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Cuttlefish -> RE: Small Ship, Big War - The Voyages of the Hibiki (3/22/2007 1:46:56 AM)
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April 15, 1942
Location: 420 miles east of Saipan
Course: North
Attached to: TF 53
Mission: Surface Combat
System Damage: 6
Float Damage: 0
Fires: 0
Fuel: 425
Orders: Escort heavy cruiser Kako back to Japan.
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From the diary of Seaman First Class Taiki Takahashi:
I have heard nothing further since that strange interview in the Captain's cabin a few days ago. This is a relief. I still don't know how Lieutenant Miharu heard anything about me, or why he might be interested if he did. The only one who knows anything about my small skill with numbers is Riku, and certainly he would not do anything to attract the attention of an officer. I suppose it could have been Shun, but I cannot picture him having anything good to say about me. Ah well, there is no point in worying about it. It is not as though I have much say in what happens to me anyway, good or bad.
It has been a quiet and dull voyage home so far. The weather has been fair, and there has been no sign of enemy submarines. I wish we could go faster! I guess if we did the patch on Kako's hull might start to leak, and that would not be good. We are truly out in the middle of nowhere here. I have seen all the maps and charts, of course, and I know how many miles it is from Kwajalein to Tokyo, but that does not truly give one the sense of how far apart things are here, and how big the ocean is. It is strange to think that the same waters that are sliding by under our hull touch the shore of Japan, and the islands we have seen, and even America too. Even England, I suppose, since all oceans are really just one big ocean. I wonder what ever happened to that Englishman we fished out of the water, and if he ever made it home?
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Excerpt from "Twelve Islands to Freedom" by Frank Barnwell, Scriveners Publishing, London, 1958
I got a ride from Madioen to Soerabaja on a stakebed truck carrying four wounded Dutch soldiers, an American naval officer, an oil company executive, and two nurses from the British hospital in Batavia. We got to Soerabaja on April 15. The next day Japanese forces cut the road behind us, surrounding the last uncaptured port in the Dutch East Indies.
I made my way down to the harbor. It was a scene of chaos and despair. I was looking at the death throes of an empire, and it wasn't pretty. Fires were burning, and the hulks of two ships sunk in the morning air raid still smoldered at the docks. There was a mob of people from a dozen nations, civilian and military alike, all of them trying to find some way to escape. People were using threats, bribes, pleading, whatever they thought would get them onto one of the few leaky tramp steamers still afloat. I took one look and left. I didn't give anything that left the harbor one chance in ten of getting past the Japanese ships and planes and making it to Australia.
I made my way to the airfield, passing shattered Dutch units streaming back into the town. Unlike the harbor the airfield was deserted. The last planes were long gone. The runway was pockmarked with craters, and burned out planes were scattered here and there. I was about to leave when I caught the faint sounds of opera music, of all things. I followed the sound to a hanger.
When I got there I found a trio of men, Australians by the look of their uniforms, working on the starboard engine of the most shot-up, beat-up wreck of a Blenheim I'd ever seen. One of them was belting out an aria from "Don Giovanni" as he worked. He didn't have a half-bad tenor, at that.
They stopped working and stared at me as I approached. I suddenly realized I was strange sight. I was still wearing the shirt the natives had given me, along with an old pair of dungarees borrowed from the Dutch priest. My hair was long and matted, and my beard was bushy and wild. I must have looked to them like some kind of crazed hermit.
"Who the hell are you?" one of them said.
"Hello, chaps," I said. "Name's Frank Barnwell, RAF. I don't suppose that thing can fly?"
"Not yet it can't" said the opera singer, who I was to learn later was named Clive Hogan. "And even if we get it patched up enough we need someone to fly it. You're RAF, you say? Don't happen to be a pilot, do you?"
Now, I have always considered myself an honest man. But it was plain to see that if that Blenheim could get into the air at all it wasn't going to be able to carry much of a load, and would probably have no need for a gunner or radio operator such as myself. But I'd logged a lot of hours in them watching them being flown. I figured I'd picked up enough about how it was done to give it a pretty good shot. I mean, how hard could it be, right? So I nodded.
"I am," I said. "Blenheims, in fact." The three men grinned.
"In that case," said the opera singer, "welcome to what's left of the bloody air force here in bloody Java. If you want to get to work patching those bullet holes we'll see if we can get this thing in the air before the Japs get here."
He started singing again as I got to work.
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