Denver (CL 58) - Naval Cruise Book

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number one stack. One of the shells which passed through the ship played tag with number two barbette in its circuitous route as It missed the armor, causing white hairs among lower handling room personnel when they later viewed the holes. After the most exciting 72 hours of her existence, the DemtT retired to Port Purvis in the Solomons to lick her wounds and was then ready the evening of the ninth to escort the Third Echelon to Bougainville. The next few nights were sleepless for the D(.iircr men who remained at battle stations all night heckled by Jap planes which some- times only dropped flares but more often came in to attack. The night of 12-13 November started inauspiciously with two air attacks, both driven off by our AA fire. At 0451 all ships in the formation commenced firing at several enemy planes. A destroyer skipper shouted on the TBS, Torpedoes in water headed toward big boys. At 0455 while turning left at full rudder to avoid torpedo wakes, the Denver felt a tremendous jar which seemed to lift her out of the water and leave her quivering in the air. She had been hit in the after engine room by an aerial torpedo and immediately listed 7 degrees. Lights went out and the gyro repeaters and steering engines went dead. Soon she lay dead in the water, listing now thirteen degrees, too close to Rabaul and 200 lap planes for comfort. Excited by the increasing list a few men threw life rafts overboard until Captain Briscoe calmly announced, We ' ll take her home, boys. The engineers soon had us going ahead at about four knots on one shaft as the C and R men removed the list by pumping all the starboard tanks. The de- stroyers continued to steam frantically in circles around the Dimvr until the Sioux, an ocean-going tug, took her under tow about 0730. A sight muster of the crew revealed that twenty men were missing and thirty-seven wounded. Of those missing, two had been; stationed on a gun just above the torpedo hole, five had been in the handling room of mount five, and the rest had been in the after engine room. The rest of that day and night were spent steaming toward Tulagi at six knots at General Quarters in constant fear of an air attack with no air cover and less than half of the AA battery operative. The morning of the fifteenth, amid cheers and blasts on whistles from other ships in the harbor, the DnirtT proceeded to her anchorage in Port Purvis. There followed a dreary time with men eating topside, working night and day in oil and debris of all sorts, removing ammuni- tion, and repairing the ship. The bodies were recovered and taken to Tulagi ceme- tery A memorial service for the Denver men lost in action was held on the forecastle on November 18 by Chaplain Hindman, who was assisted in the service by a Priest from a neighboring ship. On November the 21st, a cofferdam having been constructed in the after mess hall, the ship got underway for Espintu Santo in the New Hebrides, towed by the U.S.S. Pawnee. She arrived there the 24th and went into a floating drydock a few days later. In three weeks the tremendous hole in the side had been closed and number three engine was back in commission. {U}

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