In the Shadows of Guadalcanal

By Phillip Parotti

"Casemate has a long history of publishing high quality military history non-fiction. Lately, they have expanded their range of work to include well written novels using wartime settings." – WWII History MagazineRe-deployed from convoys in the Atlantic, the men of PC-450 must face Japanese submarines and air attacks as they support the U.S. Marines island-hopping across the Pacific.

Twice torpedoed during the Battle of the Atlantic, LT. Tony Colombo USNR, a former merchant marine officer, is appointed to command a new Navy ship, PC-450, a 173 foot, steel-hulled and much advanced submarine chaser carrying five officers and sixty-five men. After a period of escorting convoys up and down the Atlantic coast, Tony suddenly finds himself escorting ships loaded with Marine Corps equipment all the way to Wellington, New Zealand and then to Brisbane, Australia. Once arrived, he is instantly ordered to begin escorting small convoys up and down the Australian coast. Some weeks later, Tony and PC-450 engage in battle with a dangerous Japanese midget submarine which is attempting to penetrate Brisbane Harbor. In the summer of 1942, as PC-450 begins to escort numerous convoys from Australia to Noumea in New Caledonia, the United States suddenly invades Guadalcanal with the result that Tony begins guiding convoys north in support of the invasion while fending off the multiple day and night air raids that the Japanese throw down The Slot. Subsequently, following the hard fought victory on Guadalcanal, PC-450 participates in the invasion of the Russell Islands and then, during the grinding fight for New Georgia, PC-450 not only helps to fend off Japanese air attacks on the fleet but twice engages in surface actions when the Japanese attempt to infiltrate troops onto the island. Wounded in a sudden air attack that radar could not detect in advance, Tony and Baldy are returned to Brisbane for convalescence and new assignments.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Casemate Publishers
• Release date: Apr 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781636241630

Phillip Parotti

Phillip Parotti grew up in Silver City, New Mexico, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1963, and served four years at sea on destroyers, both in the Pacific and the Atlantic, before exchanging his regular commission for a commission in the U.S. Naval Reserve. In addition to a number of short stories, essays, and poems, Parotti has published three well received novels about The Trojan War. In retirement, Parotti and his wife, Shirley, live in their hometown where he continues to write and work as a print artist. Together, they have two daughters and four grandchildren.

Book preview

1

Tony Colombo had been torpedoed once before, in November of 1939, near the close of his third year as third mate aboard the S.S. Harrison Lane. That miserable experience had taken place in the Irish Sea not forty miles northwest of Liverpool, the port where the Lane intended to offload the cargo of lubricants and munitions that she’d safely carried all the way across the Atlantic from New Orleans. Because the Lane was a fast ship and because the owners—in order to profit from carrying war materials—had manipulated a fiddle around America’s neutrality laws, they’d transferred ownership of the Lane to their London firm, re-registered the ship under the British flag, and blithely sent her on her way. The Lane, almost within sight of land, had finally had the misfortune to steam into dangerous waters and paid the price. Tony, who happened to be standing on the fantail supervising two able seamen who were flaking down a mooring line, turned out to be the only officer who survived the German torpedo that struck the ship in the forward hold. The resulting explosion blew him and the two able seamen straight over the stern but clear of the ship—the only three members of the crew to escape the sinking, which was immediate.

All told, for the way that he and the two men emerged from the disaster, Tony knew them to have been lucky. Although his watch had been broken the moment he struck the waves, Tony didn’t imagine that the three of them had been forced to tread water for more than thirty minutes before two coastal fishing boats quickly descended upon them and made their rescue. The seamen—both of whom Tony knew to have signed on in Baltimore—went into the first boat to arrive, while Tony was plucked from the drink by the second. Because the first boat happened to be returning to Preston rather than Liverpool, Tony never saw either of them again. Instead, with a somewhat filthy blanket wrapped around him against the chill, Tony was deposited at the foot of a Royal Navy pier in Liverpool. There he was picked up by two intelligence officers, interrogated about his sinking, and with the charitable issue of some dry clothing, dispatched to London, where he’d repeated what he had to say about the sinking to representatives of the ship’s owners. After compensating him somewhat by paying his salary with a bonus, those fair-minded men sent him on his way so that he could work his passage back to the States in another of their bottoms—this one, save for a cargo of Scotch and Irish Whiskey, riding high and empty in a small, insignificant convoy that the U-boats either never detected or found so inconsequential that they never attacked it.

Arriving back in New York during the miserably cold December of 1939, Tony booked himself into a hotel, enjoyed some good meals, took in a show, and allowed himself four days to consider his decision. Then, reflecting on the friends he’d lost aboard the Lane and with a firm intuition about what he expected to unfold in the future, he made his way straight to the Headquarters, Third Naval District. Without hesitation, he asked for an interview with the personnel officer and applied to have his inactive commission as an officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve activated at once.

The personnel officer, a graying commander with a reserved voice but a pleasant mien, reviewed the credentials that Tony had retrieved from his safe deposit box, studying both the transcript and diploma that Tony produced. They attested to his performance at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, the institution from which he’d graduated in 1936, as well as his merchant marine credentials. The officer noted that while Tony had served on the Lane as third mate, he had passed his examination and was fully qualified to serve on any ship as a second mate, and he scanned the various letters and reports that attested to his performance on the Lane. Included in the mix, the commander also found the document which commissioned Antonio Benjamin Colombo as an ensign in the United States Naval Reserve (inactive) until such time as the appointee elected to serve.

Yes, well, the commander said, closing Tony’s file. Everything seems in order, so I shall set things in motion. Check in with me daily beginning next week, but in the meantime, see a tailor, fit yourself out with a set of uniforms, and ask them to be striped for the rank of lieutenant, junior grade. Your experience and your record qualify you for something more than an ensign’s rank, and I’ll ask that you be sent for a two month-course in gunnery to bring you up to speed on the one aspect of your navy duties with which you are not yet familiar, an assignment which Tony accepted with alacrity.

The gunnery course to which Tony was sent amounted to little more than a series of practice shoots conducted while he did temporary duty aboard a training destroyer out of Newport. By study and application, however, Tony mastered the basics, both with regard to the guns that the destroyer carried and the fire control system that went with them. When the captain of the vessel finally signed off on his letter of completion, he received a set of orders that sent him straight back to New York, to the U.S.S. Herman Flint, an ancient four-stack destroyer that had first seen service before World War I. The captain of the Flint—also a relic of that war—after studying his records, assigned him to perform his functions as the ship’s leading deck officer, her first lieutenant as the post was known.

In the beginning, Tony stepped carefully. The Flint’s captain, a man named Hughes, happened to be a senior lieutenant commander who had been once passed over but who was anxious to add the scrambled eggs to his hat before he retired and who therefore turned out to be both touchy and bit of a martinet. The exec, a senior lieutenant anxious to qualify for his first command, adopted a similar attitude. As a result, it was only in the wardroom, after meals and after both the captain and the exec had departed, that the department heads and division officers finally felt free to relax; while at sea and on watch on the bridge, none of them relaxed, even for a minute. Nevertheless, with a few adjustments, Tony fit in, found his brother officers congenial, devoted himself to learning his new trade, and came more into his own as the ship began to do escort duty with some of the convoys that were making their way toward the United Kingdom and the war.

From the beginning, it seemed clear to Tony that the United States Navy had found itself woefully unprepared for what he believed was coming. In a nutshell, the Navy had too few ships to begin even to shepherd the convoys that were being put together to keep England alive. Numerous ships and convoys steamed alone, both up and down the east coast or straight out into the mid-Atlantic. When a convoy was accompanied a part of the way, as far as to what was called the chop line—where ships of the Royal Navy were supposed to assume responsibility for them—there were far too few of them to give the merchantmen the kind of support and coverage that would keep them safe. Later, as Tony would learn, the German submariners dubbed that period between 1940 and 1943 the Happy Time, because it was during those years that they could sink nearly any ship they attacked right up against the American coast or farther out in the Atlantic, without much fear of reprisal.

In early 1941, Hughes, suddenly needed and kept afloat for the escort duty he was doing, finally made commander, relaxed slightly, and became more personable. The exec, finally qualifying for command, was removed and given command of one of the armed millionaire’s yachts that had been dragooned into service from the New York Yacht Club. To his near shock, owing to the date of his commission, in the middle of 1941 Tony suddenly found himself promoted to the rank of lieutenant and promoted by Hughes to act as the Flint’s exec. It was during this period that the Flint removed from New York to Newport so as to be closer to Massachusetts Bay, from where many of the convoys for England were departing. And then, quite suddenly, on December 7, 1941, the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbor, and America entered the war.

Five days later, having made the transit up to Boston through the Cape Cod Canal, the Flint fell in with three other destroyers to provide its part in the screen for a convoy of thirty merchantmen that were headed for Reykjavik before making their final transit to Belfast. The Flint and the three other destroyers in the screen were none of them destined to go so far; their job was to escort the convoy to the chop line and there to turn over their charges to an escort of Royal Navy corvettes, but as things worked out, the Flint did not make it to the chop line.

Not more than five hundred miles into the Atlantic and less than one hundred miles east of Halifax, something that Hughes heard over the sound-powered phones gave him the impression that the gun crew on the Flint’s 4"/50 gun mount aft might be doping off. At once he sent Tony aft to conduct a personal inspection and see that the gun crew was brought up to the mark. From that vantage point, he happened to glance out to starboard where he detected the obvious wake of a speeding torpedo headed straight toward the ship. To give the man credit, Hughes had also spotted the torpedo, acted at once, and apparently gave his helmsman orders for a hard, emergency turn to starboard so as to try to save his ship by combing the torpedo’s track. But the old Flint’s steering controls were simply too slow for the demand that had been placed on them. The torpedo struck almost directly beneath the forward gun mount, the resulting explosion hurling everyone to the deck, snapping the keel forward of the pilot house, and setting off the forward magazine with a secondary explosion that killed everyone on the bridge before the entire foc’sle sank beneath the waves.

Thrown hard against the gun mount when the torpedo struck, Tony knew instantly that he had probably cracked one or more of his ribs, but when the ship’s stern did not instantly sink, he managed to scramble to his feet, began issuing orders, and began receiving reports. A bleeding survivor from the signal bridge informed him in no uncertain terms of the fate of Hughes and the bridge personnel. Meanwhile, as the snipes from main control poured topside, they told him that the chief engineer and the main propulsion assistant were trying to secure the boilers to keep them from exploding. Other survivors explained that the engine room as well as several additional spaces were flooding.

Tony quickly came to grips with the grim news that the captain was indeed dead. Assured that the depth charges and torpedoes had been set on safe, that the after magazine had also been flooded, and with what was left of the Flint both listing and settling, Tony issued orders to the remaining crew, to get as many of the life rafts into the water as possible. Just as he was about to order the ship abandoned, he was saved from that disgrace when the senior officer afloat came alongside aboard the Henry Talbot, gave the order himself, and began taking off all survivors. In the event, having seen everyone aboard—including the chief engineer and main propulsion assistant—over the side, Tony Colombo, acting captain of the Flint, was the last man to leave her. From a distance he watched with regret as the Talbot put a torpedo into her in order to sink what remained of the stricken old destroyer.

Two days later, Tony and the other forty-seven survivors of the Flint’s destruction were transferred at sea onto the decks of three destroyers escorting a westbound convoy back to Halifax. Once put ashore, Tony spent a week there in the Royal Canadian Navy’s hospital, his ribs bound, his needs looked after, until he was finally released and returned to the States riding cold in the bay of a Navy PBY which delivered him to Quonset Point Naval Air Station in Rhode Island. There, according to procedure, he spent two more days in the hospital until the U.S. Navy’s doctors were firm in their belief that he was fit to be released. And in that manner, mere hours later, he found himself, still wearing a makeshift uniform, back in Newport, sitting in the headquarters office of the personnel officer of the Second Naval District.

2

As with the personnel officer Tony had first seen when he had activated his reserve commission in New York, Commander Lint, the officer he faced in Newport, proved to be a retread, his First World War ribbons, including a Navy Cross, faded on his breast. Lean to the point of appearing gaunt, with thick gray eyebrows shading deep-set dark blue eyes, Lint presented Tony with the image of a specter. Had the man’s hair been black rather than totally gray, he might have passed, Tony thought, for the spitting image of Bela Lugosi in his 1931 rendering of Dracula.

Get along well enough with Commander Hughes, did you? Lint asked after he’d stood and shaken Tony by the hand, his thin lips stretched in a line across his face, showing no hint of a smile.

Yes, Sir, Tony said.

Served with him in ’17, Lint said. Found him a bit of a tight ass at the time.

I think he relaxed a bit after he was promoted to commander, Tony said, relaxing a bit himself at Lint’s casual admittance.

Good, Lint said. Pity about his loss. He’s much needed at the moment. So, what about you? Feel fit? The pain gone?

I’m feeling fit, Tony said. From time to time, I still feel a twinge, but that seems to be passing.

Lint flipped open a file. Hughes gave you excellent fitness reports, he said, the man’s face still showing a perfect blank. "So, let’s go over a few preliminaries. Says here that you graduated third in your class at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, that you were sunk in the Irish Sea in 1939, that you activated your commission in December of that year, that you took a course in gunnery upon activation, that Hughes assigned you as his first lieutenant, and that you were promoted and advanced to acting exec of the Flint in June of 1941, confirmation of the appointment following in August. Are those the facts?"

Yes, Sir, Tony said.

What do you know about PCs? Lint asked quickly.

Tony had never heard of a PC. With a shrug of his shoulders, he replied, Nothing.

There are some who still refer to them as submarine chasers, Lint explained.

Yes, Sir, Tony said. I’ve heard of those. The splinter fleet. Wooden vessels, about 110 feet in length with two or three officers and about twenty men.

PCs are the larger versions, Lint added quickly, and constructed of steel. 173 feet, 8 inches in length, 23 feet in the beam, with a draft of about 10 to 11 feet. Twin rudders, two shafts propelled by two 2800 hp diesels, making the ships capable of speeds of something slightly over 20 knots. They’re well armed too: one 3/50 dual-purpose mount forward, three 20mm guns and a 40mm aft, two mousetraps for throwing anti-submarine projectiles, four K-guns for throwing depth charges, and two depth-charge racks on the stern. They carry five officers and around sixty-five men, and used in the right way, they can be deadly on escort duty. At the moment we don’t have half enough of them, but the yards are turning them out as quickly as they can, so by the middle of next year, we hope to have far more of the class, including the smaller wooden subchasers, so as to begin putting a stop to the U-boat threat in the Atlantic. That bring you up to speed?"

Yes, Sir, Tony said. Thank you. Aside from never having seen one, I hadn’t so much as heard of them.

No surprise, Lint said, his eyes narrowing. They’re scarce, and here in Newport, where we are desperate for them, we haven’t seen more than three, all of them laid down in early ’41 and only now coming into commission.

Tony had no response to the comment. The question in his mind revolved around why Lint seemed to be stuck on the subject.

I would imagine that you’re wondering why I bother to mention this, Lint said, preempting Tony’s question. No response required, because I am going to tell you. At this precise moment, PC-450, one of the prototypes for the class, is tied up outboard of the tender down at Pier 1. Her commanding officer who shall remain nameless, a reservist like yourself, has unfortunately been caught with his hands in the till. I won’t go into detail, but it appears that he’s been fiddling the accounts for the crew’s rations, something which the Office of Naval Intelligence seems to have detected early, and the man has been removed to stand court martial and may well spend the war in the Portsmouth Naval Prison. What that means, Mr. Colombo, is that PC-450 is without a commanding officer. The situation is made more complicated because, save for the fraud of which the man appears to be guilty, he also appears to have been fairly competent in the role to which the Navy assigned him, has trained a good crew, and seems to have been well liked by his men. For that reason alone—for letting both his crew and the Navy down the way he has—I probably wouldn’t be above strangling the man if I could get my hands on him, but I speak metaphorically, of course, because the Navy is going to do that job for me. My problem is one I am going to hand to you. I have to find a commanding officer for PC-450 because she’s slated to escort a convoy south the day after tomorrow, and time is short. Unless you raise a strong objection and can give me excellent reasons why the job shouldn’t go to you, you’re elected. Do I hear any objections, Captain?

Tony found it hard to mask his surprise, his mouth hanging open at the unexpected assignment. The most that he could have imagined when he first entered Lint’s office was that he would be dispatched, after a spot of convalescent leave, to another destroyer. A command at sea would have been the last thing to cross his mind.

Do I hear any objections? Lint repeated, this time more forcefully.

No, Sir, Tony said, with a slight stutter. I’ll give it my best, Commander.

You’re damn right you will, Lint replied. "And you can believe me, Mister, when I tell you that the Navy expects no less. Now, some preliminaries. You are without uniforms for the most part, yours having been lost when the Flint went down, so when you leave here, go straight to the naval exchange. I’ve already called them, so they’ll be waiting for you and will fit you out with what you need at the Navy’s expense. Got it?"

Yes, Sir, Tony said.

Now, without too much detail, here’s the scoop on the officers and some of the men you’ll be serving with. Lint shuffled through a sheaf of papers on his desk and retrieved the relevant files. Lieutenant (j.g.) Richard Fisher—I think he goes by Rick—will be your executive officer and operations officer, and from what I’ve been told, he’s a fair navigator. He appears to be a graduate of Boston U and was a stockbroker before he activated his commission. Lieutenant (j.g.) Tedford Dabrowski is a graduate of MIT, and he’s PC-450’s chief engineer and damage control officer. I did an inspection down there when the CO was removed, and the man knows what he’s about. Ensign Frank ‘Baldy’ Namec is a graduate from Indiana University, and he’s the ship’s gunnery and weapons officer, and finally, Ensign Andrew Jason Milgrew is your communications officer and also handles supply. He may be only an ensign, but he’s a trifle older than the others, a graduate of the Texas School of Mines in El Paso, and thought to be very good with such things as procurement. I think he’s also married, but his wife has remained in El Paso. With regard to enlisted personnel, you have at least three regulars: Chief Gunner’s Mate Hagle is apparently also your chief master at arms, while Chief Tact is a machinist’s mate and Dabrowski’s righthand man. And a sailor named Kester is rated as a bosun first class. Combined, they seem to have about thirty years of experience behind them. The rest of the crew are straight from boot camp; the sonarmen and the fire control technicians came after going through their Class A schools. All told, I doubt that any of them have more than six months in the Navy, so if they aren’t already up to the mark, you’re to see that they get there. Any questions?

No, Sir, Tony said, feeling a tightening in his chest as he absorbed the ramifications of what he was being assigned to do.

Right, said Lint, handing Tony a packet. Here are your orders. Get over to the exchange and then go straight to the ship, and I will expect you to have read yourself in by 1700 this afternoon. I’ll be down tomorrow to have a look at you—nothing formal, mind—and you are to have your ship ready to steam by 0700 on the morning after. Good Luck, Captain Colombo, and good hunting.

And with that abrupt ending, Lint concluded their interview.

By the time Tony fitted himself out with a new kit of uniforms at the naval exchange and found his way down the appropriate pier and across the tender to PC-450, the new wristwatch he’d acquired had already advanced beyond 1530. After saluting the ensign and the officer of the deck, a somewhat surprised third class petty officer, Tony swiftly took things in hand.

I’m the new CO, he said bluntly. Have your messenger notify the officers to assemble in the wardroom in fifteen minutes, point me in the direction of my stateroom, and call away the crew to muster on the fantail. We’re going to have a change of command in twenty minutes.

The captain’s stateroom, to Tony’s satisfaction, had been cleared of the former officer’s gear and thoroughly cleaned before he entered it, a feather in the executive officer’s cap in so far as Tony was concerned—an indication that the man was on top of things. Without bothering to stow his gear, Tony set his new B-4 bag on his bunk and took the time to fill and smoke one pipe. Then, bracing himself, he beat out the ash from his pipe, climbed the ladder, and ascended into the wardroom where he found his four officers standing at attention to greet him.

Be at rest, Tony said quickly, introducing himself and shaking each man by the hand. All calls to be considered paid and received. By this time, I believe, the crew should be assembled, so let’s adjourn to the fantail where I will read myself in, and then we can return here for a brief meeting.

With the crew assembled, save for the few men who were away from the ship on business, Lieutenant (j.g.) Fisher quickly brought them to attention, and then, stepping forward, Tony took out his orders and read himself in as commanding officer of PC-450. With that job done, he then dismissed the crew, with the warning that he would swiftly be touring the ship, and returned to the wardroom with his officers.

Let’s have a quick cup of coffee, Tony said, seating himself at the head of the wardroom table. Almost immediately, as though the man had been primed by someone, a Filipino steward who identified himself as Dizon appeared, set mugs in front of each officer, and poured them each a cup of coffee. He departed only after Tony had expressed his thanks, tasted the coffee, and pronounced it just right.

I regret the troubles you’ve experienced, Tony began. I understand that your former commanding officer was well liked and popular with the crew, but there is no way to mend what cannot be mended, and all of that is behind us now as we begin with a fresh slate. Prior to my meeting with Commander Lint at 1100 this morning, I had no idea that I would be assigned here, so I suspect that all of us share a degree of surprise and must turn our attention to the matters at hand. As I understand it, we will be leaving for escort duty the day after tomorrow, so we are not going to have much time to get to know one another before we go out. As a result, I have a few preliminary questions to ask. First and foremost, have you done escort duty before? Mr. Fisher, I’ll let you answer that one.

No, Sir, Fisher said. We completed shakedown training in Bermuda and came straight here for our first assignment.

But the watch bill is up to date, and you are certain that all men know their duties?

Yes, Sir, Fisher said.

Mr. Dabrowski, Tony continued, is the plant shipshape and ready to run?

Yes, Sir, Dabrowski replied.

"Mr. Namec, guns, sonar, depth charges, and the mousetrap are ready to