Category Archives: U.S.

by Joel | 2 January 2025 · 4:50 am

Making of a Japanese Spy, 1936

From Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor, by Mark Harmon and Leon Carroll, Jr. (Harper Select, 2023), Kindle pp. 15-17:

Ensign Takeo Yoshikawa steps out of the Imperial Navy’s Regional Headquarters and takes the first deep breath of his new life. His old one, so full of promise, ended in disappointment. Now he’s being given a second chance to fulfill what he always felt was an important destiny. Yoshikawa’s youth on Shikoku Island was defined by the pursuit of excellence, as demanded by his physically abusive father.

…

By 1933 Yoshikawa was an honor student at the Imperial Japanese Naval College. There he’d been instructed that “the Navy stood for [a] southward advance and war against the United States; while the Army stood for northward expansion and war with Russia.” Yoshikawa recalled debates over ways to win a war with America; they all looked upon one as “inevitable.”

There was an introductory training cruise on a battleship and a short submarine deployment before Yoshikawa started pilot training in 1934. He was building the résumé of a promising career, and no one knew this more than Yoshikawa. Despite his philosophy of selflessness, he formed a strong ego. He told people his coming career was to be “stellar” and considered himself “the envy of [his] classmates.”

But after a few months of flight training, coming back from a practice sortie, the confident young man was struck down by severe abdominal pains and ordered to the hospital. He was sidelined from active duty, designated as physically unfit and shunted into a frustrating netherworld that he endured month after month. As he languished, things in Japan got more serious.

In 1936, officials in the Imperial Army murdered the Imperial advisor Makoto Saito, Army General Jotaro Watanabe and Finance Minister Korekiyo Takahashi and attempted to assassinate many others who opposed their expansionist plans. Tensions with China flared again, and Japan was squaring off against great global powers.

On the cusp of such historic events, Yoshikawa was forced to just watch. In 1936, the Imperial military finally retired him, leaving the youth “in great shock, since all my plans and hopes were bound up with the Navy.” He even contemplated suicide.

That was just two months ago. But with the change of the season came hope, when a captain from the regional headquarters summoned him for today’s meeting. The man’s words are still ringing in his ears: “There is still a place for you in the Navy, if you forgo any hope of advancement and return to active duty as an agent in naval intelligence.”

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by Joel | 1 January 2025 · 5:19 am

AJA Baseball, Honolulu, 1936

From Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor, by Mark Harmon and Leon Carroll, Jr. (Harper Select, 2023), Kindle p. 13:

It’s the second inning of the scoreless Americans of Japanese Ancestry championship game, played before a packed house. AJA games have been a staple of Hawaiian sports since 1909, and starting for a team is a high-profile position for the university student. Sunday games are major events in Honolulu; most draw about a thousand fans who pay a quarter each to watch. Since the stadium costs just one hundred dollars to rent, profits are guaranteed. There’s even more action to be found in the illegal (but tolerated) betting pools that spring up in and around the stadium.

Today’s game is more than a typical matchup. Wada plays for the Wahiawas, who haven’t won a championship in the twelve years of the league’s existence, and today they’re squaring off against their rivals, the Palamas.

The AJA League is a very public, popular expression of Nisei pride. There’s an outcry in 1936 when the Japanese American owner of the Asahis team appoints Neal “Rusty” Blaisdell as coach. “The Asahis have always been the only strictly one-race team,” writes Hawaii Hochi sports reporter Percy Koizumi. “The Asahis have a tradition to uphold. You might pass this up as a lot of hocus-pocus entertained by fossil-headed fans, but you’d be surprised to see how empty the stands will be if these fossil-heads decide to keep away.” (Blaisdell kept the job [and became mayor of Honolulu, 1955-69].)

Behind the Wahiawas-Palamas rivalry is intra-Nisei racial tension. After some hand-wringing, the AJA League leadership allowed mixed-race players, provided that they have the proper Japanese surnames of their fathers. Not every team holds to the same rules: the Palamas are a mixed-race team, while the Wahiawas are not.

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Filed under baseball, Hawai'i, Japan, migration, military, nationalism, U.S.

by Joel | 29 December 2024 · 5:54 am

Moo Aviator Bragging Rights, 1945

From The Mighty Moo: The USS Cowpens and Her Epic World War II Journey from Jinx Ship to the Navy’s First Carrier into Tokyo Bay, by Nathan Canestaro (Grand Central, 2024), Kindle pp. 308-310:

Recovery of Allied POWs swung into action soon after the occupation forces anchored in Tokyo Bay. Commodore Rodger Simpson was in overall command but heading up the Navy side of the effort was Cmdr. Harold Stassen, a former governor of Minnesota and later a prominent figure in the Republican Party. Stassen’s political star was bright at the time, and many Americans thought he would be Truman’s challenger in the next presidential election. On the morning of the twenty-eighth, two of the Moo’s Avengers transported Commander Stassen and his staff ashore to Atsugi airfield, thirty miles southwest of the capital. They were the first naval squadron to touch down on Japan; they did not receive a warm welcome, but this time the hostility was from the US Army, not the Japanese. The Eleventh Airborne Division had arrived on the airfield two days earlier, taking up residence in barracks that only days before had been occupied by kamikaze pilots. As far as the Army was concerned the Navy was not welcome.

Commander Melhorn’s Avenger—with Stassen in the back—blew out a tire when he landed, and he limped his plane down the runway, looking for a place to deliver his passenger. As the damaged plane came crawling in, Melhorn described how an Army colonel “[came] charging out on the taxiway, waving this .45 [pistol] and motioning for me to take off, to get out. Obviously I had no business there that this was an Army show.” Melhorn was disappointed and annoyed that the war was barely over and interservice rivalries had reemerged, a turn of events he described as like the bad old days of 1940 all over again. But the arrogant colonel got his comeuppance when Commander Stassen stepped out of the back of the plane. Melhorn described him as doing the “double take of all double takes” and suddenly becoming very deferential to Stassen’s direction.

The Japanese were waiting to meet the arriving US officials in a little striped tent just off the runway. They made some attempt at pleasantries, offering lemonade and snacks for the arriving Americans….

Even though only a fraction of the air group had gone, all of them were immensely proud of having been the first squadron to touch down on occupied Japan. To recognize their accomplishment, Air Group Cmdr. Raleigh Kirkpatrick printed up brag cards to distribute to his men. Decades after the war, some of these veterans still proudly kept the cards in their wallet:

In the interest of public safety and the future well-being of all bars, clubs, beer-joints, pubs, juke-joints, cocktail lounges, night spots, dives, shower rooms, bowling alleys, football stadiums, and other places of amusement where liquor and argument lead to bloodshed and mayhem; this is to certify that [name] is of the stalwart company of Air Group Fifty, which led Naval Aviation into Japan by making the first group landing on Japanese home soil, at Atsugi Airfield on the Tokyo plain, at 0951 on the morning of August 28th, 1945, AD. Any claims to the contrary are damn lies. [signed] R.C. Kirkpatrick, Commander US Navy, Commanding Air Group 50.15

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by Joel | 28 December 2024 · 9:25 am

Moo Mothballed, then Scrapped

From The Mighty Moo: The USS Cowpens and Her Epic World War II Journey from Jinx Ship to the Navy’s First Carrier into Tokyo Bay, by Nathan Canestaro (Grand Central, 2024), Kindle pp. 320-321:

The Navy needed the Moo and her Independence-class sisters early in the war when losses had thinned the number of available carriers. But now the war was over, and the situation was far different; American industry had caught up with wartime losses. By the end of 1945, the US Navy had nineteen of the larger, more capable Essex-class, as well as two of the even larger, armored Midway-class battle carriers. Accordingly, it had no need for the humble “stopgap sisters.”

Cowpens’ service had come to an end. She was inactivated in February 1946. By then, Captain Duckworth had moved on to his next assignment and so the ship’s executive officer, Frederick Brush, oversaw her decommissioning. The remaining crew, most of whom had arrived too late to witness her in her wartime prime, celebrated her inactivation in grand style with a party in San Francisco, which the program for the evening dubbed the Mighty Moo’s “Last Rendezvous.”

The Navy was not ready to dispose of Cowpens just yet, and she was mothballed at anchor outside San Francisco in a way that she could be restored to service quickly if needed. It took more than a year to make her ready, but by January 1947, all her hatches, portholes, and windows were sealed and her interior spaces were dehumidified. All her exposed surfaces were covered in protective insulation and corrodible parts coated with plastic paint. Every piece of machinery was coated with preservative, her electrical system disconnected and tagged with instructions for reassembly. Her gear topside was cocooned under weatherproof hoods, and her gun mounts covered with metal igloos that were sealed at the base.

A survey of her condition in September 1959 found that she was in good shape and capable of being restored to service. But the Navy saw little utility in retaining her, and concluded that “there is no existing requirement for this ship in either its present configuration or any planned conversion to permit is utilization… it would be most uneconomical to maintain her in the reserve fleet without justifiable reason for her maintenance.” The government estimated her worth in raw materials as $422,560, but was unable to get even that. The valiant little Cowpens was sold for $273,389 in May 1960 to a scrapping company, and by October 1961 she was gone.

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by Joel | 26 December 2024 · 2:28 pm

April–May 1945 in the Pacific

From The Mighty Moo: The USS Cowpens and Her Epic World War II Journey from Jinx Ship to the Navy’s First Carrier into Tokyo Bay, by Nathan Canestaro (Grand Central, 2024), Kindle pp. 280-281:

On May 21, 1945, the Moo was again ready for sea. Her two-month overhaul, necessary after the wear and tear of more than 160,000 miles of steaming in wartime conditions, was now complete. Repair crews completely rebuilt her troublesome boilers, replaced all four of her six-ton screws, and located the source of the terrible vibration in the aft end of the ship at high speeds—missing teeth on the reduction gears between her power plant and propeller shafts. The Navy upgraded the Moo’s radar and antiaircraft guns, added an additional catapult, and replaced more than 60 percent of the ship’s wooden flight deck planking, fixing the leaks into the ship’s hangar bay.

Much had happened while Cowpens was in drydock. On April 14, President Franklin Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of sixty-three at his vacation home in Warm Springs, Georgia. His death shocked the nation; news of the president’s declining health had been kept secret from the public. FDR had been in office since 1933, and most of the seventeen- and eighteen-year-old servicemen fighting the war could barely remember a time when someone else was president. In contrast, Americans knew little about his successor, Harry Truman. He was FDR’s third vice president, had occupied the office only since January, and many Americans didn’t even know his name.

Almost three weeks later, the nation savored the defeat of Nazi Germany on May 8, 1945. Close to a million people took to the streets in New York City, and Broadway and Times Square turned on their illuminations for the first time since the war began. In San Francisco, just across the bay from where the Moo was in drydock, the response was muted. The city, as one of the major West Coast ports of embarkation for the Pacific War, did not have the emotional connection to the fight against Nazi Germany that New York City did—and upon learning the news the city government swiftly prohibited the selling of alcohol for twenty-four hours. “I remember all the yelling on V-E Day, but it didn’t mean much to me,” Art Daly noted in his journal. “The war was still on in the Pacific.”

And indeed it was—the latest example of the Japanese willingness to fight until the bitter end was Okinawa, where US forces landed on April 1. Operation ICEBERG, as it was known, was the last major US amphibious landing of the war, and resulted in the highest US casualties of any fight in the Pacific: 12,250 killed or missing and more than 36,000 wounded. These casualties included the bitter fighting out at sea, where the kamikaze campaign reached its terrible climax, with 1,465 suicide attacks over the course of three months. They sank 36 US ships—including 15 amphibious ships and 12 destroyers—and damaged 368 others.

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Filed under democracy, Germany, industry, Japan, military, nationalism, U.S., war

by Joel | 24 December 2024 · 4:39 pm

Typhoon Cobra vs. U.S. Navy, 1944

From The Mighty Moo: The USS Cowpens and Her Epic World War II Journey from Jinx Ship to the Navy’s First Carrier into Tokyo Bay, by Nathan Canestaro (Grand Central, 2024), Kindle p. 246:

As soon as Cowpens cleared the storm, all departments began taking stock and cataloging the damage. Seven planes had gone over the side: four Hellcats and three Avengers. In addition to the loss of the ship’s radar, the storm battered several of the ship’s antiaircraft guns out of action, while the twisting and bucking of the ship opened two twenty-four-inch cracks in the hangar deck bulkheads. All four of the ship’s side-mounted smokestacks were smashed in on their undersides from waves, and water taken in through the stacks had to be drained out of the engine rooms. There was only superficial fire damage to the wooden flight deck, just a ten-foot-diameter charred area. The radio generator room was flooded; it was just off the flight deck between the stacks and wasn’t fitted with a watertight door, as the designers never foresaw the possibility that the sea would enter the ship that far up. But all told, the damage was far less than it could have been. Captain DeBaun noted with some pride in the ship’s damage report to Third Fleet that “the USS Cowpens was materially ready and able to fight at the end of the storm.”

While the Cowpens escaped major damage, other ships in the Third Fleet were not as lucky. In a two-hour period at the height of the storm, the typhoon sank three destroyers, damaged twenty-seven other ships, and swept 146 airplanes from carrier decks. Two other destroyers had very close calls with disaster, rolling as much as seventy degrees in the raging seas, and aircraft that broke loose aboard Cowpens’ sister ship, Monterey, sparked a hangar bay fire that gutted that deck, killed three, and wounded forty. The total death toll was 790, more than twice the number of American casualties in the Battle of Midway in 1942, while the loss of planes was five times greater than US combat losses at the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot in June.

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Filed under Japan, Micronesia, military, Philippines, U.S., war

by Joel | 23 December 2024 · 2:48 pm

Naval Base Ulithi Atoll, 1944

From The Mighty Moo: The USS Cowpens and Her Epic World War II Journey from Jinx Ship to the Navy’s First Carrier into Tokyo Bay, by Nathan Canestaro (Grand Central, 2024), Kindle pp. 213-214

Cowpens tied up at Ulithi Atoll on October 29. The atoll was on the far western end of the Caroline Islands, southwest of the Marianas. Vaguely resembling the outline of the Italian peninsula, the string of islets created a 209-square-mile natural harbor spacious enough to host in excess of seven hundred ships, more than enough for the Third Fleet. The atoll was a new acquisition for the US Navy, captured without a fight on September 23. Like Majuro before it, Ulithi had been largely bypassed by the war. Under US control, it became the major American fleet anchorage in the Western Pacific, replacing Majuro and Eniwetok, which were now too far to the east.

By the time Cowpens arrived, there were over one hundred ships in the harbor, including nearly forty from Service Squadron 10, which just that month had arrived from Eniwetok, some 1,400 miles away. The squadron rapidly transformed the idyllic Pacific lagoon into a major logistical base, bringing with it specialized ships for repair, salvage, supply, fueling, and medical assistance. For the Moo’s officers and men, Ulithi’s primary draw was Mog Mog, the small islet that the Navy set aside for recreation. After weeks of unending shipboard life, anything that got them ashore was a welcome break. Although it baked under a fierce tropical sun that varied, in the words of one sailor, from “the infernal to the merely intolerable,” Mog Mog offered the opportunity to relax on the pearl-white sands, swim in the crystal clear tropical lagoon, or play baseball, basketball, or volleyball.

The Moo’s officers and men did not have it to themselves. Most of the ships in the harbor were releasing a third of their complement at a time to go ashore, meaning that as many as fifteen thousand sailors and one thousand officers were on the island on any given day. Arriving on the beach for a four-hour liberty, the sailors were given two cans of warm beer, sometimes Iron City beer from Pittsburgh or Rupert’s from New York City. Naturally, the bluejackets soon developed a barter system so those who wanted could drink their fill, with the sailors trading cash and smokes for others’ ration of beer. Unfortunately, the beer was spiked with formaldehyde to keep it from spoiling in the tropical heat. While this deterred few sailors, overindulgence resulted in what Clem described as a “walloping” hangover.

On the officers’ side of Mog Mog the engineers constructed a series of thatched huts that served as a makeshift O club and recreation area, known as Crowley’s Tavern. The officers sipped beer or whiskey at a yards-long bar constructed of crushed beer cans or enjoyed grilled steaks or a game of horseshoes. After the wear and tear of weeks of flying and the strain of on-again, off-again clashes with Captain Taylor and his staff, Air Group 22 went to Crowley’s to blow off some steam. Several of its fliers returned to the ship drunk and belligerent, and only the quick intervention of the air group’s senior pilots averted a confrontation with the ship’s officers. “Some of the boys went ashore in p.m. almost resulting in trouble aboard at night,” Clem wrote sympathetically the following day. “Not that they can be blamed too much as we are still taking a beating about the last attack. Both Houston and the Canberra [battle cruisers they had helped rescue] are here and so we are supposed to be heroes.”

Captain Taylor’s preferred choice for dealing with Air Group 22 finally caught up with the ship at Ulithi. Bob Price, who commanded VF-25 and then Air Group 25 before surviving eleven days adrift in the Pacific in a life raft, returned aboard the Cowpens on October 30 after more than a month in transit. He made the long journey from Jacksonville to Ulithi by train, ship, and finally by air.

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by Joel | 21 December 2024 · 6:50 am

The Price of Rescue at Sea, 1944

From The Mighty Moo: The USS Cowpens and Her Epic World War II Journey from Jinx Ship to the Navy’s First Carrier into Tokyo Bay, by Nathan Canestaro (Grand Central, 2024), Kindle p. 132:

Despite the absence of the enemy fleet, land-based planes from Palau and nearby islands remained to menace the US carrier task force. By 8 p.m. on March 29 Japanese torpedo bombers were massing at the edges of the Moo’s radar screens. Two divisions of Hellcats led by Al Morton were flying the last CAP [= Combat Air Patrol] of the day; faced with encroaching darkness and imminent enemy attack, Captain McConnell ordered Morton to bring his planes home. Seven of the eight got aboard, but the last man in the formation, Ens. Anderson Bowers, ran into trouble when the plane in front of him went into the crash barrier. By the time the plane handlers cleared the wreck out, McConnell had put the Moo into its evasive maneuvers to throw off enemy attacks, which put her out of the wind and unable to land planes.

Admiral Reeves ordered Bowers to ditch his plane alongside a destroyer, and Bowers, who had little experience in night operations, took the order literally. He made a perfect water landing near one of Cowpens’ escorts, but did not remember that standard procedure was to land one thousand yards ahead of a rescue ship—and the destroyer steamed off ahead looking for him. Bowers floated in his Mae West life vest for fifty-five minutes in the bath-warm Palauan waters before finally attracting the attention of another ship with gunfire from his pistol. Bowers did not keep his gun for long, however; the destroyermen extracted a ransom for every carrier pilot they recovered. Usually they stripped the pilot of every possible souvenir—flight jackets, silk survival maps, knives, and pistol—and then demanded in trade from his home ship a GI can full of ice cream, perhaps thirty-five to forty gallons in all. While grateful for the rescue, one pilot observed that “you don’t come out with a thing except your life.”

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by Joel | 20 December 2024 · 5:30 am

U.S. Navy Ship “Crossing the Line”

From The Mighty Moo: The USS Cowpens and Her Epic World War II Journey from Jinx Ship to the Navy’s First Carrier into Tokyo Bay, by Nathan Canestaro (Grand Central, 2024), Kindle pp. 109-111:

The Moo’s southbound course put her across the equator for the first time some seventy miles west of Baker Island on January 22, an occasion that the ship marked with a line-crossing ceremony. In this centuries-old tradition, sailors who have never crossed the equator before—known as pollywogs—are initiated into the “Ancient Order of the Deep” by their more experienced colleagues, known as shellbacks. Filled with farcical ritual, harmless pranks, and old-fashioned hazing, the festivities were a welcome distraction from daily routines and worries about the upcoming operation. In the days before the ceremony, the crew had received occasional warnings from the ship’s loudspeaker system: “Beware all you pollywogs!” On the nineteenth they received a legal summons from King Neptune himself, warning the Cowpens was approaching his royal domain:

…

In advance of King Neptune’s arrival, his shellbacks relieved Captain McConnell in a bloodless coup and took command of the ship. The air group’s senior officers were forced to serve lunch in the enlisted men’s mess, while many of the junior officers were assigned meaningless tasks, such as calling the bridge every five minutes to report on temperature. For his part, newly arrived pilot Ed Haley was stationed on the forecastle with a pair of beer bottles for binoculars and ordered to scan the horizon for the Royal Party.

Streaming seawater and festooned with seaweed, Neptune and his Royal Court—all of whom bore a suspicious resemblance to several of the Moo’s saltiest chief petty officers—planted themselves on the flight deck and bid the lowly pollywogs to do them homage. A group of Royal Bailiffs rounded up the pollywogs and herded them to the flight deck. Some did not go quietly; Art Daly and some cohorts ambushed several shellbacks in advance of being dragooned, engaging in a bare-fisted skirmish with officer and enlisted alike. There was nearly a large brawl on the fantail between the two groups before a passing officer warned them to knock it off. In another instance, some mutinous pollywogs roughed up a couple of Neptune’s royal cops, and shellback reinforcements restored order by spraying down the melee with fire hoses.

George Terrell described how the pollywogs were rounded up and then led single file up to the flight deck by a group of shellbacks that he called the “Judas Battalion.” Once there, “we were beaten to our knees with blivets by our merciless captors, formed into creeping columns,” and, with further whacks with wooden paddles, encouraged to move forward.” With Captain McConnell watching the proceedings from the bridge with a bemused look upon his face, the pollywogs were force-marched to the Royal Court’s red carpet. This was a target sleeve, a fabric tube thirty inches in diameter and thirty feet long, normally towed behind an airplane as target practice for the ship’s gunners. Unfortunately, the pollywogs were not to walk on it, but crawl through it, and the sleeve had been loaded with stinking garbage and slop from the ship’s galley for the occasion. With further encouragement from the paddles, the pollywogs dove headfirst into the sleeve and crawled through thirty feet of muck. “Do you know how fast you can move on your hands and knees?” wrote Terrell. “Would you believe thirty feet in 15 seconds? Records were set and broken in rapid succession.”

Finally, the pollywogs were introduced to King Neptune and his entourage, bedecked in robes, wigs, and gold-painted cardboard crowns. The most colorful member of the court was the Royal Baby, a fat, balding, half-naked chief petty officer in a diaper and covered in axle grease. Each pollywog was forced to his knees in front of the baby, who took a handful of lubricating grease from a drum at his side and rubbed it all over his sweaty abdomen. Then came the order: “Kiss the baby’s belly!” If the pollywog hesitated, a shellback bailiff delivered a whack to his backside. “I closed my mouth and eyes,” recalled Sam Sommers. “I wish I could have held my nose.” Accepting the kiss as tribute, the Royal Baby haughtily waved on the pollywog, with his paddle-wielding bailiffs making sure he cleared out quickly to make room for the next victim.

The final stop was the Royal Barbers and their merciless clippers. Each pollywog ended up with a highly unconventional buzz cut that left his hair in tatters. “They were real artists,” said Marine George Terrell. “A thousand haircuts to be given and no way were any two going to be alike.” Some sailors emerged with a Mohawk or bird’s nest (bald on top, with a fringe around the bottom), but the barbers also sometimes amused themselves by spelling C-O-W-P-E-N-S or V-I-C-T-O-R-Y on successive heads. Sailor Robert Lee attempted to evade the royal clippers with a preemptive head shaving, but soon found out “it doesn’t pay to be smarter than King Neptune. For punishment I had my head and body smeared with a combination of oil and eggs and had to stand on the bow of the ship for one hour in the sun. Did I have fun taking the oil and eggs off my head and body with cold salt water. I learned my lesson.”

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by Joel | 19 December 2024 · 8:50 am

Japanese Night Attack Tactics, 1943

From The Mighty Moo: The USS Cowpens and Her Epic World War II Journey from Jinx Ship to the Navy’s First Carrier into Tokyo Bay, by Nathan Canestaro (Grand Central, 2024), Kindle pp. 88-90:

The [U.S. Navy] task force beat a hasty retreat [from Kwajalein] with the enemy hot on their trail. Everyone expected trouble that evening, and the Japanese did not disappoint. They were expert at night attacks, with a robust playbook of tactics. A little before sunset, one or more snoopers—usually Betty torpedo bombers—would trail the American formation just out of range, radioing the ships’ position to their squadronmates ashore. When darkness fell, the snoopers dropped a string of float lights marking the direction the ships were traveling. When the striking planes arrived, the snoopers flew over the fleet at high altitude, dropping parachute flares to illuminate the ships for torpedo attacks. Getting spotlighted or backlit by brilliant flares produced a profound sense of vulnerability even among the most grizzled sailors. Capt. William Tomlinson, who commanded the Moo’s sister ship Belleau Wood, likened it to one of his recurring bad dreams where he was naked in a bathtub under the bright lights of Times Square—except in this case it was real.

Sure enough, a Japanese snooper shadowed the force in the late afternoon, and as Clark had warned, after dark it guided in the Bettys that the day’s strike had missed. Starting at 7 p.m. and continuing for the next six hours, Cowpens and the fleet were under almost continual attack, with small groups of one to four bombers at a time trying to break through the outer edges of the formation to torpedo the carriers at the center. When the Bettys were not attacking, they were circling or ganging up for a fresh strike, so that bogeys were constantly on US radar screens. The moon was dangerously bright, and sailors aboard the Moo could easily see the formation of ships around them, illuminated further by the fiery, hissing parachute flares that descended from high above.

Tracking the bogeys on radar, Pownall ordered frequent and sometimes radical changes of course to throw off the Japanese and present them the least favorable angle for a torpedo attack. While the maneuvering frustrated most attacks, there were many close calls. One of the Moo’s flight deck firefighters, George McIntyre, described how the water was “lousy with torpedoes.” One passed just astern of Cowpens, while Yorktown had two near misses of her own. Lexington was not as lucky, and took a torpedo to the stern, wrecking her steering gear and killing nine.

Just before 11 p.m., the enemy started to come in with more determination, and Admiral Pownall signaled his ships, ANYONE WITH A GOOD SETUP LET ’EM HAVE IT! Aboard the Moo, those topside watched the fireworks as the task group’s outer cordon of ships lit up the sky with muzzle flashes, orange tracers, and the bright flares of hit and burning Japanese planes. Cowpens and the other CVLs—unlike the larger ships in the fleet—had no radar-guided guns, and so to avoid giving away her position at night she usually did not fire unless the target was brightly illuminated and at close range. The crew, watching the action from the center of the fleet’s battle formation, quipped that what the Moo needed was a big neon arrow on the flight deck with the words: “The big carriers are over there.”

The Japanese planes withdrew just before 1:30 a.m. as the moon set, and soon after the task force’s radar scopes were clear of enemy aircraft.