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.

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                   THE GUN FROM USS SHUBRICK

               (outside the NMCSD Command Suite)

RADM William Branford Shubrick’s Navy career was long and distinguished.  Born on 31 October 1790, Mr. Shubrick received his midshipman’s warrant in the Spring of 1806 at the age of 15.  During the Barbary Wars, he served aboard WASP, 18, and ARGUS, 16.  During the War of 1812, he served aboard the ship-sloop HORNET, 18, and CONSTELLATION, 36.  It was during this latter tour that he distinguished himself by leading a party of bluejackets in the defense of Craney Island, near Norfolk, on 22 June 1813.  Serving subsequently aboard CONSTITUTION, 44, he won a Congressional gold medal for his actions in that frigate’s engagement with HMS LEVANT and HMS CYANE.  The Mexican War found him overseeing the capture of Mazatlan, Guaymas, and San Blas and later commanding the Navy’s Pacific Squadron.  He retired in December of 1861 and was appointed to the rank of Rear Admiral (Ret) on 19 July 1862.

During Shubrick’s career he also served several tours on loan to the US Lighthouse Service, a branch of the Treasury Department whose vessels were often captained by Navy officers.  From 1859-71 he chaired this service’s governing body, the Lighthouse Board, and for this effort was honored with the naming of a Lighthouse Service wooden sidewheel frigate.  Early in the Civil War, on 23 August 1861, USLHS SHUBRICK was transferred to the US Revenue Cutter Service (now US Coast Guard) to patrol the Puget Sound area.   Confederate commerce raiders were then operating in the north Pacific, exacting a heavy toll on merchant shipping.  Indeed, when the Russian Telegraph Company planned to survey the Bering Strait, they recruited an American agent, COL Charles S. Buckley, to petition our government for an escorting warship.  USRCS SHUBRICK was re-assigned to the Navy for 90 days of special duty beginning 15 February 1865, to protect this Russian survey party.  No records of USS SHUBRICK’s brief Navy career survive.  Like many wooden steamers then in military service, she probably mounted both traditional smooth-bore naval guns as well as more advanced artillery pieces.  We know she mounted at least one of the latter, for a 30-pounder Parrott rifle from her battery is currently mounted outside the Command Suite of Naval Medical Center San Diego.

RADM Shubrick has since been honored with the nameplates of three other Navy vessels.  After WWI the Blakley-class torpedo boat SHUBRICK (TB-31) was renamed COAST TORPEDO BOAT No. 15 to allow the Clemson-class destroyer DD-268 to assume the Shubrick name.  Still later the WWII Gleaves-class destroyer DD-639, commissioned 7 February 1943, carries on the Admiral’s name.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  20 MAR 22

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Cogar, William B.  Dictionary of Admirals of the U.S. Navy, Vol 1 1862-1900.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, pp. 164-65.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 6 “R-S”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1976, p. 492.

Reynolds, Clark G.  Famous American Admirals.  New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1978, pp. 310-11.

Tucker, Spencer.  Arming the Fleet:  U.S. Navy Ordnance in the Muzzle-Loading Era.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, pp. 228-30.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  The Parrott rifle was developed in 1860 by Robert P. Parrott, a former US Army CAPT then in charge of the West Point Foundry Association.  The cast iron, muzzle-loading rifle was reliable, reasonably durable and relatively inexpensive, and thus became popular with the Navy and the Army.  By January 1864 the Navy had about 650 Parrott rifles in service, about 20% of the total that had been manufactured to that date.

The 30-pounder identifier indicated the weight of the projectile it fired.  The gun weighs about 3500 pounds and had a range of 4800 yards.  The Parrott’s characteristic feature is the reinforcing band about the breech.  The higher gas pressures in the firing chambers of rifles caused conventionally constructed cannon to burst.  Parrott’s technique strengthened the breech by pounding a red-hot band into place, then allowing it to cool and contract even more tightly around the gun.  SHUBRICK’s Parrott rifle is the most modern of the three guns currently displayed on the NMCSD compound.

In 1915, the US Coast Guard was created by combining two splintered services then in existence, the US Lifesaving Service (seaborne rescue) and the US Revenue Cutter Service (anti-smuggling and customs enforcement).  Then on 7 July 1939 the US Lighthouse Service (aids to navigation) was merged with the Coast Guard, hence their three modern missions.

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