Victory in Kula Gulf

This description of the first Battle of Kula Gulf was cabled by TIME correspondent Duncan Norton-Taylor, who was aboard one of the U.S. warships:

Early on the morning of July 6, between 1 and 2 o'clock, we made contact with the "Tokyo Express" as it was crawling in a northeasterly direction around the Kolombangara coast. We paralleled our course and opened up before they apparently even knew we were there. In the flame and thunder it was impossible to know completely what was going on, but we knew that five of their ships died in our first onslaught. Others spoke back, their shells raising geysers less than a hundred yards from our bow.

But soon it was plain that they were depending more heavily on another weapon. The frantic enemy was firing torpedo spreads. I had turned away, momentarily blinded by gun glare, and was hanging on to the bridge shield when I saw the white track of a torpedo shooting straight for us. A signalman saw it too, and yelled, but it was too late to turn.

It struck us amidships. Men in the engine room and on various damage control stations and in magazines and ammunition handling rooms under dogged-down hatches, heard it hit and thought their time was up. But it never exploded. It only dented our bottom.

End of the Helena. We had kindled several targets, which were burning in the night like small, innocent bonfires along the Kolombangara coast. One hour after the firing started there were no Jap targets left. It was then that we picked up, in the beam of a searchlight, a ship's bow protruding from the quiet sea. The admiral ordered a destroyer to investigate. For a long time the destroyer was silent, as she also threw a beam, and the admiral kept asking: "Who is it? Who is it? Acknowledge. Acknowledge." Finally came the destroyer's voice: "I am sorry to report it is Five Zero." That was the number of one of the fightingest ships in the Pacific: the cruiser Helena.

Struck again & again, she had been stopped dead. Miraculously, there were none but minor explosions, though oil sprayed over the men on the bridge. They cut loose rafts and abandoned her without panic; the last man to leave was the 49-year-old captain. Through an inches-thick layer of oil they paddled away from the sinking vessel. Thirty minutes after she was struck, she upended, hissing like a giant calliope, protesting through all her shattered structure, and sank.

Two destroyers stood by. The rest of us stood out to sea, our bellies filled with fighting. The destroyers edged slowly into the midst of the oil-covered men flapping their arms and looking like a school of black fish in a sea of phosphorescence. They were singing and cheering. Most of the men had knives out in case the rescue ships turned out to be Japs.

The destroyers had recovered only a score when they spotted vessels coming out of Kula Gulf, and the squadron commander ordered the destroyers to prepare to attack. But the Japs turned tail and the destroyers went back to their rescue work. They put their whaleboats over and had pulled out about 300 more men when they again picked up a hostile ship coming out of Kula. This time they abandoned the survivors long enough to fire nine torpedoes at the ship. Illuminating her with star shells, they saw her to be a cruiser, now smoking and dead on the water. Behind her was a second smaller enemy ship, and they shelled and hit it. Back they went to the Helena's men, and for the third time had to lash out and close with a circling Jap, which they crippled and left smoking. Dawn was beginning to light the sky and the destroyers could see spotter planes coming from the Jap airbase at Vila.

The Hard Choice. The squadron commander had to make a hard choice of retiring while the men were still floating in the water, or staying and risking everything in an air attack. He chose to retire. One of the abandoned men was the Helena's captain.

They left whaleboats with two boat crews. Self-appointed coxswain of one crew was 22-year-old Ensign Jack Fitch, son of Vice Admiral Aubrey W. Fitch. Fitch had to be peremptorily ordered aboard his destroyer just as it was getting under way and racing south. The bulk of the force sped on its way to get under our air cover before daylight betrayed us. We were unscathed, except for a few broken valves, pipes, soap dishes and hair-tonic bottles and the dent in our bottom.

That night 675 officers and men were rescued by the destroyers. The next morning some more got ashore on New Georgia, including the Helena's captain.

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