Topeka (CL 67) - Naval Cruise Book

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their activities to drinking beer and trying to trade with the natives for souvenirs. Most of the trading was for Philip- pine money, but the great quantities of clean crisp bills substantiated the story that the natives had obtained posses- sion of the presses on which the Japs had turned out occu- pation currency and were printing new money as fast as the sailors would buy it. There were too, the usual stories of what one could obtain in exchange for a package of Ameri- can cigarettes. Time passed rapidly, and before long the word was passed around that the Task Force would get underway 1 July for another series of smashing attacks on the Japanese homeland, these attacks to be co-ordinated with the pulver- izing bombing tactics of the Army's B-29s. When the ship steamed out of San Pedro Bay on 1 July. it was generally believed that she would be back in again within six or eight weeks, no one knew how much history would be written before the Topeka dropped anchor again. For nine days the Task Force tuned up for battle with numerous drills and practices, including a mock battle be- tween two groups of battleships, cruisers and destroyers. Enemy mines were spotted every day and exploded by destroyers of the screen. The great concern shown over the sighting of mines in daylight led to a certain amount of cynical discussion about the mines that must be just as nu- merous at night when they could not be seen. The group moved slowly north from Leyte during these nine days. Task Force 38.1, of which the Topeka was again a member, was composed of the carriers Bennington, Lex- ington and Hancock, the light carriers San Jacinto and Belleau Wood, the battleships South Dakota, Indiana and Massachusetts, the light cruisers Atlanta, Dayton, Okla- homa City, Amsterdam, and Topeka, the AA cruiser San Juan and about 18 destroyers. On the morning of 10 July the Task Force, composed of Task Groups 38.1, 38.3 and 38.4-, was ready to renew the onslaught against Japan. From a point off the eastern coast of Honshu, the central and most important of the three Jap- anese islands, a mammoth air strike was launched against the Tokyo Plains area, which includes the most heavily populated and most highly industrialized sections of Japan. From 0400 all through the day the planes roared off the carriers, and flew in to their targets, dropped their bombs and returned to be recovered, loaded, gassed and again launched. This routine was typical of the strike days to follow. As many as 2,000 missions would be flown in a day by the carrier planes. On this day, as in days to come, little opposition was encountered by the pilots although at some targets the anti-aircraft fire was moderate to heavy. The Topekais job on strike days was to maintain a sharp radar and lookout watch for enemy planes about to attack the Task Group, to open fire and destroy enemy planes as directed, and to supply air-sea rescue planes as ordered. During these days the ship went to General Quarters for launching and recovery of planes and twhenever enemy planes approached the formation, and maintained Condition Two Able-Able, with half to two-thirds of the men on watch, the rest of the time. Although few enemy planes, except those that were apparently suicide reconnaissance missions, approached close enough to cause any great alarm, it was a grueling routine, particularly for the anti-aircraftjbattery, the lookouts, and Combat Information Center. By sunset all planes had been recovered and the night combat air patrol had been launched. The group retired for fueling on 11 and 12 July, then steamed north for an attack on Hokkaido, the northernmost of the three principal islands, on the 13th. Foul weather prevented effective air strikes on the 13th, but on the 14th a full-scale attack was launched with enemy planes, enemy airfields and certain industrial points the targets. As on the 10th over the Tokyo area, many planes were destroyed on the ground and little opposition was encountered in the air. The Japanese either had run out of planes or were saving them for the expected invasion of the homeland. About noon two planes ap- proached the formation but were shot down by the combat air patrol before they could do any damage. The next day, the 15th, was in general a repetition of the 14th. That night the group retired for fueling the following day. While fueling on 16 July the Task Force was joined by a British task group of carriers, battleships, cruisers and destroyers, which was to conduct future air operations in conjunction with Task Force By the morning of the 17th the ships had again reached a point off Tokyo for scheduled strikes on that and the next day. Bad weather interferred again, however. The first two strikes of the day were launched on the 17th, but then the weather closed in, preventing any further operations that day or the next. But those who thought that operations were setting into a routine were due for a surprise that night. 1 At 1630 on 18 July the Topeka, along with her sister cruisers the Dayton, Oklahoma City and Atlanta, was de- tached from the Task Group for a shipping sweep off the eastern entrance to Tokyo Bay, within easy range of Jap warships, planes, and even shore batteries. Purpose of the mission was to destroy enemy shipping encountered and to bombard the southern tip of Nojima Cape. Navigating largely by radar, the four cruisers with -their destroyer screen, commanded by Rear Admiral Holden, USN, in the Topeka, approached the Japanese homeland in the early evening. At about 2200, radar contact was made with an unidentified surface craft. Two destroyers were sent out to investigate, but the contact turned out to be an American submarine. Just before midnight, steaming in column, the cruisers opened fire on Japanese radar installations on Nojima Cape. Belching flame and destruction, the 6 guns fired salvo after salvo toward shore in an awe-inspiring spectacle, and the target was seen to explode in a quick flash as the projectiles reached their objective, The Task Unit proceeded westward from Nojima Cape and reached a point 45 miles south of Tokyo, the closest to the .Japanese capital that any enemy force had ever been since the days of Genghis Kahn in the 13th century. Turn-

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ing south, the unit swept through the outer reaches of Tokyo Bay searching in vain for Japanese shipping. Although il was obvious that the unit had been picked up by Japanese radar, neither enemy planes nor ships ventured out to give battle. At 0135 on 19 Jul.y, having completed the sweep the unit turned east to rendezvous with the rest of the Task Force. En route, the radars picked up a single unidentified plane which closed and was taken under fire. The plane quickly withdrew and was not again detected. lnsignificant as it may have been tactically, the sweep made history in a small way for the Topeka, and provided another tip-off that the Japanese were about at the end of their rope. It might have been a dangerous mission, but the Japanese were unable, or unwilling, to make it so. Foul weather prevented further strikes until 211- July. On that day and the next the planes from the Task Force car- riers struck at enemy shipping in the vicinity of Kure and reported successful completion of their missions. Un the early evening of the 25th several -enemy planes followed the carrier planes back to the Task Force and were shot down by the combat air patrol without inflicting any dam- age to our forces. The force again retired for fueling, and struck once more at Kobe and Kure on the 28th and 29th of July. By this time the Japanese were suffering from a bad case of jitters because they were unable to keep up with the movements of the Third Fleet and never knew where it was going to strike next. Further, any one strike might have been the prelude to invasion at that point. With their fleet a negligible fac- tor, their air force shot to pieces and their major cities in ruins, the Japanese were looking at a black present and an even blacker future. On the afternoon of 29 July the Task Force shifted its position again. and on the 30th and 31st struck at the Tokyo-Nagoya area once more with devastating effects, then retired for fueling. For seven days no operations against the empire were undertaken while the Task Force fueled and engaged in anti-aircraft firing practice, moving gradually north to a position east of Honshu. Again on 9 and 10 August Task Force 38 struck savagely at the Japs, this time hitting northern Honshu with indus- trial centers and airfields, as well as aircraft, the principal targets. And on the 9th the Topeka, by the daring of one of its officers, stood momentarily in the limelight. On that day the Topeka had the routine air-sea rescue assignment. Purpose of the assignment is to recover from the water pilots of downed carrier aircraft. 1n the middle of the morning the Topeka was ordered to send a plane to the rescue of a downed British pilot from a British carrier operating with Task Force 38. Ensign Harry Poindexter, USNB, who is equally at home in a stud poker session, took off in his SC-1 Seahawk, a one- seater seaplane with space in the fuselage aft of the pilot to stuff a passenger, and flew to the point where the pilot had been reported downed, less than a mile from the Jap- anese beach and within range of shore batteries. Setting his plane down in the water, Ensign Poindexter picked up the British aviator, and was about to return to the ship when he was informed by radio that another British pilot had been downed about live miles away and was in the water. With some difhculty, Poindexter took off in the choppy water with his passenger and flew to the second pilot. While he knew that he could jam another passenger into the fuselage with only some slight discomfort to the passen- gers, Poidexter also knew that his light plane would be heavily over-balanced and might very well not be capable of taking off from the somewhat heavy seas. However, rather than leave the aviator to the mercy of the sea and the ma- chine-gunning Jap pilots, Poindexter set his plane down again and took the second pilot aboard. With friendly fighter planes circling overhead as protec- tion against Jap planes, Poindexter gunned his tail-heavy plane over the water and forced it into the air more by will power than anything else. When he radioed that he was bringing in two passengers, one of them badly injured, in his one-seater plane, half the shipis company was on the fantail to receive him and the Task Force Commander sent a message to the Topeka asking for complete details of the rescue. For his daring and courageous achievement in the D . 23 face of great odds, Ensign Poindexter was awarded the Dis- tinguished Flying Cross. On the evening of 10 August the ships retired again for fueling, but by this time there was but one item of conver- sation throughout the Topeka. A stateside radio news broadcast had told first of the Russian entry into the war, then of the devastating atomic bomb, and finally of the re- ported Japanese offer to surrender, which was supposed to have been transmitted to the U. S. and British governments through a neutral. Shortly after that, another report made the first official. Then there was no further news for a couple of days. But the ship was bright with jubilation for the long days of darkness seemed nearly at an end. With ine contempt for the Japanese efforts to extricate themselves short of unconditional surrender, Task Force 38 struck furiously at Tokyo again on 13 August, rested on 14 August, and that night moved back into position for another attack on 15 August. Meanwhile, newsbroadcasts from the states crackled with facts, rumors, speculation and hope. The Allied govern- ments had answered Tokyois plea for peace with a defiant reiteration that only unconditional surrender-specifically, an Allied Supreme Commander to whom the Emperor would be subservient-could bring an end to the holocaust which was crushing Japan. The world was awaiting the Japanese response, and in the little part of the world aboard the Topeka all the emotions that had been released by the earlier announcements were being held in check amid the deafening quietness which fell over the ship. At dawn on the-15th, the first wave of planes was launched, and the second. Before they reached their targets, the great news broke over the Task force like a tropical storm and the planes were recalled. Aboard the Topeka, men were going wild, singing, yelling, whistling and danc- ing. On the battle stations and living compartments, on the forecastle and in the wardroom, the word was the same: 26 ll J