The next morning, at dawn on 27 February, the fleet was picked up by a Japanese reconnaissance plane, which directed in a squadron of bombers. They attacked but without conviction when met by anti-aircraft fire. Yet it caused Dutch commander Doorman to have second thoughts about continuing. He decided to refuel back at Surabaya and fight the next day. So, all ships in the convoy returned to the stinking, crushed port, which still glowed with fires under a dark cloud shroud. But not for long.
The Dutch High Command at Bandung gained intelligence about a massive Japanese invasion force. At 2 p.m. Doorman was ordered to turn about and meet the enemy. His fleet had to attack the troopships and sink them. The Japanese responded by splitting into three groups, which spread over a 20-mile sea-front. This was impossible to tackle unless Doorman destroyed them one after another, an effort beyond his current resources. On top of that, he was without air support.
The skies were clear and blue, visibility was good and the seas were flat when the enemy was spotted by the British ship Electra in the north-east at 4 p.m. Twelve minutes later it was able to report the sighting of at least one Japanese cruiser and plenty of big destroyers. The information was flashed to Doorman and every ship in his fleet. Nervous tension built; everyone’s adrenalin pumped as battle stations were taken up.
This was it. Half of Perth’s crew members had never faced combat on the high seas before. The Japanese battleships, heading west, would cross in front of the Allied force, in the hope of protecting their troopships, which were being withdrawn to safer water. The two huge Japanese heavy cruisers, each with ten 8-inch guns and a dozen torpedoes, came into view.
The Japanese opened fire first. Those on Perth could see the flashes and bursts of spraying light. The shells flew at them with a scream that chilled. Most landed in the sea, sending water plumes high. Nothing in the first volley hit the Allied ships. Doorman had all his ships in a straight line which put all of them at a distinct disadvantage to the Japanese cutting across them. He directed his Allied fleet to head west, which meant the two opposing forces would soon be running parallel to each other. But he had turned too early. When he called for fire, shells from the 8-inch guns of his heavy cruisers—Exeter and Houston—fell short of the enemy.
Waller and the other captains with 6-inch guns knew they were well out of range. Waller was furious that Doorman had made such an early sweeping turn that left so many of the Allied ships out of the initial combat.
‘I’m a fucking Aunt Sally!’ he bellowed. An ‘Aunt Sally’ was a fairground dummy set up as an easy target for people to throw things at; it could be attacked without being able to fight back. This was Hardover Hec, the tough commander, who wanted so much to prove his skills again in the deadly business of battling at sea while ensuring the survival of himself and his men.
Slowly, surely, over ten minutes, which seemed like an hour to Waller, the parallel lines of combatants drew closer. Waller ordered his officers to calculate the range. The four gun turrets were manipulated so that they would fire on the same target. Below deck the worker bees with the toughest job of all began loading the heavy 100-pound shells and cordite charges into the elevators that would push them to the turrets.
Soon each gun was set. A red light glowed. Waller was informed. He was ready to order ‘Open Fire!’
The noise everywhere now was ear-splitting. Collins was in a frantic search for Red Lead. He found her scampering around near the ship’s Walrus plane 25 yards from the captain’s cabin. He had never seen her eyes so wide and petrified. She was ready for flight, but where? She arched her back and hissed at Collins, which he’d never experienced before. She dashed for the nearby aircraft crane, leapt onto it and seemed to be considering a high-wire act on lines joining the foremast to mainmast, about 50 yards. It would have been a precarious balance even for this most nimble of animals.
Collins waved his arms and yelled at the cat.
‘Don’t you dare!’
Red Lead looked down, hesitated and meowed.
Collins heard the pipping calls to battle stations. He was ready to abandon the cat and return to his work on the main deck. When he turned to go, Red Lead meowed again. It was a long, plaintive cry he’d never heard before. She climbed down the crane at speed and was soon close to Collins. He grabbed her and hurried to the captain’s cabin. Collins could feel her tiny heart thumping as he shoved her into the cabin. His number-one job done, he moved to a hose on deck. Collins’s role was simple but dangerous. When shells landed, he had to hose them down, hopefully after they had exploded, otherwise Waller might be looking for another cat-minder.
Waller, binoculars now a permanent fixture on his nose, called ‘Open Fire!’ Then he demonstrated why he was regarded so highly. He directed his pilot at the wheel to weave this way and that in the bigger Houston’s wake. He was attempting to avoid falling shells while, at the same time, ordering his gunners to open up at a propitious moment.
At 4.45 p.m. Waller practically did a jig on the bridge as Perth’s gunners hit a Japanese cruiser, which was soon hidden in smoke cloud and limping out of the battle. Almost at the same time, Exeter landed a hit on another cruiser. It remained in sight but was now on a distant flank of the conflict.
The Japanese took the hits as they lined up for a torpedo attack. Houston tried to disorganise the enemy with a fierce barrage of its red-dye infused shells. They created pretty but ineffective crimson sprays around the enemy destroyers as they readied their silent underwater killers. Yet perhaps the American ship’s flurry had caused panic among the enemy. The torpedoes were fired too early and from too great a distance. They fizzled out short of the ships, with minor eruptions in the water that signalled the end of their runs.
The battle raged on for 62 minutes before the Japanese cruiser Nachi, using its 8-inch guns, launched a successful hit on Exeter. It took out the British ship’s starboard 4-inch gun and a crew of four. It then smashed into a boiler room, killing another ten men and blowing up six of eight boilers. The ship lost all its electric power and no amount of work from electricians could restore it. Houston was closing behind Exeter and the American captain did all in his power to avoid colliding with the British ship.
Exeter wobbled out of the Allied force and staggered on. Steam from a hole in its starboard side signalled its slow surrender, a pathetic and depressing sight for all the other ships.
Waller didn’t see the problem with Exeter initially and followed Houston to port and away from close engagement with the enemy. Other Allied ships did the same. Then Waller realised Exeter’s predicament. He knew the Japanese would move in to sink it. He had his ship accelerate to full speed. Guns blazing, Perth passed Houston. Waller sent out a white smokescreen that streamed from Perth’s generators. This shielded the British ship Exeter, which could limp on to a Javanese port. This selfless, courageous action saw enemy cruisers making a concerted effort to take out Perth, which they viewed as a foolhardy interloper that threatened to upset their plans. They lined up their torpedoes, this time closer. The silent death missiles streaked towards the Allies, and this time had a strike. Down went the elderly Dutch destroyer Kortenaer. It pained Waller that he was not allowed to come to the aid of the crew’s survivors, but he and all the Allied ships were under orders to keep fighting and not stop. This inhumane inaction was a shock to the new sailors on Perth. They watched Dutch sailors struggling and waving in the water, aware that any second, any moment, this could be them. No one would come to save them from a watery grave.
Doorman’s Allied fleet was in disarray. Ships wandered in several directions. Communications broke down, through language and systems differences, and also because of inexperience in such a complex battle. Waller would have been a better choice to lead the convoy, but the three empires—British, Dutch and American—would never allow an Australian to take charge. The Allied chaos was in contrast to the systematic methods of the Japanese who had the advantage of air reconnaissance that could pass data down to ships from their grandstand view in the skies. The enemy knew all Allied boat conditions and movements. They had three planes constantly tracking their own ships’ firing. Were they falling short, or on target? Were the torpedoes accurate and making an impact? By contrast, the Allies had no planes. All were damaged and inoperable. It was a telling disadvantage as the battle developed, and made worse by the fact that their only ship with radar, Exeter, was struggling at 12 knots towards Surabaya.
The Japanese now hunted in packs, cornering the British destroyer Electra. Like wolves on a rabbit, they attacked. Shells rained down. The weight of the attack had to strike home somewhere and the boiler room was the first to explode. Disabled, the ship went down fighting with its captain waving from the bridge. He took the option to go down with it, while his crew took the directive of ‘Every man for himself.’ Due to the Dutch decision not to rescue anyone, most of the crew would drown at sea with him.
Night was falling, and Doorman had little choice but to consider calling off the Allied mission, yet he still gave no clear instruction to his fleet. He was ambivalent about making one last attempt to find the Japanese troopships, or retiring. The latter would see him berated and probably fired by his superiors in their safe offices in Bandung. The rest of the Allied captains had to deal with a flurry of confused orders, which made the Dutch commander appear like a drunken sailor. The other ships followed him, not knowing if he had a plan, or if he was pulling out of the encounter. Most of the Allied force’s torpedoes were spent.
Without instructions, the American ships headed for Surabaya. Their commanders knew they could blame others for the mission’s failure. None of them would be dismissed.
Doorman, fearing an enemy trap in the dark, headed close to Java, but too close to shallows and mines, causing the destroyer HMS Jupiter to be hit by a mine. It blew in the starboard side and the engine room was flooded. Jupiter struggled on like a wounded animal for several hours but none of the Allied ships were allowed to go to the aid of the British ship or its floundering crew.
The Japanese planes now dropped flares near the Allied vessels, giving the Japanese ships a good view of where their moving targets were. It was another huge advantage in a conflict that had moved from clear light to darkness. Waller wrote in the ship’s log that the flares were being dropped whenever and wherever he made a turn. This emphasised to him that the Japanese planes were providing pinpoint intelligence to their ships.
As the opposing forces drifted apart in the dark, the battle continued in favour of the Japanese. Only four Allied ships were combat operational, the Dutch De Ruyter and Java, and Houston and Perth.
The battered Allied force headed for Surabaya; the Japanese closed in. They continued the torpedo bombardment and their fifth round proved decisive. Java was struck and cut in two. It sank inside three minutes. De Ruyter took a terrific hit but struggled on a little longer until fire reached a storeroom of flares and rockets. The resultant Catherine wheel of destruction made a spectacular sight as the Dutch ship sank.
Waller came into his own once more, swerving his ship to just avoid the submerged Dutch vessels. Doorman and his second-in-command were not going to risk the indignity of diving overboard with the hapless sailors. They found an empty room and together shot themselves. In effect, they were in control of their destinies, minds and bodies as they went down with the ship.
Doorman would have realised that his reputation was finished before he was. He had led the Allied force bravely, but incompetently. Thousands of sailors were now dead or floating in the ocean as a result.
The only minor consolation was that a small percentage of those in the water were saved when the surviving Allied ships, Houston and Perth, took risks and disobeyed orders to save hundreds in the water. Houston stood guard while Perth deployed small boats to round up survivors, all of whom were struggling in the choking oil, burning debris and swirling water.
Japanese air reconnaissance had been the deciding factor in the battle of the Java Sea, which had been a disaster for the Allies.