Destroyers, WWII Pacific

                        24 JANUARY 1942

                     MAKASSAR STRAIT ACTION

With the wreckage of the American fleet awash in Pearl Harbor, the Navy’s western Pacific squadron, known then as the Asiatic Fleet, found itself isolated.  For the first four months of the war this fleet retaliated as best it could against the overwhelming air, sea, and land supremacy of the Imperial Japanese military, all the while hoping in vain for American reinforcements to appear on the horizon.  One of the bright spots in this otherwise dismal story was the Battle of Balikpapan.

Balikpapan is a major oil port on the Makassar Strait east of Borneo, and this made it a prime objective of the invading Japanese armed forces.  In January of 1942, they staged a large amphibious invasion.

Upon learning of the enemy’s intent, the combined American, British, Dutch, and Australian forces planned an attack on the Japanese landing operations.  The cruisers USS BOISE (CL-47) and USS MARBLEHEAD (CL-12) were assigned to the mission to be accompanied by six destroyers.  Enroute to the assembly point however, BOISE struck a rock and MARBLEHEAD was sidelined with a turbine failure.  Two destroyers were detached to protect the crippled cruisers, and the four remaining WWI vintage four stack destroyers, JOHN D. FORD (DD-228), PARROTT (DD-218), PAUL JONES (DD-230) and POPE (DD-225), continued with the attack. 

They entered the waters off Balikpapan at 0245 this morning.  All hands expected this would be a suicide mission.  The air was ominously thick with smoke from the Dutch efforts to destroy the oil reserves.  CDR Paul H. Talbot on JOHN D. FORD set a course for the center of the Japanese transports and ordered torpedoes to be expended first.  Fortuitously, in the darkness, smoke, and confusion the Japanese mistakenly assumed they were under attack from submarines.  Japanese escorts went to general quarters and began evasive maneuvering.  Talbot’s force was able to make four passes through the Japanese anchorage, opening with their deck guns on the last.  By the time the Japanese grasped the situation the four destroyers were retiring at flank speed.

Estimates as to the extent of the damage vary.  The destroyers claimed six Japanese transports sunk, while a Dutch submarine, coincidentally offshore at the time, reported 13 vessels down.  In any case the only damage to the destroyers was a hit to the after deckhouse of JOHN D. FORD.

In truth, the attack did little to slow the inevitable advance of the Japanese.  It was, however, a great boost to the morale of the Asiatic Fleet and represented the first significant surface action for the United States Navy since the Spanish American War.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  30-31 JAN 23

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Hoyt, Edwin P.  The Lonely Ships:  The Life and Death of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet.  Los Angeles, CA: Pinnacle Books, 1976, pp. 251-57.

Morison, Samuel Eliot.  History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol 3  The Rising Sun in the Pacific.  Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1948, pp. 285-91.

Winslow, Walter G.  The Fleet the Gods Forgot: The U.S. Asiatic Fleet in World War II.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1994, pp. 151-57.

Winslow, Walter G.  The Ghost that Died at Sunda Strait.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1984, pp. 64-69.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  CDR Talbot received the Navy Cross for his conduct of this action.  He was promoted to CAPT and survived WWII.  He retired in 1948 and was advanced to RADM on the retired list.  He passed away in 1974.

The embargo enacted by Franklin Roosevelt against the Japanese for their attacks on Indochina in the Summer of 1941 had made oil a strategic resource for the Emperor.  Bornean oil was particularly high-grade–pure enough that by the end of the war the desperate Japanese in some cases pumped Bornean oil from the ground, through strainers, directly into the bunkers of thirsty warships.

     The destroyer JOHN D. FORD remembers RADM John D. Ford, a veteran of the Civil War and Spanish-American War.  PARROTT remembers LT George Fountain Parrott, a Navy Cross recipient from WWI who was killed when his warship collided with an escorted freighter.  PAUL JONES remembers John Paul Jones, and POPE remembers CDORE John Pope, a Navy veteran of the Civil War.