Death of the Houston

On the night of Feb. 28, 1942, a radio flash told the Navy that its cruiser Houston had joined battle with the Japs. Then there was silence. Everyone knew the Houston must have gone down; everyone was sure that she had gone down gallantly. But not until last week, when the Navy gathered reports from survivors who had been held incommunicado in Japanese prison camps until the end of the war, was the story told:

For a month the Houston had been taking it in a hopeless, losing, running battle with the powerful Imperial Fleet. Her crew was red-eyed and groggy from constant days of battle and alerts, from nights of air attack. She was running low on antiaircraft ammunition, her planes were out of action, one turret gone, her whole hull was bruised and weary from steady punishment.

But the Houston, in those grim days the last heavy U.S. vessel left in the Far Pacific, was still full of fight; her crew had begun calling her the "Battleship Houston."

On the last night of February she headed out from Tanjong Priok, Batavia, to take up a new stand off the South Java coast. With her were the Australian cruiser Perth and one Dutch destroyer. Half her crew was at battle stations, the rest flopped exhausted in their bunks.

At 11:15, just as the Allied column was making the entrance of Sunda Strait, the Perth, in the van, sighted two Jap ships. Soon more appeared--the Allied ships had run into a Jap invasion armada of transports and their escort. The battle--if anything so one-sided could be called a battle --was on.

Last to Go. Firing as fast as she could load, the Houston bored in, throwing salvos into an enemy which attacked from all sides. In the confusion she lost sight of the Perth, picked her up again in the glare of star shells just before the Australian went down. The Dutch destroyer, battered and crippled, was beached. For another hour the Houston fought on alone.

Anything that floated was hostile now, as the Houston twisted and turned in the geysers of near misses. Her speed and punch rocked the Japanese gunners off balance and they began firing at each other. Then, at midnight, a hit on her forecastle illuminated the Houston and the fire thickened. A torpedo crashed into the after engine room, exploding in a sheet of flames. Once the battle surged to such close quarters that U.S. sailors opened up with pistols and automatic rifles on enemy small craft which were crowding in.

Still the Houston was far from finished. When an erratic Japanese spotlight lit up the transports near the beach, the cruiser poured in enough shells to force four of them aground. One of her 8-inch salvos smashed fairly into a large warship, which wavered and turned over on its side, sinking rapidly.

Twenty minutes later the Houston's No. 2 turret took a direct hit which sent flames leaping as high as the bridge. It was getting worse every minute. Another fire broke out. Enemy planes were overhead.

At 12:25 Captain Alfred H. Rooks reluctantly gave the order to abandon ship. Before it could be executed he was killed. Another torpedo struck home. The Houston lay dead in the water. For a few minutes she heeled far over to starboard. Then, at 12:45, on even keel, she disappeared, taking with her 500 of her dead and wounded crew. In the water that night, and later in prison camp, 227 more died. Of her whole complement, only 260 lived to tell the great tale.

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