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Bill Cox,
one of the KIDD's wartime
torpedomen, relates his experience of an incident which occurred on
November 11, 1943, during the Bougainville landings just a few months
after KIDD's run-in with NORTH CAROLINA. |
"Torpedoes
In The Water" — Rescue Off Rabaul
The action that I remember
probably the clearest was the 11th of November, 1943, the invasion
of Bougainville, which was in the slot between Rabaul and
Bougainville. We went in to pick up a pilot. We put a strike over
at dawn into Rabaul and we had probably just landed most of our
aircraft and one of 'em had apparently gone down. But before we
got to pick him up, the Japanese jumped right out of the sky on us
and the first one I saw came right around our fantail on the port
side and right straight up the starboard side. I could have hit
him with a spud. He lasted about 10 seconds. There was an F6F
right on his tail and he splashed him right there. After that it
got very interesting.
We went out to try to pick this [American] pilot up, and every
time we slowed down, the Japanese thought we were dead in the
water and they came in to try to polish us off. At one time, I was
on the port side of the bridge, and there was a fish [torpedo] in
the water coming in on the port quarter and there was a plane
flying in on the starboard bow: a Japaense torpedo plane with a
torpedo slung right underneath the plane. Well, he dropped it and
it was running hot, straight and normal. Being a torpedoman, I
knew exactly what that meant: it's gonna blow us straight to hell.
So, the old man [Captain ... at this point in time, Cdr. Allan B.
Roby] didn't see it. He was looking at the torpedo on the port
quarter and the guns were going off, so he couldn't hear me
screaming at him, so I just pounded him on the back until he
turned around and looked at me and I pointed to the torpedo in the
water. He immediately ran into the pilot house and grabbed the
engine order telegraph and pushed it flank speed ahead on one
screw [propellor] and emergency astern on the other. And we just
sat there and vibrated. And one fish went up the starboard side
and the other one went up the port side. And that's gospel. I was
so damn scared. I walked around on the starboard side and lit up a
cigarette and figured "Well, how high is that son of a bitch
gonna blow me?" I was so absolutely certain that we were
gonna be hit. It was a remarkable maneuver by a man that really
knew how to conn a ship.
After this same action, we went on picking this man up and we
went alongside with lines and nets and we tried everything we
could to get 'em in there, but every time we'd just about get 'em,
the Japanese would jump on us again, we'd have to take off and
leave 'em. And finally, Lang went over the side. He was a gunner's
mate and was holding this one aviator up. And we went back again
and again trying to pick him up and every time we did, the
Japanese would either bomb us or strafe us or do something.
Finally, the old man put a boat in the water and they went out and
picked him up and it took about a couple of trys to get the boat
back in 'cause they still kept jumping us, 'cause we were way
outside the formation and they figured we'd been hit. We finally got
the boat back on and got back into the squadron. And we pulled that
famous naval maneuver known as "getting the hell out of there."
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