Lexington (CV 16) - Naval Cruise Book

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11:01 11:05 11:09 11:20 The Lexington opens fire. We change course. The moon is a blaze of brightness. Its broad glittering moonpath brings memories of a procession of other moon-nights . . . beginning far back in my teens . . . then in my twenties, when to me the moon and the moonlit scene were nature's supreme evocation of beauty, and the nocturne theme became the subject for many of my paintings. Another memory, strangely unrelated, brings up the vivid image of a farm tractor methodically rolling down my delphinium fields, the trailing disc-harrow chopping up the bloom spikes and churning them into the earth. Into this crazy-quilt pattern of memories, emotions, and reactions, flashes the thought that this very night's moon also bathes the hills and home in Connecticut . . . bathes them with a vast soft stillness. BOOM-BOGM-BQOM . . . BOP . . . ABLUMP . . . BUP-BUP-BUPBUPBUP . . . All hell is let loose around us. This moon is no neutral bystander, starkly it points out our ships to the enemy. I can see each unit of our task group, even the farthest carriers, as plainly as by daylight. Black black specks upon the ocher, green-gray tones of the sea, each unit of the fleet trailing a wake that makes a thin, sharp, screeching white line. Howl now hate that smooth bland moon, want to scratch it down, blast it to smithereens. A young officer reading and reporting the distance between us and the Yorktown mutters to himself Damn that moon. Intermittent firing in various quarters keeps on . . . my eyes follow the line of the tracer bullets like they follow color balls from roman candles on a Fourth of Iuly . . . I wish each roman-candle effect will reach and explode a lap plane. Sometimes a section of the sky is covered with colored ribbons made by the tracer shells. Four parachute flares drop almost directly ahead of us about five miles away. The flares slowly drop lower and lower, lighting up this area of the ocean in a new brilliance, with a sinking feeling comes the thought, now the covers are all off . . . we are naked and we'll have to fight it out with the bastards .... Strange satisfaction . . . this swearing E 125

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7:50 7:51 7:59 9:06 9:20 9:50 10:54 on here. Voices drop, and the routine is smooth again. Both task groups are continually maneuvering and altering their courses. The radar reports increasing numbers of single and small groups of enemy planes closing in on the task force from various directions. A battleship is ordered to a position astern of our task group. Casual conversation ends abruptly. The Captain moves in and out of the wheel-house, listening, watching. - The first barking of guns towards the western horizon indicates enemy aircraft have found and are closing in on task group 50.3. Sporadic firing continues in that direction. Battleships, cruisers in our own task group 50.1 open fire. Not only is radar reporting planes, but some units of the group report visual contacts. Now comes the closer Booivr- BOOM of five inch guns. Radar must have located something up in the sky that we can't see, it looks as if the five-inchers are shooting at the moon. ' ' A sudden glare on the horizon. A hit. A burning plane down. It burns too long. Maybe it's not a plane, maybe they got one of our destroyers. The Hames disappear, and the TBS reports one lap enemy plane downed by task group 50.3. Enemy planes have dropped some Hoat lights in the vicinity of task group 50.3. Detailed radar reports of the actions and movements of enemy planes are important information for the Hag admiral and stall on the Yorlqtowng they are hot and cold sensations to me. I pay very little attention to the reports that planes are 20 miles away, but when they are 3 miles away . . . then a few thousand yards and closing in . . . something in my chest tries to crowd up into my throat. Here is a long standing controversy coming to a test . . . a battle between naval vessels and land-based planes. Anti-aircraft gunfire from different ships of the task force now becomes continuous. The Enterprise reports she is being slowed up by engine trouble. Our speed is reduced. 124 ii

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11:25 11:25 at the enemy at a moment when his closeness blows a cold chill down your back. The flares burn out one after another. What a relief! The immediate attack I expect isn't taking placeg maybe they've overdone it-adding the light of the Hates to the moonlight may have cross-lit and confused the picture for them instead of clarifying it. The quartermaster makes an entry on the log sheet. I-Ie holds a red-filtered flashlight close to the paper, its lens masked down to a narrow slit gives the minimum light necessary to see the words as he puts them down. Commands for changes in our course are steadily coming over the TBS from the Hag- ship. The helmsmen swing the rudder for the evasive zigzag twists and turns. These maneuvers are diagramed by the moonlight coming in through the open hatches and portholes of the wheel-house. The probing shafts of light violate the anonymity of shadowsg in the manner of a slow-motion movie film they lugubriously creep and slide along the decks and up and down the bulkheads. At first, the TBS reports and commands came from the squawk-box in the drab monotone of the police precinct routine 'cCalling all carsn . . . but as the battle action steps up it sounds more like the ringside radio report of a fight. It has become evident from the TBS talk that the code name for the Lexington tonight is HANCOCK and that STORK is the Yorktown, Hagship of Admiral Pownall and task group 50.1. There are too many things going on in my mind to make it seem worthwhile to identify the code names of the other ships. I make a guess that FROLIC is the Hagship in a neighboring task group and that SAINT IC is probably one of the outlying scout destroyers. Our radar reports task group 50.1 is surrounded by large and small groups of enemy air- craft on all bearings. A major attack appears to be developing. F rom over the TBS comes: 11:27 THIS IS FROLIC ALERT ALERT RAID ABLE O50 4 MILES OUT 126 5 Sie ,.- - -..anna M..- ,Q-. .A -