constructed blockhouse on the roof of the old Main Navy Building in Washington, DC. Graduates of this training, who became known as the On-the-Roof Gang, were posted aboard ships throughout the Pacific theater and at various intercept stations. They were experts primarily in the collection of Japanese radio communications, but some On-the-Roof Gang operators also developed their skills even further and became direction finding (DF) operators, traffic analysts, cryptanalysts, communicators, or maintenance technicians.

Of the 176 On-the-Roof Gang members, close to one hundred were still on active duty when the United States entered World War II, mostly at collection and direction finding sites in the Pacific. Others had recently transferred to the naval reserves, while others had been commissioned as officers or warrant officers. Together with the dozens of officers and yeoman who worked in some aspect of radio intelligence, the active-duty On-the-Roof Gang members made up the Naval Security Group, which had been tasked with keeping tabs on the IJN and the Japanese diplomatic corps. These men performed their mission while stationed in Washington, DC, Station HYPO in Hawaii, Station BAKER in Guam, Station CAST in the Philippines, and a number of smaller sites in the United States and abroad.

On December 7, 1941, Chief Radioman Harry Kidder—the acknowledged founder and technical leader of the On-the-Roof Gang—found himself stationed in Greenland, operating a small DF station responsible for tracking German U-boat transmissions. He was half a world away from the action for which he’d spent so many years preparing. Needless to say, it was not where he wanted to be, and he became disillusioned and despondent.

Despite the years of training and the establishment of a network of intercept and direction finding stations around the Pacific, the U.S. Navy’s radio intelligence enterprise failed to predict the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. This intelligence failure, perhaps the worst in modern history, proved to the U.S. Navy that its investment in radio intelligence operations wasn’t yet sufficient. The U.S. Navy needed more intercept operators, more codebreakers, more intercept and DF stations, and mobile intercept platforms. The war in the Pacific—and perhaps even the fate of the world—hung in the balance.

Chapter 01

Chaos at Heeia

Sunday, December 7, 1941

Station HYPO, Heeia, Territory of Hawaii

Ray Rundle’s job was so secret that the U.S. Navy made him swear not to tell anyone what he did. It was a secret he liked to keep, even from his cousin Walter, who had spent the previous night in Ray’s room at the barracks in Heeia, Hawaii. Walter was a Navy aircraft mechanic stationed at nearby Kaneohe Naval Air Station. He and Ray were not only cousins, they were also best friends and were thrilled to be stationed together in Hawaii—which was exotic and exciting, unlike their tiny hometown of Ryegate, Montana, located about sixty miles northwest of Billings. Since Ray and Walter both had Sunday off, they planned to spend it sightseeing in Honolulu.

Unbeknownst to his cousin, Ray was an intercept operator who’d been trained at the Main Navy Building in Washington, DC. The training in the nation’s capital taught him how to copy the IJN version of Morse code, which was based on Japan’s katakana alphabet. This alone earned him entrance into an exclusive group of Sailors and Marines known as the On-the-Roof Gang. In February 1941, he’d graduated from the twenty-fifth and final offering of the training held in Washington, DC, and had been assigned to Station HYPO, the intercept site in Heeia, Hawaii.

The day before, Ray had completed an uneventful day shift performing intercept of IJN communications. Led by Radioman First Class Elliott Okins, the on-watch supervisor, Ray and the rest of his crew had spent the entire day scouring the airwaves for a coded weather message instead of copying the typical IJN communications. They hadn’t found it, and Ray supposed they’d keep looking until they did.

Whatever they want me to do at work is fine, he thought. But today is my day off.

Even though Ray was relatively new to the job, he’d shown real skill in intercepting IJN katakana transmissions. In fact, he’d already been promoted to radioman second class and was performing his job better than many other operators his senior.

With rare time off together, Ray and Walter set out on foot to Kaneohe, where they planned to catch the next bus to Honolulu for a day of sightseeing. They walked along Kamehameha Highway and passed over Kaneohe Stream. From their vantage point, they could clearly see Kaneohe Bay and the naval airfield. It was a cool morning on the windward side of Oahu, making the walk pleasant and easy. As they passed by a deli, Ukulele music broadcast from a local radio station echoed out into the street. The smell of coffee and sizzling bacon urged them to go inside, but they resisted the temptation.

Strolling along, they heard a formation of airplanes approaching from behind. They didn’t think much of it since Kaneohe Air Station routinely had plenty of air traffic, but it did seem a bit odd for this early on a Sunday morning. When a single plane flew directly overhead—low enough that it made the pair look up simultaneously—they immediately knew something was wrong. The plane was flying so low that they could see the pilot looking straight at them through his open canopy. To Walter’s trained eye, the plane looked similar to the U.S. Army Air Force’s Curtiss P-40 Warhawk flown out of Wheeler Air Base on Oahu, except that behind the cockpit and on each wing, he saw the Hinomaru: the telltale rising sun emblem of Japan. The low-flying plane was a Japanese Zero!

The Zero banked and turned in the direction of Kaneohe Air Station, and the pilot closed his canopy and followed the slope of the hill down toward the bay. As the plane glided across the bay, the pilot let loose with his strafing cannons, throwing geysers of saltwater into the air. The Zero continued on, and the pilot found his intended targets, hitting the runway and at least four PBY Catalina seaplanes sitting on the tarmac. When the pilot circled to come around again, Ray and Walter dashed into the deli to take cover.

Panting from the adrenaline coursing through their veins, the cousins looked at each other, confused. What the hell is going on? they both thought. The deli owner, who was obviously of Japanese descent, was grinning at them, which perplexed them even more. Couldn’t he hear what was going on outside?

Meanwhile, back at Station HYPO, Elliott Okins, a graduate of On-the-Roof Gang Class #20, was relaxing in his assigned housing unit on base with his morning cup of coffee and the Sunday edition of the Hilo Tribune Herald. The front page was full of stories about Japan’s military activities in the Far East, including an IJN convoy steaming toward Thailand and President Roosevelt’s efforts to come to some sort of agreement with Emperor Hirohito about Japan’s increasingly aggressive actions across the Pacific. Another story quoted retired Rear Admiral Charles Woodward, who stated that the United States was already at war given its aid to the Allies in various battles around the world.

Okins nodded his head and chuckled when he read on the front page that Senator Ralph Brewster from Maine, who sat on the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, said the U.S. Navy could defeat the IJN any place, any time.

I hope it doesn’t come to that, Okins thought.

Just then, someone banged loudly on the front door of Okins’s house. It was his next-door neighbor and fellow On-the-Roof Gang graduate, Chief Radioman Harvey Howard. Okie, get out of bed! Get up! We’re being attacked! he hollered. Okins opened the door to see a wide-eyed, out-of-breath Chief Howard. C’mon, we have to get to work!

Just then, a Japanese Zero streaked over Okins’s house and turned toward Kaneohe Bay. The pair watched in horror as the fighter plane’s cannons burst into action, rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat.

Let’s go! Okins yelled. They hopped into his 1936 Ford Model 48 sedan and headed for the intercept building across the base. By then, the Zero had been joined by others, who were forming into single file. One by one, the planes in the formation turned directly over Heeia as if using the flagpole at the intercept site as a guidepost on their attack runs toward Kaneohe.

Okins and Howard hurried into the building to see intercept operators Henry Ethier and Wesley Knowles sleepily waiting to be relieved of their shift.

What are you doing? Chief Howard barked.

The skeds are all quiet, Chief, Ethier replied, referring to the groups of enemy radio transmissions on specific radio frequencies at certain times.

We’re being attacked! The air station is going up in flames! Howard shouted.

Okins sat down at an open intercept position and tuned the receiver to 590 kilocycles to listen to commercial radio station KGMB out of Honolulu. He turned on a speaker so the rest of the men could listen in. The radio announcer, Webley Edwards, repeated over and over, Attention! This is not an exercise! The Japanese are attacking Pearl Harbor! All Army, Navy, and Marine Corps personnel should report for duty immediately.

Halfway between Heeia and Kaneohe, Walter and Ray heard Webley Edwards’s broadcast blaring on the deli’s radio and knew they had to report to their duty stations. Agreeing to talk to each other as soon as they could, they rushed out of the deli in opposite directions and headed to their respective bases.

Running up the street, Ray needed to find someone to give him a ride to Heeia. This would probably be difficult to do considering what was going on, so he continued to run. Eventually, he heard a car approaching from behind, and he stuck out his thumb to try to hitch a ride. When the car stopped next to him, he noticed a familiar face—it was Chief Radioman Joseph Mac McConnel, one of the senior operators at Station HYPO.

Hi, Chief Mac, Ray said.

Get in! Mac shouted.

I can’t believe it! Ray said as he jumped into the car. There must be a dozen Zeros attacking Kaneohe! Where’d they come from?

Mac shrugged and sped toward Heeia. When they arrived at the base, Chief Radioman Leroy LD Lankford met them at the gate, which was being guarded by a Marine. After his transfer from Station ABLE in Shanghai in September, Lankford was now the radioman in charge of Station HYPO.

Relieved to see reinforcements, Lankford barked orders at McConnel and Rundle. Mac, you go with Howard and Okins out to Kamehameha Highway. Get a couple of .45s from the arsenal and round up any Japanese nationals you see. Rundle, you head inside and fire up a position. You’re on watch now.

Within an hour, all the Japanese Zeros had departed the area over Kaneohe Bay, and the men had arrested half a dozen Japanese nationals. Two turned out to be Japanese consular officials dressed in top hats and tails, who were trying to get to their offices in Honolulu. The men brought all the prisoners to the base at Heeia and held them at gunpoint. By then, Station HYPO’s entire roster of thirty-five On-the-Roof Gang operators had reported for duty as instructed. The intercept spaces were small, so only ten of them could squeeze in. The rest mingled in the yard between the building and the fence, some gazing at the smoke rising from Kaneohe Air Station, the others gawking at the Japanese prisoners being held, wondering what they were going to do with them.

I say we shoot ’em, Chief Howard said. Shoot ’em in the back and say they were trying to escape.

We’re not shooting anyone, Chief Lankford said. Howard knew Lankford was right; his emotions were simply getting the best of him.

Just then, a pair of Marines performing the daily courier run arrived at Station HYPO to pick up the intercept logs from overnight to take back to the Combat Intelligence Unit at Pearl Harbor. Despite the mayhem across Oahu, the Marines were still executing their daily orders as usual. One of the Marines described the carnage at Pearl Harbor, including ships burning, capsized, and sunk, and the scores of enemy aircraft that filled the skies, attacking ships and airfields all around the naval base. He assumed that thousands might have been killed in the attack.

The men at Station HYPO couldn’t believe what they were hearing. Until then, all they knew was that Japanese Zeros had attacked Kaneohe. The attack on Pearl Harbor sounded much, much worse.

Inside the intercept room, Maynard Albertson, Orville Jones, Charlie Shanghai Southerland, Harold Pete Waldum, and Howard Cain—all graduates of On-the-Roof Gang training—joined operators Ethier, Knowles, and Rundle. They each manned an intercept position, trying to find the ships responsible for the attack. Each of the operators searched for and copied any katakana telegraphic code transmissions they could find, but there were suddenly so many frequencies active that they couldn’t keep track. Their efforts were unfocused and random—any semblance of an intercept plan had long since been abandoned. It seemed that the chaos on Oahu had caused an equal amount of chaos inside the intercept room.

Outside, in addition to turning over the intercept logs, Chief Lankford asked the Marines to assist with the Japanese prisoners. The two Marine couriers and the armed guards on duty at Station HYPO led the six Japanese citizens to Pearl Harbor Naval Base for incarceration.

Meanwhile, in the basement of the Administration Building of the Fourteenth Naval District in Pearl Harbor, Joseph Rochefort, commander of the Combat Intelligence Unit, and his men were taking cover under their gray, steel desks. He had been preparing for a family picnic and had been called to work as soon as the attack began. Because of the chaos around Pearl Harbor, he didn’t get to the Dungeon, as it was called, until around 0900.

Located directly across from Ford Island, the Administration Building sat next to the Ten-Ten Dock, which was named for its length of 1,010 feet. At the height of the attack, Rochefort wondered how much of the IJN’s Operations Code, or JN-25, the codebreakers at Station CAST or the Research Desk in the Main Navy Building had broken. Instead of the Operations Code, Commander Laurance Safford of the Research Desk (OP-20-G), had assigned Rochefort’s unit the responsibility of breaking the IJN’s Admin Code.

Rochefort’s team consisted of twenty-two officers and twenty-five enlisted men working in the Dungeon. They decrypted, translated, analyzed, and reported on the intercept picked up across the island at Station HYPO. After what seemed like hours, Rochefort decided to go upstairs when he was sure the attack was over. He wanted to go outside to see how bad the attack had been, but he told his men to stay put until he gave them the all clear. Emerging from the basement, he saw that the typically serene Pearl Harbor had been turned into hell on earth. He couldn’t believe his eyes: The Ten-Ten Dock was severely damaged, its lumber strewn around like toothpicks. USS Helena, which was moored at the Ten-Ten Dock, had been hit by a torpedo and set ablaze. USS Oglala, which was tied up alongside Helena, had rolled over onto its port side and was sinking in the oil-soaked water next to the pier. Men on board Helena screamed in agony with burns, broken bones, and severe lacerations, while hospital corpsmen doled out morphine to those most seriously injured. Mutilated bodies of dead Sailors lined the deck of Helena.

Beyond the chaos of Ten-Ten Dock, Rochefort witnessed ships burning all around Ford Island, immense columns of dense, black smoke rising into the air in all directions. The smoke blotted out the sun and obscured most of the sky. What remained of USS Arizona was engulfed in flames and sinking. USS Oklahoma was lying on its starboard side with more than half of it below water. USS Nevada, the only battleship to get underway during the attack, was forced to beach at Hospital Point on the eastern shore of the Main Channel in order to keep from sinking and possibly blocking the entrance to Pearl Harbor. There were so many other ships burning, sinking, and out of place that Rochefort was completely disoriented.

Looking over the destruction across Pearl Harbor, Rochefort wished he had spent more time on JN-25 because what they’d extracted from the Admin Code was of little intelligence value. But he tried not to berate himself too much. After all, Station HYPO had intercepted very few Japanese naval communications in the previous week. There was simply nothing to decrypt, even if they had broken the code.

Rochefort’s view of the devastation was sickening and demoralizing to behold, and he felt an overwhelming sense of failure for not being able to predict such an event. Right then and there, he vowed to throw more weight against the JN-25 as soon as he could get operations moving again in the Dungeon.

Unless, of course, they fire me, he thought, which is a very real possibility.

Chapter 02

Guam Attacked

Monday, December 8, 1941

Station BAKER, Libugon Hill, Guam

In Guam, it was four hours earlier than Hawaii and a day ahead because of the international date line. Early on the morning of December 8, Radioman Second Class Eddie Dullard sat alone at the intercept position on the midwatch at Station BAKER. The IJN nets he was used to copying had been eerily silent over the past several nights, and he was expecting another quiet midwatch. As he’d anticipated, hour after hour passed with very little katakana code to copy. He wondered why the IJN ships weren’t communicating, but there was nothing he could do about it. He and his fellow intercept operators at Station BAKER had been searching the radio spectrum just in case the Japanese had changed frequencies; they found nothing.

Unexpectedly at around 0400 hours, the radio spectrum exploded with life. Suddenly, several IJN ships were communicating via katakana telegraphic code on 59 and 223 kilocycles, and Dullard couldn’t keep up. It was hard for him to keep track of how many ships were active because they were using call signs he had never heard before. But what he could tell was that several dozen Japanese aircraft were communicating with each other and with the ships on 330, 336, 339, and 342 kilocycles. He also heard at least a half dozen Japanese submarines communicating with each other on 3515 kilocycles. And for the first time in over a week, the Japanese frequencies of 4255, 5645, 6520, and 12765 kilocycles were all actively broadcasting scores of five-character encrypted traffic. Dullard tried his best, but he simply couldn’t copy it all.

A stack of intercept logs was quickly piling up next to his position. He ripped a sheet of paper full of romaji characters—the romanization of katakana—from his RIP-5 Underwood Code Machine, inserted a blank one, and started typing again, clack, clack, clack, clack. As the sound of the typewriter echoed throughout the empty operations room—clack, clack, clack, clack. Dullard wished he had some help.

He had no idea what was going on, but he knew it was big. While all the broadcast traffic was encrypted into five-character code groups, the tactical IJN traffic was in plaintext. As was the practice of the IJN, whenever they needed to transmit a non-Japanese word, they would enclose that word in brackets. In several of the messages he intercepted, he copied the English words Arizona, California, Nevada, Oklahoma, and West Virginia in brackets.

Why are they listing American states? Dullard wondered. With no time to think about it, he got back to the intercept.

The frantic level of communications continued for over an hour when Stuart Faulkner burst into the intercept room. His eyes were wide, and he was out of breath. As he approached, Dullard took off his headphones and said, What’s up, Stu?

Pearl Harbor is under attack! The Japs are attacking Oahu!

"My gosh! So that’s what I’ve been copying. Sit down."

Faulkner sat at the empty intercept position next to Dullard’s and began to copy. Even between the two of them, they couldn’t keep up with the volume of traffic. Soon, Chief Radioman Don Barnum and Radioman First Class Markle Smith rushed into the operations room. Smith tapped the operators on the shoulder and motioned for them to take off their headphones.

Markle Smith was the second-most senior man at Station BAKER. Born in Indianapolis in 1910, he was small in stature—only five foot four—but he was arguably the strongest man in the unit. He’d been the starting halfback on the Connersville High School football team, earning All County honors for his speed and tenacity on the field. He graduated from Connersville High in 1928, despite numerous suspensions for fights with some of the biggest boys in school.

Chief Barnum was the Radioman in Charge and had assigned Smith as the Leading Petty Officer, delegating to him the day-to-day running of the intercept operation. As such, the men of Station BAKER responded to him with respect.

Headphones off, Smith said.

But, Smitty— Dullard objected.

Headphones off! Smith barked. Dullard and Faulkner could tell by Smith’s sharp tone that he meant business, so they complied.

It’s time to stop copying, Smith ordered. Just then, Bob Ellis, Hal Joslin, and Rex Parr—the rest of the intercept operators from Station BAKER—entered the room. Don McCune, a general service radioman assigned to Station BAKER as a direction finding (DF) operator, also joined them. They gathered behind the intercept positions.

In deference to the radioman in charge, Smith waited for Chief Barnum to speak. After a long awkward moment during which Barnum appeared lost for words, Smith broke the silence.

Boys, this is it. The Japs have attacked Pearl Harbor. We’re at war with Japan. Smith’s words hit the men heavily—like an anchor hitting the seabed. Clearly, the enormity of the situation would take some time to sink in. Captain McMillin has asked us to implement the War Plan. Captain George McMillin was the Naval Governor of the U.S. Territory of Guam and the senior naval officer on the island.

What war plan, Smitty? Dullard asked.

Yeah . . . OK . . . I was afraid of that, Smith replied. This is what we’re supposed to do. First, we destroy everything to make it look like we were never here. Then a radioman will come up from Radio Agaña and help us set up some gear on Mount Tenjo so we can communicate with Pearl and Cavite to figure out what’s next.

Located six miles southwest of Libugon, Mount Tenjo was the home of Camp Barnett, a U.S. Marine Corps garrison where a battery of guns had been installed during the Great War to help defend Piti Naval Base. The guns had been removed in 1921 as part of the Washington Conference of Arms Limitation, but a small contingent of Marines still operated a base on the site.

Don McCune, the youngest man in the group, asked, The Navy’s coming to get us, right Smitty? McCune’s voice cracked nervously as he awaited reassurance from Markle Smith.

I don’t know, Don. All I know is that we have a job to do. With that, Smith started assigning specific tasks to the men. Hal, Stu, Rex . . . you guys go out to the storehouse. Get some gasoline, sledgehammers, axes—anything you can find—and bring ’em back here. Bob, Eddie, you empty the safe and pile up all the papers in the middle of the room. Don, take a hammer and destroy the RIP-5s. Make ’em look like regular typewriters that had the snot beat out of them. Now, go!

The men all scattered to do as Petty Officer Smith directed. McCune raised a hammer to a RIP-5 and looked at Smith for reassurance. When Smith nodded, McCune started banging away at the Underwood Code Machine in front of him, squinting as pieces of the typewriter flew in all directions.

Smith turned to Chief Barnum, who was still silent, and asked, You OK, Chief?

Yeah, but I don’t know if I can handle this, Markle.

We’ll be fine, Don. You just gotta keep your chin up for the men.

I’ll try.

Hal Joslin came back from the storeroom with two ten-gallon cans of gasoline. Rex Parr and Stu Faulkner followed with several axes, sledgehammers, and machetes. Everybody grab one, Smith commanded, but be careful not to hurt yourselves.

Just then, the men all heard an airplane pass directly over the building. It was so loud that they all ducked. They ran out back just in time to see the red sun disk symbol, or Hinomaru, on the tail of the plane.

We’ve gotta get a move on, boys. Destroy that gear, Smith ordered.

With newfound motivation, they all grabbed a tool and started banging away at receivers, oscilloscopes, and Underwood Code Machines. Within half an hour, they had smashed all the radio gear, which was shattered in pieces all across the room. Crushed hulks of radio receivers and RIP-5 typewriters were the largest pieces of debris remaining. A huge mound of classified papers was piled in the center of it all.

Hal, you douse that pile of papers with gasoline. Rex, you soak a rope in gas and lead it out the door. Everyone else, get out, Smith ordered.

The unmistakable smell of gasoline filled everyone’s nostrils. Joslin and Parr doused the entire place with fuel, and the men all walked to the end of the gasoline-soaked rope about fifty feet from the building. Next to them stood a stack of radio gear, food supplies, and machetes that they’d set aside to take to Mount Tenjo. Just as Petty Officer Smith was about to set the rope on fire, a box truck came speeding up the road toward the group. It stopped nearby, and the radioman they were expecting from Radio Agaña stepped out of the truck.

Hi. I’m George Tweed, the driver said. I’m here to get you to Mount Tenjo.

Right, good! Hi, Tweed, Smith responded. You’re just in time to see the show. Smith struck a match and lit the rope.

Even though they had completely soaked the rope in fuel, the flame drifted slowly along its length toward the building. They all waited, unable to take their eyes off the flame gradually creeping its way toward the door. When it finally reached the building, the entire place went up in flames with a loud whoosh! The flames were enormous, easily reaching fifty feet into the air.

As the building burned, more Japanese airplanes filled the skies, circling Apra Harbor, Piti Naval Base, and the town of Agaña. From their vantage point high on Libugon Hill, the men could see USS Penguin casting away lines and trying to get underway in the harbor. As it did, airplanes dove toward the ship and strafed the deck, sending Sailors running for cover.

Two bombs exploded on either side of the ship, sending tall columns of water straight into the air. Bombs also rained down on Piti Naval Base and the Pan Am fuel depot on the far side of Apra Harbor. The fuel tanks exploded ferociously, rocking the entire area around the harbor. The pressure wave traveled