THE GREAT NAVAL BATTLE OF THE CARIBBEAN SEA
In a flash my newspaper sense made me realise that this was an
extraordinary opportunity. The greatest naval battle in history was about
to be fought so near us that we might almost hear the big guns booming.
It would be worth thousands of pounds to the London _Times_ to have an
eye-witness account of this battle, and I resolved to turn the island of
Jamaica upside down in search of an aeroplane that would take me out to
sea.
The fates were certainly kind to me--or rather the British Consul
was efficient; and before night I had secured the use of a powerful
Burgess-Dunne aeroboat, the property of Vincent Astor; also Mr. Astor’s
skilful services as pilot, which he generously offered through his
interest in naval affairs and because of his desire to give the world
this first account of a sea battle observed from the sky.
We started the next morning, an hour after sunrise, flying to the north
straight across the island of Jamaica, and then out over the open sea. I
shall never forget the beauty of the scene that we looked down upon--the
tropical flowers and verdure of the rugged island, and the calmly smiling
purple waters surrounding it. We flew swiftly through the delicious air
at a height of half a mile, and in two hours we had covered a third of
the distance to Guantánamo and were out of sight of land.
At ten o’clock we turned to the right and steered for a column of smoke
that had appeared on the far horizon; and at half-past ten we were
circling over the American fleet as it steamed ahead slowly with fires
under all boilers and everything ready for full speed at an instant’s
notice.
As we approached the huge super-dreadnought _Pennsylvania_, flag-ship of
the American squadron, Mr. Astor unfurled the Stars and Stripes, and we
could hear the crews cheering as they waved back their greetings.
I should explain that we were able to converse easily, above the roar of
our propellers, by talking into telephone head-pieces.
“Look!” cried Astor. “Our ships are beginning a manoeuvre.”
The _Pennsylvania_, with red-and-white flags on her foremast, was
signalling to the fleet: “Prepare to engage the enemy.” We watched
eagerly as the great ships, stretching away for miles, turned slightly to
starboard and, with quickened engines, advanced in one long line of
battle.
At half-past eleven another smoke column appeared on our port bow, and
within half an hour we could make out enemy vessels on either hand.
“They’re coming on in two divisions, miles apart,” said Astor, studying
the two smoke columns with his glasses. “We’re headed right between
them.”
We flew ahead rapidly, and presently could clearly discern that the
vessels to starboard were large battleships and those to port were
destroyers.
At one o’clock the two fleets were about nineteen thousand yards apart
and were jockeying for positions. Suddenly four vessels detached
themselves from the German battleship line and steamed at high speed
across the head of the American column.
“What’s that? What are they doing?” asked Astor.
“Trying to cap our line and torpedo it. Admiral Togo did the same thing
against the Russians in the Yellow Sea. Admiral Fletcher is swinging his
line to port to block that move.”
“How do they know which way to manoeuvre? I don’t see any signals.”
“It’s done by radio from ship to ship. Look! They are forcing us to head
more to port. That gives them the advantage of sunlight. Ah!”
I pointed to the German line, where several puffs of smoke showed that
they had begun firing. Ten seconds later great geyser splashes rose from
the sea five hundred yards beyond the _Pennsylvania,_ and then we heard
the dull booming of the discharge. The battle had begun. I glanced at my
watch. It was half-past one.
_Boom! Boom! Boom!_ spoke the big German guns eight miles away; but we
always saw the splashes before we heard the sounds. Sometimes we could
see the twelve-inch shells curving through the air--big, black, clumsy
fellows.
Awe-struck, from our aeroplane, Astor and I looked down upon the American
dreadnoughts as they answered the enemy in kind, a whole line thundering
forth salvos that made the big guns flame out like monster torches, dull
red in rolling white clouds of smokeless powder. We could see the tense
faces of those brave men in the fire-control tops.
“See that!” I cried, as a shell struck so close to the _Arizona_, second
in line, that the “spotting” officers on the fire-control platform high
on her foremast were drenched with salt water.
I can give here only the main features of this great battle of the
Caribbean, which lasted five hours and a quarter and covered a water area
about thirty miles long and twenty miles wide. My plan of it, drawn with
red and black lines to represent movements of rival fleets, is a tangle
of loops and curves.
“Do you think there is any chance that it will be a drawn game?” said
Astor, pale with excitement.
“No,” I answered. “A battle like this is never a drawn game. It’s always
a fight to a finish.”
Our aeroboat behaved splendidly, in spite of a freshening trade-wind
breeze, and we circled lower for a better view of the battle which now
grew in fierceness as the fleets came to closer quarters. At one time we
dropped to within two thousand feet of the sea before Astor remembered
that our American flag made a tempting target for the German guns and
steered to a higher level.
“They don’t seem to fire at us, do they? I suppose they think we aren’t
worth bothering with,” he laughed.
As a matter of fact, not a single shot was fired at us during the entire
engagement.
I must say a word here regarding an adroit German manoeuvre early in the
battle by which the invaders turned an apparent inferiority in submarines
into a distinct advantage. The American fleet had thirty submarines
(these had been towed painfully around South America) while the Germans
had only five, but these five were large and speedy, built to travel with
the fleet under their own power and not fall behind. The thirty American
submarines, on the other hand, could not make over twelve knots an hour.
Consequently, when the German line suddenly quickened its pace to
twenty-five knots, Admiral Fletcher had to choose between abandoning his
underwater craft and allowing his fleet to be capped by the enemy; that
is, exposed to a raking fire with great danger from torpedoes. He decided
to abandon his submarines (all but one that had the necessary speed) and
thus he lost whatever assistance these vessels might have rendered, and
was obliged to fight with a single submarine against five, instead of
with thirty against five.
When I explained this manoeuvre to Mr. Astor he asked the natural
question why Admiral Fletcher had not foreseen this unfortunate issue and
left his burdensome submarines at Panama. I pointed out that these thirty
vessels had cost half a million dollars apiece and it was the admiral’s
duty to take care of them. It naturally was not his fault if Congress had
failed to give him submarines that were large enough and swift enough for
efficient fighting with the fleet.
Meantime the battle was booming on in two widely separated areas, the
battleships in one, the destroyers in the other.
Mr. Astor had held the wheel for five hours and, at my suggestion, he
retired to the comfortable little cabin and lay down for fifteen minutes,
leaving the aeroboat to soar in great slow circles under its admirable
automatic controls over the main battle area. When he returned he brought
hot coffee in a silver thermos bottle and some sandwiches, and we ate
these with keen relish, in spite of the battle beneath us.
The dreadnoughts had now closed in to eight thousand yards and the battle
was at the height of its fury, making a continuous roar, and forming five
miles of flaming tongues in a double line, darting out their messages of
hate and death.
As the afternoon wore on the wind strengthened from the northeast and I
realised the disadvantage of the American ships indicated by Admiral
Allyn, namely, that, being light of coal, they rode high in the sea and
rolled heavily. Unfortunately, the Germans had thirty battleships to
seventeen and this disparity was presently increased when the flotilla of
German destroyers, about eighty, after vanquishing their opponents,
swarmed against the hardpressed American line, attacking from the port
quarter under the lead of the four battle-cruisers so that the valiant
seventeen were practically surrounded.
In this storm of shells every ship was struck again and again and the
huge Pennsylvania, at the head of the column, seemed to be the target of
the whole German column. About three o’clock, as the flagship rolled far
over to port and exposed her starboard side, a twelve-inch shell caught
her below the armoured belt and smashed through into the engine-room,
where it exploded with terrific violence. The flagship immediately fell
behind, helpless, and Admiral Fletcher, badly wounded and realising that
his vessel was doomed, signalled to Admiral Mayo, on the _Arizona_,
second in line, to assume command of the fleet.
“Look!” cried Astor, suddenly, pointing to two black spots in the sea
about a thousand yards away.
“Periscopes,” said I.
At the same moment we saw two white trails swiftly moving along the
surface and converging on the _Pennsylvania_ with deadly precision.
“Torpedoes! They’re going to finish her!” murmured Astor, his hands
clenched tight, his eyes sick with pain.
There was a smothered explosion, then a thick column of water shot high
into the air, and a moment later there came another explosion as the
second torpedo found its target.
And now the great super-dreadnought _Pennsylvania_ was sinking into the
Caribbean with Admiral Fletcher aboard and seventeen hundred men. She
listed more and more, and, suddenly, sinking lower at the bows, she
submerged her great shoulders in the ocean and rolled her vast bulk
slowly to starboard until her dark keel line rose above the surface with
a green Niagara pouring over it.
For a long time the _Pennsylvania_ lay awash while the battle thundered
about her and scores of blue-jackets clambered over her rails from her
perpendicular decks and clung to her slippery sides. We could hear them
singing “Nancy Lee” as the waves broke over them.
“Are we afraid to die?” shouted one of the men, and I thrilled at the
answering chorus of voices, “No!”
Just before the final plunge we turned away. It was too horrible, and
Astor swung the aeroplane in a great curve so that we might not see the
last agonies of those brave men. When we looked back the flagship had
disappeared.
As we circled again over the spot where the _Pennsylvania_ went down we
were able to make out a few men clinging to fragments of wreckage and
calling for help.
“Do you see them? Do you hear them?” cried Astor, his face like chalk.
“We must save one of them. She’ll carry three if we throw over some of
our oil.”
This explains why we did not see the end of the battle of the Caribbean
and the complete destruction of the American fleet. We threw overboard a
hundred pounds of oil and started back to Kingston with a crippled engine
and a half-drowned lieutenant of the _Pennsylvania_ stretched on the
cabin floor. How we saved him is a miracle. One of our wings buckled when
we struck the water and I got a nasty clip from the propeller as I
dragged the man aboard; but, somehow, we did the thing and got home hours
later with one of the few survivors of Admiral Fletcher’s ill-fated
expedition.
I have no idea how I wrote my story that night; my head was throbbing
with pain and I was so weak I could scarcely hold my pencil, but somehow,
I cabled two columns to the London _Times_, and it went around the world
as the first description of a naval battle seen from an aeroplane. I did
not know until afterwards how much the Germans suffered. They really lost
about half their battleships, but the Americans lost everything.